MRY
Wormwood Studios
Dave did an interesting interview with the Adventure Advocate. In it, he explains (I think to some degree) why WEG is moving away from traditional, puzzle-based adventure games to more streamlined story-telling games:
There's also this interesting tidbit: "But I will say that as we've done more and more of these games, we have learned what works well with this style and what doesn't. Dystopian futures like the ones in Primordia, Technobabylon and Gemini rue work really well with pixel art. Sunny art-deco Florida in Golden Wake did... not. So since we're sticking to pixel art, we are going to stick with games that are enhanced by the style rather than harmed by it."
In some respects I agree with him, but I think the solution is to provide gentle, contextual hints within the game (as we did with Crispin and other characters in Primordia) rather than to impose a five-minute rule on puzzle difficulty. (Though, in fairness, I think Dave's games to date actually do have some trickier puzzles in them.)
Story-telling vs puzzles: is there an ideal balance? What’s your opinion about interactive movies? How do you feel about the recent shift by some adventure game developers to exclusively make this type of games?
What a lot of adventure developers need to remember is that the Internet exists now. You don't have to be stuck unless you really want to. Back in the late 80s, I happily spent weeks trying to defeat that bastard wizard in King's Quest 3. Today? I'd last about five minutes before reaching for Google. Modern developers understand this. So the focus has moved away from puzzles and more towards immersion and "fun." If you have to leave my game in order to enjoy it (e.g., going to google) then you aren't really having fun and I consider that a failure.
Which adventure game protagonist from the 'golden' era of the 80s and the 90s would you have liked to have created yourself?
I try not to think about the "golden era" too much. It's that kind of backward thinking and over-reliance on nostalgia that holds adventure games back. I'm happy with what I've created myself.
There's also this interesting tidbit: "But I will say that as we've done more and more of these games, we have learned what works well with this style and what doesn't. Dystopian futures like the ones in Primordia, Technobabylon and Gemini rue work really well with pixel art. Sunny art-deco Florida in Golden Wake did... not. So since we're sticking to pixel art, we are going to stick with games that are enhanced by the style rather than harmed by it."
In some respects I agree with him, but I think the solution is to provide gentle, contextual hints within the game (as we did with Crispin and other characters in Primordia) rather than to impose a five-minute rule on puzzle difficulty. (Though, in fairness, I think Dave's games to date actually do have some trickier puzzles in them.)