Codex Interview AdventureDex: A Conversation about the State of the Adventure Genre

[gromit]

Use a fucking teaser break, you queer.

 

[Aeschylus]

Ok, well, I read it and I have a lot of thoughts. I'm not really sure where to start. I guess I'll just go through it bit by bit...

I got a pretty similar start to adventure gaming as Infinitron (my first one was KQ6, and then I played every one I could find from there), but I never really lost my love of the genre, and have been picking at the (relative, occasionally very high quality) scraps of amateur AGS games for ages now. Regarding the Kickstarter stuff, it's sort of been discussed to death here, but I will say that I'm really glad it's given some of the groups that really kept adventure games alive through the Dark Ages(tm) such as AGDI and IA a real chance to put out a commercial game.

The relative success (or lack thereof) of adventure games on Kickstarter was really about where I expected it to be. Let's be realistic: most of these people have been out of the public eye for close to 20 years now, or if they have gotten publicity it has been bad (recent LSL games). Combined with relatively weak pitches I was just happy the ones I cared about met their goals. I do agree with MRY that benficiaries of Kickstarters shouldn't be forced to kowtow to their fans desires, but that's more me (perhaps naively) believing that these people can still create interesting games without just copying what they did before.

Anyway, regarding the idea of adventure game communities on the internet, I've been semi-involved with them over the years, and honestly I think that most of the good ones have been dissolved or dying for many years. I mean, right now the Codex is basically the best adventure game forum on the internet imo, and it is a RPG fansite. The AGS forums are alright, but nothing compared to what they once were. To be honest, my feeling is that a lot of the fans of classic adventure games have just given up by now. Back in the late-90's/early 2000s there were vibrant communities surrounding every series by Sierra and Lucasarts (some still exist today in barely-functional form), as well as tons of fan games, but most of them have vanished over the years. The DFA kickstarter, for someone who still followed and loved adventure games, was sort of like seeing a pet you'd put down years ago suddenly appearing in front of you again. Similar feeling for the big CRPG kickstarters. In that sense, I definitely agree with Blackthorne that adventure game fans are crpg fans are pretty similar. The only real difference is that adventure games fans have been starved for longer, and are if anything more bitter and pessimistic.

The point about the richness of rpgs vs. adventure games is an interesting one. I personally always felt that the systems of RPGs are much more in-depth, while the content of adventure games is much more in depth (as it has to be, as that's really all the games have). I dunno, just an observation. It was interesting to read about how bt approaches designing his game.

And to MRY, I think some of the criticism you cite about your game is made by, um... less experience adventure game players. Although I sort of agree that the ending's pacing was a bit abrupt, I certainly don't think the puzzles were too hard or obscure. And some of them were really excellent. I think a lot of the problem there comes from the fact that the remaining actual 'hardcore' classic adventure fanbase is fairly small, and so a lot of people who are going to be trying these games out are going to be new to the genre. To a lot of people who started gaming after the 90s, a 'puzzle' at most constitutes flipping a few levers in sequence. This is why it pisses me off so much when crappy sites like AdventureGamers call Portal an adventure game. Fuck that.

I do sort of disagree with one thing MRY said, though more from a historical perspective than a good-game-design one. I honestly *do* think a lot of the puzzles in very early adventure games were there solely as a way to stop players in their tracks and extend gameplay time (and possible create calls to Sierra's hintline, only $1/minute!). This (to me) started to change gradually around the early 90s with the popularity of Monkey Island. I don't think those sort of dead-stop puzzles are all bad though, as figuring them out could really give a great feeling of accomplishment. RE: Backtracking... well, as long as it's within reason and the toon can walk around fairly quickly it's not too annoying. I do think that if backtracking is a major part of the puzzle there should be some extra impetus to go back, like a change in the area that's ocurred or some other puzzle that needs to be solved there. I think the Quest for Glory games (particularly 4) did this the best -- returning you do old areas repeatedly, but often with new twists or characters appearing. So basically, it depends on the scale of your game. It's probably not great for a smaller game like Primordia, but in a more 'full-length' sort of game it can be great.

I liked the Adventure vs. RPG discussion. I do think the two genres overlap in a lot of ways, and can make for a pretty damn great hybrid that transcends both genres (QFG). In general I'll play an adventure game if I feel more like relaxing and thinking analytically a bit, while I'll play an RPG if I feel like engaging and doing more tactical thinking. Or I'll just play QFG because it's amazing. I do think the 'need' for non-linearity and C&C are one of the big differences between the adventure and RPG genres, but I for one am a big proponent of multiple solutions and paths in adventure games, Indy: FoA and KQ6 are some of my favorite games, and really benefited from multiple paths. I also agree with MRY that it's important to have a degree of non-linearity in adventure game puzzle-solving so that a player doesn't become overly frustrated with one task, but I do also see the games in general as being more focused along a set path than RPGs. I don't think that as a bad thing, it's just how narratives work.

In my opinion, most 'hybrid' adventure games were colossal failures other than QFG. In general all it meant were fucking horrible action sequences made by people who had no concept of how to make a fun action sequence. It would probably work better if you started from another genre and then added adventure game elements, rather than vice-versa. And you're right bt, the first Actraiser game was pretty fantastic. 2nd one sucked though.

I don't really agree at all that Myst-like games were inheritors of the classic IF type gameplay, as I always saw those games as more of 'show-don't-tell' sort of experiences, while IF games very much told without showing.

I also half-disagree with the premise of the question about 'loneliness' in classic adventure games. It was occasionally true, but most of my favorite games have extensive casts of characters and fairly vibrant worlds. The main reason I disliked The Whispered World so much is because after a while the world began to feel empty and sterile. A large part of adventure games is interaction with the environment and the characters therein -- I actually think there is more of a pervading sense of 'loneliness' in modern adventure games, which imo started with Myst. The MC him/herself being something of an outsider is another matter though. I always thought of adventure game MCs as kind of analogous to a noir private eye, maybe outside the setting and occasionally looked down upon (hello Roger Wilco), but in general very relatable/entertaining. I think that's a large part of what many modern adventure games are missing.

The transition to 3d was, imo, a large part of the attempted-murder of the classic adventure genre. Beautiful environments and exploration are a huge part of the games, and frankly early 3d looked like hairy man-ass. I don't think it unneccessarily limited the gameplay, but damn was it ugly. FMVs were more a fad, which while it produced some decent games mostly resulted in 'interactive movies' more than games in the classic-adventure mold.

Adventure games were buried in a shallow grave, but, that which can eternal lie and all... I think AGS and the fan community in general should get most of the credit for keeping the genre alive. But yeah, the answer is fairly simple I think: they 'died' because the fanbase was relatively small, while gaming was becoming a huge-numbers industry. The few series (i.e. King's Quest) which could sell huge numbers took fairly disastrous turns. Idiotic bureaucrats started running companies and destroying them. Shit happens. Same thing that happened to Black Isle, basically.

Anyway -- am I being too hard on current games, even those for which I have a soft spot (like the WEG catalogue)? Is the design not as bad as I think?

No you are not, in my not-so-humble opinion, and you make a legitimate point about adventure game design being a learned skill. Even Daedalic, which shits out adventure games like nobody's business is just now started to produce halfway decent games. It's definitely a long process. I do think that there were some real gems produced in AGS over the years though. I should really make some sort of retrospective thread at some point...

I have to agree with both MRY and bt that WEG is the best current 'commercial' producer of adventure games. I do think their titles in general are kind of crippled by being 'indie' though. Not that they are bad, just that in general they could be more. Most recent Euro adventure games are frankly pretty bad.

Oh, and Sierra games are better. I will fight you . Nah, just kidding. We all know Legend Ent. made the best adventure games. and Infinitron I think the reason they haven't been released on GOG.com yet is that the rights to the games passed through so many hands and are so convoluted that nobody even knows who to contact to sell them.

tl;dr: Good interview, lots of interesting points made and discussed (though I don't necessarily agree with all of it), and I'm glad you guys all took the time to do it.

 

[Infinitron]

Aeschylus

Re: the bit about the loneliness, I actually redacted a bit of that part of the interview that because I felt it didn't add much.

Good point about some of the early adventure games giving you a group of characters. However, I would say that for most of them, you were "lonely" even as a group. Gabriel Knight, on the other hand, is probably a good early example of the newer type of adventure game. Gabriel is no outsider - he's very much in his element in New Orleans.

Here's the perfect example of the tonal shift that I'm referring to - Sierra's Space Quests 1-4 vs Dynamix's Space Quest 5.

Mark Yohalem:
Interesting. I'm not sure I'd consider Space Quest V a "modern" game though -- it was released in 1993, the same year as Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father and Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness (i.e., QFG4) and just two years after Monkey Island 2. I would say that's the period we'd still call games "classic."

I do think you're onto something, though.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to refer to it as a sharp dichotomy between older and newer adventures. It was more like a long term trend, one that had many exceptions (ie Myst clones).

 

[Gurkog]

That was an interesting read. I missed out on the glory days of adventure games, but find their development intriguing.

 

[Midair]

So, here is the question : Could you totally avoid combat in a good resource/ability-based adventure game ?

If you mean combat in the form of physical violence, then you could replace it with many alternatives, e.g. sanity points. But I don't see any point in having resources unless there is some type of combat in an abstract sense, depleting an opponent's resources and defending your own.

 

[Manny]

thesisko:

Yeah, I think you’re right in a sense and maybe I haven’t expressed myself clearly enough. Also, I think that maybe “difficult” vs. “easy” isn´t the best way to put what I mean. Maybe “complex” vs. “simple”, or “subtle” vs. “obvious”, or maybe both because they don’t overlap. I’m not sure. But let me explain with more detail the idea I wanted to express.

When I said that a good a puzzle is one that keeps you stuck for weeks or months, I wanted to capture one of the consequences than can happen to players when they find a puzzle and not its solution. The puzzle doesn’t “need” to get the player stuck. The puzzle only has to be complex. And, if it’s complex enough, some players (not all) are going to get stuck for a time: some a day, others a week, etc. The good thing about this is that, when you solve a puzzle after a while, you feel good, great in some cases. You feel pleasure. And you realize that you’ve been having fun with the game and its obstacles. Jasede has explained this feeling and how your brain works when you’re not playing better than me, in a subtle way, and, when you return, you have an epiphany (well, I’m exaggerating a little) and solve the puzzle. And this kind of puzzles are lacking in the majority of new adventure games. This doesn’t mean that all the puzzles need to be this way. The game needs to have a rhythm in the flow of the puzzles. Some simple and obvious, others simple but subtle, others complex. As Ghostdog said:

when it comes to puzzle design, a good adventure should have a few complex, multi-layered, clever puzzles that will leave an impression on the player and the rest should be designed in order to accommodate the plot as much as possible and not be very difficult, in order to let the game flow.

Now then, if you follow me, the problem is how you make a puzzle complex or subtle or both. And here the discussion can get long, really long. I’m going to list some elements I think affect this; I’m going to do it in random order and without developing the idea behind each one. Maybe they can be expanded in other post. 1) the number of elements to interact with; 2) the interface the player uses to interact with the environment; 3) the number of items you can take and combine; 4) the number and clarity of the hints that allow for the player to elaborate hypothesis regarding the solution of the puzzle; 5) the clarity of the goal; 6) the clarity of the “how”; 7) the number and “openness” of the “rooms”. There are more maybe, but I can’t think of any more at the moment. If you compare the new adventure games, all of these elements have been simplified. Take Daedalic as an example. Its first game, Edna and Harvey: The Breakout, have at least four actions. Also have a lot of hotspots to interact. The hints to the puzzles weren’t obvious. Then, you have a really nice game, at least by my criteria. The Whispered World maintains the quantity of the actions, but you have less rooms to interact with at the same time and also less hotspots. It was a nice game and had some good puzzles. I didn’t like it that much though, but for other reasons. Then you have A New Beginning: less actions (only two), less hotspots, and less rooms “opened” at the same time. I didn’t like it at all. I liked the second Harvey game only because I like the world and characters, but the puzzle design was very bad, because all puzzles were obvious. Also it had only two actions, less hotspots and, if I remember well, less rooms than the first.

In that sense, I agree with you that the game needs to give you hints to solve the puzzles, to formulate hypothesis. But there´s obvious hints and subtle hints. And this little thin boundary makes all the difference to me.

Finally, I don’t argue the idea that puzzles need to be totally integrated in the story being told. I hate those puzzles that feel like they have been created only to “fill” the game. And, yes, the best adventure games are those where

the puzzles felt like a part of the game, rather than obstacles that prevented me from getting the next bit of story.

But that doesn’t make them less of an obstacle. They have to be a real obstacle to the advance to be a valid puzzle. If not, there´s only interaction. And there lays another difficulty in the design of adventure games: how to make a puzzle that doesn’t feel as an obvious one.


MRY

I hope you like the Spanish sites. In indiefence there is a pdf file with an explanation, with examples created by the author (so, without spoilers), of different kind of puzzles. I like his vision, especially when he talks about the importance of the context for a puzzle to work.

Regarding games, try to play at least the last two Larrys if you can. They’re really good. SQ isn’t a Series I think is too good regarding puzzles, but the last one, the sixth installment, has a great beginning; after that, it’s nice here and there, but nothing spectacular. The problem with SQVI is it´s less fun, at least as a whole, than the previous ones, I think, but I like its design more.

By the way: why don’t you like Gk2? You were clear in the interview regarding why you think KQ6 is overrated. If I understand well (please point to me if I’m wrong), you dislike it because it’s melodramatic. But what do you think of its puzzle design? And what about the puzzle design of GK2?

I know I’m putting a lot of emphasis in the puzzle design s, but that’s because I think it’s the base of the gameplay of adventures. Obviously, there are more things that are important too: exploration, writing, plot, artistic design, etc. But I think they’re secondary. I, for example, like Sanitarium for the ambience and artistic design; I also like the plot but wouldn´t considerit a great adventure because its puzzles aren´t goods.


Aeschylus

I do think that there were some real gems produced in AGS over the years though. I should really make some sort of retrospective thread at some point...

That would be great. I haven’t played many AGS games. But from what I’ve played I don’t remember any gem. (Here I’m not counting remakes nor commercial games). I like the two first Technobabylon games and also, from that year, Snakes of Avalon and The Journey Down. The Trilby games were nice and, to a lesser extent, so was Permanent Daylight. I remember Pleurghburg. Dark Ages had some interesting things going on too, but it was too linear to my taste sometimes. Ah… I almost forgot: The Infinity String has really good art and ok puzzles, but the story was a mess. I have played some other games but nothing that´s worth mentioning. So a retrospective with commentaries of the games would be really interesting.

 

[Blackthorne]

Absent from the discussion are the Japanese family of adventure games ranging from PnCs like Snatcher, VNs, and puzzlers like ace attorney, prof layton, 999/virtue's, danganronpa etc. It's not all tentacle rape and schoolgirls.

I have to be honest; for me it's absent because I have never played any of them, so I really couldn't speak about them or their merits.


Bt

 

[MRY]

Whew! A lot to respond to.

@ Karellen & Ghostdog: In terms of resources, layered puzzles, etc. -- this is all very helpful, and it jibes with my thinking. I don't want to discuss our next project ideas because they're nebulous, and could be changed or simply never developed. But the ideas are similar to those you're talking about, and the ideas have gotten sharper since reading your posts. It's helpful to have the importance of tangible progress reemphasized to me. That's something I promise to have in the next game, whatever it is. At this point, I've got a lot of big ideas, but as Ghostdog rightly notes, there's a real danger in trying to build game concepts up from scratch. The nice thing about imitation is that it insures at least a modicum of decency.

@ Aeschylus: I really enjoyed reading all your thoughts. I'm going to argue against one of them, though: I don't think the first Act Raiser was very good at all. Granted, I played it years after it was released, but my impression was that it was a simplified, linear, and unstrategic Sim game wedded to a decent, but not great, side scrolling platformer/actioner. Nice "packaging" (art, sound, narrative) though. I liked it much less than other side scrollers like Strider or Cadash. I agree with you that there were time-waster puzzles in old games; I just think they were bad, that's all!

@ Manny: I'm working my way through those sites, and I found your analytic framework really interesting. I actually think KQVI isn't a terrible game, just an overrated one; since a large part of why people love it is the melodrama, I focused my criticism on that, since that's where I disagree with them. It's been years since I played it, and my recollection is that the puzzles were pretty decent, but too many typical Sierra "walking dead" scenarios and unpredictable puzzle solutions / failures. In terms of GK2, no, I thought the puzzles were terrible. I remain baffled that anyone solved the "clever" puzzle involving the tape editing -- to me, it combined the worst parts of designer mindreading and in-world implausibility because even after you figured out exactly the recording that Jane Jensen was thinking of, it sounded choppy and unconvincing. Much of the game consisted of simply exhausting dialogue topics in which it didn't matter what you chose because you had to choose everything. The dialogue itself was poorly acted and not very well written. The climax puzzles didn't build on anything the player had learned to do over the course of the game and had weird and unfun interfaces. Really, I'm not a fan of the game!

In terms of the Larry games -- as much as I like to take people up on their suggestions, there's really no plausible chance of it happening. I have almost no time for playing games, and I'm married with two young daughters, so it's not exactly the kind of game that will generate squeals of delight when I go off to play it. There are so many other games already on my play list that are just gathering dust (I bought Anachronox like three years ago!). Still, I appreciate the suggestion, and I'll try to watch some Let's Play videos if nothing else. (I've also been following The Adventure Gamer as he plays through them.)

@ Ninja: I can say with relatively high confidence that I am not going to make another game in Primordia's world. I love worldbuilding. Even if a sequel would make 50% more money than a new IP, I think I'd rather build up a new world (and perhaps a bigger one, which could better sustain sequels). If I were going to do a Primordia sequel, it would probably be about Autonomous 8 trying to recover the Thanatos virus (i.e., a follow-on to "Fallen" rather than to Primordia itself). But, really, I'd rather break new ground!

 

[Blackthorne]

I like ActRaiser because it was a simplified sim and a platformer. Granted I was, what, 13 when it came out, but it was really cool to combine them. I like that it's easy to play; it gives a story to a platformer, and it was something different. The sequel got rid of the Sim stuff, and it was just a basic platformer. The notion that you went down to fight specific threats to your people was fun. Hell, I'd love to see a sequel/spiritual sequel with the same kind of idea - maybe a bit more dynamic in the sim sequences - but I love that notion of having to go down and fight for your people.

Bt

 

[MRY]

I agree that it was more than the sum of its parts, and if I'd played it as a kid, I would've been more impressed. Since I played it in my 20s, it just seemed grindy and blah.

 

[Aeschylus]

Haha, you picked out the one part of my commentary totally unrelated to adventure games!
I dunno, I liked Actraiser. As bt said the way the different parts of the game meshed was fun, and it was something pretty unique that worked. Though it's true it wasn't really the best side-scroller out there.

It's been years since I played it, and my recollection is that the puzzles were pretty decent, but too many typical Sierra "walking dead" scenarios and unpredictable puzzle solutions / failures.

KQ6 didn't really have many of those (dead ends), and none of them that forced you to go back very far. Those were more KQ5's thing. Missing things in general just put you on the 'short' path.

 

[MRY]

It was the only part I disagreed with.

 

[SCO]

Still, this article made me start setting up Quest for Glory on the tablet. I'll try and resist all handholding.

If you need handholding for a game with multiple solutions to the overwhelming majority of puzzles that are mostly class themed... well, i'd consider consulting a psychiatrist. Very fun though. You might have actual trouble in deciding that there is a puzzle to solve in some cases, since there are quite a few optional ones scattered through. For instance i didn't think QFGIV had a paladin nomination quest until very recently (it does, it's that thing with the 'special' wraith/burgomeister that Erana eventually directs you to). QFG is a very rich game series textually; remember to look at things, and speak to yourself.

Also QFG combat was always crap, except 'barely acceptable minigame' on the QFG2 fan-remake. Bloodnet was even more horrid RtwP, although it had the potential to be a lot better if not for that terrible interface usability.

BTW, i'm playing the PSP growlanser wayfarer of time recently and this is reminding me of adventure gamer logic. If you're not familiar with it, growlanser is a stock RTwP jrpg, with gridless movement on the same maps where you move (very similar to a much better bloodnet combat system actually). What's surprising about it is that it's got a unfair C&C mechanic - the game can be playing normally just by following the plot hook - however that will lead to 'tragedies' to almost all characters. To avoid this, you often need to use misable items you have in your inventory that you can't see on the main screen on the characters. And finding them. And the characters are often connected. And you can miss opportunities to do so.

 

[asper]

Good interview. Very nice to see Anchorhead, Photopia and Lost Pig mentioned. A lot of interesting stuff happens in text adventures but they get very little attention.

 

[thesisko]

thesisko:

Yeah, I think you’re right in a sense and maybe I haven’t expressed myself clearly enough. Also, I think that maybe “difficult” vs. “easy” isn´t the best way to put what I mean. Maybe “complex” vs. “simple”, or “subtle” vs. “obvious”, or maybe both because they don’t overlap. I’m not sure. But let me explain with more detail the idea I wanted to express.

When I said that a good a puzzle is one that keeps you stuck for weeks or months, I wanted to capture one of the consequences than can happen to players when they find a puzzle and not its solution. The puzzle doesn’t “need” to get the player stuck. The puzzle only has to be complex. And, if it’s complex enough, some players (not all) are going to get stuck for a time: some a day, others a week, etc. The good thing about this is that, when you solve a puzzle after a while, you feel good, great in some cases. You feel pleasure. And you realize that you’ve been having fun with the game and its obstacles. Jasede has explained this feeling and how your brain works when you’re not playing better than me, in a subtle way, and, when you return, you have an epiphany (well, I’m exaggerating a little) and solve the puzzle. And this kind of puzzles are lacking in the majority of new adventure games. This doesn’t mean that all the puzzles need to be this way.

I just don't think adventure game puzzles ever were so complex as to actually require thinking about them for days. Usually one got stuck because of missing some detail/item.

Puzzles that "stump" the player were often solved by just realizing one has missed some crucial bit of information/object or haven't (re)visited a location - i.e. probably by anyone willing to spend a lot of time on the game regardless of how "smart" they are. Most of us played these games when we were children, and I it would be pretty sad if we have worse problem solving skills in our 30's.

I think a good adventure game puzzle should be solvable fairly quickly by an observant and intelligent player, and perhaps not at all by someone who isn't paying attention and has poor deductive/problem solving skills.
Take an IQ test for instance, a clever person will score higher than other people but it doesn't necessarily require a large amount of time to score well on the test.
One could make a test that takes longer to solve by supplying less information in each question and allowing multiple tries, but that wouldn't make it more "complex", it would just mean that there are more apparently possible answers that don't fit the requested solution.

 

[abnaxus]

I just don't think adventure game puzzles ever were so complex as to actually require thinking about them for days. Usually one got stuck because of missing some detail/item.

Have you played Schizm: Mysterious Journey?

 

[thesisko]

I just don't think adventure game puzzles ever were so complex as to actually require thinking about them for days. Usually one got stuck because of missing some detail/item.

Have you played Schizm: Mysterious Journey?

No, but reading the Gamespot review I get the impression that the puzzles are more like complex problems that require multistage solutions - I doubt that you can simply solve them by having an "epiphany" and trying something new.
In fact, I'd say that they seem to be more in line with that I was suggesting - solvable by a dedicated and intelligent person and not even possible to attempt by those with the wrong mindset/skills.

 

[Blackthorne]

RE: forgetting an item for adventure game puzzle.

Let's travel back to 1988 for a minute. My cousins had a bitchin' (It was the 80's, this is appropriate) Apple IIgs. And they had SPACE QUEST for it. So we spent hours playing that motherfucker, having a good time with it. We spent days roaming the desert, getting killed, avoiding the spider bot... good times. But when I finally got to the caverns underground, and got to the laser... we couldn't get around it! I had no idea... wracked my brain thinking for ideas, but being kids, we gave up for a while, and played King's Quest and Zany Golf until our eyes bled.

A couple years later, having beat SQ2 an SQ3... I met a dude at school who played and beat Space Quest. I said "How do you get past the lasers?" He said "Uh, that was easy. You get the glass from the wrecked escape pod."

So simple, yet I missed it. And spent YEARS not finishing it, haha. It was more circumstance, though. I didn't own SQ1, and they did - and I only played it when we visited. But yeah - sometimes a puzzle takes a lot of time simply because you forgot an item or missed a small detail. It was a different time; no internet, so the cafeteria table at school was where you traded info. Plus, you know, games had load times in-between screens... not huge, but definitely noticeable compared to today. Anyway, I'll always remember playing SQ1 on that IIgs, and being stuck on those damn lazer beams forever. But I wouldn't change it, cause when I got by them, and worked my way through the game and beat the rest on my own, it was super cathartic.


Bt

 

[Midair]

Here is why I do not like adventure games:

In a good riddle, you have all of the information you need but still have to apply lateral thinking to realize the solution. You don't get stuck because you missed something. The problem SEEMS impossible until you look at it in a different way, rather than the problem actually being impossible until you find some missing information.

Adeventure game puzzles are not good puzzles. Their solution rarely comes from an epiphany, but instead from canvasing the game until you find some information you were missing. So, you are not faced with a seemingly impossible problem, requiring you to think creatively. In fact, the problem often has many logical solutions, but you have to pick the right one, or do what could be done with many objects using just the right object, or do things in just the right order.

I would like an adventure game that gave you all the necessary information up front, telling you that you have e.g. these 3 items and these 4 actions, then making you figure out how your limited tools can possibly solve the riddle. That is how most puzzles work, in everything from crosswords to lateral thinking riddles, you know what the rules of the puzzle are up front and have to think within the rules to arrive at a solution.

edit: to find the glass in space quest 1, you have to examine the ship multiple times or examine it in a particular spot or something, otherwise there is no mention of it. May such "puzzle" design RIP.

 

[Infinitron]

You don't get stuck because you missed something.

...

I would like an adventure game that gave you all the necessary information up front

And so the adventure game quest compass was born.

 

[Athelas]

The problem with adventure games is obviously one of technological limitations: gameplay mechanics (talk/use/combine/etc.) can never fully represent the human thought process and different ways of how to tackle a puzzle, nor can the puzzles themselves be as complex and interactive as their real-life counterparts. There's too many variables, which is perhaps why the genre remained in 'static' 2d and never really made the move to 3d.

 

[FeelTheRads]

There's too many variables, which is perhaps why the genre remained in 'static' 2d and never really made the move to 3d.

Wat

 

[Tigranes]

Still, this article made me start setting up Quest for Glory on the tablet. I'll try and resist all handholding.

If you need handholding for a game with multiple solutions to the overwhelming majority of puzzles that are mostly class themed... well, i'd consider consulting a psychiatric. Very fun though. You might have actual trouble in deciding that there is a puzzle to solve in some cases, since there are quite a few optional ones scattered through. For instance i didn't think QFGIV had a paladin nomination quest until very recently (it does, it's that thing with the 'special' wraith/burgomeister that Erana eventually directs you to). QFG is a very rich game textually; remember to look at things, and speak to yourself.

Also QFG combat was always crap, except 'barely acceptable minigame' on the QFG2 fan-remake. Bloodnet was even more horrid RtwP, although it had the potential to be a lot better if not for that terrible interface usability.

BTW, i'm playing the PSP growlanser wayfarer of time recently and this is reminding me of adventure gamer logic. If you're not familiar with it, growlanser is a stock RTwP jrpg, with gridless movement on the same maps where you move (very similar to a much better bloodnet combat system actually). What's surprising about it is that it's got a unfair C&C mechanic - the game can be playing normally just by following the plot hook - however that will lead to 'tragedies' to almost all characters. To avoid this, you often need to use misable items you have in your inventory that you can't see on the main screen on the characters. And finding them. And the characters are often connected. And you can miss opportunities to do so.

Cool. I just find the 'Adventure Game way of thinking' regarding puzzles hard to get into, and sometimes I can't make heads or tails of it. That really applies to games like Myst, but even in ones like Grim Fandango or Conquests of the Longbow I would sometimes need help. QFG seems easy enough so far but we will see.

 

[Blackthorne]

Yeah, you know - the mentality of the game isn't for everyone, and you - that's cool. I mean, that's why there's such variety in video gaming, as it were. I love a lot of different genres - I mean, I grew up on a diet of not only PC gaming, but Arcade gaming, Atari 2600 & 7800, NES, SNES, Genesis and the N64 were all huge in my life. In fact, I have an itch to make an old-school beat 'em up in the style of Double Dragon and Golden Axe using some of my QFI characters, and keeping it's irreverant attitude and charm. Whether or not I ever get around to making it, heh, that's another story.

But, for me, Adventure Games - at the time in my youth - offered such a different alternative. RPGs as well - the gaming world has come so far now; there's something for everyone and everything out there. With QFI, though, I did try to blend a love for many different retro styles of games - there are some puzzles in the game that might be head scratchers, but almost all of them have several different solutions, and if one is to explore the game thoroughly, the solutions are offered. Hopefully it all works out - I just wanted to capture that magic of story-telling, with the fun of having to work things out - and keeping the puzzles and quests plot relevant. Also, with combat, there's a bit of RPG gaming and Arcade gaming in there.

I don't want a game to be easy, but I don't want it to be so hard you bang your head. But still, there was that kind of satisfaction in the old days about getting stuck, and somehow later getting unstuck.

Bt

 

[Midair]

Let's say an adventure game did have something like a quest compass, telling you where everything is and how everything can be used. It would be trivially easy, right? Therefore, the puzzles themselves are rarely challenging. The difficulty is all in a tedious exploration process. You can call that a puzzle if you want, but I think puzzle design needs to explore new territory in order to create more epiphany moments rather than missed item moments.