Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[tuluse]

There are many "classic" point and click adventure games that didn't have a whole bunch of verbs and 99.9% of the time they were pointless and could be replaced with contextual actions. Like "give", there is no point to give. If an item can be given just let me click on it and the thing I want to give it to.

 

[Dexter]

There are many "classic" point and click adventure games that didn't have a whole bunch of verbs and 99.9% of the time they were pointless and could be replaced with contextual actions. Like "give", there is no point to give. If an item can be given just let me click on it and the thing I want to give it to.

These things add to the complexity and mood of the game and were most of the actual "gameplay" of old Adventure games. To be able to "give" something to someone you had to actually have the idea of doing that, to "use" something or "push" or whatever you actually had to come up with the idea that doing that might make sense.
Others also lived off of the humour delivered that way, for instance as a late example in the latest Larry remake a lot of the fun is in trying out all the verbs on things you believe might not work and listening to the dialogue.

This kind of system of context sensitive dumbed down gameplay is nice for short/cute Flash Adventure games but is mostly disadvantageous to full length Adventure games in case of complexity and puzzle design. It turns them more into "click-through" Adventure books than the Adventure games of old:


Removing this kind of system I imagine is mainly done out of 3 reasons:
a) trying to appeal to the idiot market by "streamlining" for them so their heads don't explode
b) wanting the game to be portable to tablets and mobile phones which only have tap
c) trying to cut down on the spoken dialogue due to voice acting and expensive voice actors

The number of verbs you can use to interact with an object is the least of this game's problems anyway.

Like what?

 

[tuluse]

Today I learned clicking on give before clicking on a item and then clicking on the person to give it to requires more intelligence than just clicking on the item and then clicking on the person you want to give it to.

Also, people would try the latter without realizing they could give said item.

 

[Boleskine]

Double Fine posted videos from their Day of the Devs event. There's some 'live' footage of Broken Age at roughly the 23:00 mark.

 

[toro]

That is frustratingly bland.

 

[Infinitron]

Doesn't look very bland to me. The Amanita guys might want to call their lawyer, though.

 

[mindx2]

The Amanita guys might want to call their lawyer, though.

Huh?

 

[Cosmo]

Not bland at all. Looks great in fact. And the Adventure Time guy's participation makes a lot of sense if this is a good sample of the game's atmosphere...

 

[Dexter]

Today I learned clicking on give before clicking on a item and then clicking on the person to give it to requires more intelligence than just clicking on the item and then clicking on the person you want to give it to.

Also, people would try the latter without realizing they could give said item.

You know exactly that I wasn't talking about the single case of the implementation of using "give" as verb or drag/drop feature, but using verbs in general. That's the only thing you might still be able to use but you lose the ability (and funny dialogue they usually had to put in) of trying to look at, use, trying to talk to, push/pull inanimate objects as well as the entire puzzle design that goes behind that. At that stage they might as well cut out the last bit of interactivity left of you having to click on an item in the inventory and on a person/object in the world by replacing that with one-click interaction too (to a certain extent Amanita has already done this too).

Some early games surely did use too many verbs that were rather redundant or could turn out to be useless beyond very limited uses:

But after some time they got to a point where a lot of them were compressed to fewer options and sometimes a graphical interface and mostly made sense even if some were simplified or context sensitive into one:

With some verbs used for additional comedy appeal in other games:

Removing all the verbs and interactions as well as the puzzle design that goes behind it is like the Adventure genre alternative of turning your FPS into a cover shooter with regenerating health or removing skills/inventory in an RPG.

What is sad is that what happened back in the early 00s with big games being dumbed down and designed to work on consoles seems to be happening with the smaller games now being dumbed down and designed to work on tablet screens to a limited extent, and a higher amount of verbs or interaction besides simple tapping is undesirable.

You've also already seen this trend in regards to RPGs with Shadowrun Returns: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=3006992#post3006992

At this time we are not planning on releasing a version of Shadowrun Returns for the iPhone. Shadowrun Returns is designed to be a tablet game, and would require lots of redesign work to be able to be playable on screens as small as iPhones. Right now we are working on further bug fix and polish for both mobile and desktop versions of Shadowrun Returns, creating Berlin (new story, and lots of new features), and looking into a new save system. We would also love to be able to create "best of UGC" packs for iOS and Android, but can only happen after we ship Berlin.

 

[PlanHex]

wut

Admittedly, it's been a looong time since I last played it, but didn't GF have just one interaction button and an inventory?

 

[suejak]

I really don't think it's possible to make a "decline" 2D adventure game.

I will admit to disappointment if the game doesn't distinguish between "look" and "interact".

 

[Dexter]

wut

Admittedly, it's been a looong time since I last played it, but didn't GF have just one interaction button and an inventory?

You're right it didn't have a verb wheel, must've been a fan made one. It's kind of long ago by now but I should have remembered that it didn't have a mouse pointer at all and WASD movement instead.
But it did have look at/use-interact/pick up buttons and some extra actions like pulling out the scythe or diverse items: http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=9420&tab=controls

 

[PlanHex]

Ah ok, I remembered it as just being WASD and using E for everything, not arrows + multiple interaction buttons.

 

[Aeschylus]

The imaginary verb coin for GF is actually basically accurate. It had 3 action buttons, but 'use' could be substituted for 'pick up' so the latter was kind of redundant.

I'm not crazy about the idea of having only single-click interaction, but it's not as if such systems have never produced good games (Broken Sword comes to mind).

 

[Zed]

The Amanita guys might want to call their lawyer, though.

Huh?

didn't quite get this either.

also I think the game looks void of humor.

 

[Infinitron]

The Amanita guys might want to call their lawyer, though.

Huh?

didn't quite get this either.

also I think the game looks void of humor.

Because the graphics are reminiscent of Botanicula, sorta

 

[felipepepe]

I see that most of the money must have gone into character animations... every single line has a unique animation, and Schafer seems quite proud of that.

Can't say I agree with him, even with all that the characters seem very bland.

 

[J_C]

Sigh, weren't we over this already? Many adventure games, which are considered classics by Codexians (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Longest Journey etc) doesn't use verb labels. This feature or the lack of it doesn't make or brake an adventure game. The dialogues and the puzzles are much more important, and Brokan Age will deliver that.

Can't say I agree with him, even with all that the characters seem very bland.

No.

 

[tuluse]

Full Throttle does use a verb coin, you can see it above, hand, foot, mouth and eyes.

Loom and The Dig didn't. Neither does Syberia. Probably some others I haven't played.

 

[felipepepe]

No.

Yes.

 

[Dexter]

Loom and The Dig didn't. Neither does Syberia. Probably some others I haven't played.

Loom does use another system and was rather fresh for its time, but boiling it down it does kind of use verbs in the form of drafts:

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Loom/Drafts

There's even one for "Open/Close" very early on as eced or dece. It's just that they've replaced all the usual verbs and inventory requirements with drafts that you can put together with notes you gradually get through the game. They might as well have had a bunch of verbs greyed out that procedurally un-grey as you gain levels and the music plays by itself if they were less creative about it.

The Dig was a lot more character and dialogue-based, but wasn't there also an "Examine" thingie?

Some developers also go as far as to use the entire inventory as kind of "verbs" instead by letting you use almost every item with almost everything else and giving additional dialogue options. The last two I played that did this to an extreme level were The Whispered World and Larry Reloaded.

I'm getting more of a "Botanicula with dialogue trees using famous voice actors" vibe off of Broken Age though.

 

[tuluse]

Some developers also go as far as to use the entire inventory as kind of "verbs" instead by letting you use almost every item with almost everything else and giving additional dialogue options. The last two I played that did this to an extreme level were The Whispered World and Larry Reloaded.

And? Is there any indication that Broken Age won't let you do this?

This is my whole point, that the actual inclusion of verbs is unnecessary to a good adventure game.

 

[Dexter]

 

[tuluse]

Watching now, one really interesting thing, Grim Fandango sold 500k copies.

 

[Infinitron]

Watching now, one really interesting thing, Grim Fandango sold 500k copies.

Did it? I've always thought it sold significantly less. The game was an abject commercial failure with 500k sales, really?