[Intrepid Homoludens]

One adventure game getting some media attention is Hysteria Project (IGN review) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is a 'live action footage' horror suspense experience that works much like an interactive story and features a very Blair Witch type style and atmosphere. The game looks to work beautifully with the device's touch screen interface. Click each pic for trailer and gameplay footage.

Originally Posted by imisssunwell

@Intrepid Homoludens,

I read your article(s) last night and it is interesting. If I understand correctly you wrote this pre-Dreamfall/Fahrenheit, which I think are cool games, but actually apart from these two I don't think you missed too much.

Correct. But I did bring up those two games in part 4:

Enter titles like Dreamfall, the spiritual successor of The Longest Journey. Designer Ragnar Tørnquist is, thankfully, unapologetic about forging ahead with his vision. Whereas The Longest Journey was a classic 2D point-&-clicker, Dreamfall will feature a far more dynamic and alive experience and will include elements deemed controversial (at least to the conservative hardcore adventure gaming community), like real time 3D, direct control character movement, an innovative interface that dumps the old fashioned point-&-click style, and RPG-like problem solving for puzzles and situational challenges. That some action (mostly optional) will be included has been the subject of white hot fights within adventure communities, evincing many fans' refusal to move beyond the past and embrace change and new experiences. But in the end, the strongest advantage will be Dreamfall's potential to attract a new variety of gamers, ones who do not define their games in terms of interface or even graphics, but instead in how those games will give them uniquely memorable experiences.

...Quantum Dream's upcoming Indigo Prophecy uses the actual pivotal narrative details themselves to establish a seemingly organic path of detours - this supernatural suspense thriller will challenge the player, in real time, 'on the fly', to make quick decisions that will affect how the story ebbs and flows to one of several conclusions. This idea of a malleable plot as the true, overarching puzzle - pretty much the only puzzle in the entire game - has never been explored to this extent before, at this level of ambition, in graphical adventure games. As such Indigo Prophecy looks to be more in lineage with text parser games like Zork and the If games.

...a better distribution system won't fix a bad game (but it can make a good game shine).

Oh, absolutely! In fact, if a[n adventure] game sucks, the more channels of distribution it has the more likely many consumers will see that it sucks so that would detrimental. Conversely, if the game is high quality on all levels, many channels of distribution can only serve to propel its high quality to a far larger number of potential gamers.

I may start another thread on distribution systems sometime in the not-so-far future, being both a fan of retail distribution and online (I think they are both needed) and totally against restrictive & invasive DRM (not *all* drm, Steam is fine by me), I'd like to see what other people think about games distribution. Pricing is also very important, iphone quality games should imho have iphone game prices, that's usually 1-2 Euros. Publishers imho should be taking in consideration the distribution method when considering pricing, online distro is cheaper & it's practically rental, so prices should be "steam prices" for the AAA games and alot less for games whose quality is not on par. I promise to start another thread on all these interesting topics but since they are not AG specific (not that I don't find AGs lacking in these departments as well)...

At the time I wrote this, I naturally had no idea of the upcoming iPhone (I own an iPhone and play the puzzle game Zen Bound on it). To date there are more than 4,078 games available for the iPhone or iPod Touch. What surprises me is that so few adventure game developers are currently not paying attention to this platform, though those that do are certainly taking advantage of the device's new way of interacting (touch screen interface).

The current reputation is that adventure games are still weighted down with the PC crowd. Not enough are still being designed expressly for handhelds and consoles, the biggest platform markets.

Also some posters mentioned some recent AGs do not use recent ideas but are rather implementing known ideas which were somewhat confined to the Japanese market so far. While something entirely new is very welcome, to people , like e.g. myself, who had little exposure to Japanese culture this is "new" and I find it nice that such schemes are entering more mainstream channels.

That sounds cool. And that's what developers working on other kinds of games have been doing for years now so it's nice to see adventure game devs tapping into that.