Adventure Forums - View Single Post - Game-design: Open or narrow START of a game?

diego · 01-13-2012, 09:55 AM

I think it shouldn't be that important in which manner the game starts, as long as it rounds-up as a high quality game. Your Monkey Island games are perfect examples.

However, change of pace is often welcomed for a more dynamic gameplay, so the combination of "open world and puzzles" and "one puzzle/location at a time" is what is often found in best AGs.

And linearity/non-linearity issue is really an interesting topic to discuss. Older AGs more usually featured "non-linearity" in a sense that you can for example visit more locations at once, which in turn increases the difficulty. For example, speaking strictly of islands in MI2 and Tales of MI, there's a clear difference with game design:

In MI2 you can freely travel between the islands which increases the "non-linearity", possibly the immersion in the game world, too.

In Tales, you need to finish the job at one island, and then the story moves to the next island.

These two different concepts can be found in majority of games, like moving from screen to screen or having at disposal 5 different locations at once. I'm not saying "non-linear" is better because there probably isn't a "formula" which could tell what is the best, as many things play part in bringing the game experience - how well the puzzles are integrated into the story, creativity of the puzzles and their connection to the gameworld, the story itself, what is it trying to achieve, interaction with the characters, characters development... And honestly, "non-linearity" can be achieved in so many ways. Is the game "non-linear" if it's strictly linear until the last chapter where you have two different endings? Is it non-linear if you can solve the same puzzles in two different ways? Is it non-linear if there're two game paths to reach the same conclusion?

So it's probably back again to how well the game succeeds as a whole. But i'm eager to see how these aspects will further develop. I'm not saying we should conservatively 100% imitate classics, but too many simplifications in a linear and puzzle sense is also most definitely not quite the way to go.

01-13-2012, 09:55 AM	#8
diego Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: belgrade Posts: 1,407	I think it shouldn't be that important in which manner the game starts, as long as it rounds-up as a high quality game. Your Monkey Island games are perfect examples. However, change of pace is often welcomed for a more dynamic gameplay, so the combination of "open world and puzzles" and "one puzzle/location at a time" is what is often found in best AGs. And linearity/non-linearity issue is really an interesting topic to discuss. Older AGs more usually featured "non-linearity" in a sense that you can for example visit more locations at once, which in turn increases the difficulty. For example, speaking strictly of islands in MI2 and Tales of MI, there's a clear difference with game design: In MI2 you can freely travel between the islands which increases the "non-linearity", possibly the immersion in the game world, too. In Tales, you need to finish the job at one island, and then the story moves to the next island. These two different concepts can be found in majority of games, like moving from screen to screen or having at disposal 5 different locations at once. I'm not saying "non-linear" is better because there probably isn't a "formula" which could tell what is the best, as many things play part in bringing the game experience - how well the puzzles are integrated into the story, creativity of the puzzles and their connection to the gameworld, the story itself, what is it trying to achieve, interaction with the characters, characters development... And honestly, "non-linearity" can be achieved in so many ways. Is the game "non-linear" if it's strictly linear until the last chapter where you have two different endings? Is it non-linear if you can solve the same puzzles in two different ways? Is it non-linear if there're two game paths to reach the same conclusion? So it's probably back again to how well the game succeeds as a whole. But i'm eager to see how these aspects will further develop. I'm not saying we should conservatively 100% imitate classics, but too many simplifications in a linear and puzzle sense is also most definitely not quite the way to go.