Adventure Gamers - Forums

Interactive teaser just released at Senscape’s website (saw this in my news feed).

http://facethehorror.com/teaser/

I’m downloading it right now.

I’m very late in commenting on this but the gradual eradication of the save game function in AGs is one modern trend I hate. I like to have the choice of creating a save game point at any stage i choose; I don’t want or need the game to do it for me. It’s fine if it is a part of the gameplay challenge to only have save points (in a game like Penumbra for instance, where surviving from one save to the next is part of the challenge) but in a standard AG, I want to decide. Why are gamers being treated like idiots these days? Is it so as not to intimidate non-experienced gamers? Well, I can’t imagine it is because it’s only really hardcore fans of the genre who buy games like this anyway. Besides, they’ll pick it up easy enough. Give people a bit of credit; computer game players are not geniuses with mental skills that ordinary folk don’t have. It’s not rocket science to save a game.

Just have a ‘Continue’ function for people who don’t want to bother with saves. That way they can just click on it each time they start the game up and carry on from where they left off and players like me can open our save games. Easy, and everyone is happy, which is surely a developer’s goal? I just cannot see why both types of person cannot be catered for; it’s hardly a huge hardship to the developer. it just seems like imposing your whims on the player, simply beause you can. Why is my experience being limited in this way; why am I being dictated to in how I choose to enjoy a game? If I want to create save points to go back and play any part of the game at any point then why not give me that function? What if I enjoy your game so much (as presumably you hope) that I want to play certain parts again? Sure, I can go to Youtube but why should I have to when I have the bloody game?? And besides, passively watching isn’t the same as playing it, as someone else pointed out. 

Adventure games nowadays have become so dictatorial, and this is one of the big symptoms of that.

As a secondary point,I also feel that eradicating the save game function is in some way giving the game away: you are basically admitting to the player that the game is a linear experience and that they won’t ever need a save game because they cannot make a mistake and they do not control what happens in any way. Sure, experienced adventure game players know this anyway (at least, with modern games) but surely not more inexperienced players (the very ones I assume eradicating save games is supposed to be catering to, in theory).

On the other point teased by Augustin, the inventory issue: I actually think this is a really tired and boring aspect of games nowadays that people seem to feel is essential, for no real reason, other than its the norm. Half of the time the inventory stuff seems tacked on or just used to elongate the gameplay slightly anyway.

It also kills the realism in a game to be lugging all of that stuff around in your magic backpack.

Unfortunately, it seems you are just talking about eradicating inventory menus, rather than inventory gameplay. Now, i’d love to see some games doing the latter. Any imaginitive game designer can come up with other challenges than the tired old inventory stuff, surely. It’s just an easy and lazy design fall back.

Can’t wait for this game. I hope it’s going to be great as Sanitarium just in some horror and silent way.

Automatic checkpoints are fine, as long as there are ways to backtrack when wanted too. A manual save system with saves being automatically created as checkpoints would be fine. It can “appear to be” a checkpoint system, if you like, and the “real” save system can be hidden by a config option or something, but please don’t oversimplify by just having a single automatic save. I started writing this post hours ago, and cbman has since basically said what I feel in a better way.
I also think an automatic-inventory-use system, which I guess is what you are using, rather removes player choice and some gameplay possibilities too, but oh well…

As for the teaser… Decent resolution in a pre-rendered game, for once
The sound cut out for me a lot, ie samples would start playing and suddenly stop part way through.
I really don’t like the push-scrolling, and would prefer a more direct control method.
Interesting atmosphere/setting… I look forward to the finished game.

I really liked the mouse movement, it was very smooth. The screen was quite dark, but I played it in a bright room. The only problem I had was when I quit and I had to use task manager to shut down the Dagon main screen black box.

jhetfield21 - 14 August 2012 09:12 AM

you mean ESC didn’t work or you didn’t try it?

No, escape got me out of the demo, but I was left with a black window called Dagon main. There was some red code writing in the upper left corner.I couldn’t close it without using the task manager.

My boyfriend just finished the teaser, and looks like I’m not going to play this game…alone