Adventure Gamers - Forums

Jdawg445 - 28 February 2024 11:42 AM

For anyone who’s interested in having a collector’s edition of the remaster/remake of broken sword 1 here is the link. The kickstarter was fully funded within 30 minutes of launch. They were only asking 63,000 but that’s still crazy. The amount is now over 100,000 collected.

As a rule of thumb I no longer back Kickstarter projects because I’ve been burned one too many times, but even I’m considering getting the $100 version, because I’m creating a game room in my house and I would love some more broken sword memorabilia.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revolution-software/broken-sword-reforged-collectors-edition?fbclid=IwAR3MQ61IQm1dHAQeKCjGsa6lWKxlKpfCuzo0eIuuJ9TC_mdJ0KzToE3A1kE

Congratulations!!! How successful.

I just watched another interview with Charles and both games are getting delayed a bit, which is not surprising after the huge Kickstarter success. But once again what I want to focus on is what he’s saying about game design of adventure games and how I really do not like it lol. He’s obsessed with a small Focus Group that gave his game 50% review scores and it was because supposedly they couldn’t understand how a point and click game worked and I just find that ridiculous. I guess if that’s what the data shows than that is what it shows, but my mom basically stopped playing games at NES at Mario Brothers and Tetris. Years later in my early teens, I got really into adventure games and she would every once while come help me solve puzzles and she figured out how to play a point and click within 5 minutes, she was by no means ever a gamer. I honestly think this boils down to Charles obsession with growing the adventure game Market, which is Noble but once again most likely will never happen. Plus he keeps going on and on in every interview how people don’t want to be stuck and I just disagree, that is what an adventure game is to some extent, getting stuck on a puzzle that is actually challenging and interesting. Plus let’s not act like walkthroughs and let’s plays are not everywhere so you can become unstuck very easily, if so desired. I feel like all this is code for since the internet exist, we no longer need to focus on interesting challenging puzzles, bc gamers dont care, which is not true to me especially in this genre.

As much as I did dislike owlsguard I will still give credit, at least the developer tried to make interesting puzzles and not just be a memory Berry fest. It didn’t work for me on a lot of levels but it was a honest to God attempt at something.

Anyways here is the interview

Dale - 08 May 2024 08:13 AM

I’m not too concerned with what Charles said there.

His story mode changes actually sound okay: the changes aren’t radical, and actually, removing unnecessary hotspots and item combinations once you’ve tried them, actually sounds like a good steer. Plus, classic mode is still there for people that don’t want that assistance.

Not quite sure what the interface changes would be, Broken Sword’s wasn’t exactly complicated.

I see what you’re saying but I just disagree especially with hot spots becoming not interactable. that’s basically the game taking control and solving puzzles for you. And it’s always a slippery slope, they take an inch in reforged and then by Broken Sword 6, they eliminate half the hot spots because Gamers apparently want something that’s completely streamlined anyways, which to me is one giant leap towards the “casual” Direction which for those that like that, great, I’m not one of them. All in the name of chasing this untapped generation Alpha, that will suddenly become interested in point and click adventure games.

Of course you might be right and they don’t take it that far but usually where there is a little bit of smoke a fire ensues. The reason I think I’m right though is because in every single interview he brings up this tiny focus group of people that’s supposedly did not understand how an adventure game works. So if he fixes the interface and puzzles he thinks he’ll gain millions of new fans, which I think is crazy. What could happen is that he isolates his core fan base that just spent 700 Grand on a Kickstarter, because he tinkered with the gameplay too much.

Like I said I just find it strange that he gets the fact that people don’t want the game changed as far as story and character go, but then for some reason he thinks his core audience wants the gameplay changed. The honest answer is you have a fan base of one to three million people that want Broken sword games, to look, sound and play like a broken sword game. not for it to be turned into a casual game for a new audience that most likely does not exist.

The smarter decision would be to start a new IP and go down that road to see if there’s an audience for it, not change your only cash cow midstream, to chase at this point a completely theoretical audience.

Ok. We shall see in a year or two when broken sword 6 comes out everybody’s like huh this game seems a lot easier than past ones. Much like a return to Monkey Island

I totally see where Jddawg445 is coming from and I think I share the sentiment. At first glance I would agree with the people saying it’s not a big deal because it’s optional and the original game as it was it’s still going to be there. But still, even though I haven’t watched the interviews, if he is indeed focusing so much on that focus group and on implementing gameplay changes, it does makes me feel concern for the future. In fact, this debate made me remember how frustrated I’ve felt in recent years because the types of games that I like the most always seem to be “dumbed down” little by little. I don’t remember the last big adventure game, the ones with big production values that had challenging puzzles or any interesting ideas gameplay wise. On the contrary, the more expensive they are, the more easy they become, because they have to “cater to a wider audience.”

Something that I would never understand about the gaming industry is how games like soullikes can thrive and be super popular despite being super hard and never having to “cater to the wide audience”, on the contrary it seems the harder they are, the better and more popular they become. Yet games that focus on puzzles or different types of challenge that don’t require dexterity have to be dumbed down all the time, because of “focus groups” or playtesting with people that can barely hold a controller need help. So it’s totally fine and cool to be stuck for ages on a hard boss, but being stuck on a puzzle? oh please God no. That is such a big contradiction in my mind.

Exactly and to your last point, I think it’s a cop out, because the real answer they wont say is “why spend time creating interesting puzzles when they’re just going to cheat and look at the internet anyways because we no longer can sell hintbooks or phone tip lines.” because the internet is there and will spoil the puzzle anyways for free. Let’s just streamline the game and focus our attention elsewhere.

For the record I have no problems with a game having a casual mode, it’s just the fact that every time I see it, the hard mode is really not that much harder, it’s even infested other genres like Jrpgs. I’m playing one now on hard mode and it’s really no different except it gives enemies a little more health points. So battles last longer but they’re not any more challenging really. Speaking of Monkey Island I think that was actually the last time I thought a hard mode and a casual mode were actually pretty different, in the curse of Monkey Island aka Monkey Island 3.

Another example of this in a different genre is jedi fallen order, it was so obvious the devs wanted to push the game in a harder Direction but they had to dumb it down because EA the Publisher wanted to appeal to the biggest audience possible, which I understand bc it is Star Wars. But the premise of the game is you’re a young Jedi Padawan that was never fully trained and so you’re supposed to struggle through the game and learn new powers, it’s kind of built and baked into the dna of the story, but if you turn it on easy or casual mode, you’re basically Darth Vader mowing through enemies. even though the main character is constantly complaining that he’s not strong enough to get things done, yet on casualmode you’re a walking tank lol. it’s kind of hilarious.