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Advice with creating my own point n click game
Hi all,
I am looking into creating my first point n click adventure game with my gf and was hoping to get some advice from you kind people.
Over the past 5 years we’ve played over 50 games together and it has become our favourite hobby. We want to create our own game not for money but to be apart of a community that has given so much joy to us, and to make our mark in this genre even if it is a small mark!
We both work as computer game developers so won’t have any problems with dev and work with artists that we can hopefully persuade to join us.
Our main difficulty will be with developing a story and integrating puzzle elements into it. My best friend writes novels and he wants to join us so that is definitely a start but adding puzzle elements will be our biggest problem. As previously said we have played quite a lot of games and have a lot to reference but creating one from scratch will be entirely different.
With the increase of adventure games recently I imagine you get a lot of questions asking for help with creating a point n click game and hopefully there are many articles, pod casts, youtube videos, interviews with experienced designers etc. I will happily consume any resource you can throw at me.
Thank you for your time and any help you can provide.
Thanks
Think about the story you want to tell first, and then start taking it apart to see what can be turned into puzzles and how. For instance, if part of the story is about or has a sequence of escaping some locked space, think about how you can turn that escape into a (series of) puzzle(s).
First you need to establish your exact genre though, a serious kind of story requires different kind of puzzles than a comedy. For reference, play The Secret of Monkey Island and try to save yourself from drowning…
It’s also a good idea to play licence titles which have been adapted to adventure games from books/movies/etc. Star Trek, Wallace & Gromit, Sherlock Holmes, Blade Runner, etc. will give you an idea how others have reconstructed a narrative into an adventure format.
Also asking help from dedicated forums will probably give you lots of input:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk
http://dead-code.org
http://www.visionaire-studio.net
My take -in most if not all video games game goals are important. In adventure game solving puzzles is just mean for player to reach game goals. And i think plot is the thing that should give player gameplay goals. Which means designer has to create such plot that gives player gameplay goals or alter plot so it would give player game goals. I would say that designer should create plot that gives player bigger goals than escaping rooms etc.
Why can something as simple as stop villain in dangerous far away place be a valid story for adventure game? Because both getting to far away place and surviving dangerous location creates problems and problem solving is what so called adventure game puzzles are about.
The popular Game Makers Toolkit created a good ten minute video about point-and-clicks: Point and Click Design
This might be helpful:
Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply and for the advice. Greatly appreciated!
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