Adventure Gamers - Forums

Fien - 26 July 2012 09:44 PM

Oscar - 26 July 2012 09:13 PM

This was very common, at least in the older days and NOT just in text games. Legend Entertainment’s games did this kind of thing particularly well.

Well… yeah, they did it very well. But most Legend adventures were sophisticated text adventures with graphics.

You could call Syberia or Deponia the same. Clicking the eye icon on the door is same as clicking ‘Look at’ then ‘door’, or typing ‘look at door’.

I do prefer the “No death” approach in adventure games, the problem I have with some of the games that allow you to die is quit often death is too frequent and as a result you will lose all progress (so you have to save every 5 minutes and so interrupt your game flow). A good example for this problem is the first game of “The Legend of Kyrandia”, I began to play it and enjoy it until I arrive to this impossible maze where all the room are identical (another thing I despise about some adventure games) and where you could easily die - after getting killed a few times and having the need to reload and reload a few dozen times I just give up on the game, its simply wasn’t fun anymore.

I wouldn’t have a problem with death as long it was more rare and game automatically restore you to your point in the game just before you perished.

Oscar - 26 July 2012 08:12 PM

Mister Ed - 26 July 2012 12:20 PM

Fien - 26 July 2012 11:41 AM

When my game is automatically saved before a possible death, I no longer see it as dying. It becomes a puzzle which is automatically reset. An example is the snake at the beginning of Congo: Descent into Zinj.

What about when you deliberately choose to save before a possible death? Do you see that as dying?

The difference is the player is involved, even if it’s by the save function. It’s the feeling that “gee, if I died there I would have failed in my quest and lost all my progress! - lucky i have that saved game” that makes the death feel permanent and much more serious. Autosave and autorestore feels very different, since there’s no consequence at all. Technically it’s the same effect if you save right before the death, but in practice the effect on the player is very different.

For some players. Obviously you are one. For me, the effect on the player is the same. The difference comes in the REST of the game, when I have to break the flow of the game constantly to save “just in case”, even when it turns out to be uneccesary (i.e. the vast majority of the time). THIS is the part I dislike, and which I find seriously degrading to the game experience, and is the reason that, while I don’t mind death, I want an auto-save. Death and restore tends to disrupt immersion, no matter WHAT the exact result is, but with an auto-save, immersion is disrupted ONLY when you actually die. Without, it is disrupted constantly throughout the entire game by frequent saves, even when you don’t EVER make a choice resulting in death.

At the point when a death actually DOES occur, I experience no difference at all between an auto-save and a chosen save. In both cases, a mechanic external to the gameplay has been used to prevent annoying loss of progress.

Ingsoc - 27 July 2012 10:08 AM

I do prefer the “No death” approach in adventure games, the problem I have with some of the games that allow you to die is quit often death is too frequent and as a result you will lose all progress (so you have to save every 5 minutes and so interrupt your game flow). A good example for this problem is the first game of “The Legend of Kyrandia”, I began to play it and enjoy it until I arrive to this impossible maze where all the room are identical (another thing I despise about some adventure games) and where you could easily die - after getting killed a few times and having the need to reload and reload a few dozen times I just give up on the game, its simply wasn’t fun anymore.

I wouldn’t have a problem with death as long it was more rare and game automatically restore you to your point in the game just before you perished.

Exactly. Personally I didn’t like death in Future Wars. It was TOO frequent! After some deaths (in all possible places of the game’s two first stages) I finally stopped the game.
I’d accept death in an AG only if it would restore you exactly where you were before dying. And if it’s not too frequent of course. Or the programmers could give the gamer the option to play with death or without. So both sides are happy =)