Adventure Gamers - Forums

yep, I think Simon the Sorcerer 1 game design was solid too. I can’t think of a game that had fewer red herrings and even though the puzzles were obvious, one still you had to figure out so many different things. I think it is one of the best games ever made. This Broken Sword game is good, but, I doubt it will go down in the book as one of the best of the year or anything.  Things were a little too obvious, and this is coming from someone who is dumber than a box of rocks. Still, it was an enjoyable romp and I am sure looking forward to the next installment.

I don’t think casual gamers have anything to do with it, the puzzles just feel easy because the solution is always in the 2 rooms available at any time.
Stuff like using the fur from the dog to make the facial hair is has obtuse (and fun!) like any adventure game and it could have been hard if the fur was obtainable in a little pixel in a far away scene that didn’t have anything to do with it.

I liked the game, kind of annoying to have to wait for the rest but top dialogue, interesting story, crazy humor make it a very good adventure for me. Also make me more excited to play the kickstarted adventures that will soon arrive (Tex Murphy!!). I will try to replay the Broken Sword series before the second episode arrives, there seems to be a lot little references that I’m not remembering.

Also, in the Hobbs appartment at the end when clicking in the Still life paintings George kept saying still life is boring or something like that. Is it a little dig at the games or I’m just seeing things?

TimovieMan I have played Callahan’s crosstime saloon (a proud owner of an original boxed version actually) and I loved it. I found the abundance of hotspots tedious, but the cleverness and humor of the reactions sure made it better. Most games, and I’ll use vampyre story again as an example, fail to make the reactions interesting enough. As for what you said about fewer hotspots meaning lower difficulty level - if the difficulty level of your game is Decided by the amount of hotspots - you’re clearly doing something wrong.
Robert Foster I really don’t think revolution were trying to appeal to casual gamers. They didn’t do anything marketing wize to imply that.
As for the cross country puzzles in previous games, they all made sense. If you needed a manuscript from Scotland in order to do something in France it makes sense, these are not the puzzles I’m talking about. The condensed area puzzles were implemented excellently by telltale back when they were still making adventure games, and revolution are good students.

Great tune! Made me stick for all credits, Hairy Lobsters is also a cool name for a band!

diego - 11 December 2013 07:06 PM

Tad - 11 December 2013 07:01 PM

Some of the puzzles are clearly made for touch screen devices casual gamers.

fix’d

More about modern gamers than casual gamers. Experienced adventure gamers have been conditioned to play games in a certain way that might seem backward to people who grew up playing newer games, and it’s important to adjust one’s design according, or at-least to retrain players so they know what to look for.

It isn’t important how one calls it (casual, modern etc.). It’s clear it’s done to attract more players, in particular people (“new” gamers) who are trained to play quick and easy (“backward”;-)) games.  Cecil, as he has stated somewhere, seems to believe that today’s gamers don’t like to play long and difficult games anymore.
It’s clearly a strategy, see the quote below (and it reduces development costs). I think it is a bad decision (not to combine an easy and hard level), and various reviews are already indicating that. (Note btw the disqualifying terms he is using now to describe the game design with “hard puzzles”, once celebrated and also implemented in previous BS games - “obscure, contrived, looking for hotspots around the world, warped logic”).

“The Adventure is the ideal genre for the wider, or casual audience. It is what they are moving onto as they get bored of hidden object games and variations of positioning gems in a row. However, there are some key points that we must understand. While previously adventure gamers used to enjoy obscure puzzles, now our audience want to be able to move quickly through the game without getting frustrated. However, that is not to suggest that people don’t want a challenge, but more that if they get stuck then they want to know exactly what challenge they have to overcome in order to proceed.
So gone are the days of contrived puzzles where the player has to wander around the world looking for a hotspot which will reveal some warped logic as to why a particular character won’t let you past (I hasten to add that we always avoided this approach). Now it is more about an immediate block, which the player understands what they need to do to overcome - all the required components are obvious and the challenge is purely cerebral. Mini-games, in particular, offer this kind of immediate blocking mechanism.”

robert foster - 12 December 2013 09:35 AM

design with “hard puzzles”, once celebrated and also implemented in previous BS games

Nonsense. The BS games never had “hard puzzles”. The puzzles in BS1 and 2 were always self-contained (all the items you needed for a given puzzle were always close at hand or already in your inventory), and the puzzles were never particularly hard or contrived. If you find every hotspot in a location and exhaust all the conversation topics with the characters, BS1 and BS2 pretty much solve themselves.

BS5 is definitely fairly easy, but that’s how the series has always been (at least the first two episodes, which is what BS5 is clearly trying to emulate).

That’s indeed nonsense (and semantics again). It’s in this context hard vs easy (harder vs easier), not using “hard puzzles” as something absolute.
(almost) Anyone who played the BS games will understand what is meant. In the quote Cecil specifies exactly why the BS5 puzzles are easier than the harder (sorry) puzzles in BS1 (immediate block, understand what to do what to overcome, all required components are obvious).
Just analyze the different types of blocks in the games and the way to solve them. One of the first puzzles in BS1 (how to get the sewer key) is already “more inspired” (will not use the other term) than most puzzles in BS5. (At least the key wasn’t hidden in the dumpsters in the alley; you got a black cat there :-))