Adventure Gamers - Forums

Not sure I can name specifics sorry, I’d need to think about it. However, there’s a number of players (granted, mostly the more casual ones) that feel “punished” by adventure game puzzles. My notion is that you avoid making any player feel punished for not understanding how to solve a puzzle, whether that means simplifying it, offering multiple solutions or the ability to skip that puzzle entirely. I’d imagine Lamplight City has this to some extent, the fact you can “fail” a case as well as “win” a case. The player isn’t punished, doesn’t quit in frustration, just carries on. Similar to L.A. Noire. There are some bottle-necks sure, but not in the capacity of say, Death Gate, where every room is effectively a bottle-neck. And a not so great example but an example none the less, Fallout 4. You can effectively skip the main story (and/or its puzzles) and yet still make huge amounts of progress in the game world. I don’t know the full solution or the best answer, but in my mind as I say at the end there believe it lies in “anything streamlined where puzzles don’t necessarily hold the player back from making progress within the world”.

Story, story, story. Not story, puzzle, story, puzzle, story. In my mind the “point and click” adventure is one of the main offenders of this (story, puzzle, story), and as I say action RPG’s are much better at delivering story, story, story. But this comes down to definition of “adventure”. To me that’s a journey through a story, not a journey through a set of puzzles. This may be unavoidable, you need puzzles, cos they constitute gameplay in adventures whereas action-RPG’s would perhaps rely on shooting stuff, I understand that. But I certainly enjoy adventure games that are lighter on the puzzle stuff with a much more accessible story, and for the “perfect first person adventure” I think that style would be best.

An interesting point of view. You’re not wrong that there are a number of players like yourself who enjoy the story side of affairs more than the puzzle side, but I’d be careful turning this into a rule of thumb - there are just as many players who love the feeling of being stuck and the satisfaction of using their intellect to find the solution. This doesn’t make them “puzzle gamers” either - these players are generally just as interested in the story and without the payoff they get after solving a puzzle wouldn’t find puzzle-solving nearly as satisfying. The good news is there are now plenty of games to cover the tastes of both types of gamers, and you don’t even need to turn to action RPGs to get your fill.

I think the concept of a perfect adventure game is flawed. There are many different ways of making adventure games, each with their own advantages.

But I think the single most underserved niche in adventure gaming is what I would call the tourism game. Underserved because I am only aware of a single game that does this, and there’s room for hundreds to thousands of these games.

One of my favourite games of all time is Yoomurjak’s Ring. The game where you explore a real city in a vary google maps (street view) sort of way. You visit real locations, where they actually exist; Walking down the actual streets that connect them. You learn the real life history of the place. On top of this edutainment, you have a normal adventure game with a fictional story.

In addition to educational aspect of this style, it just is great at producing a “real place” feel in a video game. In this is shares similarities to another favourite, and very modern game, Gone Home. Gone Home is not really even a game, but it is very much a “real place”. This feeling, this style, I think is probably the most important aspect of any game. The biggest difference between an adventure game that is great and one that is mediocre, is often not mechanical, it is its ability to convince you that the game world is a real place, and not just a shelf for puzzles.

Would it be in 2d, 3d, 360° nodal, VR?

This is a more specific question, and might even be answerable. I think mostly the answer is the same as the above. But there is a lot of personal preference here. I personally am not really fond of 2d adventure games, I prefer 2d in most genres, but not adventure. Similarly, while their are many adventure games that I love that are full 3D, I prefer the pre-rendered 360” nodal and screen based. I think that most of the time full 3D worlds just do not look that great and developers get a pass because it is hard to make things look great in every direction and it is hard to get things to look great in 3D and run on a normal pc.

wisnoskij - 12 May 2018 11:47 AM

I think the concept of a perfect adventure game is flawed. There are many different ways of making adventure games, each with their own advantages.

But I think the single most underserved niche in adventure gaming is what I would call the tourism game. Underserved because I am only aware of a single game that does this, and there’s room for hundreds to thousands of these games.

One of my favourite games of all time is Yoomurjak’s Ring. The game where you explore a real city in a vary google maps (street view) sort of way. You visit real locations, where they actually exist; Walking down the actual streets that connect them. You learn the real life history of the place. On top of this edutainment, you have a normal adventure game with a fictional story.

In addition to educational aspect of this style, it just is great at producing a “real place” feel in a video game. In this is shares similarities to another favourite, and very modern game, Gone Home. Gone Home is not really even a game, but it is very much a “real place”. This feeling, this style, I think is probably the most important aspect of any game. The biggest difference between an adventure game that is great and one that is mediocre, is often not mechanical, it is its ability to convince you that the game world is a real place, and not just a shelf for puzzles.

Would it be in 2d, 3d, 360° nodal, VR?

This is a more specific question, and might even be answerable. I think mostly the answer is the same as the above. But there is a lot of personal preference here. I personally am not really fond of 2d adventure games, I prefer 2d in most genres, but not adventure. Similarly, while their are many adventure games that I love that are full 3D, I prefer the pre-rendered 360” nodal and screen based. I think that most of the time full 3D worlds just do not look that great and developers get a pass because it is hard to make things look great in every direction and it is hard to get things to look great in 3D and run on a normal pc.

Yoomurjak’s Ring isn’t the only “tourism game” with 360 degree movement. Byzantine: The Betrayal is another.

Personally I don’t need 360 panning to enjoy these type of games. The “slideshow” photograph games can be just as good (and usually feature better photography), and the Capri series and Carol Reed games (among others) are both examples of games which give excellent impressions of having been to and explored real-world places.

However, I agree this is a highly underrated genre and I would welcome more games in the same style.