Adventure Gamers - Forums

rtrooney - 11 April 2015 11:13 AM

One way to create suspense without resorting to the things Becky mentioned is to require that the game be played in real time. Does anybody remember the game Traitor’s Gate? You had 24 hours to complete your mission which, in this case took place inside the Tower of London.

There was a great deal of urgency created by knowing that you would die if the mission wasn’t completed in the allotted amount of time.

What I remember most about Traitors Gate is a post from a guy who almost managed to finish the whole game, but ran out of time just before the end. He tried going back to previous saves, but found no recent saves with enough time on them. He didn’t have the heart to replay that whole long game—or use someone else’s save—and put the game away forever.

If he’d cheated and looked at the walkthrough, he’d have realized there was a reason why it recommended saving, playing until you found out what to do next, loading the save and quickly doing what needed doing, quickly saving, and repeating the process until the end of the game. Because he didn’t cheat, the guy was never able to see the end of the game.

I thought it stunk. The game was hard enough without the annoying timer. Daydream Software’s previous game, the 1997 Safecracker, also had the stupid timer, so you had to continually replay lsections of the game to avoid being screwed at the end.

I played Traitors Gate via the ‘save, play and replay method’. As much as I didn’t like the gameplay, I always felt like I actually toured the Tower. To this day, I recognise bits of the place when I watch historical documentaries. Same goes for the Hagia Sophia from Byzantine the Betrayal.

rtrooney - 11 April 2015 05:48 PM

I don’t consider playing/saving/reloading until you know what to do, then play/save to be cheating. Considering how the game is constructed, and the consequences of not completing the game in 24 ‘real-time’ hours I think it’s smart gameplay.

That’s how I finished the game. 

I don’t think the game was intended to be played that way, though the save, play, and restore business was clearly the lesser of two evils. I think the only people who were enamoured of the time restriction were the developers.

It’s also the reason why the concept wouldn’t work for casual games. Until designers include a save/restore function it would be impossible.

Certainly not one I’d be interested in buying.
There’s a reason why developers of hidden object games eventually decided to dispense with timers or make them optional.
Most people have enough time pressure imposed on them in their daily lives, and almost no one enjoys replaying the same scene over and over. The last thing they want when they’re trying to relax with a game is more time pressure.

Traitors Gate had a lot of nice features, like the graphics, and being able to explore accurately depicted parts of the Tower. But the game also had some pretty severe design flaws. Not only the mandatory time restriction, but the way the game insisted on playing a transitional video between clicks. Since the transitional videos were not copied to the hard drive during the installation, they had to play off the CD. CD players of the time would spin down after they finished reading, so you’d have to wait for them to spin back up for nearly every click forward. It was actually better to have a slow CD drive because it wouldn’t take as long to spin back up to reading speed. Supposedly you could skip the transitions, but you still had to wait until the CD had spun up and loaded the transition before you could use the hotkey to skip it.

I don’t think they ever made an “updated” version that would install everything to the hard drive, including the transitional videos. Creating a version that would work on a modern computer would probably require a complete redo. The original is the only game I know of that required BOTH QuickTime 2 and QuickTime 3.

Sometimes I think about rebuying and replaying Traitors Gate (I traded the copy I originally played shortly after finishing it). Then I start to remember all the problemss I had with it—the annoyance of having to keep going back to saves, the sluggish response due to frequent CD access, the way almost half the screen was taken up by an interface (check screenshots—> here <—to see what I mean)—and I think “I’m not replaying this without significant changes.” I’d certainly be interested in a remake that solved the problems with the original.

rtrooney - 08 April 2015 11:19 AM

Just started playing the demo of House of 1000 Doors - Evil Inside Collectors Edition. It’s the fourth game in the series. The demo is 90 minutes. I’ve only played 15 of those minutes, so it’s too early to make a comment other than it looks to be as good as the games that preceded it.

It’s not available as an SE yet. I bought the CE version of the last game, Serpent Flame. It was worth the extra $$, but not as a provider of additional story. It was really a game unto itself, which I found enjoyable, if not a bit strange. I think I described it as a replay of the main game with graphics supplied by Salvador Dali.

I’ll let you know what I think when I’ve played a bit more of it.

I played this game Evil Inside and kind of like it. But I have to agree that, recently, most casual games are being rushed off to deliver. 3/4 of the cinematics happens before a quarter of the game is played. Why is that? It almost prove that Alawar started the game planning something and, when they reached 1/4 - 1/3 of the game, then decided to let someone else finish it.

I’m playing House of 1000 Doors - Evil Inside Collectors Edition since I liked the other games in the series.  The screens are colorful, sometimes bordering on lurid though, and the “magic hand” becomes a little tiresome after a while.  Other than that I’m enjoying the attempts at making the HOGs more interesting and the use of the sidekick. 

I’m playing on Casual and think I should have chosen the next level - there were four to pick from, which is unusual - since some hints are blatant, such as use of the companion.  The puzzles are on the easy side but some are cleverly done and I can see an attempt to get away from the mundane which I applaud.  The one with the trains was especially cute.

As for the abrupt change in the last quarter, I hope it won’t spoil what has been fun so far.

I could have sworn another poster said it looks as if Alawar handed it off to be finished by another studio at the end, but I don’t have time to look it up now.  If I’m wrong so much the better.

I’ll just add:  I love the robots!