Adventure Gamers - Forums

Monolith - 23 September 2012 03:37 PM

Oscar - 23 September 2012 06:58 AM

tsa - 23 September 2012 06:34 AM

And if almost nobody can solve your puzzles because you made them too hard it’s a wise business decision to make the puzzles easier in the next game.

Good business decision; bad artistic decision. What to do? I understand the importance of good business - after all, it’s the only reason companies can stay alive to make more games… but skipping a puzzle after 5 minutes? I haven’t played Testament yet but doesn’t that spoil the thrill of playing as Holmes, the world’s greatest detective?

Being picky here,  but Art Direction has nothing to do with that. That’s game design.

What I was getting at was that making sacrifices to your work to please the audience is artistically poor form. I know you’ll say ‘but games have to be played’ and that’s true, but art is consumed too and had van Gogh made his art ‘easier’ to please his contemporary audience he would not be as celebrated as he is today.

I hope so Lucien. It’s this statement that concerns me:

wael - 23 September 2012 05:59 AM

but Yes, I will never do a game as hard as Arsene Lupin again.

But I’m obviously in the 1% here because that was my favorite from Frogwares. The puzzles were wonderful.

Oscar,

if I understand correctly you are saying that we are delivering lesser games because we are not making ultrahardcore puzzles? is that right?

Well, puzzles is just one possible side of adventure games, puzzles games are “myst-like”, but there are other components: characters, story and intentions. but you know that already.

I’ll explain more clearly:

We made two games with puzzles for main component, the mystery of the mummy, and I already explained that it was the way for us to learn how to make games(graphics, localization, puzzles, negotatiating with publishers, getting royalties,hitting publisher in the face…) and Arsene Lupin, that is, in all logic, our most difficult game, being a puzzle game or the closest to a Myst like.

The Awakened is not difficult at all, some puzzles are a little surprising but it doesn’t require heavy thinking, compared to the brain cells spent in Arsene Lupin. Why? because the emotion should be given by the atmosphere, the adventure and the feeling of oppression that you should feel at some point (remember the pursuit with the thief?)

In Jack the Ripper, the puzzles proposed there are an interactive way to discover the truth. This game is not for puzzle lover, it proposes to uncover Jack the Ripper through reconstructions of the murders, a deep cold analysis of the facts, with a deduction board to summarize your findings and make YOU feel you are the detective. Very hard puzzles don’t make really sense here, they’ll cut you from the story and intention: making you feel whitechapel, a poor area with immigrants, anti semitism and public prostitution, and the Ripper is among them.

The feeling you have when you beat hard puzzles in Arsene Lupin should be satisfactory, because a nemesis is challenging your intelligence, and you are beating him. Opening a door in a crappy street of whitechapel shouldn’t require 2 poems, 3 pictures from the 16th century and some reference to babylonian antiques at the British museum…

In the Testament, as opposed to the current idea about console games and other mass market ideas, the difficulty is higher than in Jack the Ripper, because the story and the intention allows it.

One French player finished the Testament yesterday and while he thinks the game is amazing he is disapointed that the elements that were in Jack the Ripper, timeline for murders, Sherlock cutting Watson’s throat and I quote"cultural and historical” elements are missing from the game. So we should have done a New Ripper case or Sherlock Holmes vs Ted Bundy?

After Arsene Lupin, some people player Jack the Ripper and said they wan they wanted puzzles and not some gruesome murders.

After the Awkanened some players said that Arsene Lupin is a game for little girls with puzzles they don’t understand and pictures and poems, and that they wanted a cool supernatural story

After the Silver Earring, some players took the Awakened, said the Adventure games cannot be in 3D and in first person that it’s not a murder investigation with quizzes and that they don’t understand this supernatural stuff and who is Lovecraft anyway…

I think you know what some people will write next year about the new Sherlock Holmes game

Of course in terms of Market, puzzles games, are not extremely popular, so game makers could have a tendency to lower the difficulty of the games. But please, don’t underestimate us, if we were to care about doing a game only according to market sales, difficulty level and brand reknown our 6th Sherlock Holmes would have been like the Silver Earring.

We will always propose something new and different, at least we will try to and we will try to make our game progress, in Graphics, in accessibility, in Gameplay, the next game won’t be an exception.

Thanks for your support on the forum and among the community, we need it to make better games

I like this thread. Thank you for your comments wael, they are very enlightening.

Yes, it’s a great thread. I now have a better understanding of how you guys make games over the years. You clearly put a lot of thought into each one and how it should work, and I hope the fans appreciate that with your new game. Including me when I buy it!

wael - 24 September 2012 04:16 AM

Oscar,

if I understand correctly you are saying that we are delivering lesser games because we are not making ultrahardcore puzzles? is that right?

You cannot please everybody. For me (and I admit I’m in the minority) the most important thing is to get the opportunity to think as Holmes thinks. We can have a great story where you move Holmes around, control his body, talk to characters and become immersed in the story, but it’s all without value if we don’t get the opportunity to tackle the crime in the way that Holmes might. If other people are thrilled guiding Holmes around without playing much of the mental part, that’s great. I’d rather read the books or watch the movies.

I don’t exactly know why I liked ‘vs Arsene Lupin’ so much, but it wasn’t because the puzzles were hard. ‘Ultrahardcore’ were the quizzes in Silver Earring - and I remember being terrible at those and hating them. I think like you said, facing off against an enemy like Lupin was so appropriate for a computer game, and Frogwares did it so well.

@diego,

If I understand correctly you don’t want to have puzzles where you stick a mobile phone to a cat that get from a tree and send it to spy inside a house?

If it’s the case, then I think almost noone wants that anymore. Almost everyone wants that puzzles and storyline make perfect sense together.

Take “the room” on Ipad for example, the difficulty is rather high but it is beautifully done and the story is not here to try to convince why should solve the puzzles, those fancy locks are just under your eyes and you cannot prevent yourself from working on opening them.

In the easy/casual style, the Walking dead is for me one of the best lesson in adventure gaming I took. Solve puzzles in one click and still make you feel happy and proud about it.

@Oscar you are not the minority, the sales of the Arsene Lupin were pretty good compared to the rankings the game got in average. PC adventure gamers liked it very much overall, no violence, big lengthtime, culture and architecture. on the other hand this game on console wouldn’t make too much sense, as too much reading is involved for once (not easy when you are sitting 4 meters away from your TV).

Olga - 30 August 2012 09:32 AM

* We are now preparing the Collector’s Edition for The Testament of Sherlock Holmes with 500 copies to be manufactured.

Is the boxed/DVD-cased Collector’s Edition going to be available in English?
Will it include physical collectable objects or just the games?
Is it going to be offered for sale on an Internet shop that will ship to North America? (unlike Amazon.co.uk, which won’t ship PC and video games to North America as they state on their Delivery Restrictions webpage)

Olga - 31 August 2012 04:35 AM

You will be able to install the game on 3 PCs simultaneously; while you have unlimited number of activations.

Is the Collector’s Edition also going to use this activation system for all the games?

@Crabapple

I’m sorry but we are kind of stuck with the manufacturing and logistics for our collector edition now, so I have no real date to give you. if you want to play the game on a DVD now, you’ll have to order it from Europe.

But you can download the Game as well, and play it and write down on a DVD if you wish to keep a physical copy.

In any case write us and tell us how we can help.

Here is one review of the game, released today or yesterday, if you want to have some opinions about the game.

http://www.gaminglives.com/2012/09/24/the-testament-of-sherlock-holmes-review/

I had hoped you’d write a review of it for on this site Fantasie.

wael - 25 September 2012 05:58 AM

Here is one review of the game, released today or yesterday, if you want to have some opinions about the game.

http://www.gaminglives.com/2012/09/24/the-testament-of-sherlock-holmes-review/

Wow that review is very positive. This seems like the perfect adventure game for me. Thanks for the link!