Adventure Gamers - Forums

Nice to see, but it’s not a huge increase, is it? I mean, we have always had a few 1st personers each year, even though true Myst clones have been lacking recently in favour of spooky horror and mystery games.

There’s also the fact that Subdued Software have cancelled Relics 2. The developer said the first game wasn’t well received and the audience on BigFish was cruel towards it. Of course, that’s a casual game audience so it could just be bad marketing but it got a bad review here too. I liked the game, personally.

I’ve played Five Cores and enjoyed it. It reminded me of Myst V but is nothing too amazing.

Of course, we’ve got the fantastic RHEM series still active, and there’s signs of a new 7th Guest, which is exciting. I’ll call a revolution when I see a new Riddle of the Sphinx, a Journeyman Project 3, a sequel to Amber: Journeys Beyond, and a new Capri, Obsidian, Shivers and Myst. Not much to ask, is it?

Some of us like to use ‘Myst clone’ and ‘first-person adventure’ interchangeably. I do it sometimes, no malice intended.

Technically that’s wrong, because Myst was by no means the first adventure to use slideshow navigation. But the phrase was originally used by reviewers (esp. those who thought Myst was just a passing fad) to refer to those games trying to capitalise on the popularity of Myst with none of its originality or charm. That negative connotation is now gone, and rightly so.

I love the variety in adventure games we have (and have usually had with some peaks and valleys). Nothing like a little AFGNCAAP action every now and then. But I agree that being first-person doesn’t make a game a “Myst-clone”, which as Oscar highlighted was more of a pejorative term used in the 90s.

Maybe rather than “Myst clone”, for all the first-person horror adventures flooding the market recently we should use “Shadowgate clone” instead?

Do you mean “Slender clones”? It seems like half of the titles on Greenlight have “Slender” in their title.

Slender? I haven’t played it.

I was just pointing to the fact that horror games like Dark Fall and Scratches are closer to Shadowgate or Uninvited than they are to Myst, if we are talking about their origins.

Calling them clones would be absurd, of course.

I always preferred third-person games until I played Fallout 3, then it all clicked into place for me. I think the narrative potential is much greater when a game’s focus is on exploration and discovery; inhabiting a world and uncovering its secrets at your own pace, as opposed to having characters sitting around, spewing exposition so you can solve a puzzle to unlock the next cutscene.

With that said, I’m not a big fan of puzzle-heavy games like Myst because the puzzles often feel contrived and the solutions convoluted. Plus, I dislike slide-show/nodal navigation—it’s slow, clunky, outdated and can be spacially confusing. If a developer can’t do real-time 3D, I’d much prefer them to adopt the Japanese visual novel approach of one background per scene, with close-up shots upon inspection. That’s what I’m doing in my game.

Hardly a revolution, as much as I wish it were true. The 5 Cores is the first game in a long time that meets my gaming needs. First person games are usually horror or suspense, which is ok, but I crave the fantasy elements that made Myst so popular. As for puzzles, I think they are integral to Adventures and wouldn’t be playing them if they weren’t there.
BTW, there is another game on the horizon:
http://kairo.lockeddoorpuzzle.com/
I tried the demo, it’s a little rough around the edges, but beggers can’t be choosers.

orient - 03 October 2012 09:32 AM

I always preferred third-person games until I played Fallout 3, then it all clicked into place for me. I think the narrative potential is much greater when a game’s focus is on exploration and discovery; inhabiting a world and uncovering its secrets at your own pace, as opposed to having characters sitting around, spewing exposition so you can solve a puzzle to unlock the next cutscene.

With that said, I’m not a big fan of puzzle-heavy games like Myst because the puzzles often feel contrived and the solutions convoluted. Plus, I dislike slide-show/nodal navigation—it’s slow, clunky, outdated and can be spacially confusing. If a developer can’t do real-time 3D, I’d much prefer them to adopt the Japanese visual novel approach of one background per scene, with close-up shots upon inspection. That’s what I’m doing in my game.

I was going to write a long reply to this about slideshow vs 3D but decided to make a new thread since it’s not strictly OT.