Adventure Gamers - Forums

I thought we as veteran players could make a list of things AG developers should and shouldn’t do.

The idea is not to criticise but to help out budding developers.

1. Make dialogue skippable

1. Make dialogue skippable
2. Listen to our advices.
3. If you are translating dialogue into another language, make sure you get a native speaker of that language on your writing team, someone who is a skilled writer. What’s funny or makes sense in one language doesn’t always translate well into another.

4. Save slots. Even if your game has autosave, I want a manual option. Aside from getting around the problem of corrupted savefiles, it allows me to go back to earlier in the game. If you don’t want to use it you don’t have to, but it’s always good to have there.

Make cutscenes replayable.
How often has it happened to you that you were in a crucial part of a game, a cutscene played that you HAD to see in order to understand what you should do next, and someone started to talk to you/the telephone rang/you had to pee/the world exploded?

Make ‘Bonuses’ optional!
I hate the thing that Steam and Gog often do: include ‘bonuses’ in games. I recently played Syberia I and II, bought from GOG, and every now and then at almost random moments an icon and the word BONUS! flashed on my screen, taking me out of the game completely. It’s excruciating and very very annoying and it takes much of the fun out of playing the game.

calligram - 05 August 2017 03:22 PM

A way to remember short term goals if you haven’t played the game in a long time. And I know the “journal” is a popular option but there’s gotta be a better way?

I agree - I often wish for a “previously, on *insert game title here*...” feature, wich would give a recap of the game so far, and remind me what I was doing before quitting. It should be optional of course - I don’t want to have to sit through a trailer sequence everytime I want to play.

I also wholeheartedly concur on the manual save solts. I like to be able to go back to certain points in the game, especially when there are multiple endings or branching paths. Life is Strange and most Telltale games were fully autosave if I recall correctly, and, while I understand the difficulty of allowing manual checkpoints with an episodic format, I found it quite frustrating to have to start over from the very beggining in order to change a sometimes hasty choice.

10 - Make action sequences skippable. They can definitely ruin a game for me.

calligram - 05 August 2017 03:50 PM

OMG I absolutely ADORE the idea of a “previously on” recap when you haven’t played in a while!
The game could ask you when you open a saved game with an old date. It should be optional of course, but it’d be so cooooool.

And +1 for the save slots as well.

Did Cognition do this or have I totally imagined it?

tsa - 05 August 2017 10:51 AM

Make ‘Bonuses’ optional!
I hate the thing that Steam and Gog often do: include ‘bonuses’ in games. I recently played Syberia I and II, bought from GOG, and every now and then at almost random moments an icon and the word BONUS! flashed on my screen, taking me out of the game completely. It’s excruciating and very very annoying and it takes much of the fun out of playing the game.

Absolutely.  I’m sure many people love these achievements so I have no problem with them, but please have an option to turn them off/ignore them.

calligram - 05 August 2017 03:50 PM

OMG I absolutely ADORE the idea of a “previously on” recap when you haven’t played in a while!
The game could ask you when you open a saved game with an old date. It should be optional of course, but it’d be so cooooool.

And +1 for the save slots as well.

Have you guys played the Layton games. They have the previously on recap when you first start the game. I’m surprised that not more devs adopt that.

This…

Oscar - 05 August 2017 07:47 AM

4. Save slots. Even if your game has autosave, I want a manual option. Aside from getting around the problem of corrupted savefiles, it allows me to go back to earlier in the game. If you don’t want to use it you don’t have to, but it’s always good to have there.

and this…

tsa - 05 August 2017 10:51 AM

Make ‘Bonuses’ optional!
I hate the thing that Steam and Gog often do: include ‘bonuses’ in games. I recently played Syberia I and II, bought from GOG, and every now and then at almost random moments an icon and the word BONUS! flashed on my screen, taking me out of the game completely. It’s excruciating and very very annoying and it takes much of the fun out of playing the game.