Laurion Studio: Useful Resources

Making Great, Deep Puzzles

The main problem with Adventure Games, as a genre, is that the entertainment value derived from intellectual and narrative novelties wears thin much quicker than the entertainment value of using your reflexes in a graphical environment that is as rich in eye-candy as it is in foes to slaughter. Quite simply, if I’ve solved a certain type of puzzle once or twice, that’s enough for me, thank-you very much. But, if I’m in the mood for mindless stimulation, I can gun-down virtual Nazi’s and their Zombie minions for hours on end.

This is not a critique of Action-oriented games, which I tend to enjoy very much; rather, it is just a frank assessment of a salient feature of the necessary interaction between the designers of an Adventure Game and their player-base. Adventure Gaming can thrive as a genre precisely to the extent that its game developers can continue to come up with innovative, intriguing, and challenging titles. Conversely, titles that seek to copy some one or another successful formula are predestined to bore anyone who has already played a similar game.

Let’s look at this problem another way. If I am in the mood to entertain myself by interacting with a story and solving its puzzles, I insist on being stimulated, surprised and thoroughly entertained in addition to being merely challenged; else I would simply pick up a booklet of brainteasers. What this means is precisely this: there exists no formula for successful Adventure Games, and there never can be such a formula! What may work splendidly in one game to stimulate, surprise and entertain me will seem old hat, and thus monotonous, should I see it trotted out in a sequence of slavish clones.

That said, I think that we can, now and at any particular moment in the future, articulate something of a declaration of the state of the art of Adventure Games. That is, we can summarize the minimal standards that we expect to see in a good game, based on the innovations that we have seen in the classical and remote pasts. This should not be construed as attempting to achieve anything approaching either a dogma or a canon of the Adventure Game; rather, it is always a provisional, completely ephemeral consensus that is founded on the classical idea of climbing on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us in order to better see the world. Any game that achieves such a vista will, of course, enable future designers to further expand their horizons by providing its own, slightly higher set of shoulders as a vantage point.

At a minimum, I think that the current state of the art in Adventure Games should build from the following points:

We should expect to get caught up in an imaginative story, which is told in an imaginative manner.
We should expect to care about the fate of the protagonist and his or her friends.
We should expect that puzzles are an integral part of the warp and woof of the story, and not mere superstructural ornaments.
We should expect that puzzles are challenging, but solvable using the tools provided and the internal logic of the story.
We should expect that all puzzles are wholly consistent with the theme, motifs and mood of the story; to wit, if I’m playing a fairy game I expect the designer to deliver puzzles that convince my I’m in fairyland, and not in a math class or LSAT review.
We should expect that multiple paths exist to the solution of the more important puzzles, so that we feel we are challenged to solve a genuine problem and not merely guess what the designer was thinking when he conceived the puzzle.
We should expect believable, realistic NPCs. The field of AI has by now provided us with all the tools we need to make our NPCs semi-autonomous actors, and not merely walking billboards and hint dispensers. What's more, Galatea has shown us that the NPCs can themselves be a multi-faceted puzzle to be solved!
We should expect the freedom to make the story our own, which is to say, the player ought to have a real influence over not only the order in which the story progresses, but also the way in which it ends. Computer Role-Playing games have been doing this for years, and I for one think that they have raised the bar for the unfolding of narrative elements in all games that are story-driven.
We should expect the freedom to customize the protagonist somewhat – to make him or her in our own image, so to speak – within reason given the nature of the story. This is obviously a matter of give and take between the player and the writer, but I would like to see more writers truly invite the players to participate in the process of creating a story, not only in terms of its progress and ending, but also its beginning, which is the player character. Once again, Role-Playing games have provided us with a full – too full, in this case, given the bewildering plethora of rules systems – toolbox for implementing such a gentle concept.

On the other hand, we should expect NEVER to see such things as these:

Puzzles that depend more on the clichés of the genre than on the specifics of the individual game. This is a sign of the sort of intellectual fatigue that heralded the near collapse of the Adventure Game market in the late 1990’s, as lazy or stumped designers began implementing puzzles that were ill-considered imitations (parodies?) of lateral thinking and dream-logic. Does anyone remember the hopelessly lame rent-a-moped puzzle in Gabriel Knight III?
Puzzles that are out of place, or not woven seamlessly into the narrative, and thus disrupt the willing suspension of disbelief.
Repetitive, mind-numbing puzzles, or puzzles that are clearly space-fillers.
NPCs with whom we cannot interact in detailed, interesting and sometimes surprising ways. That is, if a simulated person exists in the game, it had damned well better be a pretty good simulation of a person.

Finally, some things may be nice in this game or that, but they should not be considered a part and parcel of the state of the art. Here are some examples, just to get you thinking:

Lavish, cinematic cut-scenes. Sure, these can be a wonderful device for advancing the narrative along, and immersing the player in the world of the game. They can also be nice rewards for solving a difficult puzzle or, in some branches of the genre, defeating a tough boss. But they are not the ONLY means of doing these things. Indeed, I think elaborate cut-scenes can sometimes actually detract from some games, in insidious little ways, such as hindering the ability of the player to interject herself and her own personality into the character of the protagonist. Let’s face it, to precisely the extent that you use cut-scenes to define the protagonist, you potentially disrupt the ability of the player to imagine the player character. While the cut-scene should by all means remain a valuable tool in the game-designer’s toolkit, I think we should continue to find new and innovative ways to advance our stories and define our characters.
Any particular interface conventions. Interface conventions exist so that a player can focus on the game, and not have to fumble around with the manual in order to learn how to interact with the environment. But they are a convenience for the player, and not a dogma set in stone. Since we certainly hope that designers will always invite us to do NEW things in their games, we should give them the latitude to adjust the interface to efficiently accommodate these new things. A fine case in point was Grim Fandango, which drew some flack for new interface elements … which were actually all-but necessary in order to smoothly implement its tentative step into the world of real-time 3D rendering.
A leisurely paced game. Yes, most of the vocal players of Adventure Games prefer, at this moment, a leisurely pace in which to examine and solve the puzzles posed in a game. And, yes, forcing a player to do some task at any given moment, or within some arbitrary time limit, certainly seems rude or unimaginative. But this is not to say that getting the adrenaline flowing is intrinsically antithetical to Adventure Gaming! Some action-oriented sequences, or better yet, action puzzles, if well-conceived and imaginative, might contribute to the overall fun of a game. In this case, the good designer should perhaps never say never.

This leads to the question of whether cross-genre trappings have any place in Adventure Games. I think that the answer depends on the intent of the designer: if you add cross-genre trappings in the hope of luring new players from other genres, you are running a huge risk of creating a shambling monster of a game that is both fish and fowl, yet neither swims nor flies. Conversely, if you are seeking new ways of entertaining your core player-base, then your risk may pay off in terms of an enjoyable and innovative game.

Let’s face it: Adventure Games tend, by their very nature, to be somewhat exclusive. People who find themselves drawn to the delights of tackling fiendishly difficult puzzles as an integral part of the process of a narrative exposition tend to be precisely those people who value highly intellectualized activities as a form of recreation. This does not mean that we do not enjoy other genres of gaming as well. On the contrary, some of us, to include myself, love to frag bots and other players when we are in the mood, while of course others of us don’t. But people who don’t enjoy overly intellectualized pursuits as a form of entertainment are simply going to hate a game that requires they think very much. This does not mean that Adventure Gaming is snobbish: I know many very intelligent and successful people – doctors, programmers, business people, academics – who use their brains all day long, and who seek entertainment forms that let them put their cerebral processes on standby. But it does mean that most Adventure Games should not be considered candidates for the elusive but tempting appeal to the mass market. Adding features that have succeeded in mass market games to Adventure Games may or may not help make the games better, but it will not mean that mass market will suddenly fall in love with the genre.

That caveat aside, I tend to think that anything at all that has worked in one genre has a potential place in an Adventure Game, just so long as it is made to fit the mood of the Adventure. I personally enjoy the chance to smack down a monster here or there in an Adventure Game, but I want to be able to do so in the same generally languorous, unhurried pace that I have set to explore the environment and solve its puzzles, and I certainly want to have to outwit that doomed monster rather than merely overwhelm it with my inexorable skill in mashing the left-mouse button at a superhuman speed. So too, I very much appreciate innovations in graphics and interface, so long as they succeed in assisting me in using my imagination as a tool to overcoming the environment. I think you see my point: borrowed trappings can be innovative, just so long as they contribute to the general sense of the Adventure instead of distracting from it.