Posts Tagged adventure
The Magic of Scheherazade Bits
Posted by The Management in games on August 26, 2011
Summary
Description: A hodge-podge of action-adventure/RPG conventions that was a bit ahead of its time.
Conveniences: Lots, surprisingly. It’s easy to grind for money/levels, healing items are automatically used when health reaches 0, NPC’s are very direct with their hints, etc.
Annoyances: Having to constantly hit the Start button in order to assign different actions to the A and B buttons.
Standouts: The time-travel mechanic
Nelson Tethers – Puzzle Agent Bits
Posted by The Management in art, games on July 12, 2010
Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent cribs quite liberally from Professor Layton, and relies heavily on its art style, but it’s still my favourite of Telltale’s episodic games to date.
The bits:
— Obviously the most noticeable thing about Puzzle Agent is its offbeat, crayon-drawn art style. What’s interesting here is that the game relies on stop-motion like animations reminiscent of old, low-budget cartoons. The effect is actually quite good and and the choppy movements are consistently utilized even when smooth animations could have easily replaced them (e.g., a snowmobile driving in a straight line).
The system made me wonder if other art styles not conducive to animation could successfully adopt a similar approach.
Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is quite a cinematic game that uses lots of different framing techniques for both its interactive and non-interactive sequences.
— Aside from the visual style itself, PA is a very atmospheric title in the vein of the old LucasArts adventure games. The characters are bizarre and expressive, the Fargo-esque setting is unique (at least for a videogame), and the great music and voice acting enrich the overall experience.
— PA was clearly designed with the iPhone/iPad in mind. The player never walks his avatar around the screen, and clicking most places sends out a helper-shockwave. As this shockwave expands, it highlights any points of interest that can be clicked on to initiate conversations, puzzles, scene transitions, etc.
These icons briefly pop-up whenever the player clicks on any close-by, non-interactive areas.
— The actual puzzles in PA are a bit of a letdown. This is due to two main reasons: lack of instructions, and the inability to jot down notes in-game.
A lot of the puzzles are quite obtuse, sometimes to the point where a hint needs to be purchased just to figure out what the game wants the player to do. Unfortunately this seems like a concession to the game’s hint system (all puzzles must contain 3 individual hints) as some cases actually contains an additional screen that explains the controls and the goals of the minigame.
The secondary complaint deals with the nature of the puzzles themselves. Many of them are common math/logic problems that are meant to be solved in a series of steps. However, the player is often forced to visualize and work through them without any in-game aids. This artificially inflates their difficulty, especially when compared to the visual jigsaw puzzles.
These points certainly don’t ruin the game, but do I hope the various minigames are improved in future episodes.
Unfortunately most of the other puzzles are not described in nearly as much detail.
- Many puzzles are completely optional and make exploring the world feel more like a non-linear, interactive experience.
- The actual hint system is quite clever. The game starts off with the protagonist trying to solve a crossword, and, having some problems with it, eventually reaching over for some gum to help him concentrate. As we soon learn, the town he visits is experiencing a gum shortage. This forces the player to pick up old, discarded pieces of gum to aid Agent Tethers in his puzzle solving endeavours. Yes, it’s quite gross, but perfectly fits the mood of the game and gives the designers a great excuse to sprinkle virtually all parts of the environment with a useful collectible.
Agent Tethers comes face-to-face with Mike "The Lobster" Lobb.
Old gum also seems to be a reusable resource, reappearing in new spots as the Agent Tethers travels around town. This provides the player with an unlimited source of hints and prevents him from getting stuck on any one puzzle.
- As a nice little touch, the time of day on the title screen changes up periodically while the camera slowly scrolls around the Scoggins eraser factory.
- The UI of the game is very flashy but intuitive, with lots of animating widgets composed of labels and icons. The unskipable puzzle submission is a tad long, but the overall interface is a joy to use (especially when compared to many other adventure games).
My favourite scene with the creepy gnomes had one of them invade my puzzle in the middle of me trying to solve it! The sequence worked very well since the puzzles (at least up to that point) were a separate, uninterruptible segment only exposed to the player.
- Agent Tethers uses a tape recorder throughout the game to narrate his experiences. This provides extra personality and context while clearly outlining what must be done going forward.
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Secret of Evermore Bits
Posted by The Management in art, games on September 19, 2009
Secret of Evermore came out close to the end of the SNES era and was the first and only game to be developed by Squaresoft USA. It tried to piggy-back on the relative success of Secret of Mana, retaining that game’s ring-menu system and part of its title, but it was not well received by the fans. The main reason for this is that it wasn’t Secret of Mana 2.
The defeat of the iconic Thraxx, one of the earlier bosses in the game.
Anime was really taking off at the time, but SoE had its own aesthetic style. Its setting also had nothing to do with Mana, and the two games played quite a bit differently. Adding insult to injury, various magazines previewed Seiken Densetsu 3, the real sequel to SoM, and hinted at the game not coming out in the West because of SoE.
Despite all the fan outrage, though, Evermore was a quality game and I personally prefer it to Mana.
Read the rest of this entry »
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders Bits
Posted by The Management in games on May 1, 2009
Zak McKracken was Lucasarts’ second ever SCUMM title. It didn’t really have the same impact as the various Monkey Island or Indiana Jones games, but it contained loads of personality and a few interesting twists on adventure game mechanics.
It all started with a dream...
The good stuff:
- Zak McKracken, the game’s protagonist, dreams of winning the Pulitzer Prize but is stuck working for The National Inquisitor, a trashy tabloid. Despite Zak’s disgruntlement, his job is a very good excuse to have the player investigate suspicious phenomenona and travel to exotic locales.
The red, underlined "LOOK!" arrow-sign was actually a breath of fresh air in a genre notorious for pixel-hunting.
- The game came packaged with a print version of the National Inquisitor and featured headlines such as “Two-Headed Squirrel Attacks Two Campers At Once!” and “Scrambled Son Tries To Kill Parents With Eggs.” Incidentally, not everything in the newspaper is supposed to be fabricated — a concept that was a big part of Men in Black.
- The game’s story revolves around a devious alien plot to overthrow humanity. This is achieved by a group of aliens — disguised in Groucho-style masks — running a phone company that’s slowly eroding earth’s intelligence through dial tones.
The FM Towns version of the game.
- Being exposed to the aliens’ Mindbender machine results in game commands being sucked out from the user interface. This is a rather clever way of simulating Zak getting stupid. It also serves to gate the player and justify some rather perplexing behaviour.
- The National Inquisitor doesn’t have the biggest budget, so Zak must pay for his own flights. Aside from being another logical gating mechanic, it also serves to tease the player with impossibly expensive flights. It’s debatable whether such red herrings are actually a good thing, but they add the illusion of scale.
- A vital way of getting the funds to travel around the world is winning the lottery.
- International flights also double as copy-protection, requiring the player to enter “Visa Codes” (that are provided in the game’s manual) when travelling outside of the US.
Yes, that King.
- Zak can “mind-meld” with animals and control them, but this is often just an amusing distraction, e.g., making your goldfish smile or having a yak poop.
- The game is split into five main parts, each one involving getting a piece of “The Device.” It’s a very non-linear approach — especially for an adventure game — as it allows the player to explore and the world in almost any order he wishes.
- The game’s female characters were based on at-the-time significant others of the various individuals on the development team. One of these women was notorious for dyeing her hair, so her in-game equivalent appears with differently coloured hair every time she takes off her space helmet.
- Zak’s pet goldfish is named Sushi.
Deductive Puzzles
Posted by The Management in design on March 10, 2009
Adventure games are filled with their fair share of sleuthing, so why do they often turn into a parody of MacGyver?
Well, gameplay, of course. Browsing the scenery for usable objects — whether they can be picked up or not, and whether they can be used by themselves or in conjunction with other objects — is the interactive cause-and-effect bit.
Way too many designers have asked themselves that very question.
Considering how many adventure games revolve around solving mysteries, though, it’s surprising that so few of them rely on the player’s deductive skills. Instead, the audience is often stuck doing all sorts of illogical things, especially on a micro level. There’s usually a clear goal, but getting there is a matter of figuring out the logistics, not the mystery.
Now relying on the player’s deductive skills can be a big challenge. It’s not the most casual concept, it can be difficult to keep all the details of the “big picture” in one’s head, and even small discrepancies between the player’s conclusions and the designer’s intentions can result in an impasse.
Still, it’s not impossible.
About
Hi, my name’s Radek Koncewicz, and I'm the Creative Lead of Incubator Games, a small development studio I started with a few former coworkers.
I think a lot about videogames, and when I find the time, I post those thoughts here on this blog.
