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Adventure games belong to one of the oldest genres in computer gaming. They have been around for over 30 years and the first computer game to sell over a million copies was Infocom’s interactive text adventure - Zork.

So why is it that, after so much history and experience, most of the adventure games out there suck?

There are some obvious reasons; many games appear rushed as the pressures of budget and shipping in time for the holiday season exert themselves. These are easy to spot with puzzles thrown in at random to flesh the game out and endings which are just a little too contrived or abrupt. Or maybe the game designer just wasn't that good. Although this is harder to spot as most games are now developed by teams and glaring weaknesses can be covered.

But what about that game which seemed to have so much promise? It has all the talent working on it. It has a good budget and a reasonable deadline. Yet it just seems to fall flat. Just what is it that sets a great adventure game apart from the crowd? What are the rules of gaming that have been followed or broken?

I started thinking that maybe I could come up with a set of rules or Gaming Laws that, if followed, would result in a superior adventure game. I could post these rules somewhere on the Internet and reference them each time I reviewed a game.

I started making notes on my doodle pad. I had little hope that my list would be taken seriously by the big gaming houses. But at least readers would have a better idea of where I was coming from in my reviews. And maybe, just maybe, an independent developer might notice them and take them to heart.

Then in August of 2004 Randy Sluganski of JustAdventure.com posted his newest State of Adventure Gaming article. In it he linked to the blog of Ron Gilbert and his excellent "Why Adventure Games Suck" article. Much of Ron's ideas overlapped with mine. He clarified several issues I had not thought much about and I had several additional points that I thought would be relevant.

So I have taken many of the concepts from Ron's article and combined them with my own to create the following Five Laws of Adventure Gaming.

Law 1: The Story is everything.

Law 2: Playability must be addictive.

Law 3: Navigation must be "Intuitive-able".

Law 4: Puzzles must be solvable by real people in real life.

Law 5: Window dressing must enhance, but never dominate.

I don't claim to be the final authority on adventure gaming. If anyone can think of additional issues which tend to make or break adventure games, then please send them to me. If I think they would make a relevant contribution, then I will add them to this article and give the author credit. (I may not be the final authority on Gaming, but I am the final authority on this article :-) ).

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