Articles
|
by Robert Washburne |
The Perfect Adventure Game |
Law 4: Puzzles Must Be
Solvable by Real People in Real Life.
One of the great satisfactions
of Adventure Gaming is puzzle solving. And a truly great puzzle
will satisfy us in two ways. First, solving it will actually accomplish
something and second, it will actually allow us to solve it.
Puzzles for the sake of
puzzles is not Adventure Gaming. That is another genre. A puzzle
should be a mini-quest that stands between you and your goal. The
point is that the goal needs to come first, then the puzzle.
There is a puzzle I need
to solve in order to open a door. Great. Why should I want to open
that door? Am I in prison and that is the only way out? Did I just
see the Evil Nefarious go through that door dragging my Dearly
Beloved? Or is it just another door in this big old building where
I happen to be wandering around for some unknown reason? Which
of the previous scenarios would give me the greater motivation
for solving the puzzle? Which of the previous scenarios will give
me the greater pleasure from solving it?
A great Adventure Game
is an escapism fantasy. I am no longer flipping burgers and living
with my parents. I am now the Great Adventurer and people’s lives
depend on my actions. But this only works if I can really solve
the puzzles and win the day.
Most puzzles in today’s
games can only be solved by dead people or people who can see into
the future. Every puzzle in a game should be solvable the first
time by someone who is observant and clever.
Scenario 1: I am walking
down a hall. Suddenly there is a bright beam of light going through
me and a loud ZOT. I am dead. Ah-ha! There is a laser beam booby
trap. I remember seeing a large mirror in the other room. I’ll
just restore from the last save-game and fetch it. This is a puzzle
that only a dead man could solve. This is a game that can only
be won because it is only a game and you can save your position.
I take some satisfaction in getting past this next step.
Scenario 2: I am walking
down a hall. Suddenly, I notice up ahead that there is a bright
beam of light which travels across the hall every few seconds with
a loud ZOT. The wall where the light hits looks charred. Ah-ha!
There is a laser beam booby trap. I remember seeing a large mirror
in the other room. I’ll just fetch it. I was observant and clever.
I was able to solve the puzzle on my own and the fantasy/SoB is
unbroken. I take great satisfaction in knowing how clever I am.
Would that make the game
too easy? Not necessarily, but it should become too easy if you
are using a walkthrough. In a good adventure game, 90% of the players
should be able to complete it without a walkthrough. And it should
feel easy to only the top 10% experienced gamers.
If a player gives up and
reaches for a walkthrough, then the puzzle has failed. If the player
then slaps their head and says, “Of course! I just wasn’t
thinking,” then the puzzle is redeemed. But if the player
looks at the solution and says, “Now how was I ever supposed
to know that?” then it was a bad puzzle. Period.
If a game is still challenging
even when using a walkthrough, then it has been filled with busy
work just to fill it out. This is a strong indicator that the story
is not being emphasized.
If a game is still enjoyable,
even if easy, when using a walkthrough, then the story truly is
a winner and the player will probably buy the sequel.
One other general point – Real
Time is not Real Fun. Adventure games tend to draw the cerebral
crowd. We tend to be the kind of people who like to take our time,
think and savor the experience. We tend not to like clocks breathing
down our necks or having to perform actions requiring significant
hand/eye coordination. We associate adrenalin with bad experiences.
Of course, there are players
who like both experiences. But including real-time action sequences
will diminish your target market, not increase it. Don’t believe
it? Think of it this way: There are three types of players out
there:
A) Those who only like
Adventure games
B) Those who like both Adventure and Action
C) Those who only like Action games.
Gamers from A and B will
buy an adventure game. If you add action sequences to an adventure
game, you will not attract C, but you will lose A. All loss, no
gain.
You might argue that there
is another group out there, D, who only like games with both action
and adventure. But you would have a hard time convincing anyone
that they represent more people than group A.
Now let’s look at some
puzzle specifics. There are four types of puzzles found in adventure
games: Exploration, Dialog, Inventory and Logical/Twiddly.
Exploration: The first
joy experienced by the first adventure gamer was when they typed
GO NORTH and the computer told them were they went and what they
saw. It may not seem like much now, but it was a Big Hairy Deal(TM)
back then. Nowadays, exploration can still be a joy when the world
the game is showing us compels us and pulls us in.
Exploration may not seem
like a puzzle, but it has puzzle-like qualities. Were we able to
go everywhere and see what there was to see? Were we able to avoid
those areas that needed to be avoided without dying or needing
a save-game?
But the source of most
exploration frustration is the one-way trip to the next area. Were
we able to tell that it was a one-way trip before we clicked through
that last door? Are we confident that we collected all of the inventory,
spoke to all the people and solved all the puzzles before leaving
the area? Or do I have to be able to see into the future in order
to know what I need to do before leaving?
Of course, exploration
can be a puzzle. When it is, we call it a maze. The biggest challenge
when designing a maze is keeping the player’s sense of direction.
The worst thing is clicking to turn a corner, finding yourself
facing an ambiguous direction and not knowing which of the paths
behind you is the one you came from. Or going down a long corridor
but not knowing how far you have traveled. I would know if I was
really there. The computer maze should be just as easy/difficult
as the corn mazes I experience every summer.
Dialogue: Dialogue trees
have the potential of adding a bit of realism to a game. People
will tend to react to you differently based on how you talk to
them. Unfortunately, they are rarely implemented well.
Many dialogue “trees” are
just lists of subjects you can talk about. The player is expected
to select each one to hear what the character has to say about
that topic until the entire menu is exhausted. There are two problems
with this. First, why bother? If there is no interaction happening
why not just click on the NPC once and get the whole dialog. The
whole tree thing just turns out to be busy work.
The second issue is getting
information out of order. You might click one topic and hear which
color was your Aunt Sally’s favorite. Huh? Who is Aunt Sally? Then
you click another topic to find out that you had a long lost Aunt
Sally whom you never knew about. In a similar fashion, the emotion
of the conversation might change at random from topic to topic.
Moral: There must be a
reason to have a dialogue tree. Otherwise, just let the NPC say
their piece and be done with it.
The other type of Dialogue
Tree is one where the NPC asks a question and you can choose how
to answer. The way you chose – friendly, aggressive, angry,
etc. – affects how the NPC responds. This is a good puzzle as long
as the player has some clue as to how to act before they get into
it. We shouldn’t have to tell the future to know how to respond.
A good way to make these
puzzles would be to expect polite behavior as the norm and give
clues before hand if you need to be aggressive with someone. The
bad way is to just designate NPCs at random as requiring different
tactics, but not warning the player before hand.
Inventory: The most popular
style of adventure game puzzles is also the most abused. In its
simplest form, this puzzle is simply finding the key that opens
the locked door. However, some developers appear to take sadistic
joy in requiring players to create devices worthy of Rube Goldberg.
One of my biggest peeves
with Inventory puzzles is the pervasive philosophy that “If
it ain’t nailed down, pick it up.” I’m in a house. I see
a piece of cheese on the counter. Why should I put that piece of
cheese in my pocket? Have you ever walked around with cheese in
your pocket? Can you imagine what that does to your pants?
I don’t know about you,
but when I’m in someone else’s house I don’t go around peeking
in their drawers and stuffing my pockets with whatever looks interesting.
The puzzle should come first. Then, after you know what the need
is, you can go back a get whatever it was you needed to solve the
puzzle.
My other gripe is puzzles
that require you to figure out how to use items for uses they were
never intended for. If you need a crowbar to open a crate, then
there should be a crowbar laying around somewhere. I shouldn’t
be expected to know that I can take a rope and soak it in the Magic
Juice so that it becomes stiff enough to use as a crowbar. That
level of complexity is just gratuitous.
On a similar vein, why
should I pick up the mysterious circuit board or mechanical thingy?
If I have no way of knowing what it is, why should I have any hope
of knowing what to do with it? I need a clue beforehand to motivate
me.
Moral: The player gets
maximum enjoyment from them being clever, not the puzzle designer.
Random clicking on objects until you solve the puzzle by trial
and error is not being clever.
Logical: Also called “Twiddly” puzzles
because you don’t pick them up as much as you twiddle with them.
The classic example is the combination lock.
The first issue is why
the puzzle is there at all. Too often this type of puzzle is just
thrown in to satisfy the twiddlers. They might be fun, but if they
don’t flow with the story then they break the SoB.
Logical puzzles can be
very satisfying, but only if they follow two basic disciplines.
First, it must be easy to figure out how to manipulate the puzzle.
Second, the solution must be available. This may sound obvious,
but I have lost count of how many combination lock variants I have
played where the solution was nowhere to be found. And the walkthrough
agreed that the solution was not in the game.
Remember, if a player
can solve the puzzle by being clever, it will bring much more satisfaction.
Purely mechanical, repetitive twiddling with no thought involved
is not fun.
Also, the average adventure
gamer has not memorized the astrological symbols or the periodic
table of the elements. If such information is needed, then it should
be found in the game. Forcing a player to investigate outside of
the game sounds like a neat idea, but by definition it breaks the
SoB and forces the player to stop playing.
