Adventure Game Interfaces and Puzzle Theory

MarkN writes "It seems like whenever broad topics of game design are discussed on Slashdot, a few people bring up examples of Adventure Games, possibly owing to the age and interests of our members. I'd be interested to hear the community's thoughts on a piece I wrote on Adventure Games, talking about the evolution they underwent in terms of interfaces, and how the choice of interface affects some aspects of the puzzles and design. My basic premise is that an Adventure Game is an exercise in abstract puzzle solving — you could represent the same game with a parser or a point and click interface and still have the same underlying puzzle structure, and required player actions. What the interface does affect is how the player specifies those actions. Point and click games typically have a bare handful of verbs compared to parser games, where the player is forced to describe the desired interaction much more precisely in a way that doesn't lend itself to brute force fiddling. It's a point Yahtzee has made in the past; he went so far as to design a modern graphic adventure game with a parser input to demonstrate its potential." Read on for the rest of MarkN's comments. MarkN continues:
"In addition to talking about the underlying concepts of the genre, the other main thing I touch on are the consequences of the simplification of interfaces — puzzles are more likely to be cracked by trying everything until it works since there are fewer possibilities for interaction. There are a few simple alternatives: requiring a number of actions in sequence, or requiring the player to achieve a more complex configuration or state to demonstrate their intent. But that can reduce the world of puzzle solving to explicit logic puzzles in order to get around the problems that more creative types of puzzles run into, since they depend upon actions that are simpler to specify. It's a topic I'd be interested to get the community's thoughts on, and what they see as the best way to craft a puzzle solving experience."

Comments

If only most MUDs had the puzzle solving aspect

[Viol8]

Most of them when I played them back in the 90s seemed to require the following player input:

find monsters
kill monsters

level

And then when you go to a high enough level

find newbies
kill newbies
run from angry wizards

And that was about it.

Re:If only most MUDs had the puzzle solving aspect

[Xest]

The funny thing is that that sounds exactly like most modern MMOs.

It's nice to know that decades of experience amongst game designers has led us round in a complete circle but hey, it works, people enjoy it so I guess that's why. Personally though I can't help but think there is room for more interesting, more complex team-based puzzles in games, but I guess games like WoW particularly have to satisfy the lowest common denominator.

Re:If only most MUDs had the puzzle solving aspect

[morazor]

I think it's just a matter of sales. A game satisfing the lowest common denominator has more potential players than a complex and difficult game. Developing a game has high expenses: low sales means failure. Many software houses making complex and deep games had to face financial problems.

Some examples:
Troika Games
Black Isle Studios
Sir-Tech

As a matter of fact, a lot of people enjoy playing games that doesn't require too much reasoning. The others still play Nethack or ADOM for the lack of new interesting and challenging games.

Re:If only most MUDs had the puzzle solving aspect

[AlXtreme]

Personally though I can't help but think there is room for more interesting, more complex team-based puzzles in games, but I guess games like WoW particularly have to satisfy the lowest common denominator.

The problem with puzzle quests in MUDs or MMO's is that it becomes very tempting to simply follow the walkthrough of someone who went before you.

With adventure games the reward for completing the adventure is the knowledge that you completed the adventure without needing help. If you offer a benefit as a reward, that benefit becomes more important for many people. Thus, people will cheat simply to get the reward sooner. Which means you get left behind on the MMO treadmill if you want to do it on your own, giving you a disadvantage to those who look up the puzzle and get back to grinding boars.

There is a reason why MMO quests are so simple. The more complicated they become, the larger the advantage becomes to those who look up the solution. I think only randomly generating puzzles will lead to a more challenging MMO game.

Point and click hell

[biscuitlover]

I think one of the biggest hurdles with adventure games, which the article touches on, is the fact that it's hard to make a complex world that is still easy to navigate.

For example, I love the idea of Sherlock Holmes games but often they devolve into a laborious click frenzy where you start investigating every object in the environment in the hope that it will be somehow relevant.
Similarly, how many people here have played Resident Evil and spent a lot of time walking awkwardly against the walls while mashing the X button?

I think the most successful adventure games are those that can make their world seem at once complex and immersive yet still easy to navigate and explore without becoming an exercise in endless clicking frustration.

Re:Interaction paradigms depend on physical interf

[Ksempac]

Not to be mean, but have you ever played Nethack seriously ?
What you say is wrong because, Nethack doesnt limit you, you can try any action with any object (it may lead to nothing but at least you can try to do it). You select an action, it suggests obvious choices but you can also try everything else.
For example, if you want to "wield a weapon" (== "equip a weapon"), the game suggest items that obviously qualify as weapons (sword, bow, ...) but if you want to wield another object such as a potion, a monster corpse, or anything else, you can do it and you may discover interesting effects with this.
My point is, if you go from action->object to object->action, you would still have to display all the objects available and then display all the actions available : you didn't reduce choice or the difficulty to navigate the interface at all.

Is it a limitation of interface?

[One Monkey]

I think it's more likely a lack of imagination on the part of designers. The fact is the basic building blocks of the design are fundamental.

Stephen Poole made the point that the more things Lara Croft became capable of in the Tomb Raider games (climbing ladders, auto aiming etc.) the more bizarre it seemed that she couldn't use the rocket launcher to blow wooden doors off their hinges.

I think a lot of times the reason puzzles devolve into an endless series of finding blue keys for blue doors is not so much because of an inherent problem in the interface but more because the designers can't be bothered to think of creative uses for that interface. Not saying that I can necessarily but nobody complains that you can solve Sudoku puzzles with a bruteforce online tool. The point and fascination for the participant is that it's more entertaining to do it without just cheating.

If your game isn't entertaining enough even if someone knows every answer ahead of time it sure as hell isn't going to be made more so by the addition of High IQ required brain busters.