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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."
"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."
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.
I once had a similar debate while discussing with a guy who was doing a nethack port on the Game Boy Advance platform.
Nethack is a keyboard-driven game, where you specify actions (go, eat, attack, loot, force, open, close, zap...) by pressing a given key before you specify the object upon which your action is performed (if any), thus taking advantage of the large number of keys available on an average keyboard.
Console RPGs have a limitation in input keys : on the game boy advance, you only have 8 useful keys (directional pad, A, B, left and right shoulder keys).
So porting nethack to the Game Boy Advance platform required either simulating the keyboard in some way, which was the approach of the guy I was talking to, or defining a different interaction paradigm.
In console RPGs you usually specify objects before you specify actions. The reason is simple: objects, displayed as a list, are easy and fast to browse with directional keys. Then for one object you select, you get to select which actions is available for performing on that object, once more a small list, fast to browse with few keys.
So I ended up figuring out that the best way to port nethack was to actually invert the interaction paradigm, going from action->object to object->action.
For the player, it meant that the game would be played in very different ways. You don't think "what am I going to do now?" but "what can I use at this point to do something?" Still, the game engine is the same...
I really miss the interfaces the older adventure games used, like Police Quest 1 and 2, Space Quest 1 and 2, Leisure Suit Larry 1-3, and the other Sierra adventures from that time. Just walking around, and typing instructions. Of course this could be modernised by using voice commands, but I like it better than just clicking around on everything until the right thing is clicked.
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.
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.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.
The more complicated they become, the larger the advantage becomes to those who look up the solution.
I'd like to submit as a counterexample the Zelda series. To put my words in the right context: I have completed Twilight Princess two times (I own it), and my gf.ex[2] had Ocarina of Time, which I played most of a good while ago.
For those of you who don't know (srsly? on /.?), it's single player. Your HP is measured on a scale from 12 to 80 (quarters of hearts), with most attacks inflicting 1 or 2 points of damage. You character "levels up" by finding items or by collecting hearts; you get a full heart container for beating a boss, and can find shards hidden in the bushes. The game has a fixed set of items: four bottles, a fishing rod, a bow plus arrows, a ball on a chain, a pair of iron boots, bombs etc., which you find at various story points; some of the bottles are hidden and found by off-storyline investigation, and some items or item enhancers (a bigger quiver) are found in side quests.
Combat is fairly easy. Even for the bosses, you fairly quickly learn how to dodge their attacks and stay nigh-invulnerable, plus there's typically a big stack of hearts available if you look around. This minimizes the impact of gathering combat gear. [one exception is the Cave of Ordeals which is pure combat, tons of fun, and completely optional].
That's for the character progression. It tends to be either (1) in lockstep with the story, or (2) not very important; something you do for completeness or (future) convenience.
The main focus, not being on combat or character progression, is on solving puzzles. Each item has between (roughly) one and three important characteristics that outline how you use them. For instance, the iron boots make you heavy, slow and give you a lot of friction. The grappling hook lets you pull objects close to you, or you close to objects, and have a limited range; it also hits the object it impacts with and travels in a straight line. The bow hits the object it impacts with, doesn't move any object, has a limitless (for practical purposes) range but shoots in a parabolic curve.
The trick is to figure out how to combine your items with your environment. In one dungeon, you jump and grab a hold of a handle hanging down from a ceiling, but nothing happens. If you put on the iron boots, you become heavy, pull the lever down, and activate something. In a later dungeon, you use the grappling hook to "jump" to a chandelier, then put on the iron boots to do the same trick.
So, each object is fairly simple on its own, having typically only a single "wear" or "use" verb (and rarely both), but complexity arises from their combination and their interaction with the environment. I think that's a fairly good of building a rich system from simple components.
The puzzles can get somewhat complex. For instance, there's a sliding block puzzle: some (~3) block reside on a frictionless ~6x6 chessboard with some squares cut off and walls on the edges; you can exert an axis-parallel force on a block, including from outside the board, but not from inside another block. Your goal is to move a subset of the blocks onto some marked squares. (think of sokoban with sticky arrowkeys and the player inside the walls if it helps you). They can get fairly demanding; less straightforward than "go kill diablo".
Yet it's one of the highest ranked games at that site which averages out other reviews.
How come?
Well, the story itself is nice. It's fairly simple:
SPOILER WARNING ... but the characters are interesting and it's told in an interesting way.
The villain kidnaps the princess
SPOILERS END HERE
I posit this hypothesis: by emphasizing story progression and a sense of achievement (from solving puzzles) over greater combat ability (from MF'ing and tediously but trivially earned leveling), there's less to be gained from cheating--you're cheating yourself out of the feeling of accomplishment, and all your getting is a nice story and the possibility to cheat yourself in the future.