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Ever been stuck for a new puzzle, one that isn't just "give item to man?" Well, below are some of the accumulated puzzle theories from various people here at the AGS pages. I've compiled them into categories and come up with some of my own. A good puzzle maker should combine many of these ideas and her or his own.







A good puzzle should not just be fun to solve, but be intimately linked to the game, to the style and tone.







All puzzles should be in some sense original, or repeated for parody effect.

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The following excerpt comes from Richard Rouse III's book Game Design: Theory & Practice, which has just been released in a thoroughly revised and expanded second edition. The book covers all aspects of game design, from coming up with a solid idea to creating the design document to implementing the gameplay to playtesting the final game. The book also explores the craft of game design through in-depth interviews with some of the field's most experienced and successful game designers. The interview subjects include Sid Meier, Ed Logg, Steve Meretzky, Chris Crawford, Jordan Mechner, Will Wright, and Doug Church. Below is an excerpt from Mechner's particularly thorough interview, covering his superb but overlooked The Last Express, as well as his most recent triumph, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

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All of which brings me to the subject that has been irking me this month, cherished reader: adventure game protagonists who are jerks. I’m not talking about the ones who are supposed to be jerks, but adventure game characters the designer expected us to empathise with and care about, when in fact they are the biggest jerks in the world who badly deserve to get hit by a speeding train.








Take note, amateur designers: the portrayal of the player character is vital to an adventure game’s appeal, because they are the player’s representative in the game’s universe. The protagonist is, in effect, an extension of the player’s corporeal form. An extrusion. A limb, if you like. And nobody likes to know that one of their limbs is a jerk.

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There are some myths, like perennial urban legends, that just seem impossible to kill off. One that took root a few years ago, and keeps coming back to haunt us, is this mindless dogma from the mainstream gaming press that declares the traditional adventure game to be dead and buried. Almost every unfavourable review of an adventure title contains a phrase to this effect, as if it is a licence to justify a bad review... but I'm not going to dwell too much on that here. No, I'd like to discuss a more insidious problem: the reviewing of adventure games by people who apparently have not a clue what an adventure game is all about!







1. Reviewing an adventure game as if it's supposed to be an action game

2. Denigrating a game simply because it is 'point-and-click'

3. Encouraging the introduction of action elements into adventure games

4. Spoiling the puzzles and the plot

5. Complaining about the length of the dialogue

6. Admitting to using a walkthrough, and then claiming the puzzles were too easy

7. Comparing every adventure game to Grim Fandango

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2. Denigrating a game simply because it is 'point-and-click'

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point and click has always been lame

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What's wrong with doing this.. point and click has always been lame.

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The adventure game is not sacred or written in stone and needs to own up to it! There, I said it. Sue me, but you'll be doing so more out of spiteful denial than charges of defamation. The truth is, the adventure game genre, as we all know it, has long been suffering from obscurity, lack of progress, sheer banality, isolation (surprise!), and, simply, from the garden variety of dullness. And everyone - developers, publishers, the media, and yes, we gamers ourselves - is guilty of creating and fueling this suffering. The apparent sources of my grievances, viewed top-down, are obvious, but some are less so. As I delve deeper, I'm finding some intriguing and inherent contradictions, fallacies, and redundancies that add to this muck. As devoted supporters and partakers of the adventure game, don't we all want to see it move ahead and reach a bigger audience and be restored back to its former glory as it was during the days of Lucas Arts and Sierra and -- Stop right there!! You see? That's what I mean! You didn't catch it, did you? Read on.

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Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall when a group of adventure developers gather together to discuss game design, genre issues, and industry concerns? Or better yet, how about having those same developers share their perspectives on issues that concern you?







Wish no further, for that time has come. Welcome to the first-ever edition of “Ask The Developers.”






The topic of our first chat centers on U.S. markets.

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Of all the different types of games, the ones I most enjoy playing are adventure/story games. It is no surprise that this is also the genre for which I design. I enjoy games in which the pace is slow and the reward is for thinking and figuring, rather than quick reflexes. The element that brings adventure games to life for me is the stories around which they are woven. When done right, it is a form of storytelling that can be engrossing in a way that only interaction can bring. The key here is “done right”, which it seldom is.

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It’s not exactly visionary to think that because it hasn’t been done well, it can’t or shouldn’t be done. What we should do is figure out how to tell stories in games. We should also realize that there are several different types of games, some want stories, and others don’t. A good FPS doesn’t need a story, and forcing one upon it just embarrasses everyone involved (see: porn).


...


The real issue is not that stories shouldn’t be told in games, it’s that the cut-scene is the wrong way to tell a story in a game. Interactivity is like a drug, once you give it to people they don’t want it taken away. A good interactive story teller should understand this and the narrative would be woven into the interaction is a seamless way. It should react to the player’s every choice and twitch. It should flow around and immerse them. This is the holy grail of interactive story telling, and I for one will continue the quest.

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