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Game design / Gameplay Evolution
« on: February 20, 2009, 02:39:10 AM »
Hi there. I was thinking about how to advance some typical gameplay elements of the adventure genre.
The first thing i was thinking "today adventures need comfort". So i did some research and found some typical gameplay elements i want to see in every new click&point game and should be some kind of standart gameplay element.
1) fast travel - double clicking on a room exit and get instantly teleported.
2) hint system - shows all interactive objects in the room that will be important, like exits or items etc.
3) action menu/action coin - already standart in wintermute. But still very interesting, i think this gameplay element was invented by LucasArts in CMI and is the final result of reducing its verbal system to its basis. Sierra and other companies already where using a similar system but it was a very annoying "click right for the next verb", where you had to scroll through all minus one button if you are unlucky. LucasArts fixed this issue with its action coin and im a little bit disappointed that this feature is still missing in most commercial games.
Then i was thinking about gameplay elements that are still a typical problem with adventure games. One thing is the annoying standart sentence "i cant do this!"
Games like A Vampyre Story try to solve this with funny dialogs. So instead of getting "i cant do this!" or "that does not make sense!" you get the sentence "Oh hello little door. How are you doing?".
That is ok for a game that uses humor but it has some disadvantages:
1) it requires much work to write for every object a funny phrase
2) while maybe funny it does not resolve the problem that it is still a "you cant do this"-answer
3) funny dialog does not work in serious games like horror or mystery adventures.
So i was looking for a way to reduce this. While i dont know how you could solve this problem for items, at least i came up with an idea to prevent the player from stupid interactions:
simply deactivate the button in the action coin.
It should be obvious that the player cant talk to his desk or chair. So why should the player get the option to talk with it? By deactivating unused interactions you not only reduce frustration for the gamer itself, you also dont have to think about an unique answer why you cant talk to a ventilation system or use a street sign.
So i wanted to ask if someone had a similar or maybe completely other ideas how to advance the point&click adventure gameplay interaction?
The first thing i was thinking "today adventures need comfort". So i did some research and found some typical gameplay elements i want to see in every new click&point game and should be some kind of standart gameplay element.
1) fast travel - double clicking on a room exit and get instantly teleported.
2) hint system - shows all interactive objects in the room that will be important, like exits or items etc.
3) action menu/action coin - already standart in wintermute. But still very interesting, i think this gameplay element was invented by LucasArts in CMI and is the final result of reducing its verbal system to its basis. Sierra and other companies already where using a similar system but it was a very annoying "click right for the next verb", where you had to scroll through all minus one button if you are unlucky. LucasArts fixed this issue with its action coin and im a little bit disappointed that this feature is still missing in most commercial games.
Then i was thinking about gameplay elements that are still a typical problem with adventure games. One thing is the annoying standart sentence "i cant do this!"
Games like A Vampyre Story try to solve this with funny dialogs. So instead of getting "i cant do this!" or "that does not make sense!" you get the sentence "Oh hello little door. How are you doing?".
That is ok for a game that uses humor but it has some disadvantages:
1) it requires much work to write for every object a funny phrase
2) while maybe funny it does not resolve the problem that it is still a "you cant do this"-answer
3) funny dialog does not work in serious games like horror or mystery adventures.
So i was looking for a way to reduce this. While i dont know how you could solve this problem for items, at least i came up with an idea to prevent the player from stupid interactions:
simply deactivate the button in the action coin.
It should be obvious that the player cant talk to his desk or chair. So why should the player get the option to talk with it? By deactivating unused interactions you not only reduce frustration for the gamer itself, you also dont have to think about an unique answer why you cant talk to a ventilation system or use a street sign.
So i wanted to ask if someone had a similar or maybe completely other ideas how to advance the point&click adventure gameplay interaction?
