Analysis of Adventure Games Copyright 2003, Murray Peterson I have been playing adventure games (and reviewing them) for several years now. Given all that experience, you would think that I know what makes a game good, bad or indifferent, wouldn't you? Hah! Every time I think I have some "rule" that works, another game comes along that breaks the mold and still manages to be enjoyable. However, writing reviews does focus one's attention very well. When it comes time to write a review, I am forced to look at all the pieces, and try to explain how they affect my enjoyment of this particular adventure game. It's not good enough to say that the game "sucks", nor can I rave about its greatness without providing reasons that (hopefully) make sense to a reader. This article is my attempt to define how adventure games are structured, at least in terms that I can use to describe why I enjoyed or hated the game. If I do a good enough job, perhaps others can use this structure to understand why they don't agree with one of my reviews. For me, a good game takes me into another realm, and makes me forget that I am sitting in front of a computer monitor. I am not controlling a character via the mouse or keyboard. Instead, I am exploring caves, turning over rocks, talking to people, and itching to see what is over the next hill or behind the next secret passage. A good game makes me an adventurer, not a mere gamer. I believe that there are three core constituents of any adventure game: graphics, story, and puzzles. I may be using these terms in unusual or unexpected ways, so I will discuss each of them. Graphics -------- All adventure games use graphics (explicit or otherwise) to transport the player into the game's world, so good graphics are a necessary part of an enjoyable adventure game. The technology used to draw these pictures is unimportant, as long as it succeeds in helping create the game's world. The resulting world can consist of exotic locales, or everyday ones, but it needs to give me that sense of wonder (make me see things I wouldn't have seen without playing this game). 2d/3d or 1st/3rd person have little impact on me, provided it "works" in immersing me in a place other than sitting in front of a computer monitor. Even a text-only game has graphics; it uses words to draw pictures of the game world inside the player's head. Story ----- Another requirement for an adventure game is a story; without some sort of story, the game devolves into nothing more than a well drawn puzzle game. Just as important, the game must make me feel like I am part of the story, not just an observer. If I am merely an observer (or reader), then where is the adventure? Just like graphics, a story can be told in many, many ways; from extremely minimalist (Myst), through to live actors throughout (Black Dahlia, Gabriel Knight 2). Not only must the story be well told (or evoked), but the game developers must take great care to not ruin their efforts. It is all too easy to ruin a story by hiring poor speech actors, or by just dumping a lot of narrative into the mouth of one of the characters. Puzzles ------- Puzzles serve multiple purposes in an adventure game. Puzzles (or challenges) regulate the speed and timing of the gameplay (or story progression). Try one of the Cryo edutainment games (such as Egypt II or Pompei) in "exploration" mode (no puzzles or character interaction). You can visit the entire set of game sites in a very small amount of time (and it's really boring). Without puzzles, you don't have a game, you merely have a slide show, or a novel, or a travelogue. Well integrated puzzles increase the immersion effect of the game. They are how I interact with the game, and how I am made to feel a part of the game world. Without these puzzles, I am merely a disinterested observer, and not even dialog with the game world's character's can replace this feeling of detachment. Poorly designed (or implemented puzzles can be a complete "game killer". The reason that I hate timed sequences and arcade sequences in adventure game is quite simple; they all make me explicitly aware of the keyboard and the mouse, when I would much prefer getting back to the "real" adventure. For exactly the same reason, I am not too thrilled with puzzles that are poorly integrated with the game world; they conflict directly with my desire to stay immersed in the game world. Putting it all together ----------------------- Please forzgive me, but I am going to use an analogy for describing how a game is constructed. I am fully aware that an analog isn't the thing itself, but it helps immensely when trying to visualise and describe something. Please imagine an adventure game as a three-legged stool constructed out of wood. Now that we have this utilitarian bit of furniture firmly in mind, let's look at the various parts that this stool (or a game) is constructed from. There are three legs, a seat, and the wood itself. The legs of the stool are respectively, graphics, puzzles and story. The stool's seat is the integration of the three legs into a single whole. In other words, graphics, story, and puzzles must interact with each other in a cohesive fashion. Think of a game with very poor puzzles; that one "short leg" will make the entire stool less than enjoyable to use. The wood itself is all of the "mechanical" parts of a game, or the implementation itself. If the game crashes every two minutes, or the controls are unusable, or you must fight with the inventory management system, then we can think of our stool as being made of rotten wood, and it will collapse under the weight of the player. A "good" game is a well built stool, fully of capable of supporting the player, while a "bad" game is a poorly constructed stool that dumps the player onto the floor. Even "good" games (stools) have uneven seats and some knotholes in the wood, but the end result is balanced enough to be useable and enjoyable. I think this poor analogy has been pushed far enough; I have already strayed into the realms of metaphor (the horror!). Conclusion(s) ------------- My stool analogy does more than help explain what makes a game enjoyable for me; it actually helps me understand why people may hate a game I love (or vice versa). All of us have differing views on what is "good" with respect to puzzles, story, and graphics. A game that I find to be well balanced and well built, will be found deficient in one area or another by a different person. For example, the story in Myst was eminently sufficient for my enjoyment of the game, while others found it to be insufficient for their needs. I enjoy mechanical puzzles and hate arcade puzzles, while others feel exactly the opposite. I find the graphics in a text game to be of a high level of artistry, while others will accept nothing other than real-time 3D graphics. In other words, none of us see the same stool...