Adventure Game Interfaces and Puzzle Theory 149
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."
Interaction paradigms depend on physical interface (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Old-style adventure games (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Old-style adventure games (Score:3, Interesting)
I play Discworld Mud. Text based online game based on the discworld books.
Kind of interesting to me since I grew up after text games went out of fashion.
xyzzy - more than puzzle solving (Score:4, Interesting)
For that reason, adventure games are more than mere problem / puzzle solving games. They require of the player some skills to hack around inside the source (or to know someone who has) to get the most out of them.
As for versions written since the early 80's - I haven't a clue. They all seem to be variations on the earlier theme, so once the (original) problem had been solved, they held no interest for me.
Re:That's not a premise (Score:3, Interesting)
"clicking your hand icon on a tree isn't much different than 'climb tree.'"
I disagree. Clicking your hand icon on a tree could mean innumerable things, some of which I might never think of. 'Climb tree' 'pat tree' 'touch tree' 'rub tree' 'get bark' etc etc.
So a graphical game will inadvertently hold your hand and help you along, where a text parser makes you figure it out.
Don't get me wrong, I like both kinds of games. Hero's Quest and QFG 1 VGA were both great games. But clicking and typing aren't the same at all.
Re:xyzzy - more than puzzle solving (Score:1, Interesting)
This is the usual argument against Science fiction "... and then he just whips out his automatic debogofier and solves the problem..."
But SciFi and Interactive Fiction are only interesting when the writer obeys the rules, many older adventure games broke the rules by having hidden items/words/etc. that you had to hack the source or know someone with inside knowledge to discover.. this put me off them as well ...
The classic example of 'xyzzy' is a bad example because you could solve the adventure without it but the magic word just made it easier ...
Re:Different subgenres (Score:1, Interesting)
A very good article. The author knows his adventure games.
Except Survival Horror, which the author somehow managed to ignore completely. Seriously, it's inventory/single-verb plus guns. How does that not qualify? Just because there's actiony bits doesn't make the "use object I found to solve puzzle" paradigm go away. And there's rpg-ish adventure games, like Zelda, etc.
And there's the resurgence in virtual consoles on the XBox, Wii, etc.
A discussion of adventure games that stops in 1995 is incomplete.
Re:just mouse click away (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a critical part of the purely text adventure is the narrator, i.e. the responses you get to any and all of your actions. In many cases, that omniscient voice is there not just to describe the environment, but to give (perhaps subtle) clues about what was possible and what was fruitless. A lot of the time, with just pointing and clicking, there's precious little feedback except success or failure; the mashed potato example in the parent post is (to my mind) much more rewarding. The recent game "Violet", winner of the 2008 Interactive Fiction Comp (playable via Parchment [googlecode.com]) has one of the best narrators I've ever encountered.
Zelda, player/character/story progression and misc (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Poor Black Isle (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want a really good comparison of interface versus depth of a game, compare Black Isle's Fallout 2 to Bethesda's Fallout 3. Fallout 3 fails to have any interesting puzzles, and very little character or plot depth. It's pretty enough, and a 3-d (if buggy) environment - and they did a good job with the real-time/turn-based hybrid interface. On the other hand, Fallout 2 is a pearl of humor and interesting character choices - not just a black and white, good versus bad spectrum.
I hope we can get through this dark period of games quickly, to a day where the tools are well developed enough that we can have some interesting writing again. The market these days is comprised of mostly of FPSs, MMOs and flash games, it seems.
Re:If only most MUDs had the puzzle solving aspect (Score:4, Interesting)
I beg the differ, why then are games like zelda or portal so popular? The way i see it, people do like puzzles. Usually people would enjoy easy to medium difficulty puzzles with the occasional hard puzzles that actually gives them a sense of accomplishment.
Also, help guides on the net is an obstacle because when puzzles get hard all the time, people tend to just cheat and look online rather than figure them out. Overtime, this turns into an automatic habit which turns lots of games into lookup and grind since it is better to grind than not being able to solve the puzzle. This issue can be avoided by using a randomized puzzle generator.
Another problem is on the game development's side. More often than not, the games we play doesn't provide the players with enough obvious clues. Puzzles need to make themselves visible and intrigue the players rather than stay hidden all the time. For example, in doom you have to collect three brightly color coded keys to advance. Sometimes these keys will be in a hidden area, but the players know they have to find those keys.
The final issue in games are immediate rewards. People like to grind usually isn't because grinding in itself being enjoyable. If you take away the exp, money, or item gained from grinding, I imagine very few would grind. The problem with puzzle solving in most game is that there's very few rewards associated to it. And even if they do, the reward usually isn't appropriate for the feat performed. Thus, people end up skipping the puzzles and go for the easiest way to obtain reward.
In the end, i think online games would be much more enjoyable if these problems are addressed.
Re:If only most MUDs had the puzzle solving aspect (Score:3, Interesting)
You make it sound as though coordinating 25 people to determine and use the correct set of gear, talents, and abilities to deal with multiple complex challenges in real time is less complex than old adventure games and "appealing to the least common denominator."
Combat, and especially the raid combat in MMO's, is as much of a puzzle as "puzzle" type games, it just uses different rules, and happens in a more stressful environment.
Now, I'd like it too if they added some more complex non-real-time problem solving (as these puzzles can involve different types of depth) to modern games, but please don't be insulting.