Adventure Games

I've never been a big fan of adventure games, though I must admit that Grim Fandango was certainly great fun (in fact, it was one of the very few games I've ever completed). Adventure games used to be a popular genre on the computer, but they're few and far between these days.

But I was just reading a post by Igor Hardy called What is an Adventure Game? and it started me thinking. We could argue definitions all day, but Hardy basically sees an adventure game as solving certain types of puzzles in an atmospheric game world - puzzles which are "not based solely on conscious data analysis and step-by-step logic, but which key aspect is the player noticing/finding non-obvious and unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated game world elements."

Well, on that note, I might point you to this article on Old Man Murray about Who killed adventure games? It's an entertaining read: Who killed Adventure Games?  I think it should be pretty clear at this point that Adventure Games committed suicide. Heh, heh. That puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3 is extreme, but yes, that's basically the kind of puzzle Hardy is talking about.

I've always seen adventure games as generally a matter of beating your head against a wall until you (1) finally figure out some illogical puzzle, or (2) give up. If you figure it out, yes, it does feel good. I can understand the sense of satisfaction if can give a player. It was always a bit too frustrating for me, but if you enjoy that kind of thing, no problem. Or, rather, there wasn't a problem in the early years of gaming. But these days, there's a big problem. It's called the Internet.

You see, you don't have to beat your head against a wall these days. If you get stuck, just go online and get the answer. Even if you do enjoy this kind of puzzle, you're not going to beat your head against a wall for very long, not when the answer can be had so very easily. It's just too tempting to take the shortcut. But that being so, what's the point of the puzzle? It will certainly make the game a lot shorter when you're not stuck for hours on end. But more importantly, if that's the essential gameplay in adventure games, what happens now that it doesn't work like it used to?

Maybe adventure games have committed suicide. Or maybe the Internet has killed them. Either way, I have a hard time seeing this kind of gameplay these days,... well, except perhaps as comedy. Adventure games have often been tongue-in-cheek, and these kinds of elaborate puzzles are a good fit for humorous games. There's still the problem of solutions being so easily available online, though, so I think modern games will have to rely far more on humor and less on elaborate puzzles. They may have funny elaborate puzzles, but not difficult ones, not the kind historically associated with adventure games.

But I had another thought, too. I've been posting that games - RPGs in particular - shouldn't be trying to tell a story, but rather give players the opportunity to create their own "story" during gameplay. But adventure games might be different. Adventure games tend to be linear, and the story is usually a big part of the game. The gameplay is just figuring out the puzzles in order to advance the story. Player choice is never a factor.

Heh, heh. It's kind of funny, really. I've always pushed for "adventure game elements" in role-playing games - by which I meant both exploration in an atmospheric gameworld and a great story. Well, I still want the former in an RPG, but I've completely changed my mind about the latter. As I've said, I no longer think RPGs should be trying to tell a story at all.

I guess that adventure games and role-playing games aren't as similar as I'd always assumed. (And I think that others have assumed that, too. Note the continual debate about puzzles in RPGs.)