Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg

What makes a fun adventure game?

I'm still sick, so I don't really have the juice and magical mojo required to write a fancy post but still, I don't want you to think I'm dead so I'll just go ahead and ramble on some things that's been on my mind today.

This year I've been playing a lot of Point & Click Adventure games; mostly thanks to Telltale Games. I try to play through Monkey Island 1-3 every now and then along with Grim Fandango, but this year I've played the first six Sam & Max games, the first four of the "Tales"-series of Monkey Island and yesterday Beneath a Steel Sky (remastered edition, on the iPhone).

I enjoyed them all, some more than other.

Beneath a Steel Sky is available as Freeware for the PC, btw.

What I'm thinking about is:

What makes a fun adventure game?

Many would say that the story is the most and only important thing. While that really is a very important part with the story, setting and great dialogue I still don't think it's what makes it a great game.

I think it's just like with any other game; the gameplay and pacing. The gameplay here would partly be the dialogue, but mostly the puzzles and how you solve them. One could argue that the "gameplay" would only be the clicking on an object to use and then the object to use it on, but I'm willing to stretch it a bit for this genre.

Even though the puzzles themselves are directly connected to the story, I think there's more going on there than you'd think of at first glance. For example, can't think of any other genre that use the cognitive process involving affordances and what we expect and item to be able to do, just by looking at it. "This probably fits here", "Oh, a credit card is often used to open locks in movies", "Hm, it's shaped like a moon", and so forth.

I've never tried to make an adventure game, so I'm absolutely no guru in this matter, but I think it's extremely hard to set the pacing. How much dialogue between the puzzles? How long should it be between gaining an object and having to use it?

I think you have to consider all these factors and more, to make a truly great adventure game.

Another thing I think is especially important for this kind of game, is something that I'll dedicate an entire post to later on once I get healthy: It have to be fun to make mistakes.

Okay, enough rambling!