3 ms·
Puzzles are to adventure games like frosting to a cake. It’s expected to be there as a convention, but you want to keep it to a minimum because too much spoils
by pavlov 2y ago
Puzzles are to adventure games like frosting to a cake.
It’s expected to be there as a convention, but you want to keep it to a minimum because too much spoils the whole experience.
The story is the point and the puzzles are just an accepted contrivance to make you stay longer within the world. They’re not objectively fun, like frosting isn’t objectively good.
- seanwilson 2y agoI partly agree, but there are puzzle heavy games with throwaway plots and people do mention they like games because of the puzzles, so I thought my observation was non-obvious. People still talk about the death of adventure games being caused by moon logic puzzles, but I don't hear people mention that part of the problem is the design space of item based puzzles is more limited than you'd think (I mean non-magic, non-NPC stuff) and has been mostly explored.
- vunderba 2y agoWhile the story is definitely very important, a point-and-click adventure game without puzzles is basically just a book where you turn pages by clicking the mouse. Of course there are good puzzles that integrate well with the world (like reading from the world's most boring book to help the oyster fall asleep in King's Quest VI), and bad puzzles (cough arbitrary sliding tile puzzle cough).