Timed puzzles and Dying in Adventure Games

[Erwin_Br]

I was wondering how you people feel about timed puzzles in adventure games. To use a well-known example: The spitting contest puzzle in Monkey Island 2.

What are the pro's and the con's?

--Erwin

[deadworm222]

It's difficult to figure out what EXACTLY to do if you don't have time to try things. This leads to unnecessary frustration. At best a timed puzzle can be a source of excitement and tension, and there are ways to make it seem like the player "just made it".

If there's an extra knack of surviving just in the nick of time, it's always a plus, I believe... That the main point of the puzzle isn't lightning-fast reflexes.

[Erwin_Br]

My favorite timed puzzles always loop; you don't have to fail after a certain time frame has passed.

Stealing a key when the guard is looking in the other direction, for example. (An utterly simplistic example, though)

I don't really like the Sierra timed puzzles in which you could actually die. But hey, I'm not a fan of dying in adventure games anyways.

--Erwin

[deadworm222]

I'm a friend of the old tragedy principle where everybody dies in the end, except one person... or maybe (s)he should die, too. I favour death only as a plot element, though.

[Erwin_Br]

While we're on the subject of death in adventure games;

Now that I'm designing my own game: I never realized how difficult it is to avoid it in your game. You give up a whole lot of puzzle possibilities and such. The fact that I decided that my main character can't die is quite restraining. Another reason to admire LucasArts, I guess...

--Erwin

[Candle]

I haven't played all that many games with timers in them but I would have to say I would not like it if it had one as I have a memory problem and and the games are hard as they are right now for me with out a timer .
A lot of my skills that use that part of the brain are not fuctioning now  so hard for me even some puzzles.
I know I'm going to need some help with puzzles for my game because if I do them they maybe to simple . lol

[jmackley]

There are so many reasons dying in an adventure game is bad, but first I'll respond to the question asked, timing puzzles in adventure games.

I think they can be extremely cool.  The melting-mug puzzle in Monkey I for instance.  We even used a very simple one in CMI (falling down the Skull Island cliff face).

The reason those, and the MI2 spitting contest work is that you are not overly penalized for failure.  In the case of CMI and MI2 you actually get rewarded for failure with humor, a funny animation or barbed insult from the spectators.

But timed puzzles are definitely linked (by some designers) to dying.  Here's why designers should avoid it:  (There are few 'never do this' rules in game designs...although making the game unfinishable because you didn't pick up the hammer in room 2 is one).

If you die in an adventure game, you encourage the player to make timid choices.  A great example is the King's Quest games.  You are in a dialog with a guard and you have the opportunity to insult him or be humble.  If you insult him, you die.

Now the reason for playing a game is because you want to do something you can't in real life.  Being as insulting as possible would be great, if social rules didn't prevent it.  So, dying encourages the player to do the safe thing.  I suppose you could kill a player for being polite, but that would be stupid and the dialog game-play would then just be a coin toss.

Even worse than dying in an adventure game are timing puzzles where you can die.  I liked "The Last Express" very much, but I didn't finish it because there was a timing puzzle and every time I died it sent me back 15 minutes in time.

The biggest problem with timing puzzles is that if the threat of failure is death (and/or God help you, being forced to play the same large section of game over and over) you're not worried about death.  You know you're not going to really die if the bomb explodes.  You're worried that you're not going to use the interface quickly enough to navigate all the rooms, click on the right stuff in the right order.  You're also worried that you've saved the game at the wrong point.  This really takes you out of the story and the game.

In essense, a timing puzzle tries to make an adventure game an action-game with a REALLY bad interface.  Action games have interfaces optimized for timing.  Adventure games, not so much.

Also, to the gentleman who is having trouble not having death in his adventure game: Try making the game a comedy, it makes it much easier.  

[Candle]

I'm lucky in the fact that the death has already happen in the game when you start . and I'll just leave it at that

[Jace Taran]

I pretty much agree with what everyone has said.  I think a timing puzzle should only be used if the player can have have as many tries as needed, and also as long as the "window of opportunity" is not too thin, because not everyone has lightning fast reflexes.

[dragonrose]

It's probably one of the most often debated topics in adventure games- should your character be able to die?  Please note that this will probably be a bit disjointed.  I can't sleep so I decided to write this instead.

Dying gives a sense of real danger to the game- every action can actually be dangerous, thereby hightening the tension of the game.

However, it can also lead to great frustration for the player.  Having to go back and repeat a section because you didn't save can be dreadfully annoying.

It's easier to design a game with possible death.  The designer can simply have the option of saying "oh, you didn't do such and such an action at such and such a time? You die," instead of having to work around the player not having done the action or forcing the player to do the action in some way so that the game can advance.

On the other hand, having no deaths shows a great deal of skill for the designer.  They were able to work around all the petty annoyances of their character's immortality.

Death can be used to create a sense of realism For example, if there is a gunfight, there is a chance you might die.  There's no getting around that. Having your character magically not get shot really makes no sense.

Immortality can be used to create terrific humour scenes.  Holding your breath for 10 minutes, anyone?

Your thoughts and opinions?

[deadworm222]

Guybrush DID die after being underwater for longer than ten minutes.

I prefer death only in action sequences ala Broken Sword 1 - as long as you can immediately restore the game to that point without having to resort to a saved game.

Also, I like death as a plot element.

[deadworm222]

Could this be merged with the other thread where we talk about death?

[Erwin_Br]

Also, to the gentleman who is having trouble not having death in his adventure game: Try making the game a comedy, it makes it much easier.  

My game is a comedy, actually. While that makes puzzle design a bit easier, because you can come up with wacky situations and all, you get some other difficulties in return. Humor is a big grey area, and it's hard to predict if your game will make people laugh. But that's an entirely different topic, which might be fun to discuss sometime  

--Erwin

[stu]

One of the great scenes about timing puzzles (and I'm not talking about death here) is that they can be used to make very good, fair puzzles that are great to solve. Good timing puzzles do this by by-passing all the conventions of the interface (e.g. using every item on every hotspot) and forcing the player to actually solve the puzzle. Take the spitting contest; it was a tough puzzle with three different components involved, but it was impossible to solve by "guessing" the answer. Because it stopped the artificial interface imposing on a supposedly naturalistic situation (i.e in real life I would walk over to the door and pull the handle, not instruct myself to do this), it meant the player had to understand the puzzle, not try things at random. As for death; I have nothing against it in a game where an element of menace (instead of pure comedy) is involved, but the developer must remember that every time the player dies, a little bit of suspension of disbelief and emotional involvement with the story is lost.

[deadworm222]

I think we have formulated an important rule here.