Nothing's as scary as a blank sheet of paper

[ad7venture]

Each to their own - my latest project is 1st person without inventory items.

Even Myst used inventory to a limited extent, but I think they had a better approach to puzzles: many buttons, and switches, and moving things in different places.  The problem comes when people use only inventory items, I think.  Anyway, I just found it too hard to develop without them.  I don't think they'll become a trap for me.  I hope not anyway. I think a game has somewhat failed when you become focused on moving a mouse around looking for hot spots. Usable items should be in plain site, and figuring out what to do with them should be the activity.

[Erwin_Br]

I wouldn't say that I'm one of them, but I know people who actually like to be hunting for hotspots.

I think it's a design flaw, though not one of the worst catagories (like dead ends, for example).

--Erwin

[ad7venture]

I wouldn't say that I'm one of them, but I know people who actually like to be hunting for hotspots.

I think it points up a failure in interactivity.  Interactivity means manipulation.  An example would be, suppose I hit a button and door opens.  I personally don't consider that to be interactive, although it is in it's most basic sense.  Suppose there's 5 doors.  Each door opens and something pops out for a short time.  Then, if I open the door in the right order, the things that pop out react to one another.  At that point, it becomes interactive.  Where most games fail, in my point of view, is they only do that first part.  A simple reaction to an action.  Then to make it "hard", they hide items or put them on the other side of the game world.  Which makes the game even worse.

[Kickaha]

I wouldn't myself define interactivity as being able to manipulate (more in terms of the game being responsive to what the player had done) but perhaps we're not so far apart.

One of the plusses of being an amateur game developer is that one can do what one sees fit.  One can try and do the kind of game one would like to play oneself.

Making the player trust the game is important - dead ends may be realistic and true to life but for me they break what I consider an unwritten rule of games (that the game is looking after the player and won't let them get into an unwinnable situation.)

[ad7venture]

I wouldn't myself define interactivity as being able to manipulate (more in terms of the game being responsive to what the player had done) but perhaps we're not so far apart.

I think that's a more common definition, really.  Not that different, because in order to respond, there has to be some type of manipulation.  Just looking at it from the other side of things, really.  The reason I don't look at it that way is because a lot of the responses come from choices that you sometimes didn't have enough knowledge of the consequences to understand what you were doing.  It then becomes more like a simulation, something without real puzzles.  I find simulations a little dry, myself, but I know a lot of people like them.

One of the plusses of being an amateur game developer is that one can do what one sees fit. One can try and do the kind of game one would like to play oneself.

Yeah, and also one can find out how much work there is in it and why people didn't do it that way.  I always hear on game sites some guy that has no experience say that he's going to make a role playing game that does everything role playing games do already but so much more.  A very big task, since large teams had to devote years just to put as much in as they did.  I can talk all I want to about interactivity, but what happens when I try putting together those types of puzzles and still try to maintain a story?

[Imari]

Kickaha said -

One of the plusses of being an amateur game developer is that one can do what one sees fit. One can try and do the kind of game one would like to play oneself.

I agree, and I also try to keep in mind that what I find fun to create, may not always be what someone else may want to play.  As a player, I most like to explore the new environment and to be challenged by a series of logical puzzles.  

For instance, I've adored the entire Myst series (and if I am able to create anything approaching Myst or Riven, I'll be deliriously happy), but I always recall a particular puzzle in Riven that involved finding a series of glyphs on tiny golf ball-shaped items.  They were hidden all over the islands, along the seashore, under foliage in the jungle, etc.  Why would anyone leave a note to himself in so many pieces and scattered everywhere?  By the time I'd finally solved the puzzle, I was cross and disappointed.

Pulling a lever, entering a code, combining and using inventory items, and dialog puzzles are all fine with me, but they need to make sense and I also would like to have some clue as to why I might want to be doing it in the first place.
 

[Trumgottist]

Making the player trust the game is important [...]

Nobody has argued against that, but I'd like to emphasise it. I think that's a very important point for adventure games. If a player loses trust in a commercial adventure, she'll head for a walkthrough much quicker and get less enjoyment out from it. In a freeware adventure, the player's initial investment is less so unless you've really captured them with your story or something, they'll just uninstall it and move on.

The gameplay in an adventure relies on trust in the creator of the game.

[ad7venture]

They were hidden all over the islands, along the seashore, under foliage in the jungle, etc. Why would anyone leave a note to himself in so many pieces and scattered everywhere?

Hmm, I never had any problem with it, really.  I think the notes were actually to the other brother, weren't they?  I've heard a lot of discussions on this point.  I know there has to be a larger suspension of disbelief if puzzles are involved.  You end up with basically no puzzles if you carry it the extreme.  I think some people are fine with that.  I enjoy the challenge of a puzzle and I don't mind if the situation is somewhat contrived in order to facilitate it.  I would much rather have that than just hiding relevant items in another scene and putting them where they belong.  Of course, the notes in that case didn't have much to do with the puzzles, they were there to fill in the story and make us ask questions.  Who are these people, what are they trying to accomplish?