Gaming How to write... an Adventure game

The NeverHood was an awesome game and absolutely hilarious! I had an abandonware version which didn't allow saving and me and my girlfriend had to sit and do it all in one 48-hour sitting, which was great. Like you, I got stuck a few times by the incredibly random puzzles. I just wish I had room in this article to interview Doug Tenapel too...

 

bloody hell your nuts lol

 

Passion has a price, I suppose

 

Adventure games really do bring back some fond memories of when I was young & everything seemed so simple.

Space Quest, Hand of Fate, Sam n Max, Rex Nebular & the Cosmic Gender Bender (not sure how my parents allowed me to buy that one lol) those were great long summers locked in my room!

How strange only last night I was reading my Space Quest manuals and those funky little extra galactic Inquirer magazines!

aaah those were the days.

 

Great article. Adventure games have a strange evolution. Text adventures were popular simply because they were the most interesting thing you could do with the technology. Same with the early point & click games. Currently, we have various not-entirely-successful attempts to integrate the vocabulary of action gaming with a coherent and involving plot. When the technology improves, we'll start to see emergent story-telling, which is where this seems to be heading. To me, the most sophisticated example of this today is Animal Crossing (don't laugh, I'm serious )
As for Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, a good game with interesting concepts, but utterly execrable writing. Please, please, David, hire a decent writer for Heavy Rain.

 

Completed Discworld in one sitting (no memory card at the time) using the D-pad on the playstation, wanted a mouse but could never find one.

When the mouse came out on the Dreamcast I bought it like a shot in case anything like Discworld came out and needed it - the only thing the DC mouse came in handy for in the end was Quake 3 along with the DC keyboard.

 

I don't know, I love point and click games! Or simple controls that don't interfere with gameplay. I think designers need not allow their ambitions to miss the point of games...FUN.

All this hype about photo realism and pushing the envelope is what is killing the genre. It got away from its roots. Things that severe their roots.... inevitably die.

Zelda, "Phantom Hourglass" on the DS is probably one of my favorite games of 07. It has, humor, a great story, great characters, great puzzles, and extremely accessible controls - i.e. FUN

Essentially... it is a point and click game adapted to the DS interface. If things are not broke... don't fix them! The other genres survived because they never really got away from their roots. Which brings me to my conclusion....

KISS!