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NaIFwriMo. musings on text adventures
Oct. 12th, 2017 12:12 pmThe Nanowrimo time of year is coming up. I plan to do a text adventure.
Basic design philosophy: There should be more than one way to achieve things. And you should never have to repeat the game. A puzzle when solved remains solved. Having to solve it again just involves lots of tedious typing. Whether that means there are no death events, or jsut a regular autosave.
I quite like the idea of using first person rather than the more typical second person. I don't really think second person works as well as it should. A lot of old adventures were a bit confused over this ("You look through the eyepiece and... I see nothing special"), but even if they get their narrative voice consistent, it can be frustrating. If you get a message saying you can't do something it removes free will, and breaks the illusion. If a third party refuses to do something then it just adds a layer of petulance to the character.
Ideally I want to avoid blockages entirely. They're frustrating and not interesting. Failures should be interesting. A simple way of doing this is something like the babelfish puzzle in the HHGTTG, where the babel fish flies out of the vending machine. You can stop than it, but then it goes down a drain... Things carry on like that. And this is near the start of the game. It's way too frustrating, as is the game in general, but it's a good puzzle in principle.
Locks are dull. Find a key to unlock is not an interesting puzzle. It's also a frustrating blockage. A better solution is "soft locks". The Legend Of Zelda series does these all the time. There are several locations that you can't get to, or are even really aware of until you get a certain toy. For example, in Twilight Princess, there are areas with quicksand. You can run through short sections. At a later point, you get a hover spinner, and that allows you to cross larger areas of quicksand, and follow tracks along walls.
Inform7 allows other characters to have abilities of their own. You can order them to do things. You can interact in all sorts of ways. I like this idea. I really want to add a flirt mechanic. No idea how to make that work.
The other thing I want to not have is puzzles that have no discernable purpose. Beneath a Steel Sky has a puzzle that simply allows you into a building. There's no reason to want to go into the building, except that you're prevented from going in. Getting in achieves nothing. You acquire no equipment and learn almost nothing. You just need to get in to trigger the next plot point; which has nothing to do with getting into the building.
Similarly bad is meaningless choices. If you have a choice between two doors, there should be some reason to pick one door over the other. Perhaps there's a clue somewhere. Ideally this sort of puzzle should be avoided entirely though. The best choices are ones with no right answer. For example, do you help an accused criminal? If so you get a criminal record. But the accused criminal might help you later.
So that's some basic rules.
What else do good adventure games (text and point and click and anything else) do?
Basic design philosophy: There should be more than one way to achieve things. And you should never have to repeat the game. A puzzle when solved remains solved. Having to solve it again just involves lots of tedious typing. Whether that means there are no death events, or jsut a regular autosave.
I quite like the idea of using first person rather than the more typical second person. I don't really think second person works as well as it should. A lot of old adventures were a bit confused over this ("You look through the eyepiece and... I see nothing special"), but even if they get their narrative voice consistent, it can be frustrating. If you get a message saying you can't do something it removes free will, and breaks the illusion. If a third party refuses to do something then it just adds a layer of petulance to the character.
Ideally I want to avoid blockages entirely. They're frustrating and not interesting. Failures should be interesting. A simple way of doing this is something like the babelfish puzzle in the HHGTTG, where the babel fish flies out of the vending machine. You can stop than it, but then it goes down a drain... Things carry on like that. And this is near the start of the game. It's way too frustrating, as is the game in general, but it's a good puzzle in principle.
Locks are dull. Find a key to unlock is not an interesting puzzle. It's also a frustrating blockage. A better solution is "soft locks". The Legend Of Zelda series does these all the time. There are several locations that you can't get to, or are even really aware of until you get a certain toy. For example, in Twilight Princess, there are areas with quicksand. You can run through short sections. At a later point, you get a hover spinner, and that allows you to cross larger areas of quicksand, and follow tracks along walls.
Inform7 allows other characters to have abilities of their own. You can order them to do things. You can interact in all sorts of ways. I like this idea. I really want to add a flirt mechanic. No idea how to make that work.
The other thing I want to not have is puzzles that have no discernable purpose. Beneath a Steel Sky has a puzzle that simply allows you into a building. There's no reason to want to go into the building, except that you're prevented from going in. Getting in achieves nothing. You acquire no equipment and learn almost nothing. You just need to get in to trigger the next plot point; which has nothing to do with getting into the building.
Similarly bad is meaningless choices. If you have a choice between two doors, there should be some reason to pick one door over the other. Perhaps there's a clue somewhere. Ideally this sort of puzzle should be avoided entirely though. The best choices are ones with no right answer. For example, do you help an accused criminal? If so you get a criminal record. But the accused criminal might help you later.
So that's some basic rules.
What else do good adventure games (text and point and click and anything else) do?
