adventure games that solved the brick wall problem?

[bvanevery]

Have any adventure games in recent years solved the brick wall
problem?

First I'll define what the "brick wall problem" is. You get to some
point in the game, you run into a puzzle that's way too hard for you,
you have no idea how to proceed, you bang your head into a brick wall
wondering what the adventure game author was on about. You either
give up playing or resort to a walkthrough.

Solutions I'd consider acceptable:
1) the game simply doesn't have brick wall problems
2) the game has in-game hints or solutions readily available if you
get stuck

Answers in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure seem to indicate that nobody in recent years has solved this problem. Either that or these people have no idea where to buy adventure games from.

[papillon]

Consider that most adventures in recent years are targeting a hardcore niche - there's been a lot of focus on puzzles, puzzles, puzzles, and on keeping things difficult. I expect I'm going to take some flak for my current game for the puzzles being far too easy, especially with the amount of in-game help available.

The way the mainstream gaming press tends to treat the adventure game doesn't help. Lots of adventures come out, but every single review goes on about how adventure games are dead. You'd think they'd realise just how often they were typing that. The adventure game developers seem to see the constant complaints about ridiculous or hard puzzles but know that people are buying these games anyway, so figure that this must be what they want (and for some people, it is.)

When an adventure game developer tries to 'go more mainstream' they almost invariably mean 'add action' rather than 'make puzzles easier'. "If I cross my puzzle game with shooting and stealth, more people will play it!" The adventure hardcore get pretty grouchy about that.

"Without challenging puzzles or action, what point is there in playing?" Well, I'm aiming for story. We'll see what they make of it. :) As I said, I already know some hardcore adventure fans will HATE me for easy puzzles and dialog, dialog, dialog....

the game simply doesn't have brick wall problems

This really isn't possible, no matter how simple the problems are, someone somewhere is going to be baffled. And equally, for almost any game, somebody somewhere solved them without any help.

[Musenik]

Lengthy post that was ahead of its topic. :-/

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showpost.php?p=139933&postcount=24

[Agent 4125]

Here's a thought: put a button in the game that goes directly to a sub-forum specifically for players to help each other get unstuck.

It'll save you time and build your community. (and maybe even help the player =)

[Sol_HSA]

I don't think that telltale's games have had any 'brick wall' problems..

[Dyno Kid]

Here's a thought: put a button in the game that goes directly to a sub-forum specifically for players to help each other get unstuck.

It'll save you time and build your community. (and maybe even help the player =)

What an excellent idea !!!

Darren.

[Spiegel]

let the main character hint the gamer in which direction to go...
you control the main character but still he comes up with some ideas for solving... even more you can do that as a whole synergy between the main character and the player... the player advances but the main char is also smart for itself...

for example, if the player takes longer than 10 or 15 mins the Main char hints the gamer, for example:"I think the solution is in the pub we just visited..."
You could have a option to turn it on or off of course.

I would not like to go outside the game even a forum to solve a game problem... as a gamer I would call that a bit of cheating... but thats just me...

[ChrisP]

I don't think that telltale's games have had any 'brick wall' problems..

Not entirely - I did hit a few during Sam & Max Episodes. To be fair, though, they did do a pretty good job of avoiding them for the most part. I was certainly stuck less often than I've been when playing the Monkey Island series, for example.

Having Max give hints when you talked to him was a great idea, though I don't think they pursued it far enough. My usual reaction to him was "well, obviously - I figured that out already, I just don't know how to do it!"

I think a fully-fleshed out hint system is the ideal solution. Start off with subtle clues that nudge the player in the right direction, then gradually provide more and more information as the player keeps asking for advice. At the deepest level of information, tell the player exactly what to do. You might consider this "cheating", but what's more important: Upholding puritanical notions of "the right way to play the game", or preventing your customers from swearing at the screen, uninstalling the game and badmouthing you all over the internet? :)

Looking at it another way, the player is bound to find the solution eventually just by stubborn trial and error, assuming they don't give up first. If they truly can't figure out the answer to the puzzle using logic, then why not save them the frustration of a pointless trial-and-error bash?

[Michael Flad]

I was pretty impressed by Shen Mue back then.

F.i. there's a scene where you have to sneak into the harbor and if you don't master the section the game gradually adds hints for you. I.e. after a few trials you got an item with a map of the harbor after a few more you got the paths of the guards ontop of the map maybe there was even more help from the game but it's been quite some years since I played it so I don't remember all details.

This isn't an example of a point & click alike adventure but it's a good general example and it shouldn't be that hard to add a similar kind of help to adventures.

[Bernard François]

The brick wall problem could also be reduced by adding multiple feasible solutions to the same problem... I'm not an adventure player, but I think that would be possible.

I think this is better than trying to push the player to the one-and-only solution you thought the player should find.

[GolfHacker]

The brick wall problem could also be reduced by adding multiple feasible solutions to the same problem... I'm not an adventure player, but I think that would be possible.

I think this is better than trying to push the player to the one-and-only solution you thought the player should find.

Simple, yet brilliant.

This is indeed the approach to go for. Not everyone approaches a problem the same way. The classic example: a player should be able to get through a door by finding and using the key, picking the lock, breaking it down, tricking the guard inside into opening it for him, etc. And there should be different consequences for each choice, good or bad, which keeps the game interesting.

[papillon]

That's an RPG, not an adventure. :)

[bvanevery]

Here's a thought: put a button in the game that goes directly to a sub-forum specifically for players to help each other get unstuck.

It'll save you time and build your community. (and maybe even help the player =)

That's clever, but I wouldn't rely on it. First there are the classic lobbying problems - what if no one's around when you need help? Second, how do you get the player quickly to specific help? Dumping them at the top level of the forum and expecting them to hunt through all the posts on their own is going to lose some players, especially if you're trying to reach a demographic that doesn't like beating its head on problems. Third, what's the response time? If they don't see a post in a day or three, then they're losing momentum and interest. Fourth, who says anyone knows the answer?

Fifth, an adventure gamer demographic is going to have a disproportionate number of loners. The same reasons I want story, are the same reasons I don't want to be bothered by multiplayer anything. I want an experience I'm in control of, it's about me.

So I like the idea of being able to go instantly to a forum, but I don't think you can escape in-game help. If you're serious about not having brick walls.

[bvanevery]

Simple, yet brilliant.

This is indeed the approach to go for. Not everyone approaches a problem the same way.

It's not that brilliant. It can expand code and art assets unreasonably for all the permutations. If you control the branching explosion by making the solutions generic, then they quickly become uninteresting and you're wasting the player's time. As another poster said, a RPG. You have to weigh the labor of "We'll give 'em more options!" vs. the labor of "We'll give 'em contextual help!" The latter is probably easier.

There's also a misguided idea that the goal is to empower the player to wander with greater degrees of freedom through the adventure simulation. Not a goal I'm interested in at all. I want players to choose to follow the story I'm interested in telling them, as close to the pace I want to tell it at, to the degree I can psychologically hoodwink them into doing so. An excess of options is against that goal.

[soniCron]

It's neither recent nor an adventure game, but the SNES's Lester the Unlikely had a very simple and helpful hint system: If you seemed lost or it looked like you were taking a little long to figure out a puzzle, a little thought bubble would pop up over the avatar's head with either a direction, object, or action. From there, it was up to you to figure out what to do next. If you still didn't do it, it would "reward" you with another hint.

It wasn't perfect (and the game was godawful), but the hint system was very elegant.

[Spiegel]

It's neither recent nor an adventure game, but the SNES's Lester the Unlikely had a very simple and helpful hint system: If you seemed lost or it looked like you were taking a little long to figure out a puzzle, a little thought bubble would pop up over the avatar's head with either a direction, object, or action. From there, it was up to you to figure out what to do next. If you still didn't do it, it would "reward" you with another hint.

It wasn't perfect (and the game was godawful), but the hint system was very elegant.

Just what I said actually, its elegant, simple and clean...:D no need to send the user on a wild goose chase...

[bvanevery]

I expect I'm going to take some flak for my current game for the puzzles being far too easy, especially with the amount of in-game help available.

Which game? Is it available? And are you submitting it to the IGF this year?

[papillon]

http://www.hanakogames.com/fatal.shtml - it is intended for the IGF, it's not done yet.

[Jesse Hopkins]

Have any adventure games in recent years solved the brick wall
problem?

That's one of the parts about an adventure game that many people like. Not everybody who is glad to purchase an adventure game really cares if they finish. I got all the way to the last boss on Zelda Minnish Cap and still have not bothered to try to win. I have not played Twilight Princess in about a month, because I am stumped. But I got so many hours enjoyment out of those already, I got my money's worth. I could care less if I really finish. Maybe when I am retired I will finish all the games I hit the wall on. :)

One way you can ensure the brick wall is passable is to publish a gamefaq of your game online. That way, it is not in game, but people can look up the answer.

-Jesse

[papillon]

... those aren't adventure games. :)

(Let the genre wars begin!)

[luggage]

Apart from actually giving hints to the player I'm not sure how you can avoid the brick wall problem. As pointed out it doesn't matter how 'easy' you make the puzzles someone will get stuck. And having puzzles which allow solutions from any angle just wouldn't be that simple on a whole game scale. Imagine just having two solutions to every problem rather than one. You've just practically double the amount of work required and it still doesn't guarantee no brick wall.

I'd either go with having another player, like a sidekick, that offers hints or another way of delivering the tips to the player. Such as a PDA or voice comm's with another character.

I'd go with offering just a subtle tip first of all, then if still stuck, a little more detail and if still having trouble just tell them the solution.

Shame it's not straight forward to set up a tips SMS system. Request help in the game and get sent a tip through via SMS for a 'small' fee...

[Musenik]

... those aren't adventure games. :)

(Let the genre wars begin!)

Papillon,

You've been trolling for genre wars a couple times already. Wouldn't you agree that RPGs and even FPS and TPS share some gameplay atributes with adventure games?

Item discovery/retrieval and it 'proper' use comes to mind. How about branching dialog trees? Free world roaming? Questing? In-place puzzles (aka Myst). To me, it seems the thing that makes adventure games special is, they are the predecessors to a wealth of modern narrative genres?

The thing I dislike about adventure games (that use them) are natural language parsers. You can fill volumes with examples of brilliant parsing technology, and still a majority of human beings will be unable to use it and will become frustrated. Like speech recognition, it's not there yet, for the masses. You should have heard Ernest Adams poke respectful fun at Facade!

That said, I'm really keen to play your new game! I love adventure games! I use to work at Sierra when they were making them, and even though I prefer Lucas Arts' adventures, the genre has a special place in my heart.

Cool quote from Ernest Adams: "Interactive Narratives are fundamentally role-playing games." His point was, as soon as you break the fiction, you are to blame, and the game is not responsible for keeping up with your break, therefore you must fulfill the role which makes sense for the game. Hopefully, that role is as free-ranging as possible within the game's context.

[Jesse Hopkins]

... those aren't adventure games. :)

(Let the genre wars begin!)

"I will not condone a course of action that will lead us to war"

http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/thumb/4/41/Queenamidala.jpg/250px-Queenamidala.jpg

[bvanevery]

Cool quote from Ernest Adams: "Interactive Narratives are fundamentally role-playing games." His point was, as soon as you break the fiction, you are to blame, and the game is not responsible for keeping up with your break, therefore you must fulfill the role which makes sense for the game. Hopefully, that role is as free-ranging as possible within the game's context.

What's with this free-ranging stuff? That's not the goal. The goal is for the player to be psychologically satisfied. Nobody goes to a film and thinks, oh, if this film bores me, it's my own damn fault. A lot is known in film about what keeps most people's interest and what most people find boring. Yet in computer games there's no sophistication here, only vague ideas that we're supposed to provide the player everything they could think of. In film that would be a non-decision; film is about deciding what's compelling and leaving out what isn't.

[Musenik]

What's with this free-ranging stuff? That's not the goal. The goal is for the player to be psychologically satisfied. Nobody goes to a film and thinks, oh, if this film bores me, it's my own damn fault. A lot is known in film about what keeps most people's interest and what most people find boring. Yet in computer games there's no sophistication here, only vague ideas that we're supposed to provide the player everything they could think of. In film that would be a non-decision; film is about deciding what's compelling and leaving out what isn't.

Like that is so NOT what he was talking about. It makes me want to answer in Valley-Talk!

One of the wonderful goals of both film and interactive narrative is presenting a compelling world to the player. Computer games can provide a richer world experience. That wouldn't help satisfy your psyche? If you think constrained narratives are superior, why bother with interaction in the first place?

Free-ranging means freedom to navigate and experience the world (including it's occupants), to explore perspectives, to grow one's avatar in directions the player desires, to arrive at personally meaningful solutions and make them work. Those are very different things than providing what a developer anticipates the player will want.

There's a classic IQ experiment worthy of mention here. Researchers placed a gorilla in a cage with a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling out of the gorilla's reach. Inside the cage was a pole long enough to reach the fruit. The gorilla jumped higher than the researchers had expected and grabbed the fruit. So next time they put the bananas even higher. The gorilla climbed the cage and hung from the ceiling to eat the fruit. So next time they used slick walls and ceiling. That's when the gorilla picked up the pole and threw it at the bananas, knocking them from the ceiling. They wrote in their paper a gorilla was incapable of using a pole to reach for a banana.

Your comments remind me of those researchers.

[bvanevery]

"I will not condone a course of action that will lead us to war"

"Open war is upon you whether you would risk it or not."

[bvanevery]

Computer games can provide a richer world experience. That wouldn't help satisfy your psyche?

I will refrain from screaming if you define what "rich" means.

[Jesse Hopkins]

"Open war is upon you whether you would risk it or not."

Aragorn

Regardless of whether type of game it is, brick walls should always be solved by separate gamefaqs IMO, and not pop up balloon cheats or anything. It just cheapens the experience. Like if a DVD would explain itself to you when you were lost on the plot. "It is like the creators saying, we realize this is impossible to understand, so just give up. We failed."

[papillon]

Musenik - The thing is, I *love* RPGs! And I love Zelda! But 'adventure' is a really confusing genre title. One of the hardcore niche adventure sites I frequent did an article once boggling at the kinds of games different sites were claiming as 'adventures'... which in some cases just seemed to be 'anything that wasn't part of a hugely popular genre'. I think Game Tunnel was calling *platformers* adventures one year...

And these games are pretty different. They can all learn from each other, of course. But, say, Black Dahlia* and A Link To The Past** are not even vaguely the same kind of game. And the ways they can go about providing clues to the player are hugely different as well.


Wouldn't you agree that RPGs and even FPS and TPS share some gameplay atributes with adventure games?


Of course! But that doesn't mean that an adventure game fan wants to play them. It doesn't matter how many times you tell me that Half-Life 2 has a great plot and some puzzles in it, it's still an FPS as far as I'm concerned. If I liked FPSes, then adding story and puzzles to it might make it even better for me, but I don't, so. Would anyone really try to argue that it is NOT an FPS and should be classed as 'adventure' instead? I don't think so...

I keep hanging out in adventure game fanzones because I remember loving old adventures, but a lot of times in modern games there seems to be too much focus on puzzle for me, and especially on puzzles that are too difficult for my lazy brain. :) I generally won't admit it, but I've pretty much given up on them and gone looking for RPGs instead.

* - Which I've never actually played, but I think I've heard the name followed by cursing and complaints about it being impossible

** - Which I love.

[papillon]

Regardless of whether type of game it is, brick walls should always be solved by separate gamefaqs IMO, and not pop up balloon cheats or anything. It just cheapens the experience. Like if a DVD would explain itself to you when you were lost on the plot. "It is like the creators saying, we realize this is impossible to understand, so just give up. We failed."


But if you take this philosophy then you might also say that all manuals, tooltips, and tutorials are inherently wrong because if the player needs any advice, then the game isn't intuitive enough.

[Musenik]

Wouldn't you agree that RPGs and even FPS and TPS share some gameplay atributes with adventure games?

Of course! But that doesn't mean that an adventure game fan wants to play them. It doesn't matter how many times you tell me that Half-Life 2 has a great plot and some puzzles in it, it's still an FPS as far as I'm concerned. If I liked FPSes, then adding story and puzzles to it might make it even better for me, but I don't, so. Would anyone really try to argue that it is NOT an FPS and should be classed as 'adventure' instead? I don't think so...

I was trying to find common ground, to end the bloodshed, and reach agreeable terms. :-)

...there goes my cred as a negotiator...

[electronicStar]

"Anybody else want to negotiate?"

[Jesse Hopkins]

But if you take this philosophy then you might also say that all manuals, tooltips, and tutorials are inherently wrong because if the player needs any advice, then the game isn't intuitive enough.

The difference between in-game cheats help and faqs/player guides is that an adventure game is not just functional but dramatic/narrative. It detracts from the experience to have it in-game, whereas reading about it elsewhere is more of a fan community thing. I don't see why Nintendo publishes walkthroughs of their games either. I just guess I am used to figuring it out alone. It worked for years on early consoles. Third parties would post cheats and walkthroughs, like game magazines. But rarely would the company that released/made the game.

[Sol_HSA]

As a counter-example, the 'runaway' games (available on steam at least) seem to have been designed to contain just and only brickwalls. I bought the first one after trying the demo to the sequel, and I've found it to be extremely frustrating.

[bvanevery]

Regardless of whether type of game it is, brick walls should always be solved by separate gamefaqs IMO, and not pop up balloon cheats or anything. It just cheapens the experience.

I can't agree with this. You're saying that if the player gets stuck, they should always stop the game, locate a solution, then start the game again, completely knocking them out of their game flow. That's like saying if I lose track of something in a film or TV show, I should take a 5..15 minute break before getting back into it. Now TV shows do survive all kinds of commercial interruptions, but they are short, and they occur at certain points in the plot. Some long films do have an intermission at the midpoint of the film, and plays have intermissions between acts, but again these are based on the plot. A screenwriter spends all his time trying to keep the audience's attention, not throw it away.

I agree that the experience of getting help should not feel cheap. Ideally, it shouldn't knock the player outside of their psychological flow. How to do that, is left for people's contemplation.

[bvanevery]

"Anybody else want to negotiate?"

"I guess that concludes negotiations."

[JoshuaSmyth]

To answer the original question. The Nancy Drew series of adventure games by Her Interactive have come up with a good way to solve the brick wall problem, they offer a cellphone for you to call your friends to give you clues as to what you might need to do next.

[Jesse Hopkins]

I can't agree with this. You're saying that if the player gets stuck, they should always stop the game, locate a solution, then start the game again, completely knocking them out of their game flow.

Well the idea is, if you sit and play a whole adventure game or adventure RPG in one sitting, your body will shut down. The length of a movie is in direct corellation to the human bladder. Most games are meant to be played over time, in sessions - heck over days, weeks.

So when I get stuck, I just call it a day. Then I decide whether to cheat. I could ask my friend Jon, who has already played every game known to mankind, how to proceed. Or I could find a FAQ/walkthrough. Or I could just try again. I usually try again and again until my wife figures it out for me.

[bvanevery]

But you're a geek, and obviously a self-directed individual or you wouldn't be hanging out in indie game developer forums. Just because you look forward to taking the next stab at being entertained doesn't mean most people do. In fact that's why few adventure game products are made anymore, most people simply aren't interested in brick walls. As someone on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure aptly put it the other day, it's not a market of 75,000 alpha male geeks anymore.

I make no assumption that a salable product has to contain "40 hours of gameplay." That's one of the classic stupidities of a bygone era. Also, we can break content into digestible chunks that have good stopping points. TV shows and books do it, we can do it with Levels.

[Jack Norton]

Many Bioware RPG like Baldur's gate, Fallout 1 and 2 have what you call "brick wall" problem and as far as I know they sold millions.

[papillon]

In fact that's why few adventure game products are made anymore


Dead Reefs
Sam and Max (6 individual episodes? Maybe only 5 were 2007)
Sherlock Holmes the Awakened
The Sacred Rings
Runaway 2
Secrets of the Ark
Delaware St John volume 3
Anacapri: the Dream
Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek
Ankh: The Heart of Osiris
Destination: Treasure Island
Penumbra: Overture

These are all 2007 PC releases. And I may have missed some, this was just a quick overview from grabbing at game review sites. I didn't count the recent portal games or any DS games. (I may have also slipped in some action-adventure as well, because I'm not intimately familiar with each of those games up there. It's an estimate.)

It may not be the top genre but it ain't dead yet, Jim. :)

[bvanevery]

Many Bioware RPG like Baldur's gate, Fallout 1 and 2 have what you call "brick wall" problem and as far as I know they sold millions.

They're RPGs. When you're stuck you can level your stats.

[Jack Norton]

No they have a main plot, and like all single player RPG you can stay stuck (not MMORPG, probably you're referring to those). I never managed to finish Icewind dale 2, despite following a walkthrough :eek:

[Chris Evans]

They're RPGs. When you're stuck you can level your stats.

My sister-in-law gets stuck within 30 minutes of almost every RPG she plays. This includes Kingdom Hearts, Tales of Symphonia, Zelda, and SW:Knights of the Old Republic. Often times she overlooks simple/obvious clues or doesn't explore an area thorough enough. Just killing monsters/enemies and leveling up doesn't get around this. She usually asks me for help or goes to Gamefaqs.

I think it's impossible to solve the "brick wall" problem because some people will get stuck even with very simple puzzles. But I think that, A) The puzzle/situation should make logical sense, so when they do look at a walkthru they slap themselves and say, "That's obvious! I should've figured that out!" B) The game overall has an interesting story line and is engaging, so stuck players bother to look for a walkthru or get help because they want to see what happens next.

[Qitsune]

Dragon Warrior 7, even if it's not an adventure game has perhaps the toughest puzzle of all the game within 30 minutes of play. It drives completely nuts... I'm a big fang of DW1 and 3 but 7 had me print walktrough and maps and charts and checking them continually, the sofa next to me looked like a college student's bedroom. I never made it past the 3rd of the game.

Having to redo a game from the start absolutely kills the fun for me, I droped Phantasmagoria because of that too.

[Uhfgood]

I must say I've now completely surrendered to the fact that every adventure game I play is going to give me a brick wall and I must use a walk-through every time. At first I was in denial, and I was like... I don't need help, not ever. And then I would look through walk-through's more and more until finally I accepted it, and now fully embrace it. Before I fire up that favorite adventure game I make sure I have a walk-through ready and waiting in the next window.

That being said, my own game will probably have multiple solutions to one problem. Although I'm not into that whole far-reaching consequences thing. People have advised against multiple solutions to the same problem simply because you may expend work, time, or money doing all the animations and coding for each possible solution that the player never sees, because most likely they'll take the path of least resistance, and you will have wasted that time, money, or work, when no one will even play it. I've had discussions since then thinking of possibly multiple solutions, but only one per play-through. But now I've listened to this discussion, I am starting to be in favor of multiple solutions again. Maybe I don't care about the time and money, but maybe it will make my game that much more enjoyable. Word of mouth carries some weight, so hopefully someone will claim that they got through this problem this way, and the same problem another way and a community will build just for that.

Keith

[bvanevery]

I am starting to be in favor of multiple solutions again. Maybe I don't care about the time and money, but maybe it will make my game that much more enjoyable. Word of mouth carries some weight, so hopefully someone will claim that they got through this problem this way, and the same problem another way and a community will build just for that.


The problem is, I don't have a model for how adventure gamers approve games to each other. In fact, my recent foray into comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure makes me envision a baby seal that's been clubbed repeatedly but isn't quite dead yet. I don't have a lot of confidence in the adherence of adventure gamers or their willingness to form communities. There aren't that many adventure gamers to begin with, and they have strong tendencies towards solo play.

I wouldn't want to pursue any "maybe" business model naively. That sounds too much like "build it, and they will come." I would study the problem of how to adhere adventure gamers before embarking on a plan that's certain to cost 2x..5x development resources for questionable benefit.

As a first step, can anyone tell me of a forum for adventure gamers that's actually thriving? As in, hundreds of participants. Could be around a single game, or around the genre in general. http://www.justadventure.com has some forums with a pulse, but it doesn't look like buckets of traffic.

[Musenik]

Try GameBoomers:

http://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php

That's their forum. Their main page has a lot of articles devoted to adventure games, indie and industry.

[Greg Squire]

... As a first step, can anyone tell me of a forum for adventure gamers that's actually thriving? ...

The largest adventure game forum that I'm aware of is http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/. The site also has lots of reviews and articles for both mainstream and indie (underground) adventure games.