ZeHa
09-26-2007, 02:09 AM
Hello,
recently I finally got a play in "Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures". When I first read about that game (1996), I was completely amazed by the basic idea. For those who don't know it, it could be described as an adventure game that reinventens itself everytime you play it, giving you small missions that can be completed in less than an hour. There was a follow-up called "Yoda Stories", which is basically the same, only in another universe (or galaxy :D ).
Well now, I only knew it from one single screenshot and I never got to play it. Yesterday, this changed... and it sucked.
The game is a complete catastrophy - first from the gameplay itself, as it's pretty hard to navigate around. There's no pathfinding, you always have to stand directly beneath the object you want to take, and the area is not scrolling smoothly, you're just hopping from tile to tile.
But also the game content is ridiculous. Most "puzzles" seem to be dealing with people who have some aztec collection and search for a special artifact, and they're giving you something in exchange, which some other person needs for his collection. The other puzzles aren't puzzly either, it's mostly using a key for a door, using a ladder to climb to a rock, and moving a box away to find some cool item that again someone needs for his collection.
It was clearly advertised as some kind of "time killer" (today it would be called "casual", I assume), but it's also a plain stupid time killer. There's no fun, it's just carrying objects from one place to another.
Now...
Would you think it's possible to create a really good adventure, maybe even in a normal "point'n'click-perspective", but which always recreates the story and the places? I think that would be really amazing, but the puzzles should be clever and challenging. Indiana Jones seems to be some "first try", but maybe this could actually be done better. I think there should be planned out an extensible structure of places, objects, persons and so on, which then could be converted by an AI algorithm into a story which can be always solved. Then the "content database" could be expanded further and further with cool stuff, until it's big enough to really create good and playable adventures, maybe not full-time, but at least "you can beat it in 2 hours"-ones.
What do you think? Has anyone ever played with the idea of creating something like that? I know there are some RPGs that do this, but since I'm not an RPG-fan, I don't know them much. However, I would prefer this for a real 2D-adventure. How about you?
recently I finally got a play in "Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures". When I first read about that game (1996), I was completely amazed by the basic idea. For those who don't know it, it could be described as an adventure game that reinventens itself everytime you play it, giving you small missions that can be completed in less than an hour. There was a follow-up called "Yoda Stories", which is basically the same, only in another universe (or galaxy :D ).
Well now, I only knew it from one single screenshot and I never got to play it. Yesterday, this changed... and it sucked.
The game is a complete catastrophy - first from the gameplay itself, as it's pretty hard to navigate around. There's no pathfinding, you always have to stand directly beneath the object you want to take, and the area is not scrolling smoothly, you're just hopping from tile to tile.
But also the game content is ridiculous. Most "puzzles" seem to be dealing with people who have some aztec collection and search for a special artifact, and they're giving you something in exchange, which some other person needs for his collection. The other puzzles aren't puzzly either, it's mostly using a key for a door, using a ladder to climb to a rock, and moving a box away to find some cool item that again someone needs for his collection.
It was clearly advertised as some kind of "time killer" (today it would be called "casual", I assume), but it's also a plain stupid time killer. There's no fun, it's just carrying objects from one place to another.
Now...
Would you think it's possible to create a really good adventure, maybe even in a normal "point'n'click-perspective", but which always recreates the story and the places? I think that would be really amazing, but the puzzles should be clever and challenging. Indiana Jones seems to be some "first try", but maybe this could actually be done better. I think there should be planned out an extensible structure of places, objects, persons and so on, which then could be converted by an AI algorithm into a story which can be always solved. Then the "content database" could be expanded further and further with cool stuff, until it's big enough to really create good and playable adventures, maybe not full-time, but at least "you can beat it in 2 hours"-ones.
What do you think? Has anyone ever played with the idea of creating something like that? I know there are some RPGs that do this, but since I'm not an RPG-fan, I don't know them much. However, I would prefer this for a real 2D-adventure. How about you?