Point and Click Adventure?

[Nexic]

After seeing the post about someone looking into the idea of creating a first person point and click style game, I started looking into it. After playing a few of these type of games (first person ones, though most didn't use real 3D) I started playing ones in 2D 3rd person (like monkey island, space quest, simon the sorcerer, kings quest etc) - and I really really enjoyed them. I used to play these kind of games all the time in the past, when I was a kid and I found them frsutrating because it took me ages to work out what to do.

But now I really love them, and I'm considering attempting to do one. So my question is, do you think these games would sell in the shareware market?

Up Sides:
Not really any other games like them at the moment,
Can be really fun once the player gets into them.

Down Sides:
Harder to get into,
Requires more of the players time,
Requires lots of art.

[oNyx]

Downsides which you forgot:
-requires very good writing
-requires carefully crafted puzzles (this one is really difficult)
-may require voice actors
-rather big download

An upside which you forgot:
-no need to code anything (except scripting) [AGS (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/)]

---

I like the genre, but I wouldn't do such a game ever. The puzzle building process is just too hard (read some articles about that - it's really not my cup of tea), I won't be able to produce tons of graphics and because I'm a bad story teller ;)

[luggage]

Would be a difficult job.

As Onyx pointed out the puzzles could be a nightmare. I'm always amazed when playing the Monkey Island games how well they hang together. Like how you never get to the point where you can be just stuck. My idea for a solution was to write the puzzles backwards.

First pick the main goal - like 'find the Holy Grail'. Next, think of a couple of things required just for that task. eg, "key to open the door, diamond to open up chest". Now work out a puzzle for each of those. Like maybe you can't get past the guards on the door if they see the diamond. But placing diamond's in water makes them very difficult to see. Right. So we need some water and a jar. Rinse and Repeat the process. This way you can build a tree of what's needed for the game and you shouldn't get stuck.

And then there's the art. Lordy :eek:

And then there's competing with the Monkey Island Games (picked them up for £4.99), Grim Fandango, and a bunch of others, all available on budget.

Rather you than me!

[svero]

I think it's at least possible to make one that sells. There are many games of this sort coming out but not of commerical quality. Check out diygames adventure monthly article and you can try some.

I do think that it will be very very difficult to succeed though. You'd have to make something really outstanding for it to have a chance at selling online, assuming you could meet some of the basic requirements like a reasonable file size. I'd put it in the category of a very risky project to undertake.

[Sparks]

Actually, a p&C adventure is what most women I know love to play.
They love cute little characters, non-violent content, nice stories, bad villains and most of all, they like to control MEN.
So if Your game hero is male, You have a winner ;)
Seriously, its a known fact that the puzzles and story in an adventure are developed from Z to A, create the hero, create the villain, create the main quest, then put obstacles in the hero's way, hopefully some that fit into the main plot :o)
I think currently there are not enough adventures of the family kind LucasArts style on the market.
While games like "Black Mirror" have their place, I guess adventures which deal with nice characters and a lot of family compatible humour are much more interesting from the selling point of view, if You want, have a look at top grossing movies, and especially at PIXAR films, then port that recipe over to the computer gaming world.
Thats what made LA style games such as Monkey Island so cool, people love to laugh at characters, or with them.People want instant fun and good comedy.
Story is more important than art here, Tony Tough was rather well received, the graphics were dated, though, but the good voice acting made up for it.
As long as the story is interesting, has enough humpur, nice characters, and as long as the artwork is nice enough to support the game, I don't see why You shouldn't be able to make decent sales, even nowadays.
3D is absolutely not relevant for this genre (which is also good for sales to a broader audience).
In adventures, keep it simple and funny, thats the secret.
As for the "time getting into it" mentioned, I think its neglectable compared to stuff like WarCraft.A simple point and click interface and a slow curve of difficulty should do the trick.

[Gmicek]

There's actually a huge indie point and click adventure game community out there. Jozef does a monthly recap for us at DIY called "Independent Adventuring" and while he plays a large number of the games released every month, I know there are more that he's just not able to get to.

One of the main issues people have with htese games is the length, and the graphics. Most are relatively short, and aren't exactly full of award winning graphics.

As far as selling them goes, it's a tough call. There's only a couple that people have attempted to sell from what I know (The Adventures Of Fatman, for example), but it may be difficult to get people to buy one when they can just play games like Nick Bounty, Principles of Evil, Apprentice 1 and 2, Cirque de Zale, and No Action Jackson for free.

[AndyN]

And then there's competing with the Monkey Island Games (picked them up for £4.99), Grim Fandango, and a bunch of others, all available on budget.
Rather you than me!
I'd have to agree, I would love to see more games released in the Monkey Island mold but it's going to be an uphill struggle with these already out there. Lucas arts even canned the sequel to Full Throttle (http://ps2.ign.com/articles/432/432671p1.html) presumable because the work involved in finishing it outweighed the predicted market.

Definately a labour of love if you're going to do it, but those can be the most rewarding I suppose.

[Musenik]

I feel compelled to respond here, although my results are still preliminary and few. I crafted an adventure game for people who never played adventure games before, and I'm selling it on the download circuit.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck selling only the Macintosh version until my online purchase provider ships their in-game DLL for Windows. So, I'm not sure my results are terribly valid, since the only people who've been able to download the game are people who are not my audience. Still, I'm seeing sales, and after a bit of revamping, they've improved. I spent $12,000 on developing this game, and I'm both happy with it and recognize its flaws. I believe that is the minimum you can spend to generate a pro-quality adventure title for the downloadable market. (8.5 MB download) Never let anyone tell you that Indie's aren't pros.

Until the Windows version ships, I won't know if my investment was worth it. But it was a terrific project to develop.

[arcadetown]

Think a good version done with top notch flash graphics/animation could do wonders. Trick is getting the perfect flash animator. One who could create excellent backdrops using vector graphics and top notch character animations while still keeping it in a size package that is manageble for online/downloadable market.

[Nexic]

Wow $12,000? Thats quite a lot!

As far as art, story and puzzle design goes - I'm going to do it all myself. I wouldnt consider myself a pro in any of these skills, but I'm hoping everything I've learnt and researched in the fields will be enough for it to pay off.

As far the free indie adventure games go, they're are not my cup of tea. Most of them I have played, whilst being okay, don't really strike me as being professional or particulary fun. Excluding 5 Days a stranger I have never felt compelled to complete any of the free title's I've played. I'm sure they worked hard on their games, but as they're are free that almost certainly means it was a part time hobby. Where as I can dedicate myself to this project 100%.

Many of the free titles start off with bad introductions, and some quite hard/obscure puzzles which immediately turn me off. A lot of people would play some of these bad ones and get turned away from trying something that was totally free.

Sparks made a good point, I think a lot of people would like a disney/pixar style adventure. But all I've really seen new in the adventure community is adult humour and serious plots. I'm sure there is more free adventures which might deliver this, but as of yet I haven't seen it.

[Jack Norton]

One of the main issues people have with htese games is the length, and the graphics. Most are relatively short, and aren't exactly full of award winning graphics.
Yes I noticed :)
I'd like to make one, if I was able to write in a very good english... :rolleyes:

[Nexic]

I just played 'Principles of Evil' - which is free and it was brilliant. It reminded me a lot of simon the sorcerer :) But really I don't see it as a bad thing, infact it just proved my theory that you don't actually need any voice acting to have a great adventure!

If there are many free games of this quality then I may be stuffed before I start, but I seriously doubt that :)

EDIT: When I say played, I don't mean completed, just had a quick peek :)

[Michael Flad]

Hi,

some years ago I wrote an adventure game engine used for 5 games - most of them were kids games - so they were really small compared with for instance the Lucas Arts games.

You can see most of them here http://www.novatrix.de/produkt/d_ff4.html

The 4 major parts of these kinds of games are:

graphics - you better partner with a good artist who's working for a share of the income
coding - at least if you write an engine from scratch it's quite some work, you really have to write a very scriptable engine to be as flexible as possible
scripting - including all the dialogues and a valid state of the game world at any time and for any thing the user does in any order. Of course you will split the game into different sections, but often you have quite some puzzles active at a time. Maybe with the same npc involved and doing all the dialogues and handling all the actions in a consistent way for the various possible states of the game world is quite a big task.
testing - it's going to be underestimated for sure, because what I wrote about scripting is what has to be tested and what will create shitloads of logical bugs you'll have to find and solve / create workarounds.

It's all doable but you have to be prepared for a long development time - you really will not release the game with some bugs moving the users in some kind of dead end. Compared with most other game types, it's really boring to restart an adventure because you couldn't solve it due to some bugs.

Besides that - I'd really like to see some more adventure because I'm a big fan of these kind of games, beeing Runaway the last one I really enjoyed more than 2 years ago.

Michael

[Anthony Flack]

The only thing stopping me is a good script/puzzles. I'd like to have a go one day; but I would have to be confident I had a really solidly written piece, otherwise all the effort taken in the art/voice acting etc. would be wasted.

[kevryan]

I designed and also did quite a bit of the coding of an adventure game system a few years ago. The editor ran over a lan so that mulitiple people could be editing at the same time. Developing the adventure system wasn't too bad and it could then be used for multiple projects in the future, but there was an awful lot content (art, dialog trees, etc.) that was needed to get a finished game. i.e. our development team was larger than average for the time.

Interesting - I just checked online to see if there were any screen shots from the games and found free downloadable copies of two of them. They are probably all available online somewhere. The games were Rise of the Dragon (http://www.abandonia.com/game.php?ID=376), Heart of China (http://www.a-for-adventure.com/gamereview.php?id=49), and The Adventures of Willy Beamish (http://www.abandonia.com/game.php?ID=179).

If you ever play Heart of China, I'm the snotty emigration official standing outside the airplane that won't let you leave Hong Kong until all your paperwork is in order.

Developing an adventure game would be fun though...

[Sparks]

I am bowing down in front of You.
Rise and Heart had some phenomenal atmosphere and graphics back then !

The testing of such a game indeed is crucial, because given enough different items, the player can try every object on every object in every scene and stuff like that.
The things to avoid in adventures are pretty clear, though, amongst them:
no dead end
no "this item only appears when the character talked to that person"-stuff
no stupid jokes
no unnecessary walking around (I hate Syberia for that)

In my mind, the perfect game has the best parts of the Indy adventures (Indy quotient, different endings/ways of solution) mixed with the best parts of Monkey (humour, ideas, backgrounds, running gags and insider jokes).

Could happen ;)))
I am just tired of dead serious stuff like Black Mirror, Moment of Silence, Secrets of the Druids, Syberia etc.

And about that "Monkey Island games available on budget": old argument.
People tend not to play one adventure per year, nor do they just buy Monkey Island and leave it at that, otherwise, with Diablo 2, Splinter Cell, WarCraft 3 at budget, no one would by Sacred, Spellforce etc.
That is why its called a market, there is a demand, and adventure games start to sell again because the market is saturated with FPS, roleplaying games, sports games and RTS games.
Its a sinus curve, and adventures are on the rise again.
LucasArts cancelled their games probably because the sales required to sustain "typical" team sizes weren't exspected, and suddenly everyone says adventures don't sell.It always comes to the balance of ressources vs sales, and if You are just 5 poeple You can very well create an exciting adventure game and get enough sales.But not if You are LA, where You probably have 5 people alone who assist the managment director(s) :)
I never said adventures are blockbusters, yet they seem good enough to allow TV commercials (in germany).Food for thought.
Besides that, I guess customers probably won't dislike adventures with higher res graphics and better sound than Monkey Island.
I played em all, and even I would want more of that :)
Gimme characters, gimme stories, gimme jokes !

[Anthony Flack]

Well yes. I've already completed most of the Lucasarts games. If something new came along of a similar quality to the best of those games, certainly I would be interested.

[oNyx]

>Excluding 5 Days a stranger I have never felt compelled to complete any of the
>free title's I've played.

Yea. That one was really good.

http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/

Ooooh there is a sequel called 7 Days a Skeptic :O
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/7days/

And I remembered that I still need to get Runaway :)

[Nexic]

7 days a skeptic is almost as good, but I didn't really feel like playing all of it. I have not completed Principles of Evil volume 1 and I am now much less impressed than I previously was. The game is seriously short! And a lot of the puzzles are too obscure (I had to look at the walkthrough 3 times). For one part you needed to have some coins from under your pillow, but there was no clue to say that there is where they might be. This would have been helped if it was made obvious when your mouse was over a hot spot.

Anyway, it took me only about 1.5 hours (and most of that was wondering around being lost on what to do next. Where as simon the sorcerer, even knowing exactly what to do would take you at least 3 hours, without knowing that it would take a good few days. Im sure I could make something offering a lot more gameplay than P o E - I doubt it would be quite as much as Simon the Sorcerer, but I think I could at least make something half as long.

[Sparks]

I guess 12-16 hours of gameplay are still enough today for an adventure, as long as these are ENTERTAINING hours.
I have spent hours literally on Syberia just wandering around, missing that 2-pixel-sized *very important* item that made the gameplay progress :/
Granted, the graphics are nice (yet I am no fan of lifeless rendered graphics),
but if You wander through the same screen for the 5th time, it looses its appeal.
Note: better less "awesome" graphics, but more variety and life to them, than those boring, static screens seen in Syberia.
Adventure games are about interaction and, erm, adventure, not fancy graphics.

[Surrealix]

as long as these are ENTERTAINING hours.

I agree.

7 Days a stranger was brilliant, but another game worth mentioning is Aftershocked.

The download is 40mb, which I think puts most people off, but it is long, has a reasonable storyline, and very, very funny.

The reason I mention this, is that the graphics look like they've been drawn with crayons, and are really pretty shocking. The game still plays well, however, and by the sounds of things, it's got quite a following.

I think it can be found at
http://madgames.adventuredevelopers.com/after/aftdownloads.htm

[filharvey]

A while back I was looking into developing a engine to handle Adventures, something that interested me, and was looking at expanding it to handle a 3D world, very much like Broken Sword 3. Hoping that, going truely 3D would help reduce the amount of custom art required. I gave up, due to the lack of interest from any of my friends who are artists and designers.

I think the games could sell, but as mentioned before the story needs to be very good, and the amount of art needed, is large.


Phil

[Sparks]

Hi,

just out of curiosity, what made You think 3D requires less custom art ?

[filharvey]

But less custom art, I meant that you would be able to re-use most 3D models, you would need custom animations for the models, and from my experience, that is simpler and easier to change as required, than frames of animation.

Phil