Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[J_C]

Ok, I think even losers like Metro would have to enjoy this: http://www.humblebundle.com/doublefine

The video is hilarious and there are a couple of really good ideas.

I have to watch it later.

 

[HanoverF]

Wow another Amnesia Fortnight to delay this game even further

Amnesia Fortnight is both awesome and makes them moolah.

That's true, and it's not like they make money from their actual games.

 

[suejak]

 

[Redlands]

So, is it called Amnesia Fortnight because they forgot where they put the Kickstarter funds, or because they forgot how to make an adventure game?

 

[Infinitron]

Fuck Yahtzee.

Actually, as far as adventure games go, the man knows what he's talking about. He's made a few.

Come to think of it, of all the classic adventure games, Loom was probably the one that played the most like the modern adventure game, in that progression was fairly linear and you only had one button to generically 'interact' with objects in the world. And that's another problem, I think - adventure games that had big verb lists, allowing such diverse activities as both Pushing and Pulling, allowed the player to explore myriads of possibilities for every object they found, providing opportunities for more complex puzzling. Think of, say, the puzzle in Day of the Tentacle where you have to push an old lady down a flight of stairs. It was also possible to talk to the old lady first to understand why this measure was necessary.

Couldn't do that in your modern adventure game, could you, where you're lucky to have one click for 'interact' and another for 'examine'. There is only one thing you can do to every object in the world. They represent an eggshell-thin layer of complexity over a vast emptiness. How would you have done such a puzzle in a modern adventure game? The first click has you converse with the old lady, and the second pushes her down the stairs? But this removes all conscious agency on my part from the decision to push the old lady down the stairs. At no point did I specify such a thing. That old lady's broken hip is on your hands alone, game. How am I supposed to get hard?

 

[felipepepe]

I should play his games... his book was quite well written and funny, made good use of his quirks.

 

[Infinitron]

The bit about player agency is something that people who look at design from a utilitarian "mechanics-centric" RPG perspective don't really get. To wit:

If you expected more complicated puzzle design, I can understand being disappointed in Broken Age's. But I also think that people conflate puzzle complexity with interface complexity. The old verb interface for using objects was definitely interesting and had its charm, but in almost all adventure games I played (admittedly not too many), only one verb was ever valid on one object at once... so the rest of them were basically pointless and it was just educated guesswork figuring out which verb worked on which object. That to me is not really interesting gameplay or puzzle design.

I wonder if J.E. Sawyer would say something similar.

 

[felipepepe]

Yeah, sea's view seems too focused on the goal, not the journey...

 

[Broseph]

Isn't this like the "interaction in the world ala Fallout or via menu ala Age of Decadence" thing where you (or someone else, I can't remember) argued they were functionally the same?

 

[Infinitron]

Isn't this like the "interaction in the world ala Fallout or via menu ala Age of Decadence" thing where you (or someone else, I can't remember) argued they were functionally the same?

RPGs are a different beast, since they're more about managing and developing your character's abilities than discovering how and where you can use said abilities.

They can benefit from a little bit of an adventure gamey sense of discovery, though, and it's possible/likely that AoD has gone too far in the opposite direction.

 

[tuluse]

I've changed my mind about verbs.

Moreover, I can argue with sea on a *mechanical* level. The vast amount of verbs and objects in the old games meant you couldn't brute force most puzzles. You had to come up with the answer, or get close and guess among 5-6 options. When you have 10 items and 6 verbs, the number of combinations is staggering. It forced you to think through things.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The bit about player agency is something that people who look at design from a utilitarian "mechanics-centric" RPG perspective don't really get.

And when I said games today are overly-designed you were sarcastic.

Hope you're enjoying the wonderful era of "push button to see result" (title is work in progress). It's streamlining after all and you certainly want that because it's really just the same thing except without the tedium, am I right?

 

[groke]

Fuck Yahtzee.

Actually, as far as adventure games go, the man knows what he's talking about. He's made a few.

Come to think of it, of all the classic adventure games, Loom was probably the one that played the most like the modern adventure game, in that progression was fairly linear and you only had one button to generically 'interact' with objects in the world. And that's another problem, I think - adventure games that had big verb lists, allowing such diverse activities as both Pushing and Pulling, allowed the player to explore myriads of possibilities for every object they found, providing opportunities for more complex puzzling. Think of, say, the puzzle in Day of the Tentacle where you have to push an old lady down a flight of stairs. It was also possible to talk to the old lady first to understand why this measure was necessary.

Couldn't do that in your modern adventure game, could you, where you're lucky to have one click for 'interact' and another for 'examine'. There is only one thing you can do to every object in the world. They represent an eggshell-thin layer of complexity over a vast emptiness. How would you have done such a puzzle in a modern adventure game? The first click has you converse with the old lady, and the second pushes her down the stairs? But this removes all conscious agency on my part from the decision to push the old lady down the stairs. At no point did I specify such a thing. That old lady's broken hip is on your hands alone, game. How am I supposed to get hard?

I used to think really highly of Yahtzee before the Zero Punctuation shit, 5DAS is one of the best adventure games I've ever played. Best AGS game hands down (suck my dick blackwell). Too bad he caught the brain rot and now everything he touches turns to shit.

 

[Redlands]

Actually, as far as adventure games go, the man knows what he's talking about. He's made a few.

This is a pretty dangerous thread to be using that particular appeal to authority...

 

[m_s0]

I should play his games... his book was quite well written and funny, made good use of his quirks.

I thought Mogworld was full of tired gags, not all that funny (the humor felt extremely labored, and that's never a good thing) and a genuine chore to read overall. I never was able to finish it because of this.

 

[felipepepe]

I read it after I stopped playing WoW, and perhaps I was in the same wavelength as him, for I think the cliches are there exactly to show how dumb and illogical a MMO world is. Stuff like levels, easy ressurections, repeatable questlines... Mogworld makes fun of all that not by pointing fingers and calling it retarded, but by taking it "seriously" and letting you see how broken it is.

It's obviously not a masterpiece, but I find it leaps and bounds ahead of other books about the overall subject, like Ready Player One or those now-popular mangas about MMOs...

 

[Irenaeus]

I prefer those who point at MMOs and call it retarded.

 

[m_s0]

I read it after I stopped playing WoW, and perhaps I was in the same wavelength as him, for I think the cliches are there exactly to show how dumb and illogical a MMO world is. Stuff like levels, easy ressurections, repeatable questlines... Mogworld makes fun of all that not by pointing fingers and calling it retarded, but by taking it "seriously" and letting you see how broken it is.

It's obviously not a masterpiece, but I find it leaps and bounds ahead of other books about the overall subject, like Ready Player One or those now-popular mangas about MMOs...

The problem I have with Mogworld comes down to the fact that its concept is more along the lines of silly webcomic fodder as opposed to a decent basis for an entire novel. I didn't expect it to be on par with the works of Wodehouse or Adams, but it probably would've taken a writer that good for Mogworld to be readable.

Ready Player One sounded quite painful from the synopsis alone so I haven't bothered trying it.

 

[J_C]

Quick impression from Total Biscuit:

Pretty idiotic video, he clearly states that adventure games (not singleing out BA, but the genre itself) are not videogames, because you are not doing anything just listen to dialogues and do some puzzles. He also says that some puzzles were difficult.
On the other hand he loves the artstyle, the music, the story, the characters.

 

[Irenaeus]

 

[Athelas]

He then goes on to praise games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us as being not just better adventure games than the old LucasArts games, but also great RPG's with game-changing C&C.

 

[J_C]

He then goes on to praise games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us as being not just better adventure games than the old LucasArts games, but also great RPG's with game-changing C&C.

Yeah, I facepalmed at the RPG part. I had to take some minutes to understand that how could he compare them to RPGs.

 

[toro]

He then goes on to praise games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us as being not just better adventure games than the old LucasArts games, but also great RPG's with game-changing C&C.

Yeah, I facepalmed at the RPG part. I had to take some minutes to understand that how could he compare them to RPGs.

I hope you didn't hurt yourself.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This condescending twat is insufferable, he actually has an audience?

 

[Whiner]

Okay,so...
1.Easy QTE fail states turn non-games into games.
2.The shitty Telltale "games" have real C&C (even when they put Bioware to shame with their fake choices).
3.Broken Age is not a game,but they are.
This only proves one thing,you have to be braindead to have over 1,000 0000 retards subscribed to you on Youtube.