In other words, you should see the lock before the key. Rather than wandering around with a bucket of water in your pocket and waiting for a puzzle to present itself that could conceivably allow for its use, you should see the raging fire first and then start looking for possible solutions, rather than idly looking for possible problems.

In this article, I will be taking a closer look at the various types of adventure game puzzles, how they relate to the gameplay, and even how some of these basic forms relate to other game genres.Ī point that Ron Gilbert, co-creator of Monkey Island, has made about adventure game design is that for most puzzles the player should be presented with a problem before the solution is apparent (1). You can evaluate the art, voice acting, and even the story or humor present in an adventure game to a certain extent without diving too deep into it, but an adventure game with terrible puzzles can make all those other elements irrelevant, since you likely will never have the patience to finish the game in the first place.

Having been told an explanation to how a puzzle works means you will never be able to play it as intended, since a big part of the experience is the enjoyment of figuring it out for yourself. In many respects, the quality of an adventure game depends upon the quality of its puzzles, whether they are ingenious and rewarding or just frustratingly illogical. The basic experience of playing that game can be described well enough through a brief preview.Īdventure games are different-in that the core features of gameplay cannot be effectively evaluated without actually playing it or giving so many details away as to detract from the experience of playing the game. Judging the quality of such games often comes down to how well the game manages to simulate its world and how engaging and rewarding the gameplay proves to be. With a quick glance at the head-up display and the quality of the graphics, you can get a good sense of what kind of monster killing mayhem you will be engaging in and what kind of experience you will likely get from playing the game. For a lot of games, you can figure out most of what you need to know about them from simply looking at an in-game screenshot or watching a gameplay trailer.

Classic block pushing puzzles