Blackberry said:
Exploration is central in Adventure games! And my game does have a main goal = make sure all the animals are cared for!
In Point and Click Adventures exploration is the same illusion as the impression that you can do anything.
The interface implies you can do anything, but you can only do certain predefined actions, and finding out which ones solves the puzzle piece by piece. If you miss just one action, you get stuck in the game forever.
Same for exploration: You feel you can go anywhere becasue you never know if ther is a action to unlock a new path leading you to a new location. But the truth is: You must go to any location the game has, otherwise you get stuck.
‘Exploration’ implies it's something optional you do at free will, eventually without a reason. But in this sense Point and Click has no exploration.
In RPGs, all those side quests are optional and not every place needs to be visited. You can go anywhere if you want, but you don't have to. This enables true exploration, but the downside is: They player may feel lost or insignificant. He may not not what he should do. He may not feel like achieving real progress after playing for hours.
Nothing of this is meant as critique on your concept. So far i only miss the Point and Click Adventure you have initially mentioned as inspiration. Which is no problem, since this genre is now dead for reason.
Blackberry said:
And Limbo and such are not adventure games, they are 2d puzzle platformers!
They are both, but ofc. it's closer to action adventures (e.g. the classic Another World) than to point and click. The adventure part of it is: If you miss to solve just one puzzle, you're stuck. Ther is only one way and order to solve them.
It sounds you intend to give players multiple options to solve a problem. Ideally the players can even come up with solutions you did not think of. Thus chances they get stuck are reduced, which is good, but then it no longer follows the classic point and click priciple of ‘there is just one static story and giant puzzle you have to pass through precisely as predetermid’ (which also is the reason why pointand click is dead).
Blackberry said:
And I don't know what you're talking about wth “perspective projection makes it hard to estimate distance (in a 3D game)”, because there's plenty of 3D games which require a much greater degree of precision then simply making sure the rope goes above the pole, or else have to wait a few seconds while he pulls it back to throw it again!
What i mean is: In a 2d actian game like Super Mario or R-Type you have perfect oversight of your surroundings. You can see enemies on your back, you can predict enemy trajectories precisely, enabling detailed tactics in moment to moment gameplay.
In a 3D game like Quake, you see only what's in front of you. Predicting trajectories of enemies or projectiles is never accurate, since distance along the camera front axis is hard to tell. Platforming barely works, and is used unly rarely to avoid constant player frustration.
That's a problem mainly for action games, but it will affect you too. Imagine the TIM game in 3D first person. You never see the whole level and it's hard to predict trajectories, so it's hard to think about a solution. TIM is a game about modeling chain reactions of many physical events to solve a complex puzzle, Portal is a game where you spend most time running around observing the scene from multiple viewpoints so you finally find the very simple puzzle about a single event you have to solve.
We loose a lot od stuff by adding one dimension. It's important to be aware about that.
Blackberry said:
And the mupitle objects don't have to be touching one and other to be combined! ….for example you can drag a crate somewhere to stand on to give you the extra high need to throw a rope over a high pole, which you can then swing on to get to a roof, which you can then use to glide off to where you need to be! That's 3 items combined in a creative way!
Yep, but the problem is: How do you design levels or a world to maximize such opportunities.
Currently you are excited about a vague idea, and you make up some examples of interesting chain reactions or sequences of actions.
But you overlook the fact that most ideas depend on level design, so they also depend on preparation of the designer.
It's easy to come up with up to ten such examples eventually, but for a whole game you need much more, but then just repeating similar ideas and problems might not work as well as your current excitement implies.
That's again not meant as critique. I just think its better to think about potential flaws earlier than late.
Blackberry said:
But you can sneak into the control room! and begin locking doors! opening others! Sending fake mesages! Turn of their power! …..and you can make noise to distract! start fires to distract further! You can blow up walls! craw through air vents! send gass through air vents! Wear disguises! Set up all kinds of traps! Take them hostage! Make demands for their release! Frame other monsters for your actions! Make them fight each other! Sabotage their equipment! And do the stuff with the crates, ropes, pullies ect!
Works great for a top down game wher you have oversight over everything, e.g. a RTS.
You can then observe how putting sleep gass into the ventilation system knocks out guards in nearbey rooms.
But in a first person 3D game, you can not observe the distant and indirect effects of your actions.
And that's the simple reason why we do not see much of this cool stuff in modern 3D games.
We all have those same ideas. But sadly they do not work as well as we imagine them within on our mental models where we observe cause and effect at multiple locations at the same time.
Go for it. Try it. Make it work as good as you can. But take my little warning with you and tame your expectations.
To me, the design process is more like this: Try all those ideas. Most won't work out. But some might, and maybe it leads to good mechanics, which are ideally simple and can be executed subconsciously while playing. Once i've found my small set of mechanics, i'll refine and likely reduce my intial vague design idea. It might lead me to a very different kind of game than initially thought.
