[POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

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kinougames
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[POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#1 Post by kinougames »

This is a poll for people who maybe have a favorite genre (BL, otome, dating sim, action/interactive) of game, but really want to branch out of that preferred genre for the right game.

A certain game has what looks to be a decent story, though scary. It has all types of relationships, and doesn't run in the linear dating sim format (meaning that the goal of the game is not to date all the other characters, but to get to the end of a completely cohesive story).

Instead of running entirely on choices, it introduces a new aspect to the game play. On certain screens/several screens/most screens, you can click around on things and find items or answer riddles or maybe even get secrets you wouldn't be able to get through just choices. (Similar to Phoenix Wright, or Monkey Island, or Myst.)

Are you now more interested?
Less interested; this is too much trouble for this kind of game?
Equally interested; it has no effect?
Last edited by kinougames on Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#2 Post by Jake »

kinougames wrote: Are you now more interested?
Less interested; this is too much trouble for this kind of game?
Equally interested; it has no effect?
I would have to go with "definitely more interested, so long as the meat of the game was in the interactions between the protagonist, objects, people and situations (as with the games you cited) and not a game of hunt-the-pixel".
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#3 Post by kinougames »

Haha, I can't imagine making any game "hunt-the-pixel" anymore than I can imagine making it "have sex with all the characters you see yay~"
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#4 Post by F.I.A »

So it is back to clickfest of the classic hentai games? I will advise against it since it is rather frowned upon these days.

I am not fluent with this Myst game, but last I know from Full Throttle (Another game by Lucasart) and Phoenix Wright series, they still follow a linear storyline till the very end.

Frankly, I don't think anyone would be pleased when they found out they forgot a crucial item at one point of the story, effectively giving them a bad end. Just because they didn't not give a through search.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#5 Post by kinougames »

F.I.A wrote:So it is back to clickfest of the classic hentai games? I will advise against it since it is rather frowned upon these days.

I am not fluent with this Myst game, but last I know from Full Throttle (Another game by Lucasart) and Phoenix Wright series, they still follow a linear storyline till the very end.

Frankly, I don't think anyone would be pleased when they found out they forgot a crucial item at one point of the story, effectively giving them a bad end. Just because they didn't not give a through search.
I'm a bit confused as to what critique you're giving here.

1) The game is not a hentai game? And as far as I know, most hentai VNs have no real gameplay, and the cheaper ones don't even provide choices.

2) The game in question would not follow a completely linear storyline (as in it will have endings), but the path to each ending will contribute to the overall story as opposed to each ending just existing to pick different lovers.

3) The searching would probably not be ridiculously intensive, and likely not for every screen, either. It's just to heighten the experience and let people feel like they're doing more than rabid clicking to get through the story. However, there still would be the opportunity to miss something if you didn't look, but I think risks like that are probably part of the point-and-click theme.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#6 Post by F.I.A »

kinougames wrote:I'm a bit confused as to what critique you're giving here.

1) The game is not a hentai game? And as far as I know, most hentai VNs have no real gameplay, and the cheaper ones don't even provide choices.
I didn't mean your game. Such gameplay has been available since the beginning of hgame industry way before the advent of electronics novels. Try JastUSA classics (Three Sister Stories, Nocturnal Illusion etc), Can Can Bunnies series, or most of the PC98 era games.
3) The searching would probably not be ridiculously intensive, and likely not for every screen, either. It's just to heighten the experience and let people feel like they're doing more than rabid clicking to get through the story. However, there still would be the opportunity to miss something if you didn't look, but I think risks like that are probably part of the point-and-click theme.
I am not sure about you, but I have heard from a few people complaining about the investigation part most of the time when playing PW series. They would prefer to get back into the suspense of the courtroom rather than being a search hound clicking all over the place for new discoveries.

EDIT: Also, fact about hentai games these days having no gameplay is also not the truth, unless you meant those pure VNs out there. Though I don't believe they are the subjects of discussion for this thread.
Last edited by F.I.A on Mon Jul 26, 2010 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#7 Post by kinougames »

F.I.A wrote:I didn't mean your game. Such gameplay has been available since the beginning of hgame industry way before the advent of electronics novels. Try JastUSA classics (Three Sister Stories, Nocturnal Illusion etc), Can Can Bunnies series, or most of the PC98 era games.
Oh, I have no doubt that several other games use it, but I'm not sure that's what gave the stigma to hentai games. xD
I am not sure about you, but I have heard from a few people complaining about the investigation part most of the time when playing PW series. They would prefer to get back into the suspense of the courtroom rather than being a search hound.
I have actually never heard this in reference to PW, especially because the story unfolds during the investigation part as well. But, that's what we're here to find out. :) Thanks for the input!
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#8 Post by Wintermoon »

F.I.A wrote:I am not sure about you, but I have heard from a few people complaining about the investigation part most of the time when playing PW series. They would prefer to get back into the suspense of the courtroom rather than being a search hound clicking all over the place for new discoveries.
This. I loathe the investigative sections in 逆転裁判 so much that I never even finished the first game in the series. It's always the same pattern:
  • Visit every locations.
  • Click everywhere.
  • Talk to every npc about every subject.
  • Expect to see a lot of repeat text.
  • Whenever you make a tiny bit of progress, restart the entire investigation from the beginning so that you can find the one new conversation topic that has been added to that one random npc.
What an incredibly pointless and tedious game mechanic.

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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#9 Post by Jake »

F.I.A wrote:Frankly, I don't think anyone would be pleased when they found out they forgot a crucial item at one point of the story, effectively giving them a bad end. Just because they didn't not give a through search.
Wintermoon wrote: This. I loathe the investigative sections in 逆転裁判 so much that I never even finished the first game in the series. It's always the same pattern:
To be honest, these are individual game design issues rather than problems with the approach in general; good point-and-click adventure games will ensure that you have all the items you need for future puzzles, for example (mainly, I think, just by only requiring items which were previously necessary to solve other puzzles) and PW's investigative sections are almost just padding... and are closer to hunt-the-pixel than Monkey Island, really.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#10 Post by Wintermoon »

Jake wrote:To be honest, these are individual game design issues rather than problems with the approach in general; good point-and-click adventure games will ensure that you have all the items you need for future puzzles, for example (mainly, I think, just by only requiring items which were previously necessary to solve other puzzles) and PW's investigative sections are almost just padding... and are closer to hunt-the-pixel than Monkey Island, really.
The problem to which you're referring - getting stuck because you are missing an essential item - is not what I am referring to at all, and as far as I can tell is not even present in the 逆転裁判 series. Rather I am referring to the problem where talking to npc A about topic X causes npc B to appear at location Y, even though there is no logical relationship between the two, and you have to do this in order to advance the game, even though talking to npc A about topic X is obviously a bad idea. The puzzles are illogical, stupid, and tedious.

I did rather enjoy the Monkey Island series (before it turned 3D), but not out of any affection for the point-and-click adventure format. I liked the writing, I liked the art, and the puzzles were relatively logical and easy for the most part. Even so, the Monkey Island series had its share of stupid and frustrating puzzles, e.g. the monkey wrench in Monkey Island 2.

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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#11 Post by Jake »

Wintermoon wrote: The problem to which you're referring - getting stuck because you are missing an essential item - is not what I am referring to at all
I know; I was replying to your and FIA's things at the same time, because both of them seem to me to be individual-game-design issues rather than inherent problems with the format. As you say yourself, you find the puzzles in PW "illogical, stupid, and tedious" - if they weren't, and they made more sense, they probably wouldn't have frustrated you so much.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#12 Post by kinougames »

Wintermoon wrote: This. I loathe the investigative sections in 逆転裁判 so much that I never even finished the first game in the series. It's always the same pattern:
  • Visit every locations.
  • Click everywhere.
  • Talk to every npc about every subject.
  • Expect to see a lot of repeat text.
  • Whenever you make a tiny bit of progress, restart the entire investigation from the beginning so that you can find the one new conversation topic that has been added to that one random npc.
What an incredibly pointless and tedious game mechanic.
I played all four of the 逆転裁判 games, the originals with the PW characters (screw Apollo, haha), and while I wasn't a massive passionate, in love hardcore fan of investigating, I didn't feel they had the format you're mentioning either. There was usually some kind of direction on where you should go next, and I found it mostly easy to follow except in cases where I wasn't paying close enough attention and forgot something that'd been said.

(My personal largest issue was actually with the large disconnect of information during cases, at times.)

Furthermore, in PW, you're right, there was a clue when you scrolled over that you could search under something, and I would implement that as well.

However, in light of the dislike of this sort of thing, I can certainly see about implementing it as more of a minigame that shows up by character choice (we've already got a "search" choice). It wasn't a particular plan to make necessary items a heavy part of this format (since you also get items just by people giving them to you), and instead they could be for the extra items that you need to get the unlockables outside of the game proper.
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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#13 Post by Meems »

What you're talking about is basically adding more adventure game elements to your VN, am I right? I would really enjoy this, as I'm a pretty big fan of adventure games.

I would recommend doing some research specifically into adventure games - playing as many as possible, talking to fans of the genre, etc - to get a good idea of what would be good game design. I agree that the PW investigation sequences are incredibly tedious, for example.

The main things to avoid, in my opinion, are pixel hunting and overly obscure puzzle solutions. Challenging puzzles are one thing, but playing "guess the developer's train of thought" is not terribly fun.

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Re: [POLL] For those outside generic game niches.

#14 Post by kinougames »

Meems wrote:What you're talking about is basically adding more adventure game elements to your VN, am I right? I would really enjoy this, as I'm a pretty big fan of adventure games.

I would recommend doing some research specifically into adventure games - playing as many as possible, talking to fans of the genre, etc - to get a good idea of what would be good game design. I agree that the PW investigation sequences are incredibly tedious, for example.

The main things to avoid, in my opinion, are pixel hunting and overly obscure puzzle solutions. Challenging puzzles are one thing, but playing "guess the developer's train of thought" is not terribly fun.
This is great advice and I'm glad you brought it up. :)

We want to add puzzle and adventure elements, for sure, but we're heavily avoiding having them take too far away from the story. We want people to enjoy the story first, and then see our adventure portions and go "HOLY CRAP! Not only do these games run and are relevant to the story, they're also short enough/simplistically understood/easy to quit and still move on so that I can actually finish the reason I'm here in the first place! To find out the story!"
Check out the new interactive media project, Mitsumata(c). Follow 8 colorful characters in a story full of drama, horror, all sexualities and exciting gameplay~!

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