ThunderPeel2001

Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!

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I took it to be that there is kind of a caste system in place, with the most evolved/modified people in the Thrush acting as a ruling class.

 

The perplexing thing that bugged me the most was that all through part 1, Shay never acknowledges that his parents are real and it kind of looks like its been years since there's been person to person contact between him and them (given his confusion at seeing his dad at the start of part 2).  But there are pictures of them together when he was younger.  It's just like, wtf?  How does that make any sense?

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I took it to be that there is kind of a caste system in place, with the most evolved/modified people in the Thrush acting as a ruling class.

 

The perplexing thing that bugged me the most was that all through part 1, Shay never acknowledges that his parents are real and it kind of looks like its been years since there's been person to person contact between him and them (given his confusion at seeing his dad at the start of part 2).  But there are pictures of them together when he was younger.  It's just like, wtf?  How does that make any sense?

I was just curious if the mutations were ever addressed in the dialog, and missed the exposition.  It does seem like your point of a caste system would be maybe most likely given their role within the lorunian society; but they could easily be society controlling aliens...or lizard people.  Or whatever new stand-in for pop conspiracy is big now.

 

It made for a good surprise to see Shay's dad come out of the sand pile, but you're right -- it also made a weird narrative disconnect with the first part of the game.  I hesitate to say it seems like a crammed in plot point to part 2... but it does feel rather sudden to change the rolls of Mom and Dad from benevolent over-protective spaceship AI to over-protective physically and functionally distant parents.  I'd like an extra post-mortem episode of the documentary to see where these changes fit in the story of making the game.  

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In the big info dump between Vella and the head Thrush guy (if you use the panel in Marek's room after escaping the Loruna city), she asks what would have happened to Shay.  He says Shay would have been welcomed home as a hero.  It's that conversation that leads me to believe that the regular looking humans aren't just slaves or something, but mostly regular members of society, just not the ruling class.

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So, I finished today. Can't say I ever had more fun with an adventure game before! While some puzzles are a bit wonkily implemented, the puzzle design in general is incredibly varied, inventive and ambitious. This is not cookie cutter, garden variety type of stuff. Honestly, the criticism Act 2 received just puzzles (ha!) me, it has me stumped (*snigger*). YEAH, THE GAME'S NOT PERFECT, BUT IT'S DARN AWESOME! Somebody say Tim isn't much of a designer again...

Also, John Walker thought about the ending "oh, that's it?" while I thought "yes, that's it!". I felt the story reached its natural conclusion.

BA is my favorite solo Tim Schafer adventure game, definitely.

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I finished Act 2 on the day of release. In a lot of ways it was a cool classic adventure game experience for me. I had a scrap piece of paper I was writing stuff down on for Vella's door puzzle, the hexipal wiring and other stuff. I love that aspect of older games, so I really enjoyed being given an excuse to do that and test some puzzles by trial and error.


For some specifics:

It was a little tedious that you had to wire a hexipal, see the reaction and then use it on an object, it would've been nicer if it just gave you a chance to change the wiring when using the hexipal on an object. I was lucky in that once I figured out the last puzzle, I was able to do it on my first try without running into any order issues. I feel like once you distract the two characters, they shouldn't return unless you do something truly superfluous. 

 

Other than that, the act 2 puzzles that required knowledge from the other character's area were big stumbling blocks. Specifically the star chart for Vella and the hexipal wiring for Shay. I managed to guess the snake's nickname during the mom's puzzle, so the idea that I would need to carry over knowledge wasn't at all introduced in the fiction or the mechanics. There's not even any prompting, which I feel the game is pretty good at when you get stuck.

 

The knot puzzle was really interesting conceptually, and I solved it in two tries. I appreciated the idea of looking at a knot and seeing the pattern in it, but I swear the one I got on my first try didn't match any of the descriptions.


Otherwise, much like Act 1, I feel like I stumbled across a lot of the solutions by being a content tourist and looking at everything. For example, I got the snake in Shay's part simply cause I had just seen Vella's complete snake sequence and wanted to see how Shay's would play out. I could totally see that stumping someone if they had gotten to a position of frustration with other puzzles though. Generally the logic made a lot of sense to me.

 

The story did fall flat for me, though. The moment to moment dialogue was all fine, but there was definitely something missing in Act 2 that Act 1 had. Even with the weird premises of Act 1, the content seemed so vital and interesting. Then, in Act 2, the explanations had no traction for me. They felt like bad sci-fi video game lore. Even though they have some parallels with interesting concepts (class systems, pitting the middle class against the lower and the lower against themselves), they were unable to feel real to me like the simple ideas expressed in Act 1 did. I know that's a really vague way of describing my reaction, but I don't really know how else to put it. There's also the issue of leaving questions on the table like Bjorn's and how the maiden feast was so deeply ingrained in almost every person's mind as a good thing.

 

All in all though, I enjoyed playing Act 2 as a game way more than I would've expected. I hope they decide to do another adventure at some point, as Broken Age has basically proven to me that Double Fine and Tim Schafer can still bring really interesting ideas and gameplay to the genre along with beautiful art and dialogue writing.

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Playing this on PS4 so I'm not sure where the join is with the acts, is it the bit I've just done? -

I have slain the mighty Mog Chothra!

If so I'm glad I didn't bother playing my backer version as I did not see that coming and couldn't have waited over a year to continue it.

 

I'm having a really bloody decent time with this. I wish I didn't need to have subtitles on as I keep wanting to take screenshots of it but they spoil it a bit, it's ludicrously beautiful.

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Yep, the transition takes place right then...

 

It finishes with Shay leaving Mog and Vella entering, and the door slamming shut between them.

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Hmm, so I just got to the part in Act 2 where I've completed both Shay and Vella's individual stories are complete (at least where you have to get them both up to a certain point to progress and there's a meeting of sorts.) I managed to make it maybe half this far before finally checking a guide, which then quickly leads to checking a bunch more once the allure of doing it compltely guideless has gone.

My generic complaints were:

Things change state without giving you any hint that things have changed. The screens are big enough with enough hotspots that I'm not interested in retrying every single one every time I complete a small action hoping that one will act differently this time.

As mentioned by others before, needing something from one person's area to help the other is all fine and dandy, but I wish that the things you needed were less obscure, and I wish there was a real story reason for that stuff to have transferred between characters.

Specific sticking points:

On Shay's side, I got stuck at the rewiring of the hexipal. For some reason I never got the right piece of dialog on the charger when I clicked it earlier to tell me what it was, so I spent 30 minutes trying to rewire the thing with no real information. Even had I figured that out, there's no way I would have found the info in the picture. I also got stuck on the snake, of course, and the egg shell, but that's because I forgot the roots of the tree were down there. I guess that's proof that maybe Tim was right about playing through part 1 again, because I would have remembered that area was there.

For Vella, I got all the way to after breaking out of the control room unassisted, but then I switched to Shay and by the time I came back I'd already cracked the walkthrough enough times to not care so much. I got stuck on getting the Ice cream (my fault for not seeing the hotspot there,) ejecting the bomb (I didn't figure out what made the arm hold cereal instead of a ball of something until much later,) and getting Marek to move. That's the part where I was frustrated the most about the state change stuff, because how the heck was I supposed to know to fiddle with the wires (which I had messed with 10 times before) after I got the hook, but not with the hook, to trigger the alarm.

Anyway, I think I'm just going to spoiler-free walkthrough this to the end now. If there's anything Sam and Max taught me, it's that I don't have the adventure game mind. I always got stuck on them as a kid so I guess I never learned the weird logic and tricks. I enjoyed how the first one was fairly easy. I guess I should have spoken up more in the DF forums.

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Just finished

I actually enjoyed the end segment a lot more than any of the rest of Act 2. Part of that was not sitting stuck as long, and part of it was finally understanding what they wanted out of the robot bits. I still had to look up a couple of things, but I did all right.

I too wish the ending had a little more closure to it. I guess since the factory was destroyed and the last two ship melted, that's it for the bad guys? Apparently, all the humans over there escaped since there's a bridge crossing festival in the credits and Alex got to see his family? Oh well, fun enough on the whole.

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I finished this last night, this was the first adventure game I've ever played. It's a real testament to the art and writing in the game that I even finished it, because I really hated playing it!

 

I think a lot of the problems are pretty typical to what I've heard about adventure games, mostly me not being able to make the mental jumps or connect the dots to solve the puzzle, but even then, as I resorted to walkthroughs, so many of the puzzles, and pretty much all the puzzles in the last third of the game just had me thinking "there's no way I would have got that". It then further confounds me that the feedback they were working on was "the second half needs to be harder". It just makes me feel so alien to know there's a group of people who want that type of puzzle design. 

 

I'm not inherently upset at the puzzle design necessarily, though, I think it was just further compounded by the games general readability and massive amounts of friction. I found there were so many times when distinguishing what was game relevant and what wasn't was very lost in the painted backgrounds. Like Toblix, I didn't know I could walk past the bird, though that happened to me in the first half. It's extremely backwards to my game design sense that you would allow so much game information to get lost in the paintings. 

 

Friction. It's mind blowing that you have a puzzle where the clues and the solution are 2 minutes of watching a character walk apart from each other. It's crazy to me how the puzzles get reset if you screw up 90% of the way through them. I'm fully willing to admit I'm an idiot, but even following walkthroughs, accidentally missing a step on a puzzle could cause me 5 minutes of redoing things to solve the puzzle.

 

I know lots of the folks around here a adventure game fans, and I stress that I loved the art and story, but do you fans really find this type of game design defensible? Do the classics in the genre have the friction and readability problems this game has? I'm just feeling so alienated by the design of this game, I'm genuinely curious about how people actually enjoyed playing this.

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I know lots of the folks around here a adventure game fans, and I stress that I loved the art and story, but do you fans really find this type of game design defensible? Do the classics in the genre have the friction and readability problems this game has? I'm just feeling so alienated by the design of this game, I'm genuinely curious about how people actually enjoyed playing this.

 

I think you are conflating your personal response to this genre with there being something inherently poor about this kind of logic puzzle design.  It's fine that you bounce off it, lots of people bounce off lots of game types.  I bounce hard off games like SpaceChem or certain grand strategy games, but I don't go around asking people whether or not those game designs are defensible. 

 

Okay, in retrospect, what's below sounds pretty harsh, but seriously, asking people if a game they love is defensible is a pretty poor way to approach a conversation about that game.

 

I'm also surprised that people didn't discover they could walk past the bird.  Why didn't you just try?  Part of adventure games is gaining knowledge through trying things and seeing what the outcome is.  It's learning through experimentation and seeing if there are different results to various actions.  I tried this, did I learn anything?  If you don't try, you can't learn, and you can't solve some of the puzzles.  Literally clicking on the other side of a bird is just about the lowest possible bar for just trying something. 

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IRT Spenny

 

I have too much nostalgic love for this kind of thing to give a real defense. Everything you say about the "friction" in these games is true, and true of almost all adventure games. Some of the best remembered games in the genre made a point not to care about friction, and indeed put more of it in on purpose.

 

(I'm thinking of Monkey Island 2 in particular, where in the commentary for the SE they mention how they wanted to make sure that the player needed to visit every location before they could start solving puzzles in any single location, for no reason other than slowing the player down. That game is close to being my favorite game.)

 

I think people understandably have a lot less patience with their video game entertainment than they did when these games were popular. A big part of the experience of playing an old school adventure game is not playing it: hitting a wall, walking away, thinking about what you've tried and haven't tried, coming back with a fresh perspective. It's a very slow, contemplative way of playing a game, and it's absolutely not for everyone. Honestly, it's not really for me anymore either... except when I'm in a very particular (nostalgic) mood.

 

That said, I'm always ecstatic when newcomers to the genre click with what makes (...made) these games fun. Reading' Zeusthecat's big Lucasarts thread was a blast, and helps me understand that my childhood memories of joy may actually be legitimate.

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I think you are conflating your personal response to this genre with there being something inherently poor about this kind of logic puzzle design.  It's fine that you bounce off it, lots of people bounce off lots of game types.  I bounce hard off games like SpaceChem or certain grand strategy games, but I don't go around asking people whether or not those game designs are defensible. 

 

Hey, sorry if I came off sounding like a dick. I guess I should have asked people to explain their loves instead of defending them.

 

I've bounced off dozens of genres before, I really don't enjoy playing RTS or Lords Managements or grand strategies, but I've always been able to come up with an idea of how they appeal to players, what the mechanics challenge and communicate. But the adventure game just left me baffled, empty, thoughtless, as to how this is supposed to appeal to a player, not just because of the logic puzzles, but more specifically their entwinement with a very friction heavy experience, and I'm genuinely curious as to what makes this game design appealing.

 

I'm also surprised that people didn't discover they could walk past the bird.  Why didn't you just try?  Part of adventure games is gaining knowledge through trying things and seeing what the outcome is.  It's learning through experimentation and seeing if there are different results to various actions.  I tried this, did I learn anything?  If you don't try, you can't learn, and you can't solve some of the puzzles.  Literally clicking on the other side of a bird is just about the lowest possible bar for just trying something. 

 

Here's reasons why not to try:

My visual read of the situation says it's not possible. It's kind of like a puzzle where you have to walk past a sign that says "No Trespassing".

The bird is angry, this furthers my visual read of the situation.

It's annoying to make your character walk, it takes time, trying to walk somewhere takes time, and the more you have to walk, the more annoying it gets.

The game makes fun of you for trying things. "I don't think it makes sense to combine those items". "Use that item on that feature, sounds dumb" are definitely types of character lines you hear. They're not always insulting to you the player, but sometimes they are.

 

If I relay this experience to you, I'm sure you can extrapolate how I would have trouble with the rest of the game. "You're playing it wrong" is probably very true in this situation, but it's still a shitty thing to hear.

 

A big part of the experience of playing an old school adventure game is not playing it: hitting a wall, walking away, thinking about what you've tried and haven't tried, coming back with a fresh perspective. It's a very slow, contemplative way of playing a game, and it's absolutely not for everyone. Honestly, it's not really for me anymore either... except when I'm in a very particular (nostalgic) mood.

 

This is a really interesting point, and the kind of explanation I was looking for. Thanks.

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I'm just gonna be a butt and only respond to three things while also being dismissive because I can.

 

My visual read of the situation says it's not possible. It's kind of like a puzzle where you have to walk past a sign that says "No Trespassing".

The bird is angry, this furthers my visual read of the situation.

I hate to pull out the "get good" card, because it's the worst, but that's all I can think of! I completely agree that making false assumptions can be a huge mental barrier, and often-times games will make it difficult either intentionally or unintentionally. But when you're solving puzzles, and you know there's no real repercussions (as in, hard game loss), there's no incentive to Not Experiment, you know?

 

It's annoying to make your character walk, it takes time, trying to walk somewhere takes time, and the more you have to walk, the more annoying it gets.

This is a valid complaints regardless of the quality of the rest of the game. It's also a valid complaint in a lot of other genres. ):

 

The game makes fun of you for trying things. "I don't think it makes sense to combine those items". "Use that item on that feature, sounds dumb" are definitely types of character lines you hear. They're not always insulting to you the player, but sometimes they are.

But this is just the game's sense of humor and seems like I dunno not really a valid criticism of the game design. It's a bit of a nostalgic pull, as it was common in older games. Maybe they're not funny here, I dunno, I haven't played the second half. I don't remember the first half being laugh out loud funny, much as I loved it, but I never felt it was insulting, by any stretch.

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Honestly I feel like weird adventure game logic is a little more defensible now that internet access is readily available. If there's a puzzle that stops being fun to try and solve and just gets frustrating you can lookup a walkthrough. Machinarium took this to its logical conclusion, and actually had a walkthrough in the game that you could consult in the form of a cool comic book type thing, and I don't know why every adventure game since then hasn't followed suit.

 

For whatever reason Broken Age really clicked with me, and it was the first adventure game I've played in a long time where I actually didn't have to look anything up, although some of the puzzles in Act 2 were kind of insane.

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I'm also surprised that people didn't discover they could walk past the bird.  Why didn't you just try?  Part of adventure games is gaining knowledge through trying things and seeing what the outcome is.  It's learning through experimentation and seeing if there are different results to various actions.  I tried this, did I learn anything?  If you don't try, you can't learn, and you can't solve some of the puzzles.  Literally clicking on the other side of a bird is just about the lowest possible bar for just trying something.

To be fair, there isn't anything immediately visible on that particular cloud behind the bird that makes it look standable. It looks like every other cloud in the screen two to the right with the tons of bird nests that you can't walk up to.

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Honestly I feel like weird adventure game logic is a little more defensible now that internet access is readily available. If there's a puzzle that stops being fun to try and solve and just gets frustrating you can lookup a walkthrough. Machinarium took this to its logical conclusion, and actually had a walkthrough in the game that you could consult in the form of a cool comic book type thing, and I don't know why every adventure game since then hasn't followed suit.

 

For whatever reason Broken Age really clicked with me, and it was the first adventure game I've played in a long time where I actually didn't have to look anything up, although some of the puzzles in Act 2 were kind of insane.

Adventure game logic question regarding the end of the game:

I've got to know how you figured out you needed to tickle the scarf

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Hey, sorry if I came off sounding like a dick. I guess I should have asked people to explain their loves instead of defending them.

 

I've bounced off dozens of genres before, I really don't enjoy playing RTS or Lords Managements or grand strategies, but I've always been able to come up with an idea of how they appeal to players, what the mechanics challenge and communicate. But the adventure game just left me baffled, empty, thoughtless, as to how this is supposed to appeal to a player, not just because of the logic puzzles, but more specifically their entwinement with a very friction heavy experience, and I'm genuinely curious as to what makes this game design appealing.

 

 

Here's reasons why not to try:

My visual read of the situation says it's not possible. It's kind of like a puzzle where you have to walk past a sign that says "No Trespassing".

The bird is angry, this furthers my visual read of the situation.

It's annoying to make your character walk, it takes time, trying to walk somewhere takes time, and the more you have to walk, the more annoying it gets.

The game makes fun of you for trying things. "I don't think it makes sense to combine those items". "Use that item on that feature, sounds dumb" are definitely types of character lines you hear. They're not always insulting to you the player, but sometimes they are.

 

If I relay this experience to you, I'm sure you can extrapolate how I would have trouble with the rest of the game. "You're playing it wrong" is probably very true in this situation, but it's still a shitty thing to hear.

 

And I'm sorry if I was overly abrasive in my reaction, it just kind of hit a nerve for some reason.  The reality is that I have a few pretty harsh criticisms of Broken Age, the biggest of which are the Hexipal puzzles, which have waaaaaay to much friction built into them.  It's not perfect, but I do still love this game. 

 

As dium said, it's hard for me to see what a game like this would be like if it were my first adventure game.  Like, the feedback about "I don't think these two things would go together" is actually a nod towards some of the ridiculous item combinations that would be necessary in older adventure games.  But without that context, I don't know how that line feels to hear. 

 

As for what I like about adventure games, it's the satisfaction of solving someone else's riddle while soaking in an engaging environment.  The loop of an adventure game for me is:

 

Explore a space

Identify obstacles/tools

Experiment with tools

Have a mini-epiphany about the correct action

Solve obstacle

Explore space

Ect. 

 

As part of that loop, I'll also often try things that I think will fail, or may be impossible, just to see what happens.  At the worst, I've just wasted a bit of time, at the best I will either learn something or I will be rewarded with a wink and a nod from the developer for trying something they also thought might be amusing. 

 

It is a patient experience.  One where I might sit and stare at a screen for 5-10 minutes while running ideas through my head.  And in the last decade, I've typically played adventure games with the lady and/or our daughter watching, and it becomes a collaborative process of solving the puzzles, which makes it even more rewarding.  I'm actually quite often more excited when one of them figures something out than when I do, because I'm fascinated by what they can see that I can't, or where their particular logic paths lead them that mine don't. 

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To be fair, there isn't anything immediately visible on that particular cloud behind the bird that makes it look standable. It looks like every other cloud in the screen two to the right with the tons of bird nests that you can't walk up to.

 

I guess one thing I did in every screen in BA was to run the cursor around the edge of the screen looking for exit arrows, so I knew where every exit was.  I didn't just depend on the look.  Oh, shit, one other fairly poorly designed room that I almost missed an exit in is at the very end, and running the cursor around the room is the only reason I found it.  So the cloud place and that late game room could have had a visual cue or two added for clarity, but the environments themselves are not inherently terrible, they just needed a bit more nuance. 

 

 

It's finding the second switch in the ship after shay takes the mallet from the first switch.  The look of that room didn't lead me to believe it continued on.

 

 

Adventure game logic question regarding the end of the game:

I've got to know how you figured out you needed to tickle the scarf

 

I actually also solved that one on my own, but it was the OTHER version that I didn't figure out. 

 

 

I was sure the hexipal was the solution, so I went around using him on things I thought I might get a reaction from.  The only unique reaction from him was from the scarf.  I had already figured out that I could wire each of the hexipals with the others behavior, so it made sense to try that there. 

 

What I didn't figure out was using the hexipal on the drum in Shay's world.  My brain never made that connection, at all.  It and the snake are, I think, the only two things I had to look up.

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So the bird exit is a thing, and let me tell you how I ended up thinking I couldn't go there. It's not like I took one look at the exit and went "well, I guess there's no use trying to click on that!" I knew about the exit from chapter one, which I played right when it came out, it reads perfectly fine as an exit, and I'm sure I did click on it and the character didn't go there. If not, I did some other thing; maybe I thought I clicked on it, but missed by a pixel and so the guy just stopped, or maybe something with the ladder, or maybe I had a tiny stroke, or the Norwegian secret police are playing tricks on me. Whatever it was, I had completely removed that exit from the list of possible avenues of exploration, and was focusing on getting past the bird blocking it. It's the equivalent of having tried something and the adventure game guy going "I don't think I can use those things together". It's done, you're never attempting that again. Only you didn't try it, and combining those items is the solution to progress to the next room!

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As part of that loop, I'll also often try things that I think will fail, or may be impossible, just to see what happens.  At the worst, I've just wasted a bit of time, at the best I will either learn something or I will be rewarded with a wink and a nod from the developer for trying something they also thought might be amusing. 

 

Playing so many adventure games has actually created some really weird habits in me: I can actually get really disappointed when I progress faster than I intended.

 

Like for instance, in Broken Age I enjoyed trying to combine inventory items with each other since there was unique dialogue for most potential combinations... ironically, when a random combination would actually work I'd feel sad that I now had two less inventory items to go fishing for dialogue with.

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I hate to pull out the "get good" card, because it's the worst, but that's all I can think of! I completely agree that making false assumptions can be a huge mental barrier, and often-times games will make it difficult either intentionally or unintentionally. But when you're solving puzzles, and you know there's no real repercussions (as in, hard game loss), there's no incentive to Not Experiment, you know?

 

This rings pretty true for me. The more adventure games I play, the less I have to rely on guides. You just get used to playing around with weird combinations to find the solution you're looking for. There are still some bullshit puzzles out there, but in general I find adventure games less daunting over time.

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Adventure games have to reward exploration to encourage it, right? For example with unique responses. Broken Age is overall pretty good in that regard! I had a lot of fun just exploring its possibilities. Sometimes I wonder why I'm a fan of the genre, because all the criticisms the first time adventure game player here has about Broken Age holds true for pretty much every classic adventure game, just even more so for the most part. Take Discworld: use an item on anything and Rincewind will mostly just throw a "This doesn't work!" back in your face. The same generic response over and over again becomes tiring and saps enthusiasm for exploration. Why should you try to explore the possibility space if you will merely hear the same line again?

Even Day of the Tentacle had a few generic lines too many for my taste.

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I hate to pull out the "get good" card, because it's the worst, but that's all I can think of! I completely agree that making false assumptions can be a huge mental barrier, and often-times games will make it difficult either intentionally or unintentionally. But when you're solving puzzles, and you know there's no real repercussions (as in, hard game loss), there's no incentive to Not Experiment, you know?

 

Not to just restate my points, but I think " real repercussions" is a bit contentious here. Minor punishments add up. I felt the games minor punishments became larger in the second half too (which I know you haven't played).

 

Also:

"You're playing it wrong" is probably very true in this situation, but it's still a shitty thing to hear.

 

But this is just the game's sense of humor and seems like I dunno not really a valid criticism of the game design. It's a bit of a nostalgic pull, as it was common in older games. Maybe they're not funny here, I dunno, I haven't played the second half. I don't remember the first half being laugh out loud funny, much as I loved it, but I never felt it was insulting, by any stretch.

 

You know how sometimes when you're struggling with something, the last thing you want to hear is a joke about how you're struggling?

 

Honestly I feel like weird adventure game logic is a little more defensible now that internet access is readily available. If there's a puzzle that stops being fun to try and solve and just gets frustrating you can lookup a walkthrough. Machinarium took this to its logical conclusion, and actually had a walkthrough in the game that you could consult in the form of a cool comic book type thing, and I don't know why every adventure game since then hasn't followed suit.

 

This is pretty much it for me. I tried to avoid any prescriptive criticism in my posts thus far, because I definitely have lots of thoughts related to how I'd change the game's design, ideas for affordances to help a new player, like myself, who genuinely wants to engage with this. It just felt to me it was more concerned with following the classic format, and I felt quite unwanted because of it.

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I know lots of the folks around here a adventure game fans, and I stress that I loved the art and story, but do you fans really find this type of game design defensible? Do the classics in the genre have the friction and readability problems this game has? I'm just feeling so alienated by the design of this game, I'm genuinely curious about how people actually enjoyed playing this.

Of course, otherwise why would anyone play them? See Zeus' LucasArts playthrough thread. He pretty much explains in detail his train of thought and in turn reveals why tracking down the solutions is fun. Honestly, there is an amount of spoonfeeding I think many have gotten used two in the past two and a half decades that makes a traditional adventure seem too hard to anyone who hasn't played any before. In general, I would say most games are easier today and it doesn't help that all high profile adventures from Telltale (now) and whoever else like David Cage require no thinking. You can just coast through almost all of the game and never get stuck. It's not necessarily bad, but often I feel like I'm being treated like a baby when I play those style of adventure games. Sometimes it's nice to be given some tough puzzles, granted they are not idiotic or punishing.

And that's part of it, many adventure games have a lot of bad puzzles even to this day. At least the dying and dead end shit was mostly eradicated in the 90s, but I still play an adventure game from Daedalic and get annoyed when there are really dumb illogical puzzles marring the game or Amanita games when they take pride in pixel hunting. At least on the former company they always have hotspot identifiers, so pixel hunting is no longer a major issue, since that kind of stuff is just a non puzzle.

 

I feel like with the LucasArts games, developers tried hard to make stuff intuitive and give proper clues within the game. Before a lot of companies the developers just made shit up just for the sake of making it hard, made worse by text parsers. Earlier Telltale series were done very well also and are well worth playing for some "traditional" fun.

 

And as Sclpls said, any adventure is more playable than ever now that you can just check a walkthrough should you encounter a stupid puzzle or get stuck.

 

This rings pretty true for me. The more adventure games I play, the less I have to rely on guides. You just get used to playing around with weird combinations to find the solution you're looking for. There are still some bullshit puzzles out there, but in general I find adventure games less daunting over time.

 

Yeah this is part of it, you start to see what a general adventure game is constructed like and besides seeing a typical puzzle flow, you become good at parsing out what you have to do through character dialogue or examining things, given that the dialogue exists and is well written.

Also, I haven't played this. I'm waiting for my boxed copy. Not sure why I am reading this thread.

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