Adventure Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 563

Journal Keeping
Another common feature of adventure games—one that is conceptually similar to
automapping—is automatic journal keeping. The game fills in a journal with text as
the player goes along, recording important events or information she uncovers. If
the game includes a convoluted plot or large numbers of characters, the journal can
be an invaluable reference tool for the player. Let her call it up and look at it at any
reasonable time (though not, perhaps, while hanging over the edge of a cliff or
being interrogated by a villain). As with conversations with NPCs, the journal gives
you an opportunity to define the avatar's character through his use of language.
Journals are ideal for games in which the player must collect informational clues,
such as mysteries in the Nancy Drew series.
A Few Things to Avoid
As adventure games evolved, designers created many different kinds of puzzles and
experiences for the player. Some of these are extremely clever, such as the insult-
driven sword fight in The Secret of Monkey Island . A good many others, however,
proved to be only tiresome time wasters, obstacles that add no entertainment value
to the game.
PUZZLES SOLVABLE ONLY BY TRIAL AND ERROR
If you give the player a puzzle that has a fixed number of possible solutions of equal
probability (in effect, a combination lock), but no hints about which solution is
right, then the player simply has to try them all. The Infocom text adventure Infidel
included a puzzle like this: The player had to line up four statues of Egyptian god-
desses in the correct order, but there were no clues about what the correct order
might be. The player could do nothing but try all 24 possible combinations and
keep track of the ones she had already tried. There's not much fun in that. Instead,
find clever ways to provide the clues.
CONCEPTUAL NON SEQUITURS
This is a variant of the trial-and-error puzzle, a problem whose solution requires
thinking so lateral that it's completely irrational. The term describes something
along the lines of “put the sombrero on the bulldozer” or “sharpen the headphones
with the banana.” A few games try to get away with this by claiming that it's surre-
alism, but true surrealism is informed by some kind of underlying point; it's not
just random weirdness. Chapter 12, “General Principles of Level Design,” discusses
conceptual non sequiturs at greater length.
A variant of this is the opposite-reaction puzzle, one whose solution turns out to be
the exact opposite of what you'd expect. In the original Adventure , the player could
drive away a menacing snake by releasing a little bird from its cage. Fortunately, at
that point in Adventure , the player didn't have many options, so he usually found