The game is titled “And Then There Were None”. How can I not have a reason to believe that there will be murders?
To whom the game is targeted?
If the game is targeted to those who already know that it’s a murder mystery or to those that can suspect that it will be a whodunnit or to those who carefully read the text on the box (this is a 2005 game) before playing, then I think that I would find it acceptable for the player to assume that he has to explore and investigate to acquire information even if not explicitly told in the game.
I don’t like very much the entire “let’s find the next random trigger” design choice nor the fact that the motivation to switch on the typical “explore anything” mode is not given explicitly in the game and I think that the game would have been better if the designers would have included a way to make clear what the goals are, but I think that I might still enjoy the game once I realize and accept that 1) it expects the player to possess some information about the kind of game it is and 2) it expects the player to explore and collect information/things even when not explicitly told so.
Is it the best way to do it? No, of course. The game is counting on the “default mode” of adventure gaming, that is the fact that adventure gamers typically roam all the places, take all the objects and do whatever they can to traverse the puzzle dependency chart.
This specific title makes assumptions on what the player will do and probably the intended target player makes assumptions on the kind of game this title is. In other words, the game is not self-contained but there is some information outside it that is required to better enjoy the experience. This design choice has negative side effects: it treats the player as a game player and not as the character in the story and this might break the suspension of disbelief, but for me it could be OK, if I am an Agatha Christie fan and I just want to play the game.
Not entirely, because of those assumptions.
Once I accept that the game is treating me like the typical “information hoarding” adventure game player, it wouldn’t feel bad to me. I enjoy more the games that don’t treat me like that, but I might still enjoy this specific game.
Ok, I think I understand. If you make certain assumptions about the target audience, such a gameplay is not necessarily flawed.
But even with those assumptions, there still remains the problem in the blurred part of my post. It seems to me even the target audience you describe would be annoyed, because it would have no way to know if the game expects them to combine objects in their inventory in any possible way, or to look under all beds. (why should the second thing be better then the first? they are equally senseless in the current context) (what I mean is that there’s a combinatorial explosion problem)
Anyway, let me sum up what I’ve learned:
I’ve not been successful in arguing that a game that requires you to do things without reason is necessarily flawed.
I am still unsure if I was successful in arguing that a game that requires you to do things without reason and has many objects and many possible ways to combine them is necessarily flawed.
a more fruitful way could be to focus on repetitiveness, not on whether you have reasons to do what you need to do.
at any rate, repetitiveness is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition to call a game “flawed”. (not sufficient: I can imagine repetitive actions that don’t annoy me, if the story gives me a good reason to believe that one of these actions will succeed. Not necessary: the and-then-there-were-none case does not have repetitive actions, and yet it is arguably still flawed)
That sort of gameplay would also bother me not only because of the complete absence of a sensible objective, but because it requires the character to behave in a way that makes absolutely no sense within the context of the story. It’s okay for a game to have a vague objective, but an objective must exist. For instance, in The Dig, the vast majority of the game has no clear objective. You’re stranded on an alien world, and your only real option is to explore the area and try to make sense of the predicament. Surely the characters in the game have the goal of getting home, or at least simply surviving, but there’s no clear way to accomplish either goal. Quite literally everything is alien to the characters. But because of the situation the characters are in, it makes sense to explore. As far as they know, nobody’s coming to save them, so they really have no choice but to start familiarizing themselves with the area. As they do, it leads to discoveries and various short-term goals. For the bulk of the game the characters still have no idea how–or even if–they will return home, but they still have plenty of reason to be curious about their surroundings.
The goal can be quite mysterious, but it still has to be more than “you’re playing an adventure game, so start clicking on stuff.” For the game example you posted, if the game started with a murder having already occurred, or if the game gave you some reasonable tasks to perform prior to the murder, then there would not be a problem. But expecting the player to start looking for clues before a crime has been committed is silly.
The first activity is just a sequence of actions that some players can resort to when completely stuck. Most of these actions do not provide a reward and the whole process is an implicit admission of failure, so players tend to avoid it.
On the contrary, the second activity is probably a very standard one among adventure gamers. For example I always look at all hotspots in a room. The player usually gets a reward when looking at something because the developers usually include a different description for each object.
If one of the goals is to acquire information, looking everywhere makes a lot of sense and it’s one of the intended (and often rewarding) ways in which the player can learn something new.
Correct. That’s because in adventure games I usually do things without reason, just because I can and because I’m not punished for trying (at least in the adventure games that I play).
Listening a long sequence of “It doesn’t work that way.” would be extremely boring to me. I would consider the game flawed if that would be the only way to proceed.
I think that repetitiveness plays a role but I wouldn’t overlook the fact that a story that gives the player a reason to do something makes the game a better experience.
Instinctively I would reply “what if this is the first adventure that I have ever played?”. But I see what you mean. it all depends on what assumptions you make on the target audience.
I was thinking about the case where you need to examine 10 suitcases of the 10 suspects and you know that one of them will contain a clue. I would not be bored by the repetitiveness in this case. But I would if the game did not give me a reason. Of course if you increase the number of suitcases, eventually I am bored even if I have a reason . But with the same number of suitcases , having a reason seems to make the difference.
I am thinking that maybe a game is repetitive ( in a bad way) if and only if “you are required to do things without reason and there are many combinable objects”. So maybe we are saying exactly the same thing…
What was your experience? You’re annoyed by the fact …
… that the game doesn’t tell you the time and the lock?
You are absolutely right, when you say that Agatha Christie fans wanted to play the game. But if I may get a little OT: Especially for Agatha Christie fans “And Then There Were None” was/is a bad game and a good example for a bad adventure game design.
The game has/had several design flaws due to the fact that the story won’t work as a game. So the developers had to use several “tricks”. For example they introduced a new person controlled by the player. This person has nothing to do with the story. In addition the story is based on the fact, that the people are trapped in a house and that they are heavily talking to each other. There are only very few necessary objects in the story (of the book). This leads to the “problem” that you have to search the rooms for clues and talk to the other characters again and again. This is annoying, even for Agatha Christie fans. And as a bonus, the ending has nothing to do with the genius ending of the book and the theater play. So, no, as a Agtha Chrisite fan you won’t play this game.
But it shows developers how you should not design an adventure game based on a book. And to come back to the topic:
For me: No. Especially because you have to search the rooms again and again. This is the similar repetitive thing like in your “Cruise for a Corpse” example.
In “And Then There Were None” this is exactly the problem: The game “stops” the story (of the book) at certain points and let you figure out all other things. In a good adventure game the story guides to through the puzzles and tells you what to do next.
I am the target audience of “And Then There Were None”, bought it at day one and was disappointed. So, no: such a gameplay is, yes, not necessarily, but very likely flawed.
Exactly.
btw: You have to distinguish how repetitive an action is: If you have three keys and one lock, you could easily try all combinations. But if you have 134 keys, it would be annoying if you have to try them all. So it depends on the game, the story and the player if a repetitive action is annoying or not.
While this involves repetition, it’s not really repetitive in the way people mean when they’re complaining about repetitiveness.
Yes, this is what people mean. To use an example from Thimbleweed Park, there are books that are needed from the library in order to complete certain puzzles. But what if the game didn’t give you any clues to narrow down your search for those books? Having to mouse over each and every book until you’ve found the one you need would be extremely repetitive. Fortunately, clues are provided, and so even though you have to mouse over more several books, it’s not repetitive in the time-consuming, tedious fashion that people normally attribute to repetitiveness.
I’d like to point out that it was only a mental experiment: the game does not really require to do what I said (not all of it). In particular you don’t need to look under the beds. I was only trying to build a hypothetical example to make a point. About this particular game, I haven’t played it enough to judge it . I can only say that the problem is in the story . I’m not sure that it can be turned into a good game. It’s my favourite book by the way.
Yes, but you nailed it down. Most of the time you have to search things in the house and the (small) garden. And if I remember correctly, some of the puzzles don’t make sense at all…
I don’t think so: To follow the story in the book, the player has to be one of the “real” guests. But these guests are murdered one after another. And in the book the murderer kills himself. So I don’t think it would be possible to make a game based on the original story. The only thing that could work: The player plays a police officer investigating the scene after the story in the book.
Agatha Christie wrote both, the book and the theater play. The interesting thing is, that both versions are using a slightly different ending: In the book the murderer dies while in the theater play he does not. According to Agatha Christie both versions are based on two variants of the song.
I suggest two less known plays from Agatha Christie which I think are among the best things she wrote: “the unexpected guest” and “towards zero”. they are as good as “the mousetrap”. the first one is possibly even better (but I only read it in short novel form.)
(let me digress a bit about what’s bad but acceptable for a fan)
Perhaps you mean that as a fan you won’t like this game?
Because about playing it I have observed the opposite phenomenon: fans of an author or a character or a story might be more forgiving for the defects and more motivated to keep playing the game just because it’s related to what they love.
“Syberia 3” has been released on April 20, 2017 and has received very negative reviews due to both technical issues and a story that has lost some of the key elements of the previous two chapters of the series, but I still see people on Steam writing opinions like “The game controls make this game practically unplayable, but due to being a fan of the game that didn’t stop me.” (which is a sentence taken from a real negative Steam review).
I never finished “Cruise for a Corpse” because, among other things, I don’t like “time slots” and the fact that the player has to visit all the locations again and fulfill a series of actions to trigger the next time slot. But that’s exactly how “Sinking Island” works and I kept playing because these unpleasant mechanics became acceptable to me, because I love Art Deco and I was captivated by the stunning environments.
But especially “And Then There Were None” isn’t, yes, acceptable for Agatha Christie fans - because the developers changed the story and especially the end. And I am confident that a lot of other Agatha Christie fans would agree with me. (Just imagine what happened if Peter Jackson had exchanged Frodo in his “Lord of the Rings” movies with Superman …)
Yes, I had the same experience with other adventure games. (I haven’t played Sinking Island, yet, but I’ve bought it a couple of years ago. )
Yeah, but even that wouldn’t be enough. If I recall correctly, the real guests do not take actions that advance the story. (not sure: it’s time I read the book again!) I mean: things happen to them, but they don’t make things happen. (Except for the killer of course).
What we really need is a new kind of gameplay… a gameplay where you don’t advance the story by taking actions, but by doing something else. But what? I was about to say “you advance by understanding things”, “by recognizing that this piece of information is related to this”, “by making connections”. but even this would not work, because in Agatha Christie’s stories, the characters don’t really understand much until the end. So what should be that makes the story advance? (please don’t answer “ask everybody about everything”. too boring . But maybe a new dialog system based on objectives… ). I am thinking maybe it can only be turned into a game like Walking Dead, i.e. you advance by trying everything with everything, and there are very few things to try at each time. But that would not be a game…
Wait. Unless… you play the killer. But too weird.
Edit: maybe what we need is a new dialog system, where you talk to someone with a precise objective, and need to achieve that objective, but not by choosing from a list of predefined choices.
Yes, as far as I remember. (I have to read the book again. ) And that is one of the problems the developers had: The characters are just talking with each other.
But this problem have …
… all crime stories. The detective speaks to all characters and presents a solution. So you can …
… ehrm. Ok. Doing conversations with -ehm- human beings. At the moment I have no idea how you could make this more interesting.
That won’t work with/in “And Then There Were None” because in that case you would start with the end. That would be similar to reading the last chapter first. The suspense originates in the fact that the reader don’t know who the killer is - it could be anyone of the characters.
There are several games that tried something similar. For example Return To Zork. But all alternative systems I played weren’t good enough. You may want to play the newer Sherlock Holmes games, where you have to “combine” facts.
I liked that kind of mechanics in “Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments”. The system that they used does a good job to visualize the deductive process.
Agatha Christie uses these long conversations to spread clues, and to disguise them so that they look like something else. (I am a big fan or her talent to do this). And this is very similar to what adventure games do: they use the story to conceal the clues, and make them look like something else.
So there are strong similarities between Christie and adventures. And yet, it is so difficult to turn Christie into adventures…
probably because agatha christie solves puzzles only at the end, whereas adventures need continuous puzzle solving in order to work.
I was reading an old review of Loom (archived copy of its text on Archive.org) and the reviewer writes something related to the “try everything with everything” approach:
Loom, however, is more an interactive story than an adventure game. Bobbin can never be killed or trapped by any of the player’s actions, so any puzzle can be resolved by clicking on all of the available items and running through all of known drafts until the desired outcome is achieved.
Many people might consider this to be a fatal flaw in the product and anybody who spends £30 on Loom expecting to get a Sierra-style adventure with better sound and graphics is likely to feel cheated. But anyone who regards it as a long, interactive video is in for a rare treat.
Notice the comparison to Sierra games and how the fact that the character cannot die is considered a flaw.
(Just imagine what happened if Peter Jackson had exchanged Frodo in his “Lord of the Rings” movies with Superman …)