List of adventure games where you can't die

By coincidence, I just started Larry 2 with the awesome H3Q filter:

I played this game 25 years ago, without solution, and I passed the boat, I reached the island and then got stuck. I think I have reached 3/4 of the game. I did not solve all the puzzles. But those that I solved must have been fair (otherwise how could I pass them? there is no brute force with that UI).

Good luck then. Expect to load a lot, even very early savestates very late in the game.

More like about half of the game. The game has some easy to miss things, and when you need them, you might not even know you need them or that they exist at all, since the game doesn’t tell you. And chances are that you can’t even go back but have to resort to a savegame several hours back.

By “relying on reloading”, I thought of save scamming, like you have to do in Larry 1 to win at the casino (unless the luck is with you, which is of course very unlikely). That particular instance isn’t too bad, considering the bank is busted at $250 already.
Dead ends on the other hand could be avoided if you know how to win the game, and don’t have to load a savestate at all.

Of course, dead ends are the worst thing you could design in an adventure game. Players expect the game to be solvable at any time, unless the game tells you otherwise.

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Whyyyyyyy! :nauseated_face:

(Required) save scumming is really bad, but luckily this is quite unusual in adventure games.
I’m sure the original intention was especially about not having to reload or restart a game because of deadends including deaths/game overs.

Some people would say such games are “unfair” (which is especially true for some Sierra games…).
In games like Maniac Mansion and Zak it worked quite well as part of the gameplay because they weren’t completely unfair. You still have to reload or restart the game because you just cannot know some things in due time but only when it’s too late.

Also timed events can be quite evil, like having to know you have to look in the porthole every time (Cruise for a Corpse), or the packet in Maniac Mansion, or a hard timer such as in Larry 1.

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you’re right, I forgot to turn on the undither function!

[insert can’t tell if serious meme]

But aside from de gustibus non est disputandum, that presumably needs aspect ratio correction.

Huh, I guess I just got lucky with the package in MM. I didn’t realize you could miss it! :slight_smile:

And the blur filter!

He is serious. But that’s what those filters are for.
I won’t touch them though!

But it’s the only real unfair event in this game. Most of the game you can play without getting stuck when playing more defensively (e.g. if you got some new items save, then try them every out, remember what you can do and reload; Hm, does this actually count as save scumming?).

I think it might. It was definitely annoying when I tried an item on an object and the character said something along the lines of “That was a waste.”

if only scummvm supported it…

a slight blur followed by a Hq3x produces incredible results.

I don’t think blurring before hqx filters makes sense.
For the other way around you could use ReShade.

Well , the blur removes the dither producing solid colors, and then the hq4x filter removes the blurry edges but leaves the contours rounded.

I would say, save scumming is to defeat luck.
TV Tropes does count trial and error game play as save scumming, but I wouldn’t count that. I think, every game giving you the freedom of saving any time you want, does so to encourage trial and error gameplay.
I personally like the freedom to save anywhere, so I can try out different outcomes. On the other hand, games relying completely on autosaves encourage to play more carefully, although this is more common in action games, but rare on adventure games. Both have its advantages for sure.

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That’s also where I have looked. How could we spell it wrong btw.? It’s so easy to remember!

Sadly it’s not rare in “adventure” games anymore, it actually seems to becoming the norm nowadays (e.g. Telltale Games). You are lucky if there is more than one save slot! (that’s one con of The Cave)

No… you’ll spoil my incredibly funny joke!

I was thinking about that earlier. But then again, why would you need to go back in The Cave?

Because in a book you can go back anywhere you want at any time. Videogames are the only medium in which that is sometimes made difficult for no apparent reason. Because you can create your own archive of the autosaves outside of the game. It just makes it more annoying.

That can range from a simple I’d like to see/do X again to a more involved choosing the other option.

Being able to start any levels/chapters once you finished it is a reasonable compromise but comparatively still pretty annoying.

Ideally you’d have the chapter thing (so you can ignore it) PLUS your own saves (i.e., bookmarks).

The mere, what was it, ~10? save slots in Thimbleweed Park were its biggest technical flaw imo. I (almost) never want to overwrite anything. I only want to add.

Oh right, so more just for the player’s interest? I’m not sure it would really help in terms of solving the game.

In The Cave, or in general? In The Cave I feel like the point is that you’re stuck with the characters you choose - it would feel like cheating if you could go back and swap them after playing with them for a bit.

With most games I would always want a good number of save slots, but The Cave is an exception because the linear format kind of requires the player to only go forward. And the absence of dead ends and ‘real’ death means there’s no need to backtrack.

I agree with that (particularly when going back to do the beta testing!), but I don’t know if I’d call it a technical flaw. In terms of gameplay it adds to the challenge, and I don’t think the priority is to revisit parts of the game for fun. Except when making screenshots for this forum :wink:

I’m not talking about solving the game at all. :slight_smile: I want my game to look like this:

It doesn’t affect (initial) gameplay at all, but it quite negatively affects replayability. Effectively the “when making screenshots for the forum” scenario, but much more general.

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Haha :slightly_smiling_face: I can appreciate that. I think like that with some games, and TWP became a bit like that spurred by all the discussion on here and regularly taking in new things about it.

I’ve never felt the need to replay The Cave, but maybe that’s partly because of those restrictions.

There is one other big reason why you want to have more than one slot:

You may want to have multiple games started when you play it with different people.
E.g. you have started one playthrough alone, but then started another one with your partner etc.

This is especially true for games like The Cave which are meant to be played co-op (but those players may not be available all the time but also don’t want to miss progress).

I guess these things just haven’t come up for me. I don’t think I’d ever play two versions of the same game at the same time like that.