Today is Day 3 of my daily blogging spree as I attempt to finish writing the puzzles for my Christian Point & Click adventure game. I decided to get up early, and spent the morning sketching out the various characters and locations in Act 2 (in stick-man form!). The nation of Israel is gathered at Mizpah to name their king (1 Samuel 10), so I’ve been doing a bit of brainstorming on the kinds of characters you would find whenever a large crowd is gathered. Mime artists, pickpockets – you get the idea! I’d quite like the player to be able to spend quite a bit of time here just exploring and solving various interlinked puzzles, so it’s a case of coming up with as many different ideas as I can and seeing where it takes me.
One of the challenges I keep coming up against is the issue of morality in puzzle solutions. When you play through some of the old classics like Monkey Island you discover that quite a lot of the solutions involve being a real jerk – like sawing off some poor chap’s wooden leg, and generally stealing stuff from people. Whilst I’ve never had a problem with that myself (it never crossed my mind as a kid that because I did that in a computer game, I should then go and do it in real life!) I’m conscious that other people – including the Christian parents I’ll probably be having to convince – may feel differently. I’m doing my best, therefore, to find ways around such issues, but it does add an extra level of complication to an already time-consuming process!
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