Innovation in Point & Click Adventure Games
I’m very excited that my copy of Rogue Leaders, the history of LucasArts, arrived in the post yesterday, full of unique little insights into the making of some of my favourite games. One theme that keeps cropping up in the book is the level of innovation that the teams responsible for games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle sought to bring to their creations – a goal that I think it’s fair to say they achieved admirably. In making my own Bible-teaching adventure game, it’s a goal that I’ve quite consciously chosen to reject – I don’t expect my game to be innovative at all. That’s one reason why, as my March 1st deadline for writing the last of the puzzles fast approaches, I’m not entirely averse to pinching the odd puzzle solution directly from my heroes – call it a homage!
The reason is partly due to what I was explaining yesterday: I don’t expect game number one to be perfect. Trying to make a genuinely effective Bible-teaching computer game seems to be innovation enough for the moment, judging by the poor selection on offer. I expect to learn an awful lot of lessons through the process of making this thing, so I’m keen to stand on the shoulders of those who’ve gone before me as far as possible, rather than trying to forge my own path through the jungle.
Anyway, this is the final countdown for me – three more days! I don’t think I shall get all of the remaining questions answered fully on time, but then even Tim Schafer had to cheat a little to meet his deadline, faking a typewriter malfunction to make the last few lines of his puzzle design document illegible, to cover up the fact that he didn’t know how to end it!
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