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Quest Guidance, Wildhollow and Rise of the Argonauts
My recent non-public release of Wildhollow (v0.2) has received some very interesting feedback. First of all, many seem to enjoy the art and the writing. Yayness! That’s actually pretty damn cool – I’ve been freetting over whether or not I’m a moron for putting so much emphasis on dialogue in the game. My reasoning is sound: Spandex Force received praise for its humorous writing, so this time I’m concentrating on much more of that. But it is a bit of a gamble. The audio received some mixed comments, but the only thing I really have to change is the typewriter sound in the dialogues. I agree that it’s a tad anachronistic in a fantasy game…but on the other hand I’ve added heavy metal songs for the dramatic scenes as well. What can I say, I like contrasts!
Other than that there are three worrying tendencies in the feedback: the minigames suck (I’m fixing that), the animal management needs to be improved (I’m fixing that)…and I have a sneaky suspicion that some people feel that there’s not enough guidance in the quests.
I’m all for easy-to-play games that one can pick up instantly. But Wildhollow requires you to read a lot of dialogue and deduce what to do based on that. I’ve done my best to have “quest hints” for each stage of the quests and have characters repeat important bits of information if they’re relevant to a quest, but there still might be a lot of exploration required to solve some of the puzzles.
I’m still on the fence whether or not this is a good thing. My initial response is “It’s a good thing, dammit! It encourages immersion and makes the quests flow naturally rather than appear forced.” But yesterday I played Rise of the Argonauts and now I’m not so sure anymore…
I consider myself a casual gamer, and Rise of the Argonauts is a pretty casual action RPG. I click some buttons, and the dude runs around like a scorched ferret, cutting and clubbing people all over the place. I love it! Epic violence, beautifully performed, that requires almost no skill at all. I don’t have to spend hours to learn how to do weird combos – they simply appear out of nowhere!
But all is not well in ancient Greece… The game gives almost no indication as to what I need to do next. I can’t be arsed to read all the text in an action game – I’m playing the game to spear people on my enormous barbeque stick! But if I skip too much I end up with my hero standing around looking dumb, and me sitting there feeling even more dumb. “So… Uh… What? What do I have to do now? Do I have to talk to someone? Is there a list of active quests? I don’t know what to do!”
Now, Wildhollow and Rise of the Argonauts aren’t comparable at all. Not in the very least, and not only because RotA is a frigging multi-million production. My choice to rely on text in Wildhollow is a major part of the design – it’s an integral part of the game. RotA’s focus is on action, with text added on. In Wildhollow you can quickly click around to try out things or talk to people; in RotA you have to physically move your character between the scenic vistas to see if this was where you needed to go…and retrace your steps if not. But at its core, Wildhollow relies on the player to explore to proceed – just like RotA.
I’ve been toying with the idea of adding graphic indicators for whom to talk to next, but… That feels cheap. It breaks the immersion. And it just might make the puzzles too easy. Another approach might be to make conversations pop up more often – make some NPCs initiate conversations on their own. That’s probably a better approach, but I’m still not sure if that would work. What I want is to make a game that’s easy to play and follow, but still not ridiculously simple or lacking in immersion.
Any suggestions for good games I ought to play to get inspiration for how to solve my dilemma?
No one?
Not a single suggestion?
Man, you suck.
Tags: casual games, Games, Indie Games, karjasoft, Wildhollow
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Dialogue is one of your strongest skills. You write funny really well, with a flair that I’ve seen in few other game writers. I definitely didn’t find the game too dialogue heavy, but even if there is a lot of text that’s the style of the game.
From my experience of playing the game the quests weren’t difficult and to add anymore guidance to them would make the game far too easy. It would really dumb it down. You already have the quest text which tells us what quests we’re on anyway. Anything simplifying things further would be removing the challenge completely. I don’t think players are that stupid to need to be handheld right throughout the game, and even if they are, well that’s what walkthroughs are for. Let them struggle a bit with the game, discover what they need to do through trial and error and then consult a walkthrough if they’re really stuck. Exploration isn’t a bad thing. It’s part of the gameplay.
The only thing I had issues with was finding the grass since I didn’t even realise the grass randomly appeared on screens. The moment you told me that I could find grass and that it was hidden I went looking for it and managed to spot some. A simple “find some grass” quest would have let me know that grass was available and I could have worked out from there where to find it. Or even just a comment from one of the npcs about how sometimes good grass can be found which feeds the animals would have made me aware of the presence of the grass.
No! Don’t include graphic indicators. Don’t hold the player’s hand. The game’s easy enough as it is. The difficulty level of the adventure aspects seemed perfect for the genre. Compared to adventure games it was easy. Compared to casual games which spoonfeed you the plot it was fine. Let people wander around and find out who to talk to. There’s not too many people to try and a little trial and error never hurt anyone.
If you’re looking at other games in the casual sphere the two I can think of which have similarish adventure elements are Tradewinds (not the first but all the others) and Chocolatier. They have you going around, doing adventurish things, needing to find the right people to talk to and the right places to go for various items. They have the quest log, just like you do. I found in Chocolatier I’d sometimes forget where someone was and I’d have to spend ages checking every location for the person I wanted to talk to and the travel times between locations made this frustrating. Since you don’t have travel time I don’t think not knowing exactly what to do would be limiting.
I think Chocolatier has the NPCs pop up and remind you what you’re doing if you don’t do it. Could be wrong though.
I don’t think you need graphic indicators of who to talk to next. I think that aspect’s fine as it is.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
What’s this about grass? Ever since I read this post about finding grass, I’ve been looking for some and haven’t managed to find any. Am I missing something?
December 7th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Dreije:
Nope, you’re not missing anything at all! The game was in development for a long time, and I had a break for about six months. When I resumed work on the game I decided to refocus some things; make the game a little easier and more rewarding to play. That’s when I realized that the grass was…unnecessary and wouldn’t add anything to the game experience.