[PROTOTYPE]The Tower. ( Point and Click )

Rademanc

Hi.
A few months ago me and an artist friend, Brad Nairn, decided to make a point and click adventure game. [Insert Alarm Bell Sound here.]
How hard could it be right?
We both loved "The Room" and the Zork series of games, so we decided to marry those two and see if we could come up with something fun.

You can play a prototype of it here:

http://www.wooglie.com/games/Adventure/The-Tower-of-Bronze

Keep in mind that it is a prototype. So expect unfinished art and a few minor bugs.

We would love some feedback from the community!

hermantulleken

I like the way you interact with 3D objects.

I got stuck very early in the game though I managed to collect two wand pieces, a card, a coin, and an eyeball, and was not 100% sure whether this was as far as it went, or whether I just got stuck the way you sometimes do in adventure games. (If you let me know there is more, I will try again. In fact, tell us if the game is finishable :) ).

Pomb

Same experience as Herman, I was clicking on everything, the only thing left is arrows and the letter which don't seem to be collectable?

Gazza_N

According to the endgame message, I've finished it!

Let me say right off the bat that the Myst series and similar Escape the Room games are a thing wot I love, so I'm coming from the perspective of a genre fan. ^_^

I really like the 3D world and the full-rotation object inspection. That's inspired, and makes the game feel more like thorough exploration than a lazy fake-difficult pixel-hunt. I really enjoyed assembling items (other than some niggles that I go into below), and the humour's great too. My favourite parts were where the patch on the wizard's hat turns out to a secret drawer, and where the power lever unfolds three or four times after feeding the Erector all your cash. Good laughs everywhere. All in all, I think it's promising, and I really want to see how you guys develop this further.

I think that a lot of player confusion comes from the double-whammy of a lack of control instructions and an inconsistent interface. Firstly, it's not at all clear how to interact with the game. I may be thick, but it took me at least thirty seconds to realise that I could click and drag to rotate the camera. That was by accident, because I was crazy-clicking everything in sight to make something happen. :P I get the impression from the control scheme that this is meant to be a mobile game, but on PC this is terribly unintuitive without instructions.

Compounding the lack of instructions is that the interface is inconsistent. One moment the player only needs a single click to interact with items. The next moment, they have to click and drag (which makes sense, once you actually work it out). The next, clicking and dragging items onto other items is only effective when in the correct inventory examination view, and the angle is right, and the player releases right on the Mystery Hotspot. The next, spell buttons that look exactly like buttons that were previously shown to only require a single click suddenly need to be click-dragged instead. I think you see the problem.

Also, is there any particular reason why solving certain puzzles takes me several "click layers" back? I don't understand why successfully opening the Erector should pull the camera back all the way out again, rather than to the shiny new control panel I've just revealed.

Iss good gaem, but the UI just needs a bit of clarity and tidying up. I want more!

Rademanc

Thanks guys for trying it out.

Herman and Pomb:
It isn't very obvious and we will have to fix it but if you turn the credit card around, there is a little puzzle on the back that will help you go on., we are working on a hint system for the game.

Gazza_N:
We had a full tutorial for the game, click and drag to rotate, how to combine items etc, but some people found it too constricting, they just wanted to start playing immediately, so we removed it altogether to see which areas people actually do struggle with.
You are right the game is being made for ipad, so the controls are a little bit clunky and less than intuitive on pc.
We never anticipated that players might want to combine items by dragging item icons onto other icons. We are fixing this and a few other UI problems. I don't know how we can make the spell buttons more consistent. One idea was that if you drag the wand onto the scene, a little context sensitive popup menu will appear, with all the spells.

I think that there is a bug after fixing the erector, it should only take you back one layer.

Thanks again for trying it out. Your input is invaluable.

hermantulleken

@Rademanc

Cool; I now finished it too. (Although it still took me a while to realise the puzzle is actually a puzzle, and not a clue for the puzzle!).

I agree with what @Gazza_N said about the UI. One quickfix for the spells is to just have a message there that says "drag onto object to use". Inelegant, but effective.

I would say, do not go into a hint system so early on. A hint system is a crutch for both you as designers, and for the player. No-one likes it (but of course in the end it may still be necessary). I'd say concentrate on making the puzzles more transparent, and provide clues in the scene itself. One of my favorite techniques (to experience as player) is when clues are provided in the decor or other "dead" objects. Pictures, symbols, etc.

Also, you should not need a tutorial for an adventure game! (Or maybe I am wrong...) Maybe a message here and there to explain the controls should be enough. (Of course, if you can manage a portal-style tutorial....)

Do you have an overarching theme / story / goal? Things felt a bit disconnected (of course I realise this is alpha).

Anyways, I enjoyed this; make more content ;)

Edit: Another note: adventure games are extremely expensive to design compared to the resulting play-time, so I would say for further prototyping, go lighter on art, and heavier on the actual puzzles. The animations etc. are very nice... but skip them where possible. You also never know when you need to cut one or more puzzles... and then you waste all that art energy.

Gazza_N

hermantulleken said:

Also, you should not need a tutorial for an adventure game! (Or maybe I am wrong...) Maybe a message here and there to explain the controls should be enough. (Of course, if you can manage a portal-style tutorial....)

I was thinking about this a fair bit yesterday. The Myst games generally had a simple single-button interface and needed no intrusive popups, but they relied heavily on contextual mouse cursors to indicate possible interactions - pointy finger for single-click, open hand which closes on click to indicate click and drag. On a mobile device this could be replicated by having a similar sort of cursor pop up when the player "clicks" an interactive item. That way you just need to teach the player the cursor vocabulary, rather than splacking neon text everywhere.

Rademanc said:

I don't know how we can make the spell buttons more consistent. One idea was that if you drag the wand onto the scene, a little context sensitive popup menu will appear, with all the spells.

I do think that a traditional approach would work well for spells: click the spell icon, then click on the object you want to cast it on. Simple, and consistent with your established button interaction.

Rademanc

Do you have an overarching theme / story / goal? Things felt a bit disconnected (of course I realize this is alpha).

Our original idea was to have a theme, but very little story line, with the goal to find and collect pieces of a broken amulet or other suitable magic item. We ended adding a little more structure and story line, but most players don't even read the little we added. We are going to add a little more for the players that do, to make things hang together more, but added a story also makes the game more rigid.

Also, you should not need a tutorial for an adventure game! (Or maybe I am wrong...) Maybe a message here and there to explain the controls should be enough. (Of course, if you can manage a portal-style tutorial....)

Yeah I agree. We will add a message or two to explain the controls.

Another note: adventure games are extremely expensive to design compared to the resulting play-time, so I would say for further prototyping, go lighter on art, and heavier on the actual puzzles..

We thought hard and long before we decided to make an adventure game. We think it is our best shot at making a succesfull game. Only time will tell. We didn't want to go too puzzle heavy for the start of the game, the first real puzzle will be the first door of the tower, and even then it will be on the easy side. We will only have a handful of really tough puzzles, and they will be optional rather than mandatory. And no 'remember the notes' puzzles. I hate those.

I do think that a traditional approach would work well for spells: click the spell icon, then click on the object you want to cast it on. Simple, and consistent with your established button interaction.

Yes, that makes sense. We have thought of just implementing both. You can drag and release or click and click to cast.

Our plan is to polish up the little demo we have and get it running perfectly on ipad and android, just to sort out the save and load system, control schemes etc. Then release the demo and see if people like it enough. If they do we continue developing the game. If they don't then we kill ourselves. ;-)

Thanks for your time guys.
This is an awesome site.

Nitrogen

Haha, that was pretty cool!

The only thing I'd add to all of the above is that the desert scene is a bit bland and arbitrary. Why am I here? and how come there's something interesting exactly at this spot and nowhere else in this endless plain? Something a bit more interesting and story-supporting would be great. For example, you wash up on the shore of an island, with the sea behind you and the interior of the island ahead. The player is blocked by the sea behind, and is provided a clear destination ahead to which they must try get to.

Rademanc

The desert was mainly chosen because it doesn't require loads of art. 90% of the game will also Happen inside the tower so we didn't want to waste time on the environment. It is a Little bland but we are still going to add some stuff to make it look more interesting. Footprints behind to show that you've been walking. Some rocks suggestive of ruins. Sand blowing of the dunes. Heat shimmer. That kind of thing. I also think the bland landscape will make our other objects pop when they are textured. Thanks for trying it out.

hermantulleken

Rademanc said:

We thought hard and long before we decided to make an adventure game. We think it is our best shot at making a succesfull game. Only time will tell. We didn't want to go too puzzle heavy for the start of the game, the first real puzzle will be the first door of the tower, and even then it will be on the easy side. We will only have a handful of really tough puzzles, and they will be optional rather than mandatory. And no 'remember the notes' puzzles. I hate those.

Just to be clear, I am not saying you have too few puzzles, or that they are too easy. I am just suggesting that you spend more prototyping effort on those aspects, to get a better idea of what works and what doesn't early, before you spend so much time that you want to kill yourselves if it does not work out ;) If I were you, I'd do the next "level" before polishing the existing one (except for fixing things, of course).

Rademanc

Hey.
We want to polish up the little demo we have, release it to a wider audience and gauge the response. If its positive we continue to develop the game otherwise we will have to try again. Going to publish it on facebook which is now much easier.