It's a slow day in Mexico

Been a little shy with the updates recently, mostly due to the fact that not much has really been going on. Trying to finalize a lot of puzzle based aspects and it's very time consuming and confusing to me, especially trying to break the whole ADVENTURE GAME MOLD of click everything possible until something works.

Creating unique puzzles in adventure games is a pretty big challenge as a lot of adventure games recycle similar formulas for their puzzles. It consists of "Click everything until something works, "Combine Items Until something works," or "Talk to Someone until they give you the answer." Everyone wants to do something unique but it's not really going to happen. I think people are too afraid of using a formula that a game has already used in their independent games and that could often be their downfall. But in the same sense you don't want to just force the user to click everything until something works.

Let's look at the opening puzzle of a game I played recently (and got bored of after the first screen, switched off and never played again.) "The Longest Journey." We open up with our main character on a cliff face, you examine everything in site to get two items, Stick, and Shell Piece. (Possibly not the correct names but that is what they are.) Talk to a tree to be given an objective, for no apparent reason combine the two items you have to create "Funnel" of all things which pretty much gives away the answer of what you need to do next. Use it on the only other object around (Diverted Stream) to divert the water back to the tree to give it life.

It was an illogical pointless puzzle that almost gave you all the answers but still didn't make sense. Combined with boring dialogue I promptly uninstalled this game and deleted the .ISO from my computer, I wont be playing that again. Now how can I learn from it's mistakes.

Yeah Yeah, Shut up and give us some Game stuff...

In regards to the score aspect of the game that I mentioned in my last post, I have been working pretty hard on this front. I've totally revamped every piece of music I had composed up to this point and I think it's starting to sound slightly professional quality if I do say so myself. I'm really happy with it considering the amount of time I have put into it (lots) so I'll definitely throw up a WIP I have going right now that any of you may be interested to listen to:

Cold Stone.mp3

It's work in progress but I'm happy with how it is sounding.

Music has the right to children and men with moustaches.

UPDATES: have been slow lately. Mainly because of that whole "Forgetting to Plan" scenario and having to go back all over again to sort out that. But I am back and better than ever with a nice pro written design doc, as far as I can tell. (I think it is pretty pro anyway, but I'm no expert so don't trust my opinion.)

After taking me about four days to write I am taking a break from the writing stage to focus on another aspect of the game. Music.

Probably my strongest point but damn is it time consuming? (Answer: Yes.) I'm really happy with the score for the game so far though. I am taking a lot of inspiration from my NUMBER ONE COMPOSER INFLUENCES Mark Morgan and Clint Mansell, so it is fairly ambient with some nice string/ethnic vibes. I've even included some of my electronica pads but it's all for mood and hopefully doesn't sound too modern.

I'll probably post some soundtrack samples in the posts to come. Just got some finishing touches to add to the pieces so far.

Moustaches however are a very important subject.


Meet Professor Richards.

Who would have thought making a game was hard?

Apparently it's not. I just opened up my latest issue of GAMESTM magazine and found a nice four page article about random internet dudes RPG MAKER GAME. Super Columbine High School Massacre or something. Yeah he obviously took the controversy route and gained instant stardom, for those of us who would rather make GAMES, well it's a little bit harder.

• BunnyMilk'r inyternet tip on how to make good game NUMERO DOS: And let me tell you I only just figured this out today. Plan ahead, and plan far. Plan your game to completion before you even think about starting work on it because boy does it suck when you get to the half way point and realise that your game is not that good simply because you didn't plan. Good advice imho.

So today I learnt that planning ahead is a good idea. When it comes to thinking about the Project I tend to skip over meaningless things like Story and Dialogue when thinking up the basic concept of the game. For this project I said to myself, Right, I need a short game that I can finish in two weeks and for this reason I neglected trying to create a good storyline. I rushed and I got too far into the project and now it's not looking as great as it could do storyline-wise.

Luckily for me this is a fixable problem for I am now going to definitely take a step back, look at my project (which is very pretty if I do say so myself.) and Frankie is putting in the extra work to help me out with it. Things are shaping up after all.

I might even try and call in a few writer friends of mine to get their opinions and possibly help beef up some elements/dialogue.

So yeah, Working on a project yourself? Don't try and get it off the ground faster than it can move.