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行业人士谈如何在尽量避免剧透的前提下为冒险游戏编写提示

发布时间:2021-04-26 09:10:16 Tags:,,

行业人士谈如何在尽量避免剧透的前提下为冒险游戏编写提示

原作者:Meghann O’Neill 原作者:Willow Wu

当我还是个孩子的时候,有好几年的时间我都沉浸在Space Quests和Monkey Islands这两个游戏中。在八年级的计算机课上,我们都在讨论如何一边斗剑一边放垃圾话,而不是学习BASIC语言。我爸把那些古早的提示书,还有那些神奇的笔都藏在他的书房里了,以前我都不知道。他告诉我“同事中有个好朋友”有玩游戏,他把我的问题转达给那位(不存在的)朋友,我等了好几周才等来一个很隐晦的提示。我一年级的老师Watling女士,她更夸张。她当时在玩The Black Cauldron,而我就是给她提示的人(当时我6岁)。

玩点击类冒险游戏的意义不就是解决谜题吗?但如今我又不是那么肯定了。我还是会玩很多冒险游戏。我不觉得《黑暗侦探》难度过高,但是我完全是因为剧情、艺术设计和音乐才玩这个游戏的。我还和我的孩子们一起玩了《银莲公园》(Thimbleweed Park),Ransome那些被哔掉的限制级脏话把他们逗得不亦乐乎。每次我要他们去做家务的时候,年纪小的那个就会说:“使唤那个傻X小丑去爬那个傻X梯子。”我玩这个游戏只是因为想让我的孩子们体验一下以前的游戏风格,这真的让我很开心。

在2021年,一款冒险游戏发行后几天网上就会出现各种指南,通常就是图文攻略或者视频攻略。我非常佩服这些为冒险游戏写指南的人,这确实要花很多时间和精力。

这些人实际上是在帮助开发商提供支持,鼓励玩家继续玩下去,不要知难而退。为什么玩家会想放弃你的游戏呢?你设计的谜题符合逻辑,新手教程很详细,目标跟踪方式也很酷。我敢肯定你会想:可能这些玩家现实生活中很忙,或者他们是刚接触这类型游戏,或者他们只是对游戏的剧情感兴趣而已。我真的不是在指责各位,但作为一个从业14年的游戏鉴赏家,我的感觉是,很多游戏都通过设计很好地处理了这些问题,但毛病在于传达上。也许你的愿景是创造一个真实、硬核的游戏体验,所以这种“关怀照顾”是不需要的。我也很喜欢这类游戏,但我还是坚持认为制作指南的人是在帮你为玩家提供更好的支持。

在为PC Powerplay杂志撰写《银莲公园》评测之后,我决定在Twine上写一份渐进式提示指南。我想象的是创造一个类似于Universal Hint System这样的平台,我在上大学(还会玩很多冒险游戏,比如The Longest Journey)时经常会用这个网站。HUS依然是一个很棒的老游戏提示查询平台,但是很长一段时间以来它都是处于沉寂状态。他们的标语是“这里没有攻略,只有一些你需要的提示。”对于《银莲公园》,我想创建的是一个可以给玩家隐晦提示的系统,一次就给一个提示,就像以前跟朋友们在计算机课堂上一起思考Monkey Island的谜题,或者Watling女士在午餐时间找我,让我提示如何见到Fair Folk。正如我之前所提到的,我很佩服那些花很多精力为游戏写流程攻略人,但在攻略中寻找提示时,我总是会被意外剧透。

Telltale Game of Thrones (from computer and video games.com)

Telltale Game of Thrones (from computer and video games.com)

我在Twine上写的《银莲公园》指南在游戏发行数周后就获得了上万的阅读量,开发商Terrible Toybox问我说能能不能用Twine创造一个Hint-Tron 3000——这是游戏内置的渐进式提示系统,你在游戏中使用任何一台电话都能获得提示。

在那之后,我受委托为Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption写了一份非常长的指南,这也是项目在Kickstarter众筹时所承诺提供的。值得庆幸的是,开发人员将他们的游戏代码库借给了我,便于我搜索数以百万计的单词和变量。

最近,软件开发者Juho Rutila联系到了我,想邀请我为Nice Game Hints这个网站做点东西。这是一个非常强大的平台,它的结构跟UHS类似,基于一种非常灵活的结构向玩家提供渐进式提示。令人难以置信的是,Juho把全部的开发工具都开放给指南创作者使用了。我只下载了demo,学习了一些关于Github和Markdown的内容,然后为Henry Mosse and the Wormhole Conspiracy制作了一份指南,在Nice Game Hints上发布。

我的“日常工作”就是测评游戏、在不同的大学里教授游戏创作课程。教师和测评者的双重身份(以及对冒险游戏的热爱)让我学会了如何能在尽量避免剧透的前提下更好地传达提示,毕竟我一直以来都在撰写渐进式指南。接下来我就跟大家分享这些经验。

1. 你得知道玩家在想什么

如果你真的不想给玩家剧透,在编写渐进式指南时你就得知道为什么玩家无法理解游戏中的谜题。来思考一下这个假设的例子:玩家找到了一个正在哭泣的婴儿,得想办法让TA安静下来,不然解谜所需的鸟儿都会被哭声吓走。他们可能会想这个孩子需要食物,或者妈妈。他们可能会想是不是该使用他们刚才在丛林里找到的排箫,吹奏安眠曲——但是排箫坏了。他们的思路可能是你完全无法想到,或者他们根本就摸不着头脑。

玩家打开渐进式提示指南,看到一个问题:“怎么才能从Bob那里拿回糖果?”这让玩家想到联想到一个俗语:“就像从小孩手里抢糖果一样容易”(it’s like taking candy from a baby),接着就马上去找婴儿的糖果,连指南都不用继续看了,这样的提示其实比他们想要的更加直白。或许他们想要的只是一条能表明之前有个小偷来偷东西的线索,由此推断出婴儿可能是偷窃案的受害者。或者来个NPC告诉他们这个孩子喜欢吃甜食。总而言之,玩家想要的提示和玩家得到的提示不一定会一样。

我可能会通过创建两个标题来避免这种意外剧透。一是“宝宝在哭”,二是“Bob那边有我需要的东西”(也就是糖果)。

另外,如果玩家的母语不是英语,游戏也没有本地化,那么你通过渐进式提示解释“小孩的糖果谜题”时就需要说明这是一种英语俗语,而不是假设玩家都能理解。类似地,考虑到会有第一次接触这类游戏的新玩家,你的UI也应该是易于理解的。神经多样性的玩家可能会想到其它解谜方式,以不同的方式理解语言。并不是每一份渐进式指南都能让每个人都满意,就像没有一个游戏能够取悦所有人一样,我在这只是为了简单说明为什么了解玩家的思路需要考虑这么多事情(游戏开发者和指南撰写者都是如此)。

2. 你需要知道设计师在想什么

Henry Mosse是Bad Goat Studios的第一款产品。我不确定这些开发者之前有什么样的设计经验,但有些谜题对我来说确实有点反直觉。这真的不是批评,我很喜欢那个游戏,总体来说谜题也非常好玩。但有个谜题是要帮助一只伤心/愤怒的野兽,但没有办法查明为什么野兽会这么伤心/愤怒,直到你碰巧发现野兽丢失的东西,在这时候Henry出来告诉你说把这个东西带去给野兽,谜题终结。

像这样的东西是很难用渐进式提示的,玩家知道他们该做点什么,但又不知道该从哪里下手。在Henry Mosse的指南中,我得诚实告知哪些部分不是解谜,哪些谜题我没理解,哪些谜题是我碰巧就解决了。野兽的线索很有可能出现在之前的某个地方,只是我没注意到罢了。我经常发现自己会强调或重复提醒游戏已经提供的线索,包括教程内容,因为人们会时不时地错过这些线索,即便是设计最巧妙的谜题也是如此。

3. 渐进式指南需要测试

由于渐进式指南依赖于复杂的逻辑结构,我会进行深度测试以防各种意外剧透,就比如上面所说的“看到问题就知道需要找糖果”,我还在学习如何完善这一点。剧透对我来说就是噩梦。

我从测试中学到的另一件事就是要重复关键词。如果有人只是偶尔翻阅指南,他们看到的提示可能是这样:Q:宇宙飞船在哪里? A:在森林里。下一个关联的提示或许是Q:具体是哪里?但是他们在去往森林的途中一直在研究其它谜题,之后才会再次打开指南。如果他们回来继续寻找宇宙飞船,看到“Q:具体是哪里?A:最左边”可能会觉得一头雾水,因为他们已经忘了你在说森林和宇宙飞船。我会改成这样——Q:在森林的哪个位置能找到宇宙飞船?A:你能够在森林左手边区域找到宇宙飞船。这样一来所有的提示都是非常清晰的,单独看也能看懂。此外,这时候的玩家知道森林在哪里吗?或者这也是一个他们需要去寻找的新地点?或者有没可能一些玩家知道,一些玩家不知道?这些问题都是在构建指南时需要考虑的。

同样重要的是,你必须意识到当一个谜题可提供的提示都用完了,这时候你只能剧透。我总是会确保玩家这时候明白剧透会出现,比如把问题设定成这样:给我看森林里宇宙飞船的具体位置截图。这就确保了玩家能够自己决定接不接受剧透。(Nice Game Hints还有一个内置的“剧透预警”功能,会把涉及到剧透的问题设定成红色。)

4.有些游戏的渐进式指南就是比其它游戏的难写

就比如一个拥有大型开放式hub、谜题环环相扣的冒险游戏 vs. 一个线性游戏,前者肯定是更加棘手的。如果是攻略的话,创作者就可以直接录下他们的游戏过程。看攻略时玩家很难避开剧透,但还是可以帮助他们解决问题。

如果是渐进式提示指南,不同玩家在遇到谜题时他们的游戏进程、对于剧情的了解程度都是不一样的。在Henry Mosse的指南中,标题我都取得比较笼统,比如“跟码头工人打交道”是大章节中一个可以随时处理的谜题。之后,你可以把这个提示延伸到角色所在地点或者如何获得他们所持有的东西(如果你已经找到他们的话)。也可能玩家在努力找这个道具,或者/而且直到看到NPC拿着它之前才明白这个东西是用来干什么的,所以不同的标题下的单独提示链可以解决这个问题。玩家可能看到角色还是不知道物品的用处。或者,如果他们在前一章中做出了不同的选择,那么他们可能无法在未解决额外谜题的情况下遇见角色,所以如果他们还找不到遇见的方法,那么就有第二组提示可以引导他们解决谜题。

Hero-U的指南是我写过的最复杂的,在Twine上有大概600页。我很享受为这个游戏写指南,但是确实难度不小,耗费了好几个月的时间。

5. 渐进式提示不容易被抄袭

就如我在上文所提到的,我做游戏测评已经有14年了。我知道自己的创作被复制到其它地方还不加署名是什么感觉——一点都不好。人们剽窃线性游戏指南,或者进行二改再加上自己的署名。为什么要这样?为了点击量吗?为了推广?我也不确定,但我见过很多这样的情况。但是要剽窃Nice Game Hints这类网站上的指南,可能性会比较小或者说可行性比较低。你来随便翻一翻Juho写的渐进式指南,你会觉得就算是抄也会非常累人,好不如直接去抄别人的游戏攻略。正如你所感受到的那样,编写一份渐进式提示指南可能需要耗费很多时间,自然也会耗费很多精力。庆幸的是,这样也给剽窃者增加了不少难度。

6. 我们需要培育一种感激提示的文化

如果你是一名游戏玩家,某份指南确实帮到了你(不管是线性指南还是交互式指南),那么你可以考虑给创作者一些奖励。我撰写Henry Mosse指南不是为了赚钱,而是因为我喜欢澳大利亚的游戏,我想给玩家提供一些帮助。但是我花了20小时来写它——还不包括两个周目的游戏时间以及分享过程。Juho在Nice Game Hints网站上设定了一个打赏功能。我希望在kofi网站写的这篇指南能让我攒到一些小钱,好让我找一个萨克斯演奏者为我自己的冒险游戏配乐。这只是一个尝试,如果最终没能成也没关系。游戏指南经常能获得很多点击量,但是这些点击量并不总是能转化成一份合理的劳动报酬。或许这就是大家都默认的一种运作方式,又或许,这种文化可以被改变。

开发者们啊,有人正在为你的游戏免费写指南呢。我觉得开发者们可以考虑一下给Nice Game Hints这样的网站,或者指南撰写者分发一些游戏密钥。或许你可以雇佣一个经验丰富的人来写官方指南。《银莲公园》和Hero-U的开发者就给我的指南估了价。我希望游戏开发者后续会思考关于官方指南的事情,毕竟他们才是最清楚自己期望的人。

那么,游戏的叙事创作者能写出更好的渐进式指南吗?说实话,这个问题我不知道该怎么回答。我觉得他们应该能,毕竟那些内容是他们自己做的,但是指南创作者可以从另外一种视角审视游戏的解谜,赋予指南一种独特的参考价值。我希望我有更多时间来撰写这些渐进式指南。

通过制作这三个指南,我学到的关于冒险游戏的知识比我多年来玩、测评游戏学到的还要多。为点击式冒险游戏制作渐进式提示系统其实就像深入分析游戏的设计。这很有挑战性,但也很有趣。你可以思考一下这种尽量避免剧透的提示是不是真的适合那个游戏,还有对应的游戏玩家。还有,如果你正在考虑从哪里开始制作的话,Nice Game Hints是个不错的平台——这里已经准备好了所有你需要的工具。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

When I was a kid, I spent years not-beating Space Quests and Monkey Islands. My Year 8 Computer Studies classes were all debating the best way to sword fight with insults, not learning BASIC. My dad secretly kept those old hint books, with the magic pens, in his study. He told me he had a “friend at work” who played games. He relayed my questions to his (imaginary) friend and then made me wait weeks for the tiniest hint. My Year 1 teacher, Ms Watling, was even less useful. She was playing The Black Cauldron, but I had to give hints to her (at the age of 6).

The entire reason to play a point and click adventure game is to solve puzzles, right? These days, I’m not so sure. I still play a lot of adventures. I didn’t find The Darkside Detective, for example, overly difficult, but I was totally there for the story, art and music. I played Thimbleweed Park with my kids, who were absolutely delighted by Ransome’s beeped out swearing. My younger son still says, “Oh sure, make the beeping clown climb the beeping ladder,” every time I ask him to do a chore. I played that for the sheer delight of introducing my kids to a nostalgic experience.

In 2021, guides will appear online within days of an adventure game being released, usually in the form of walkthroughs, text or video. I vastly appreciate every person who creates guides for adventure games. It takes such effort.

Game developers, people who create guides are supporting your players by encouraging them not to give up on your game. Why would a player give up on your game? Your puzzles are logical, your tutorial is detailed and you have a cool method of tracking objectives. And I’m sure you’ve reflected on the fact that your players might be busy with life, new to the genre or just interested in the goofy story you’re telling alongside your puzzles. I’m genuinely not blaming you, but as a game reviewer of 14 years, my feeling is that many games carefully address all of these things through design, but not everything is communicated well enough for everyone. Perhaps your vision is to create an authentic, hardcore adventure game experience, so “handholding” is irrelevant. I love those kinds of games too. But I stand by my absolute conviction that people who make guides are supporting your players beyond the ways you’ve supported them yourself.

After reviewing Thimbleweed Park before release, for PC Powerplay magazine, I decided to create an incremental hint guide in Twine. I pictured creating something like Universal Hint System, which I used extensively while I was busy studying at uni (and playing adventures like The Longest Journey.) UHS is still a great resource for classic game guides, but it hasn’t been active in a long time. Their tagline is, “Not your ordinary walkthrough, just the hints you need.” For Thimbleweed Park, I wanted to create a system that could deliver players a tiny nudge, one nudge at a time, like friends nutting out Monkey Island together, in Computer Studies, or Ms Watling bothering me at lunchtime for hints on how to meet the Fair Folk. As I mentioned, I appreciate people who make linear walkthroughs for games immensely, but I have accidentally spoiled myself via use of them, many times, while trying to find the nudge I needed.

My Twine guide for Thimbleweed Park got tens of thousands of views in the first few weeks after release and Terrible Toybox asked me if they could use the Twine to create what you may know as The Hint-Tron 3000; an in-game, incremental hint system that you can call from any phone. Creator, Ron Gilbert, explained his thought process in a blog post here.

After this, I was commissioned to write a very large Twine guide for Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, which formed part of a Kickstarter promise. Thankfully, the developers lent me all of their game’s code so I was able to search literally millions of words and variables, as part of my process. You can find it here.

Recently, software developer, Juho Rutila, got in touch to invite me to make something for Nice Game Hints, which is an immediately impressive site and concept. It is structured like UHS and aims to provide incremental hints, via a flexible structure. Incredibly, Juho has made all of his development tools available for guide creators to use. I simply downloaded his demo, learned a few things about Github and Markdown, then made a guide for Henry Mosse and the Wormhole Conspiracy, to be published on Nice Game Hints. The file structure and syntax looks like the below. You can see the page, shown by the last screenshot, live, here.

My “day jobs” are reviewing games and teaching game composition at a couple of universities. The intersection of teacher and reviewer (as well as a lifelong love of the adventure game genre) has allowed me to learn a few things about the best ways to communicate low spoiler hints to players, as I’ve been creating incremental guides. I’d like to share these lessons with you.

You need to know what players are thinking.

If you’re serious about not spoiling players, writing an incremental guide requires you to have a range of ideas about why players may not understand literally every puzzle in the game. Consider this hypothetical example. The player finds a crying baby and they need to quiet it because it’s scaring away the birds needed for another puzzle. They may wonder if the baby needs food, or its mother. They may wonder if they need to play the panpipes they found in the jungle to soothe the baby to sleep, but the panpipes are broken. They may wonder something you can’t imagine. Or they may have no ideas at all.

The player goes to an incremental hint guide and sees a question reading, “How do I get the candy back from Bob?” This makes the player think of the saying “it’s like taking candy from a baby” and (without even exploring the guide) they go in search of the baby’s candy, having potentially been more spoiled than they wanted to be. Perhaps all they needed was to be pointed to a clue in the game that suggested a thief has been stealing things, and therefore perhaps the baby was a victim of this crime. Or, they could be pointed to a character who will reveal the baby has a sweet tooth. The hint they want and the hint they get may not align.

I’d probably try to mitigate this accidental spoiler by creating two topic headings. One could be, “The baby is crying.” Another could be, “Bob has something I need.” (The candy.)

Also, if the player is not a native English speaker (and the game is not localised), the way you explain the “candy from a baby puzzle”, via incremental hints, may need to address that this is an English expression and not assume they understand it. Similarly, aspects of the UI may need to be made explicit for newcomers to the genre. Neurodiverse players maybe bring other approaches to puzzling and understand language differently, too. Not every incremental guide is going to get everything right for every person, just as no game can do that, but this is a quick overview of why “knowing what players are thinking” requires a lot of thought, both on the part of developers and creators of game guides.

You need to know what designers are thinking.

Henry Mosse was a first title for Bad Goat Studios. I’m not sure what prior design experience developers have, but some of the puzzles seemed a little backwards intuitive to me. (It’s not really a criticism. I loved the game, and the puzzles were very enjoyable, overall.) Nonetheless, one of the optional puzzles involves you helping a sad/angry Beast, but there is no way (that I could find) to guess why the Beast is sad/angry until you happen across the item the Beast is missing and, at that point, Henry tells you to take it to the Beast, so it’s no longer a puzzle.

This kind of thing is difficult to hint at in an incremental guide; when the player knows they’re supposed to be doing something, but have no way to connect to the solution. In the Henry Mosse guide, I had to be honest about the non-puzzles, the puzzles I didn’t understand, or those I had solved accidentally. It’s entirely possible that a clue about the Beast is embedded in the game somewhere. I often find myself highlighting or repeating clues that the game has already provided, including explicit tutorial instruction, because people WILL miss these, from time to time, even for the world’s most cleverly constructed puzzle.

Incremental guides require testing.

As incremental guides rely on complex logical structures, I test them thoroughly to look for accidental spoilers, like telling players they need candy via a question. I’m still learning how to perfect this. Spoilers give me nightmares.

Another thing I’ve learned from testing, however, is to repeat keywords. If someone is using an incremental guide occasionally, they might get a hint along the lines of … Q. Where is the spaceship? A. It’s in the forest. … The next hint in the structure might start with … Q. Where exactly? …. but they’ve been working on another puzzle on the way to the forest and come back to the open guide later. If they come back to finding the spaceship and choose … Q. Where exactly? … and the hint is … A. The far left hand side … they may have no idea that you’re talking about the forest and the spaceship, any more. I’d write … Q. Where in the forest can I find the spaceship? A. The spaceship is found in the far left of the forest area. … so that every hint is coherent and clear, in and of itself. Additionally, does the player know where the forest is at this point in the game? Or is it a new location they need to find? Or, will there be players who know where the forest is, and others who don’t? All of these questions are relevant to structure.

It’s also important to know when you’ve exhausted hints for a particular puzzle and have to provide a spoiler. I always try to make sure the player knows the spoiler is coming, often by phrasing the question as something like … Q. Show me an explicit screenshot of the location of the spaceship in the forest. … This ensures the player has agency over how much they are spoiled. (Nice Game Hints also has a built in function for turning the question red, from yellow, when you want to signal a spoiler.)

Some games are harder to write an incremental guide for than others.

Writing any guide for an adventure game with a large open hub and interlocking puzzles is trickier than for a linear game. In a walkthrough, however, the writer can present their one, straightforward journey through the game. It might be difficult for the player to find what they need without spoilers in a linear walkthrough, but the guide remains entirely functional.

In the case of an incremental hint guide, individual players will arrive at any puzzle with divergent understandings of the context and interacting puzzle pieces. In the Henry Mosse guide, I made a very general topic heading; “Dealing with the Dockworker”, for a puzzle that could be approached at any time during a large chapter. After selecting this topic, you can branch into hints for either reaching the character’s location or accessing the item they are holding, if you can already reach them. The player could also be trying to find this item, and/or not know what it is, before they have seen the character holding it, so a separate hint chain addresses that, under a different topic heading. Or, they may see the character and not know what the item is for. Or, they may not be able to see the character without solving an additional puzzle, if they made a divergent choice in the previous chapter, so there are branches to the second set of hints which can lead to that puzzle, if there’s no route to seeing the character yet.

Hero-U is the most complex guide I’ve written. It had around 600 passages in Twine. (It actually broke Twine at about 150, due to the squillion arrows no longer rendering, and I had to continue in Twee.) I loved writing the Hero-U guide, but it was difficult and it took months.

Incremental guides are harder to plagiarise.

As I mentioned above, I’ve been a game reviewer for 14 years. I know what it feels like to have content get lifted and published elsewhere, word for word, without attribution. (It’s not nice.) People steal linear game guides, either explicitly, or by using yours to create theirs. Why? Hits? Advertising? I’m not sure, but I’ve seen this happen to guides a fair bit. Someone is much less likely, or able, to lift something from a site like Nice Game Hints. Take a look at any of Juho’s incremental guides (he’s very prolific) and you’ll instantly become exhausted by the idea of stealing it and go look for a walkthrough to steal instead. As you may be coming to appreciate, writing an incremental hint guide can be time consuming. You’ll work hard to create it. Thankfully, it’s also more difficult to steal.

We need to foster a culture of appreciation for hints.

If you’re a player and you’ve used a game guide that has helped you, either a linear guide, or an interactive one, consider tipping the creator. I didn’t make the Henry Mosse guide for money. I did it because I love Australian games and I want to support the game’s players. But, it took me around 20 hours to create, not including two playthroughs and sharing process in this Gamasutra blog. Juho has built a tip function into NGH. I’m hoping to eventually get enough tips from this guide (on kofi) to pay a saxophonist to record me some parts for an adventure game I’m making myself. It’s an experiment. If it doesn’t happen, that’s OK, too. It seems that people who make guides often get a lot of hits, but can’t always turn hits into reasonable recompense for their labour. Perhaps that’s just the way things are, or perhaps cultures can change.

Developers, people are going to make guides for your game for free. You know that, I know that. I literally just make a guide without pay for Henry Mosse. But (if you don’t already), you could consider giving keys to sites like Nice Game Hints, or to established guide creators. Perhaps you’d pay an experienced person to write an official guide, too. The Thimbleweed Park and Hero-U developers valued the well-structured, low spoiler hints I was able to provide. I’d expect official guides would be something game developers would want to explore, given developers have clear ideas about what kind of engagement they’d like to encourage in their players.

Could the narrative designers on Thimbleweed Park, Hero-U and Henry Mosse have written better incremental hint guides than me? This is a question I honestly don’t know how to answer. I feel like they should be able to write better guides than me, given how well they know their own content, but (specifically) guide creators seem to bring a fresh eye to problem solving that makes their content uniquely valuable. I wish I had more time for making incremental guides.

Thankyou to creators of guides.

To the people who create game guides, thankyou. I use them. And I’m getting better at tipping, where I can. I think of you as fondly as I remember the kids in my Year 8 Computer Studies class. And, I picture a retired Ms Watling enjoying reading your guides in her retirement, too. (Ms Watling wasn’t actually annoying. She was a teacher who played videogames when I was 6; my hero.)

I’ve learned more about adventure games by making these three guides than I have in all my years of reviewing and playing them. Making an incremental hint system for a point and click adventure game is basically like doing deep dive analysis into design. It’s challenging, but fun. Consider whether a low spoiler structure is good for the game you’re making a guide for and its players. And, if you need a place to start making one, Nice Game Hints is ready to provide you with all the tools you need.

(source: gamasutra.com )


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