Scarpia - Application of Puzzle Theory

Today I'm bringing you an oldie. Scarpia's article about Application of Puzzle Theory. Dating from 2003 it's still as useful as it was then, as it covers some basic concepts on the different types of puzzles you can get your players into. It's focused on adventure games (point-and-click), but many of these puzzles have presented themselves in other kind of games as well, such as RPGs or games like Mass Effect, that somehow blend the genres.

I want to state that I just re-formatted the whole article and corrected a couple of typos. I haven't added anything, and I'm not claiming any ownership on the text.


Review - The Whispered World

It's OK, but not great.


The Whispered World is the latest game by Daedalic Entertainment (Ankh), a classical point-and-click adventure. In this genre, story and puzzles play the major rolee in the game, and The Whispered World does a good work on both, but it doesn't really nail them; the story is nice, for a while, but it gets a bit bland at the very end. Puzzles are great, or they would if we were in 1997. If you ever played graphical adventures, chances are you have already done at least a couple of them (the eight queens in a chessboard, yeah).


There aren't many characters in the game, and their voice acting is decent. A couple of them seem to be dubbed by the same guy, though. I've read some complaints about Sadwick's voice. I found it appropriate for the character, but maybe it's because English isn't my native tongue. However, he's one of the greatest emo-kids in history, and while the game tends to mock about it (even Sadwick himself), he may get on your nerves at some point.


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The Whispered World shines when it comes to design; the graphics are gorgeous, in its huge XGA resolution (believe it or not, 1024x768 is even nowadays quite a lot for a totally 2D game). The animations and style resemble those by Disney... but for some reason they didn't seem to be able to give that touch to the cutscenes, that look... well... hm... bad. There just aren't good words for it.


The adventure is pretty long, and I found it, overall, pretty enjoyable. If you can get it at a reduced price it may be worth it. However, be warned, it's just a "decent" game. If you aren't very fond of point-and-click, you won't like it, and if you are, chances are it'll bore you at some points throughout your walkthrough.


As a final score I'm giving it a 5 out of 10. Standard. 15 years ago it would have been obscured by others, but there isn't that much to choose from at the moment unless you go indie.

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Clay and cardboad make great games

At least that's what Cockroach Inc, a Swedish development studio, is trying to tell us with The Dream Machine. Yes, they are creating a classical point-and-click adventure game using claymation (picture!). Remember The Neverhood? This time it will make sense from the beginning. You can play the demo already in the official website, and I mean exactly that. As with Samorost and Machinima, this game uses Flash, so it's actually possible to play directly on the browser.


Also, they're running the Beta test for the first chapter. If you sign up you may be able to play it as well! I'm already looking forward to the release.


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Hello, I'm an alien

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At least the model is now "closed". Probably still needs like 400 hours of polishing to be acceptable, but considering it's going to be quite small in the game (where it will be shown in a sidescroller perspective), and that it's my first organic model, I think it doesn't look THAT bad. I'll probably do a higher polygon model though, with the sculpt tools, to get some nice normal mapping for the clothes that hopefully will make it a bit less boring. Oh, yeah, and textures too.

On a side note, from today when you click on an image to get the full sized version, you'll be able to close the popup by just clicking on the image again. Sadly it doesn't change all those I already uploaded, as re-publishing the blog won't update the html popups.

Edit: Tweaked the general posture of the torso just a bit.

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Faces and crappy models

The title is actually incorrect, as there's only one of each. I've been trying to model the protagonist, Heiko, for some hours. Or at least, something that I can use until I get something better, to start learning about armatures and how to bring the models to Unity 3d.


Anyway, this is a quick sketch of how these people look, the K'zaai:

heikoface.png

So, we have horns, pointy ears, slanted eyes (that should be completely black, no white as they appear there) and horns. Supposedly those horns are kind of "unique" for each K'zaa. Coming from a planet with less gravity than Eart, they are quite tall. It's somehow difficult to distinguish between male and female K'zaai, as they evolved through the path of complex pheromones, instead of the one with boobies.

Anyway, after tearing some blood, this is how the body is looking right now, untextured:

heiko.png
Summarizing: Bad, but I guess that not "that" bad for a less than 300 faces model. Soon she'll have feet and hands, and maybe some re-worked proportions.

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