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[eri0o]

Hello,

I am doing a pixelart old-school point and click adventure game (think The Dig) and I am looking into ideas for effects and mechanics that could add juice and game feel to make the game feel fresher - ideas like screen shake in some modern action games when you take damage, except this is a  slow paced puzzle game.

[bombjack]

Any attention to detail would ad juice to it.
eg:
- ptich shift for some sound to add diversity
- tweening/easing instead of straightt movement
- visual feedback for interaction: add dust etc...
- leave trace in the rooms the player already explored etc...

[Lares Yamoir]

I think in order to make a point and click adventure more juicy, you need to implement a more direct control scheme first. Simply because after clicking on a element to perform an action, you'll typically have to wait for the character to move there. So with every action there is a delay on the actual response to said action. Well at least I feel that way, when playing point and click games.

[eri0o]

Bombjack, I like your ideas, leave trace is something I am not exploring.

Lares Yamoir, I don't usually like to direct people from one forum to another, but since I am waiting electricity to come back where I live, can you take a look in the approach I took here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=55077.msg636573199#msg636573199

[Lares Yamoir]

I took a look at the thread, but honestly this is not something that can easily be reviewed via videos and screenshots.

The animated gif in the post you have linked to directly seems fine, but it's not the kind of problem I was talking about.

From what I've seen you also let your character walk right up to the object you want to interact with, before giving the actual information (click on arcade machine -> character moves to machine -> character explains that this is one of Gary's). I don't know if that information is important, but it does seem to be flavor text. So why does the player have to wait 3-4 seconds (the walking time) to get the information? I know the way you did it is normal for point&click games, but why not break the rules here?
Would it be so strange to let the character just comment on the object from where he's standing? And just to be clear: I'm talking about actions like "look around" or ones that fail anyway/are just there for flavor. If the character picks something up or opens a door, obviously he needs to be in front of that.

It would be great if you could find something that would also improve the response time for successful/important actions. But I don't have a solid idea of what fits a classic point&click game and still feels responsive. Maybe it would be enough to use a run-animation instead of a walk-animation (and double the movement speed) in case the player clicks on an object that is x pixels away from the character.

[Lowbit]

Game feel for an adventure game. Cool topic! I couldn't help picturing a bunch of screenshakes and hitsparks whenever you click on something. Maybe some chromatic aberration on the bartender whenever he talks.

I'd recommend focusing extra flair on the rewarding aspects of the game. Inspecting an object for the first time and revealing new text is a reward, so maybe reward the player with a confirmation noise. And if they ever click on object again, and it's the same text as before, dim the reward by playing a slightly less satisfying confirmation noise. You could do the same with the visuals by having the cursor react differently to new content.

(That highlight effect on the main menu is fantastic.)

[BorisTheBrave]

There's a lot of adventure games where the protagonist has some sort of special power, like being psychic, smell-o-vision etc. These are often an opportunity for both visual flair as well as USP.

Voice acting also comes to mind - not really in an indie purview, but the older adventure games stand out for their lack of it.

[TitoOliveira]

I think you could approach the game like a big UI screen, and apply the principles of UX to it. Might wanna study the topic a little bit.

[eri0o]

What an amazing community!

First thank you Lares Yamoir, you did a pretty good analysis. Also Thanks bombjack for the direct and to the point list of things. And thanks Lowbit, BorisTheBrave and TitoOliveira.

Yeah, how to add dynamism and feelgood vibes using game-feels in a slow-paced point and click pixelart game. It's a hard topic but I like the ideas and I will have to sleep on them a little.

The idea I liked the most from this thread:
- leave trace. Right now, in the first act of the game, the player doesn't revisit any levels (a group of rooms where there is a single major goal). But at some point he will. Also some levels have a big group of rooms. I see this in lots of action games, some stuff you just smash for the sake of. I don't know how to translate to point and click but a cool thing to reflect upon.

Also some cool points here:
- break the rules where makes sense. I think this is a big one, I guess at most look ats I will make the player character face in the direction and nod the head somehow (maybe run a 50% he adjust his glasses). This will save some movement time that may be not needed.
- extra flair on the rewarding: this is a very good idea, I like this. I am right now playing with the music as you get near the completion of a level, reading this I got ideas on how to do this visually.
- clarify when you reveal new text on the first time: I like this, I am not sure on the warning through sound, but I will try to think some more on this.
- visual feedback for interation: I like this, I imagine some dust being sprinkled away from collected objects. I will sleep more on this idea.
- tweening: I am already using a lot of tweening, one thing though is that I found out that 95% of the time, for my point and click game, the linear tween works best, only at some corner cases I used other types of tween (screenshake for instance likes bouncy).
- voice acting: yes, I want to do voice acting, unfortunately due to cost I will have to wait until the game is finished (and I don't live on US, I live in Brazil, so finding people speaking english is hard).

temporarly discarded ideas:
- ptitch shift for sound : too difficult to do on the engine right now :/
- run animation: as much as I like this idea, it just doesn't fit my main character, he is really not the running type.
- chromatic aberration: since I am going clear pixelart right now, unless I throw away all hard rules (like Last Night, that does this beautifully) this just doesn't look good - or I am very bad at implementing this. If someone has any image of chromatic aberration that uses at least 1 full pixel size in the distortion, please show me images and ideas where to apply!
- approach the game as UX problem: I have no idea what this means, so I am discarding this.

[pjsdev]

I think making each click feel impactful is definitely a good place to focus as this is the main interaction for the player. Also, as stated above, making the rewarding interactions feel extra good makes sense. For this stuff I would try all the tween tricks, subtle cam shakes, tiny momentary pauses to let the player enjoy a victory etc..

Also, for me, the full screen dialogue popup really takes me out of the feeling of being real space, it's like: "hey, you! you're playing a game". This could just be me, but I wonder whether you've played around with a less dominating speech UI or world space speech bubble?

Just my two cents. Good luck!

[Slapdash]

I think in order to make a point and click adventure more juicy, you need to implement a more direct control scheme first. Simply because after clicking on a element to perform an action, you'll typically have to wait for the character to move there. So with every action there is a delay on the actual response to said action. Well at least I feel that way, when playing point and click games.

This is quite interesting. In this sense you will make a point and click game more of n exploratory Resident Evil style game perhaps.
Problem here is then you can't use specific points of interest to click on but highlight areas. Think also like diablo when you pick up items.

My main issue with the Point and Click games is finding a great way from letting the people not click on everything and then rewarding them with a clue or gameplay mechanic. I liked the way the old school games like Space Quest did it by typing specifically what you want the character to do. It broadened up the whole game with so many possibilities. However...I doubt many people today would want to play a game like that, and, it will basically exclude consoles if you ever want to get the game runnign on there.

[Lares Yamoir]

This is quite interesting. In this sense you will make a point and click game more of n exploratory Resident Evil style game perhaps.
Problem here is then you can't use specific points of interest to click on but highlight areas. Think also like diablo when you pick up items.

That's one possible outcome, yes. You could also design the game from a first person POV, making the game into either a hidden object game (no walking at all, only scene changes) or something like Gone Home (walking around is part of exploring the environment and therefore doesn't feel like waiting).

There are many ways to solve this problem. I'm sure some are even suitable for classic point&click style games.

My main issue with the Point and Click games is finding a great way from letting the people not click on everything and then rewarding them with a clue or gameplay mechanic. I liked the way the old school games like Space Quest did it by typing specifically what you want the character to do. It broadened up the whole game with so many possibilities. However...I doubt many people today would want to play a game like that, and, it will basically exclude consoles if you ever want to get the game runnign on there.

I'm not so sure about that. Stories Untold did this to a degree and people seem to like it. There are also other successful games that rely on typing for their main mechanic, like Her Story.

[Thaumaturge]

That's one possible outcome, yes. You could also design the game from a first person POV, making the game into either a hidden object game (no walking at all, only scene changes) or something like Gone Home (walking around is part of exploring the environment and therefore doesn't feel like waiting).

You wouldn't quite have a hidden-object game or a Gone-Home-like, necessarily, but perhaps something more like Myst or the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games, respectively. As those demonstrate, I feel, both approaches have been used successfully for point-and-click adventures.

(The Myst-like approach has been used in less logic-puzzle-centric games, I believe, but to my annoyance the best example that's coming to mind is the likely-obscure Darkness Within. ^^; )

That said, they do have disadvantages: both may call for more asset-generation (or be somewhat limited), and the Sherlock-like approach may leave some players motion-sick who would otherwise want to play.