Articles

by Jeff Strand February 15, 2002

"The Evolution of the Adventure Game, Part Three" by Jeff Strand

For those of you just joining us, I'd like to recap what we've learned in this series so far. Of course, I'd also like Nicole Kidman to show up at my house wearing nothing but gummi bears, but it's probably not going to happen. Instead, let's recap what we haven't learned from this series:

1. Anything useful about the evolution of the adventure game.
2. That sitting on a circular saw can ruin your pants.

That out of the way, let's proceed.

The next major stage in the evolution of the adventure game came with the invention of the mouse, so named because early models tended to squeak and get caught in mousetraps (at least in my household). Suddenly, typing was unnecessary. In fact, we couldn't figure out how we ever were able to handle the misery of moving individual fingers during the course of playing a game! The mouse changed the face of adventure games so thoroughly that when games like Grim Fandango and Escape From Monkey Island returned to keyboard control, some players reacted as if they were being asked to maneuver their character through an involved system of bashing their hands repeatedly against a spiky granite pillar.

The two most popular interfaces were from LucasArts and Sierra. In a LucasArts game, you would select a verb from the nine or so choices (look, take, talk, burn, slurp, impregnate, deglutinate, etc.) and then click on the object you wanted to verb. Sierra games were icon-driven, so if you wanted to "look," you'd move this big creepy eyeball all over the screen. I kept waiting for one of the on-screen characters to scream "Eeeeek! There's a giant disembodied eyeball floating around! Whack it with a rake!" but they never did. To "talk" you moved a mouth icon into every nook and cranny, despite the obvious hygiene and etiquette concerns.

Of course, the biggest change that a mouse-driven interface brought about was in the puzzles. Previously, if you were, say, trying to turn on a lantern, you'd type "TURN ON LANTERN." Then the game would say "THERE IS NOWHERE TO TURN HERE." So you'd type "LIGHT LANTERN" and the game would say "THE LANTERN GLOWS WITH AN OTHERWORLDLY LIGHT" and you'd be happy until you realized that those gas fumes weren't just there to spice up the room description. But with the new system, you'd with just click the "USE" icon, click the lantern, and you'd have a light source!

But the mouse interface also limited your choices. For example, you could no longer "THROW LANTERN AT DUMB ELF," or "DRINK KEROSENE FROM LANTERN," unless that was the option the programmers had decided went with "USE." That wasn't a big deal, because the typing interface would probably just have given you a "YOU CAN'T DO THAT" message anyway. But what if the puzzle really did involve throwing a lantern at the dumb elf?

In the old system, you'd have to make a conscious choice: Okay, I've got a lantern. I see the dumb elf, who is wearing a highly flammable polyester loincloth. I'm going to throw this lantern at the dumb elf, thus igniting his loincloth and freeing the magical key hidden within.

In the new system, you might be thinking: My lantern is ever so shiny and pretty. I wonder if that elf would like to see my lantern, so that he can gaze upon his reflection and become so enamored that I am able to reach into the loincloth and retrieve the key? So you'd click on the lantern, click on the elf, and suddenly your character would throw the lantern at him, which wasn't your intent. As if by magic, you could solve puzzles without really knowing what you were doing.

Those of us who were long-time adventure gamers scoffed at this new system. Oh, how we scoffed! There was scoffing galore. "Adventure games are now aimed at the common dullard!" we proclaimed, gesturing at the common dullards surrounding us. But then one of these long-time adventure gamers (me) spent more money in calls to the 1-900 hint line than he'd paid for the game itself, and scoffed no more.

That's another way that adventure games have changed...the way we get hints. It used to be that the only source of hints was this gargantuan nerd named Scott, who claimed to have played and solved every computer game that humanity ever created, and also said that he fused a Commodore 64 and an Apple II together into one mega-machine, although I suspect he just used Scotch tape.

Another possible source was Glenn, a severely stuck-up goober who would play Zork during computer class, but he'd cover the screen so we couldn't benefit from his progress. I remember writing an elaborate computer program in BASIC called "Jokes About Glenn," which contained such material as "What's the difference between Glenn and a bucket of tapeworms?" "The bucket." Then "HAHAHAHAHA!!!" would scroll down the screen for about thirty seconds until it was time for the next joke. (Tapeworm humor was big in that class, as it should be in every class.)

But if you didn't have a Toby or Glenn in your neighborhood, getting hints was going to cost you. You could order Invisiclues from Infocom, where you would use the invisible ink-decoding marker to reveal progressively more detailed answers to a question like "How do I get the diamond?" the final answer to which would sometimes explain that there was no diamond anywhere in the game, and then ridicule you for not even pretending to complete the game on your own. You could also subscribe to publications like Questbusters, but if you needed help on a specific game right away, you'd have to call the 1-900 number, and then later try to explain that 1-900-GAMES4U was not a sex line.

Actually, there was also the occasional program that included in-game hints, where you could either only access a limited number of hints or your score was reduced each time you used one, a foolproof setup that forced players to only use hints when absolutely necessary, unless they were familiar with the obscure save/restore functions.

But now, with the handy Internet, you can practically start cheating before the game is even finished! You can post a question on a newsgroup and get bitched at by dozens of people within seconds! It's progress that even Glenn and his tapeworm-ravaged soul could never have imagined.

Anyway, back to the scoffing. Though puzzles were simplified with the mouse-driven interface, an entirely new breed of puzzle was born: the pixel-hunt, meaning a puzzle where the important element on the screen was so tiny or well-hidden that it felt like you had to click one pixel at a time to find it. At least, that's what it used to mean. The term has recently come to refer to any puzzle where the important element doesn't have a giant flashing arrow with neon letters reading "CLICK HERE, JACKASS!!!"

The icon-driven interface flourished, but another change was on the horizon. For adventure games were about to become...immersive.

To be continued...