Sunday, July 02, 2006

Design Genres #4: Point & Click

Having mentioned this genre in both the Firefly post and the recent Design Features, I figured it was about time to give one of my favorite game genres of yesteryear its own article.

Point & Clicks were the next logical step in the Interactive Fiction field after text games, a popular field that all but indundated home computers since the early ages of the Commodore 64. Possibly even before, though my knowledge only tends to go as far back as the 80s, what with having been born then and all. While those text adventures have gone off on a indie/fan-based tangent of their own that's still around today, commerical games took the leap to graphical adventures shortly into the 90s with early successes - such as Maniac Mansion, the King's/Space Quest series and Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade - for the game consoles of the time (Atari ST/Amiga/NES). The gameplay behind them wasn't much different from the original text adventures: You played a part in a story, and needed to use items and the world around you to progress slowly through the plot. What was new with Point & Clicks, as the name suggests, was that you could now point and click on objects to use them instead of inputting a text command to do the same. The emphasis on the graphical surroundings meant you could explore a fuller world, with more hidden or inconsequential discoveries to be made.

Instead of going too much into their history, the seemingly last appearances of the genre were made in the late 90s with excellent titles such as Discworld Noir (the third P&C based on Terry Pratchett's amazing Discworld series), Grim Fandango and the latter entries of Curse of Monkey Island. After which, the genre sort of sputtered out. Until the release of one console that was a natural choice for the Point & Click to call home: Nintendo DS. With the touchpad, players could now literally point and click places of interest or items to collect in a game, and the compact format still had the graphical power to produce sharp and concise 2D backgrounds to explore. Several brilliant games have used the touchpad for this effect, most notably so far Phoenix Wright and Another Code (or Trace Memory as its known in the US).

Rather than come up with design ideas like I usually do for this type of article, I've decided to leave this one purely introspective as the genre's creativity comes through the deep story and narrative as well as the puzzles the player must solve. There are no devices; no features or gimmicks that will make a Point & Click work better than any other of its type, all it needs is an awesome plot to follow with situations and puzzle solutions to keep players guessing. While some games used some experimental features, such as Indiana Jone's fighting subgame (which could usually be avoided with some quick-witted bluffing) or the Gobliiin's real-time puzzle solving which involved one goblin character performing an action that allowed the second to reach an otherwise unreachable area or item, most depend on the complexity and entertainment of the narrative itself.

Unfortunately, I'm no author (you may have gleaned as much from the blog entries so far), so in order to contribute to such a game, I would probably be required to create some of the item puzzles for the player to progress while making sure to stay relevant to the story. Which would be pretty interesting I think.