The Perfect Adventure Game

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Law 1: The Story is everything.








Law 2: Playability must be addictive.








Law 3: Navigation must be "Intuitive-able".








Law 4: Puzzles must be solvable by real people in real life.








Law 5: Window dressing must enhance, but never dominate.

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Adventure Architect Series

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It’s probably the industry's best kept secret that many of the most entertaining new adventure games these days are being designed not by the major studios, but by amateurs—fans of the genre working alone or in small teams to do something that we’ve all wanted to do at one time or another: create our own adventure game. Beginning this month, I’ll be taking my first steps down that road as well. I’ll report on everything I learn along the way, from choosing a game engine and deciding on a story idea to writing the plot and, eventually, even beta testing and completion.

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terrific articles... enjoyed the architect series particularly.

thanks O-B

Great Articles. Thanks for the link

Very nice artical's. Though i dont plan to create or play a Adventure game anytime soon.. the laws can be used in other games as well

yep... i agree wholeheartedly with SB's comment...

good link OB, thanks

--Mike

The Economics of a 2D Adventure in Today's Market

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...this article contains gory and gruesome details about the games business and, in particular, marketing and distribution. If you'd rather remain blissfully oblivious to the horrors of what goes on behind the scenes, this is the place to stop reading. If you're one of those people that can't help but stare at a car accident, read on.

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The Inventory

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A Magazine for Adventure Games Only

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The Art of Puzzle Design

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Creating puzzles is an art, like creating songs, movies or poetry. Here are my thoughts on the art of puzzle design. You'll also find links to puzzle sites and a bibliography of articles about puzzle design.

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The 10 Scariest [Adventure] Games of All Time

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How scary is The Dark Eye? (Major spoiler ahead!) It has the power to so involve that you forget you are playing a game. One of the multiple story lines concerns a woman who has a sleeping sickness and, mistakenly diagnosed as dead, is buried alive. As you are occupying the character's body, you are not aware of your desperate situation. All we as the player see is a pitch-black monitor screen, and all we as the player hear is our fingernails scratching the inside of the coffin. It was right at this point of realizing that I was buried alive that my son entered the dark computer room and, since I was wearing headphones, tapped me on the shoulder. There is still to this day an indentation in the ceiling from my head.

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maybe you alreay know it , but its good to mentioned it :

http://www.the-underdogs.org/

this site contains tons of abandonware/freeware games and reviews from all times.
it all categorized nicely .
by downloading theses old game which many of them were geniusly crafted : great puzzles , super plots , inresting and unique ideas .

you can learn a lot , and take tons of great ideas for games or for puzzles .

Adventure Developers

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Some people still say the adventure genre is dead. Some say it's sleeping. Some say it's reviving and others say the genre has never really been away. Whatever you may say, one thing's assured: there's still a lot of interest in the adventure genre.









Most publishers, however, seem to ignore this. They don't believe the traditional adventure game could make enough money anymore. In an on-the-move society where instant gratification is a must, the gaming public seems to need to always keep their mouse fingers twitching in blazing first person shoot-outs and exhilarating car chases.










This has caused the market to be flooded with mindless action oriented games, leaving us adventure gamers pretty much out in the cold.










Fortunately for us, there are still people out there who do believe in this genre. And that number of people is increasing rapidly for the past few years. We've seen very interesting projects developing by independent studios, sometimes funded by small publishers. Also fans have been creating their own 'amateur' game projects, some good, some bad, some finished, many abandoned.









Adventure Developers is not only here to tell you about all of these interesting games and developing projects, but is also a source for news. Furthermore, we're a place to discuss games, projects and other issues with our visitors. Our forums are available for developers as well, to promote their projects, ask for help, find members for their teams, and more. We also publish articles, tutorials, and other features, sometimes written by (recognised) industry professionals.











In short: we're a place for both those who're interested in playing (independently developed) adventures and for those interested in developing their own games.












We hope you'll all have a pleasant stay.

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@zohar: I'm familiar with that site, but note that that most of those games still have a copyright holder; thus downloading them is piracy. In short, it's a warez site. Please consult their FAQ.

Not everything on there was commercial, though and some games may have been released to the public domain, so there are some legal downloads to be found. Also, any software that is still available commercially has only a link to where you can purchase it from.

On the legal side, it's a good site to search for old screenshots, box art, history, and other specific information about the software and industry of yesterday.

The site has changed a bit since the last time I visited which was a long time ago. All of the more well known games used to be on there, as well, but I see that all of those have been removed so that the site lives up to its "underdog" reputation.