Although it has been around in one form or another since the early 80s, people still have room in their hearts for a good old-fashioned point-and-click adventure game. In fact, some people (Cough Zoomers Cough) are learning how rewarding it can be to patiently examine a multitude of pixels in the hope of finding just the one that matters, or how frustrating it can be to grapple with developers’ unique interpretations of human logic.
To learn more about how to bridge this generation gap between gamers, Editor-in-Chief Danielle Riendeau sat down with adventure game designer and Revolution Software co-founder Charles Cecil to talk about Revolution’s upcoming 4K remake of Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templar.
Produced by Jordan Mallory and featuring music by Mike Meehan, this is episode 46 of the Game Developer Podcast.
As was the case over 30 years ago, adventure game developers in 2024 must walk a tightrope when it comes to managing difficulty. Cecil’s approach is to give hints when needed, but be sparing. Too little help and you risk frustrating the player, but too much and you rob them of that all-important sense of achievement.
“It would be better to give these little hints too rarely than too often, because if a player is close to a solution and is really excited that they’ve figured it out and then we give them a hint, they’re going to find that very, very frustrating,” Cecil explains. “At the end of the day, people play these story games and feel smart because they’re the ones driving the whole thing forward.”
For Cecil, writing this player-driven story is a separate but symbiotic process compared to designing the various puzzles that ultimately form the basis of the experience.
“I come up with a two- or three-page story,” says Cecil, “where I obviously imagine how the gameplay might fit into it, and then I start designing the puzzles in parallel.” And while these two halves of the project “remain separate documents,” they are also in constant dialogue with each other, as “the story is always influenced and complemented by the puzzles. … We’ll be looking for great moments where the story and the puzzles come together in some kind of climax.”
In the specific case of Broken Sword – Shadow of the Knights Templar: ReforgedThe remake not only offers younger players the opportunity to experience the magic of the 90s computer classic, but also gives Cecil the chance to make amends for the mistakes of the past.
“In one particular scene, a drainpipe has been irritating me for nearly 30 years,” says Cecil. If the player decides to pull on the pipe, “it comes off the wall and (the protagonist) says, ‘Well, the clown didn’t escape that way.'” But in the original 1996 illustration of this scene, the pipe is not connected to anything, meaning that the clown apparently would not have been able to use it to escape, even if he had somehow fit inside.
“This has been bugging me for so long, so I go to the artist and say, ‘Please, just make me happy. Just draw the drainpipe so it looks like it’s going up past the top of the screen.’ There are so many little things like that.”
Experience the joy of finally finding the right pixel when Broken Sword – Shadow of the Knights Templar: Reforged starts on September 18. In the meantime, we recommend you listen to our charming little podcast and then see what happens with the also upcoming GDC showcase.
