Is point and click the run and gun of puzzle games?

[Nuclear Mosquito]

So I might have made a bit of a misleading title, but there is a reason for it.

So for the past IGMC I've made a puzzle adventure game (Think very bad Secret of monkey island made in rpg maker) and I've noticed a peculiar thing. When it comes to these puzzle games a lot of designers tend to fall back on the typical fetch quests where you have to do something or run somewhere to get an item which you need to progress. I'm also very guilty of this. The mechanic in itself has some merit, but is that all which the genre has to offer?

What I'm asking for is your opinions on the matter and maybe some examples of games that can prove me wrong.

Also to clarify:

I know that most of these games are more story driven, but I'd like this discussion to have a bit more of a mechanics focus to it.

Happy posting

 

[Geoff Moore]

Ahhh, Monkey Island.

Fetch quests are common in a lot of genres, of course - they're just so easy to come up with. But I think puzzle games are the least guilty of this, at least the oldish school ones like Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky, and especially the really oldschool examples like Zork, are the least guilty of it. As you can tell, I haven't played many games in the last million years, so I don't really know what the state of play is now.

 

[Tathel]

One or two fetch quests aren't a bad thing, though a fetch quest in itself isn't even a puzzle; it is, by its own name, a fetch quest. It's the difference between realizing the door needs a key and having the game scream "THIS DOOR NEEDS A KEY! REMEMBER THAT GUY BACK THREE LEVEL TALKING ABOUT THE KEY HE LOVED SO MUCH, WELL WOULDN'T IT BE CONVIENENT IF THAT WAS THE ONE THAT FITS!" that makes the difference between a slight annoyance and a complete waste of time.
If anyone can point out a fetch quest that was actually fun, I would be happy to play it and possibly change my opinion on this, but until then, fetch quests are not even puzzles, simply a time sink.

 

[hiromu656]

I kind of feel like the search for hidden items and the almost back and forth nature of point and click games is what differentiates them from the other types of puzzle adventure games. In a game like the Legend of Zelda, you go through puzzles and battles, "fetch" the key and return to the locked door, but the control over your character is what separates the genres. And speaking of genres, at this point its a bit difficult to truly define many of the recent puzzle adventure games. I can't really say that a Professor Layton game plays like a Zelda, or a Monkey Island, but they all have similar mechanics. The control you have over the characters is what sets them all apart.

I guess what I'm saying is, games like Monkey Island, Myst, Deponia etc. are what they are, because that's all they're trying to be. If you were to throw in a turn based combat system or a central parkour mechanic into Monkey Island, it wouldn't even be considered within the same realm as other point and click adventures. Sanitarium (which I hugely recommend) plays on a few mechanics that are a bit more involving for the player but most of the time you're going from one clue to the next unraveling a great story. One recent game I can say that feels similar to classic point and click games is the Phoenix Wright series, primarily the part where you gather evidence on the crime scene, after that comes a Court System, which is why the series won't really come up during a conversation on point and click games.

I can't say that I'm a super big player of point and click, but these are my thoughts on the puzzle adventure genre.

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

Is milk the bread of drink?

 

[Nuclear Mosquito]

Is milk the bread of drink?

Imagine how this confused me, having read it just after waking up XD

 

[Matseb2611]

It can be tricky to come up with interesting puzzles, but a lot of the time you don't need to come up with something super original that's never been done before. What I notice is that you can take just about any existing puzzle mechanic, then tweak it slightly, and you have a whole new puzzle on your hands. What's more, you can really adapt it to your game's setting too and make it as unusual as possible. RPG maker is a really versatile engine. It allows for a lot of cool puzzle mechanics.