Difficulty


Once again, from the comments in the manual, one can infer that Loom was made from the start to be an easy game to play. One definitely gets the sense that the game truly wants players to succeed and hopes players will see the end of its lovely story. Traditionally, adventure games prided themselves on vexing players and making them play the game again and again until, after much suffering, a reward was doled out.

The LucasArts games made a dramatic break from other adventure games by, for the most part, preventing players from ever being killed or from ever getting stuck. Many prior adventure games included countless ways to die, thereby punishing players who had forgotten to save their game. Some adventure games would also allow players to progress in the game even though they may have forgotten to do something fundamental earlier in the game. Then players would get to a location, not have the object needed there, and have no way of going back to get it. In effect players were dead, since they could not progress in the game, but this was a worse kind of death: it was death masquerading as life, where players could still interact with the game-world but had no chance of actually winning the game. The LucasArts games set a standard that many subsequent adventure games have emulated: do not be unfair to players.

If the LucasArts games in general tried to eliminate player frustration, Loom went one step further in making the game as player-friendly as possible. Some cries were made by players that Loom was too easy. Indeed, the adventure game enthusiasts who had been hardened on the adventure games that came before Loom found it very easy to finish. They were used to dying around every corner and spending hours bashing their heads against nearly incomprehensible puzzles. Indeed, many adventure gamers were accustomed to not being able to finish the games at all, at least not without buying a hint book. But the problem with making games that only appealed to the veteran enthusiasts was that it made it hard for any new players to start playing adventure games. If players were not already experienced with these twisted and convoluted exercises in masochism, there was a good chance an adventure game would frustrate players so much that they would feel no desire to try another one.




Game Design Theory and Practice
Game Design: Theory and Practice (2nd Edition) (Wordware Game Developers Library)
ISBN: 1556229127
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 189

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net