Adventure Game Design Patterns

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized.
What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.

Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk 📖

How about an abstract approach to adventure game design? Or at least an abstract approach to creating puzzles in adventure games — that could be useful!

The General Pattern That Adventure Games Take

Here is the general format adventure games usually present:

An objective is given or hinted at.

Become a ninja, save the world, rescue a girl, save a kingdom, get that guy’s hat…

The objective is not immediately obtainable.

Attempting to achieve the objective will explain why it’s currently not achievable.

The ninja master lives in Japan and you live in Australia, you don’t know who bought the nuclear weapons, there’s a big forest in front of the tower where the girl is imprisoned, the guy with the hat has a big dog…

The objective then splits into sub-objectives. Each of those may split into further sub-objectives, and at the finest granularity are the puzzles.

The puzzles are interesting because they’re more broadly applicable to gaming as a whole.

Puzzles

Let’s break down adventure game puzzles into pieces and then we can categorise these pieces and use them as building blocks for new puzzles.

Most of my examples will be taken from Monkey Island One. If you’ve not played it, beware of spoilers.

We can describe puzzles using the notation below:

ascii PROBLEM → SOLUTION

Here’s our first example puzzle to break down. It’s one of the puzzles from Monkey Island 1.

Problem: You can’t get into the kitchen because the cook always stops you.

Solution: Wait until the cook is serving the pirates food, then go to the kitchen.

We only want a rough mechanical idea of what’s going on, so we might formalise this as:

Problem: Guardian

Solution: Temporal

The problem is described as Guardian, to mean some entity prevents you from taking a certain action.

The solution Temporal means you must do some action at a given time — maybe at night, on Tuesday, or when someone is distracted.

You can probably think of several puzzles that could fit into the above slots, and that’s why I think looking at these puzzles is a good idea.

We could expand the above formalisation to dictate what’s being guarded:

Problem: Guardian(location)
Solution: Temporal

Let’s move on to a list of problem types and solution types that I’ve identified. Then we can go through some examples of how to use them.

Problems

Problems can be a little fuzzy in their boundaries.

Guardian

There is a FOO stopping you from doing something. It may block a location, guard an item, or prevent access to an NPC.

Typical Example: The bridge troll guarding a bridge.

Non-Typical Example: Bad breath guarding an NPC — you won’t talk to him with bad breath.

Want FOO

Your character wants or needs something but cannot directly get it. This may be knowledge, money, training, etc.

Typical Example: The sword costs 300 gold.

Key Request

To proceed, the character must have a certain item. The character might need a password, membership in a certain group, certain clothes, etc.

Typical Example: A locked door that requires a key.

Temporal Item

An item that you need to use keeps disappearing before you can use it.

Maybe you need a gold key to open a door in the thieves’ market — but it’s always stolen when you get to the door. Or you need to transport acid but it dissolves the container.

Typical Example: ?

Hidden FOO

This is a problem the player might be unaware of, and it’s potentially a very hard problem.

There’s an item, destination, or NPC that the player needs but it’s somehow hidden.

A file in a cake, a tree house city up a tree trunk, secret passage, long lost master trainer… You might need a microscope, telescope, or something that allows you to see the hidden thing, or you might need to pick up or move a concealing object.

Typical Example: File in a cake.

FOO Out of Reach

You can see, smell, hear, see evidence of, or have been told about FOO, but you can’t physically get it.

This is closely related to Want FOO.

Maybe it’s too high up, or maybe you can’t catch it. Think a mouse, a parachute in a tree, a treasure chest deep underwater, a monkey with a gold ring, a lost city, an island, the moon.

Typical Example: A box on a top shelf that you can’t reach. The fabled city of gold.

Trapped

Your character is somehow trapped and needs to escape.

Perhaps locked in a room, with a cement block on their feet and sinking underwater, tied up, and all the variations on the theme.

Typical Example: Thrown into prison.

Approaching Danger

If you stay where you are and do nothing you will die (or similar).

Think of an oncoming flood, being underwater and about to drown, a biker gang approaching, the police coming for you, an evil alien after you, the ground crumbling, a bomb about to go off, angry bears, BEES!

(Can sometimes be similar to trapped.)

Solutions

A problem may have more than one solution or a combination of solution pieces.

New Item Perception

An item must be seen in a new light.

That pot could be a helmet, the bat could be a boomerang. This is something the user has to understand in their head, or it may be required that the character formally understands this knowledge.

For instance, you may need to look at the bat, then the character might say:

“Hey, looks a bit like a boomerang.”

The game will then rename it baaterang and you will now be able to use it as a different item.

Typical Example: Water as a mirror, paper clip as lock pick.

Combine Items

You need to combine two, usually inventory, items to produce a more useful item.

Poison and meat creates drugged meat. Cat hair and glue creates fake sideburns. Gold foil and a toy badge creates a police badge.

Typical Example: Poison and meat to create drugged meat.

Trial and Error

Generally something to be avoided, but it can be an amusing distraction.

What’s the correct offering to the hillside tribe? How should a certain machine be adjusted or put together? What order should three levers be pressed in? How should a conversation tree be navigated?

Typical Example: Pull three levers in the correct order to open the door.

Obvious Item Use

Using an item straightforwardly on another object, or performing a straightforward action on an object.

A key on a door, the fish with the troll that wants fish, the money with the shopkeeper.

Typical Example: Give money to the shopkeeper.

Change Item State

Very closely related to obvious item use, but specifically items that change their current state.

Eating a cake, smashing a glass, burning wood to get charcoal, cooking raw meat, opening the box…

Typical Example: Eating a cake to get a file. Opening a container.

Temporal

Warning: this can be a very difficult solution.

You must do a certain action at a certain time — enter the kitchen when the chef isn’t looking, sacrifice the virgin during a full moon, spit when the wind is blowing with you, throw the bomb when the gas fire goes out.

At all other times the action will fail.

Typical Example: Enter a room when the owner isn’t there or is distracted.

Monkey See Monkey Do

This is quite a general meaning.

You might see an NPC give a password, then follow their lead and say the same word. Or you might see them perform a combination, or physically follow them through the streets to see where they go.

Typical Example: Follow the NPC to his secret place or treasure.

Repetition

Do the same action more than once.

It won’t succeed on the first action but will succeed on a subsequent repetition.

For example, kicking a wooden door once may do nothing; kicking it a second time might break it. You might have to ask an NPC about something twice to show that you’re really interested.

These solutions can also be quite difficult.

Typical Example: Breaking something, smashing a bar window with a hammer, chopping down a tree with a saw.

Spatial

Can be even more difficult than temporal.

An action will only succeed if the character is in a certain place.

Avoid the patrol by standing in the shadows, shoot the apple by standing on the hillock, be behind the man when you hit him with the bat.

Typical Example: Hiding in the shadows so you can’t be seen.

Bait Item Use

Different from obvious item use.

With obvious item use, we give the fish-wanting troll the fish.

With bait item use, we throw the fish in the river and the troll jumps in after it. We “bait” the river.

Bait item use indirectly solves the problem — something nearby is interacted with in the hope it will distract or remove the problem.

Throwing a rabid chipmunk into a chef’s kitchen so you can steal his washcloth. Putting cheese in a mouse trap. Putting an attractive woman across the road to make a bouncer move away from a door.

Typical Example: Cheese in a mouse trap to catch a mouse you cannot directly catch.

Real World Knowledge

The puzzle requires some aspect of real-world knowledge.

This includes nearly every puzzle, but this pattern highlights puzzles where it is especially true.

Formulating a chemical compound, using magnets to move metal objects, knowing that to siphon petrol you usually start by sucking the pipe with your mouth, that a strong magnet will wipe a video cassette, that salt wards off evil…

If the knowledge required is too obscure it may make the game very hard.

Typical Example: Balloons are often filled with helium, helium is lighter than air, helium can change your voice.

Sabotage (high level)

Stop something working. Prevent something from happening.

If you want to get a better job in a company, you might sabotage the competition using laxatives in their drink, talking to them, distracting them with a light. You could remove a car’s spark plugs, put a penny on train tracks…

Typical Example: A spanner between two cogs.

Common Puzzles

The Trade

Trade is a restricted version of:

Want Foo → Simple Item Use

It is where, to get something, you must give something first:

Want Foo → Simple Item Use (give)

You want the magic axe, but the warrior wants a replacement weapon before he’ll hand it over.

This is the normal trade puzzle.

It’s not really a trade puzzle if you can hit him on the head with a spade and then take the axe, which is what the unrestricted Want Foo → Simple Item Use would allow.

Unless you say you were trading a blow on the head with a shovel for an axe… but I think the warrior may want to dispute that.

Need To Travel

A special case of FOO out of reach, where FOO is a location.

Think Monkey Island: The Secret of Monkey Island, or the secret herb patch in a forest.

FOO out of reach(location)

The solution may be a long series of puzzles.

Some Notes About the Above Categories

All categories are human inventions and exist only in our heads. Few category systems are perfect.

Some puzzles are better and more satisfying than others. The main problem with this system is that it does not differentiate between good puzzles and lacklustre ones.

With that said, there are a few things I’d like to focus on here:

I think in Monkey Island 2 you had to close an open door to find something on the back of it. At the time, an extremely tricky puzzle because it’s an easily overlooked thing.

The same kind of thing happens with picking up an item that you would imagine to be unpickupable, such as a poster on a board of other posters. The poster might be useful in itself, or reveal a hole or a different poster.

It’s worth noting this list doesn’t say much about making a good game either.

For instance, in Monkey Island 1 there’s some great foreshadowing where you get money from the circus for being fired out of a cannon with a pot on your head, then later you fire yourself out of a cannon with a pot on your head to get to Monkey Island.

Big Example List

These examples are taken from Monkey Island 1. If you haven’t played the game yet, I advise you skip this section.

Release the Prisoner — Monkey Island 1

The prisoner is stuck in his cell.

Grog will dissolve the bars’ lock. Unfortunately, it also dissolves the cup.

To solve this problem you must keep transferring the grog from cup to cup.

Problem: Temporal Object
Solution: Repetition, Combine Items

You must repeatedly transfer the grog from cup to cup.

Cannon Job — Monkey Island 1

You wish to get fired from a cannon for money, but your potential employers are unwilling to fire you without a helmet.

You give them a cooking pot and they agree to fire you.

Problem: Key Request
Solution: New Item Perception, Obvious Item Use

Guardian Dogs — Monkey Island 1

There are dangerous dogs blocking your path.

You must realise that a petal causes sleep, then combine the petal with meat, then give the drugged meat to the dogs.

Problem: Guardian
Solution: New Item Perception, Combine Items, Obvious Item Use

Getting a Bird’s Fish — Monkey Island 1

A bird is eating a fish on the dock.

You want the fish, but every time you approach it flies away with the fish.

If you stand in a certain place, a board rises and hits the bird, knocking it away and leaving the fish for you.

Problem: Guardian
Solution: Spatial Location

Swordsman Training — Monkey Island 1

You want the swordsman to train you, but he won’t do it unless you have a sword and give him money.

Once you have the sword you must show it to him, and once you have the gold you must give it to him.

Problem: Want FOO
Solution: Obvious Item Use (gold), Obvious Item Use (sword)

Trapped — Full Throttle

At the start of the game you’re trapped in a dumpster.

Problem: Trapped

If you punch the hatch it will open, freeing you.

Solution: Obvious Interaction

Want To Enter A Trailer — Full Throttle

You want to enter a trailer.

There’s a door and a man stopping you. He won’t let you in.

Problem: Guardian

If you kick the door when he’s talking, you’ll kick the door down and flatten the guy in the trailer.

Solution: Temporal + Obvious Item Interaction

Dog Guarding the Junk Yard — Full Throttle

Every time you go to pick up something, the dog stops you.

Problem: Guardian

To get rid of the dog you have to remove it by throwing meat in a car, then lifting the car with a magnetic crane.

Solution: Bait Item Use, Real World Knowledge
(magnetic cranes are for moving cars)
+ Obvious Item Use (crane)

You Can’t Get Into a Locked Room — Full Throttle

You cannot seem to get into a locked room.

You may not know, though you may guess, that this is because an item is hidden from you.

Problem: Hidden FOO

The solution is to move a pillow and find a crowbar.

For now, I’m putting this as obvious item use, though I might change it.

Solution: Real World Knowledge
(people put things under their pillows),
Obvious Item Use (move pillow)

Final Thoughts

Spatial, Temporal and World Knowledge are best used as modifiers on the other solutions.

I think the list is quite interesting and if you think you’ve recognised anything similar I’d be interested to hear.

I intend to go through a few adventure games and see what I can find.

I changed simple item interaction to obvious item interaction to reduce the scope. Some of the examples now read a bit weird.

Notable absences are timed problems. I also found it hard to categorise the sword fighting and insult collecting with pirates, and then later using those collected insults in a new situation with the swordmaster.

PuzzleFamiliar

Previously I shared a desktop application here called PuzzleFamiliar. It generated these puzzle prompts randomly. I’ve replaced it with an online tool in the sparks directory with the same Puzzle Familiar name and you can use that to get inspired about possible puzzles to add in your own game.