I'm not quite sure of the point you are trying to make here. As Becky says, there is a story to be written, environments to be created, many of which are quite beautiful and must have taken a significant amount of work to produce, and so on. Most traditional point-and-click adventure games also use 'remarkably similar systems' do they not? I don't see much innovation in that genre either, and when there is innovation, old-school adventure gamers inevitably complain. Pre-built engines are of course used in non-casual games too, so I suppose you could say that those developers are simply 'slotting in' all the elements you mentioned before as well. But to say that would be deeply unfair to those developers, as I'm sure you'd agree.

I'm not arguing against any game type. Whatever floats your boat. What I am saying is that houses are developing these games because they take less time to make and have lower production costs because they are a very simplified form entertainment. Lower production costs *must* mean lower quality in areas of the game. If it didnt we wouldnt have casuals in the first place as software houses would be producing full adventure at the cost of a casual and they are not.

Indeed some big games do use engines (or modified) that have been used before. Lost Horizons seemed familiar with its zooming in and out (did Art of Murder games themselves use that same engine? cant remember). Now do you think Lost Horizon (Or even the old Art of Murder games) costs are even close to the best casual?



I wasnt making a point I was asking for some suggestions that would demonstrate what yo were saying thats all. And as far as the Woman In White is concerned there was no story to be written or characters to invent. They even seemed to give up at the end and inserted a great dollop of exposition at the end rather that gameplay to finish the story off.

This is true, of course. I guess what I took exception to was the rather dismissive way you described the production of casual games. A whole lot more work is put into these games than you give them credit for. You wanted examples: the MCF games (Ravenhearst, Return to Ravenhearst, Madame Fate, Dire Grove) are casual games that have deep storylines, wonderful atmospheres, beautiful environments and very challenging, interesting puzzles. There is nothing paint-by-numbers about those games, which is more than can be said for many point-and-click adventures.

Edited to add: I also played The Woman in White and I completely agree that it was a poor example of the genre.

Lower production costs always means lower quality? So higher production costs always means higher quality?

I can see that in general, this would be true -- though that assumes that none of the production costs are wasted, or poured into areas where huge investments create only small improvements.

A lot depends on the audience -- how important photorealistic 3D graphics are to them, for instance, since graphics are a large driver of production costs.

Lol I'm certainly not defending bad Adeventure games. Bad is bad. I suppose because I look at it with a programmers eye to some extent I see where corners would be cut (again from a programmers point of view this isnt necassarily a negative). If I write a prog that contains a big block of code that acomplishes(sp?) a certain task and in the next prog I write I need to accomplish a similar task I'm not going to rewrite that block again. Id either cut and paste the source code or put the code into a library.

The games you mention I'll certainly look into.

@Becky. No production costs dont always mean better quality. That would be an absolute. But in general yes that is what I'm saying. Things *generally* cost a lot more for a very good reason.

Oh do! If you haven't played any MCF games, you're in for a treat. Other examples of deeper-than-average IHOGs I enjoyed are:

The Women's Murder Club games (Little Black Lies in particular, the others are on the short side)
Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet
Penny Dreadfuls: Sweeney Todd
The two Nancy Drew Dossier games (made by Her Interactive) are also a lot of fun

mj2c, please do not stack your posts, if you have more to add and no one has posted behind you, click the edit button on your post and add it, please and thank you.

Ana

Erm I dont actually know what "stack" means. I'm more of a child of Usenet than web forums. If I'm being a pain just kick me:-)

If you note yor previous posts, I have had to combine them. Rather than posting two new posts in a row, (stacking them) it saves on precious bandwidth to type everything in one post if no one has posted after you.

Ana

Ah I see thats's a new piece of jargon for me:-) I think I replied to them one at a time because only the first one was there when I started to reply. I think:-) Consider me kicked:-)

This discussion is certainly interesting

But surely, the "be all and end all" is that the type of game bringing in the biggest profit will, inevitably, be what we are offered