I think it would be fair to say that a good portion of IFs designed by non-professionals (if such a profession exists) are very often difficult to complete, not because of good deign, but because of poor design.

I certainly do not exclude myself from this group, and am constantly coming across areas of my WIP that need 'fixing', not because the mechanics don't work, but because they're simply illogical or set unclear objectives.

The toughest part, of course, is trying to look at your game world as though you've never seen it before - as a prospective player would - when in fact you've seen every location and object a thousand times over. You the designer, know that you must visit the wizard in order to get the portion to kill the witch, but will your player? The trick therefore, is finding the balance between 'tricky' and just plain confusing... easier said that done.

To make the game difficult, you must force your player to think logically, in order to overcome the stumbling blocks, and then reward them when they do. Having them run around like a headless chicken because all their logical inputs fail to produce the desire result (because the actual solution is illogical) is the quickest way to lose a player.

But no one sets out to make a solution illogical (unless they're silly), and it could just be that their thought process was on a completely different path when creating the puzzle. What may have seemed perfectly logical to them when creating the game, may well be the last thing a player may consider to be the answer. A perfect example of this was when I uploaded a section from my own game for beta testing. The 'solution' was to 'shoot the goon', but this never occurred to one of the testers, and on reflection he was perfectly right. Whether it was a lack of info in the narrative, or a failing to make the player's objectives clear, I failed to spot it.

And yes, you can say this is what beta testers are for, but these illogical games still get through and I think it would be useful for others to offer their opinions on the topic.

I didn't say shooting the goon was illogical. I said that I didn't know diplomacy wasn't an option and I didn't know there was a time limit to do the right thing.

I offered a solution in that the goon should make a threat and verbalise the time limit. Then the player knows that they have a time limit to do something and they have two options:

1) they can hand over the gun like the goon demands. This doesn't have to lead to death it can lead to something else.

2) they're holding a gun and have been threatened. So they can shoot.

TA is very open so in some ways the player has to be given very strong direction as to what their options are, imo.

Silver wrote:I didn't say shooting the goon was illogical. I said that I didn't know diplomacy wasn't an option and I didn't know there was a time limit to do the right thing.

Fair enough, but the result was the same. In other words I hadn't considered a player may think of other options. I applied your suggestions and now have a (hopefully) far clearer scene for the player.

Silver wrote:TA is very open so in some ways the player has to be given very strong direction as to what their options are, imo.

To a certain extent, I'd agree, but this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say finding that balance is difficult. Would you really enjoy a game that has turn script which prints "Okay, you're obviously struggling here, aren't you? Why don't you try the wizard in the forest? Maybe he has a portion that may help." after every fifth failed attempt to solve a problem?

Well obviously not. But part of the art of IF is that you can both direct and misdirect in your descriptions. Here's an example.

Gravel crunches under your feet as you arrive in the courtyard. A bronze statue stands defiantly in the centre with its head gazing towards the castle, which looks sinister under the gathering clouds. Ivy climbs slowly up a cobble wall towards a wooden sign that points to the east.

Okay slightly obvious clue. or was it?

Silver wrote:Well obviously not. But part of the art of IF is that you can both direct and misdirect in your descriptions. Here's an example.

Gravel crunches under your feet as you arrive in the courtyard. A bronze statue stands defiantly in the centre with its head gazing towards the castle, which looks sinister under the gathering clouds. Ivy climbs slowly up a cobble wall towards a wooden sign that points to the east.

Okay slightly obvious clue. or was it?

Clue? Well, I don't see anything here that I'd immediately see as a clue. My first input would be

>x sign

What is the ivy doing?

I think you guys are over-thinking this. IF games can give the illusion of a huge world with endless possibilities, but in reality the player has a limited number of rooms and objects and NPCs to interact with. Unless the player has the attention span of a gnat, or the game is so poorly written and buggy it's not worth spending time on, they're going to examine and try the obvious interactions with everything. In the OP example 'visit the wizard to get the potion to kill the witch', that wizard will eventually get visited just in the natural course of exploring, and if the witch is a major obstacle of the game the player will likely ask the wizard about her. Or about his potions, if the author has bothered to get across the fact that he makes them.

Though I'd say it would make me more confidant that the author knew what they were doing as far as game design if it were clued in some way that the player should visit the wizard--not one delivered with a sledgehammer since those are just obnoxious, but something more subtle in a way that doesn't clash with the rest of the writing. Maybe it's well known that the wizard is the only other magic using potion-maker in the area and that he and the witch don't get along. If the character doesn't start off knowing this themselves, there's a thousand different ways to deliver that information that aren't literally just print message 'HMM I WONDER IF I SHOULD GET A POTION FROM THE WIZARD IN THE FOREST'.

Though of course if you're expecting the player to do something pretty far outside of the usual things they expect to encounter in an IF game, a little more obvious hints as to the actual verbs needed might be necessary.

And Silver's example was a good one. Normally I might not pay attention to a wall my first time through a room, but the ivy draws attention to it. I wouldn't necessarily think to climb the wall right away, but I'd definitely examine either it or the ivy, and both descriptions could easily talk about how uneven the wall is, with cobblestones jutting out here and there, or about how the thick ivy looks strong enough to hold your weight.

I think this mostly comes from playing games. As you play games, you learn what to do and not do as a game maker, how descriptive~hintful you should be or how ambigious~secretive~subtle you should be, how much detail you should put into your game, and into what, vs trying to do too much and be totally at a stand-still in getting your game completed because of it, and also what your ability is to actually do stuff vs not being able to do stuff as it is too advanced for you.

Reading Marzipan's post was very reassuring, as I think I'm very much on the right lines with my game's design. The most helpful bit was that the less obvious, unfamiliar-to-IF things needs to be highlighted a little more heavily, and this is precisely what I've started to do.

I find the best approach is to set up the scene; descriptions, objects, objectives... and then stop and ask youself, "OK, so I'm a gamer who's never seen this game before. I arrive here. What am I going to want to do? Well, I'll want to examine all the objects, I'll want to talk to the guy in the corner...etc" and then address each of those things.