I've often thought about that myself. One of the most common complaints that get made about GAGs (or text adventures, for that matter) is that there is often only one way to solve a puzzle. I can't remember how many times I've been playing a GAG and needed to cut something, but I can't use a knife but must find a pair of scissors or some such. It often makes no sense at all. I'm sure it's this kind of thing that turns so many people off the genre.
On the other hand, allowing multiple solutions might be more difficult to program than it seems. It might lead to the "exponential branching" problem, and quickly get out of control. For instance, if you could just shoot locks open instead of bothering with the combination or keys, you might not have enough bullets to kill the ogre. Thus, you'd need more than one way to handle that, perhaps evading him, but then you'd never hear his dying message about the secret location of the treasure and so on. I'm just being silly here, but I hope the idea is getting across.
Still, I don't see any reason why developers can't be sensible and at least avoid obvious problems like the scissors/knife thing. Surely, a few alternatives aren't too much to ask, particularly if they don't involve a major twist in the narrative. At the very least, the game ought to give a good reason when it won't let you do something obvious. Donald Norman does an awesome job of explaining this stuff in his book "Design of Everyday Things." The design of a game suggests ways to deal with problems, and it isn't fair if the developer suddenly asks you to solve a problem in some new and counter-intuitive way (unless that's the point, of course). I'll never forget a moment in Myst IV where you have to hold the mouse button down and sweep the mouse in a certain pattern. You're never asked to do this before or after, and I didn't even know the program was capable of recognizing that kind of input. There's a similar moment in Rhem. I think in these cases a text ought to display along the lines of, "HOLD BUTTON DOWN TO..." just to make it clear what you're able to do there.
I've often thought about that myself. One of the most common complaints that get made about GAGs (or text adventures, for that matter) is that there is often only one way to solve a puzzle. I can't remember how many times I've been playing a GAG and needed to cut something, but I can't use a knife but must find a pair of scissors or some such. It often makes no sense at all. I'm sure it's this kind of thing that turns so many people off the genre.
On the other hand, allowing multiple solutions might be more difficult to program than it seems. It might lead to the "exponential branching" problem, and quickly get out of control. For instance, if you could just shoot locks open instead of bothering with the combination or keys, you might not have enough bullets to kill the ogre. Thus, you'd need more than one way to handle that, perhaps evading him, but then you'd never hear his dying message about the secret location of the treasure and so on. I'm just being silly here, but I hope the idea is getting across.
Still, I don't see any reason why developers can't be sensible and at least avoid obvious problems like the scissors/knife thing. Surely, a few alternatives aren't too much to ask, particularly if they don't involve a major twist in the narrative. At the very least, the game ought to give a good reason when it won't let you do something obvious. Donald Norman does an awesome job of explaining this stuff in his book "Design of Everyday Things." The design of a game suggests ways to deal with problems, and it isn't fair if the developer suddenly asks you to solve a problem in some new and counter-intuitive way (unless that's the point, of course). I'll never forget a moment in Myst IV where you have to hold the mouse button down and sweep the mouse in a certain pattern. You're never asked to do this before or after, and I didn't even know the program was capable of recognizing that kind of input. There's a similar moment in Rhem. I think in these cases a text ought to display along the lines of, "HOLD BUTTON DOWN TO..." just to make it clear what you're able to do there.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com