Well, I really liked Dreamfall and I would definitely class it as an adventure game. However, I guess for me it has to do with how strong the story is to start with.

I'm not sure I'd like to have to order the timeline though I don't mind learning what happened in flashbacks or by written material

I think one of my main issues with a couple of the 'plot puzzled' games mentioned i.e Dreamfall & The Lost Crown is nothing to do with them being 'plot puzzled'. It was more to do with stories that weren't concluded satisfactorily.
I got on with Dreamfall far better as it had a story within itself which was concluded & a comprehensible story-line, although I was annoyed that I felt left hanging and a sequel is needed to tie up the loose ends. I wish game developers wouldn't do this & make their games completely 'self -contained'.

As for the Lost Crown, as much as I enjoyed playing it, on it's conclusion it had dropped from potentially being in my top 20 games to the ranks of 80+. The reason being that the ending didn't really offer any full explanation as to what the story was about so the content ended up feeling 'shallow'. Also ambiguity in small doses can be interesting, but throughout a whole game it is just feels that you are on the recieving end of a developer who can't make up his mind what he is doing.

ive played computer games for long time but never seen the words *plot puzzle* before.
Ive seen slider puzzle, sound puzzle, inventory puzzle, mechanical, etc

many thanks becky for your explanation but i still dont understand. i put plot puzzle in google and got different things absolutely.


wouldnt this be a *plot problem* or a *plot ambiguity* or even a *plot failure or bug* or something?

why is it called puzzle?

I think of plot puzzles as puzzles because (to me) they require as much thinking as more "traditional" puzzles, such as inventory or mechanical puzzles. I find them just as challenging and enjoyable as other kinds of puzzles.

I suppose partly what I'm asking is: are they indeed puzzles? Or are they really something else? (Is the plot just the plot, even if you have to piece it together to understand it?)

For me the 'plot puzzles' are the most important ingredient of memorable games. I love to piece the parts together while playing the game. What I even like better, after finishing the game, is to sit back, enjoy a beverage of choice and pondering about the plot. Filling the plot holes with my own interpretations! When a game succeeds to do that, it's sure to get high on my favourites list!


Bernard

Perhaps the argument can be made that a "plot puzzle", as defined by becky, could be a puzzle, but it would be a stretch to call it gameplay. That would be like saying a mystery novel has gameplay.
I myself wouldn't consider it a puzzle in the video game sense at all. Though it can be engaging, I would call it "plot comprehension" or just "plot".

And it is not a substitute for active gameplay either. Both have an important role in the quality of a game.

But that often happens in real movies too, that have no gameplay at all.

i must be all too dense.
sliders, mazes, combinations, and on, are put in by deliberately by the game makers to puzzle the people.
are these plot puzzles,which i still dont really understand,put in deliberate by the developers to puzzle people? or are they sort of faults when making game?
im still mixed up.excuse me

LindaMarion -- yes, using a plot this way is put in deliberately by the game makers to puzzle people and make them reconstruct the plot or think hard about what must have happened in the story. Some gamers really enjoy it and others (from what I can tell) chiefly find it confusing. It's not a fault, IMHO, it's an added layer of challenge.

Jenny -- yes, I'd say it does occasionally happen in movies. I wouldn't say that it happens a lot. An example would be Momento.

Games draw puzzles from other media too. Sliders, mazes, codes, etc. -- though those are more traditionally "game-like."

The developers of Overclocked did this on purpose - with the overall piecing the time frames together to form the plot. They deliberately made the other puzzles in the game, such as using inventory items or logic puzzles easy, with the main focus on piecing together the story. Like it or not like it, it's still a puzzle to solve. This is different from a game that is just constructed willy nilly and without that intent.

Certainly a plot doesn't have to take a chronological path from what happened first to what happened last, whether it's in a game, a book, or a movie. But revealing a plot -- putting together the pieces of a mystery -- isn't unique to games. You pretty much always see it in mystery novels. Just because the same method of storytelling is used in a game doesn't make it "gameplay."

Hi Becky,
Your "plot puzzles" definition answers some of my personal questions about many of today's games.
I think adventure games are evolving into something else and that something is a lot more complex than adventure. I'm from the old, old school where an adventure was a *quest* and the gamer was part of the plot in a way. We had to look at everything and had tons of inventory to be curious about and to search out answers to make the game move forward. I can't really explain it but (strictly my own reaction to these two well made games) Overclocked was boring in one way and Jack Keane was boring in another way. I wasn't interested enough to try to finish either game, kept thinking that the creators of these two games had *never* played an adventure game so didn't really know how it worked. But then, I come from the "good old days" and the only adventure game worth the name for me this year has been Diamonds In The Rough, a true adventure game gem, nothing rough about it, except in the title, of course.