Art of Murder Cards of Destiny

Hi all,

I just finished this game and I must say I have enjoyed all 3 in the series. This one may be my favorite.



Don't know if that is a spoiler but posted it as such just in case.

Sorry Oldman but if what I read is true the Chronicles of Mystery and Art of Murder Series have gone the way of the Casual game. Too bad as another developer/publisher (City Interactive) has given up on adventures with the lure of making easier money with the casual market.

The next games will be HOG's

Chronicles of Mystery: The Legend of the Sacred Treasure
Chronicles of Mystery: Secret of the Lost Kingdom
Art of Murder: The Secret Files

City Interactive list of upcoming games
AOM Secret Files
COM Legend of the Sacred Treasure

Grr... Many bad words.

I was so looking forward to the sequel. If it is a casual game it might introduce me to casual games that is if they even follow up on the story line at all.

Yes. Too bad they gave up.
I thought their games were improving.

That s____!

That is sad news.

Bummer indeed! This is one of my favorite series! I see the casual game market evolving though. At first HOs were the rave, then interactive HOs, now it seems people are wanting more adventure elements in casual games. So to me it looks like the pendulum could swing back to a more traditional adventure game market. IDK, that's probably just me. I got away from adventure games for a while in favor of casuals, but even the adventure HOs aren't doing it for me anymore. I'm getting bored with them and looking for a good old-fashioned adventure game to play instead.

Sad! It looks like I'll be replaying my old games. A few casuals are okay but not as a steady diet.
Charllotte

Yes, same for me, casuals are way down the food chain. When a software house takes one of their adventure series down the cheapy "stock 'em high, sell 'em cheap" casual route it's always a bit of a disappointment.

I suppose if you had a choice of hard work developing a full blown game with long development time and not knowing at the end of it if it was going to make money or churning out a casual knowing there was relatively little work, and that if it failed, you could knock out another one the following week then it must be tempting to do the latter.

mj2c, you must not be playing casuals or you'd see that many of them are being made with the same quality and budget as a full fledged adventure. The reason they are creating them, is that there is more demand.

Ana

And cheap. I certainly have played them just not very many. There seems to be a chasm between the two genres. Do you have a particular casual in mind that has "the same quality and budget as a full fledged adventure"? Struggling to believe that one but Ive been wrong before:-)

"mj2c, you must not be playing casuals or you'd see that many of them are being made with the same quality and budget as a full fledged adventure. The reason they are creating them, is that there is more demand. "

I'm sure I read here on Gameboomers somewhere that "Casual" games were cheaper to produce ?? But I can't find the post, so maybe not.

However .. The first "new style" Chronicles of Mystery game is certainly being offered at nearly half the price of its predecessors - here in the UK anyway

The Casuals have come a long way from the simple HOG games and games like Dire Grove, Drawn, Return to Ravenhearst put many "real adventures" to shame. The quality is increasing as more are demanding it.

Ana

I have a feeling adventure games are as much labors of love as ways to make money. Some casual games may be slick but I've yet to play one that impressed me as the product of a group of talented people who set out to make something memorable and great as well as entertaining.

I only hope that as players of casual games become bored with them they'll drift toward adventure games and the demand for them will rise. Purely selfish reasons, of course.

Gil.

I have to agree with BrownEyedTigre that it is unfair to claim that casual games are cheaply made and churned out one after another without any care as to quality.

Sure, there are some that are very poor, but some are truly outstanding and frankly outshine many of the true adventure games that I've recently played.

As mentioned above, the Ravenhearst series is a prime example, but there are many other beautifully produced HOGs/IHOGs out there. The two Drawn games are just breathtaking in their beauty and originality. They are certainly 'labours of love', as Traveler puts it, far more so than The Art of Murder series, IMO, which while enjoyable in terms of gameplay had dreadful, shoddily translated dialogue and even worse voice acting.

I only started playing casual games in the last two years and pure adventure games will always come first in my heart, but I will certainly defend the many outstanding HOGs/IHOGs being made today. I think the opposite of what Traveler hopes for is true - many adventure-game players are being drawn to casual games because the quality of pure adventure games has dropped quite dramatically in recent years. LOL - I know this won't be a popular opinion round here.

Part of what's figuring into the mix here is that the business model for the US and (to some extent) the UK, where publishers put an adventure game on disk and sell it in brick and mortar stores is increasingly problematic. (This is just for games in English -- Germany, for instance, doesn't seem to be having this issue.) For the most part, the developers see so little money from purchases of disk versions in English that it doesn't cover even a small portion of their expenses. Often, they get nothing back at all back. If you buy an adventure game (in English) on disk, and you didn't buy it directly from the developer, the developer probably hasn't benefited from your purchase.

The "try and then buy" online portal model, which started with casual games, has been able to channel money to the developers. (Even in English. )Since adventure-like casual games are increasingly popular in certain online portals, adventure developers (some of them) have started to develop casual games with adventure elements. Casual gamers also have their likes and dislikes (some different than adventure gamers) so the games they develop for the casual portals won't be exactly like adventure games.

I suspect that developers are trying to figure out what adventure gamers will like that casual gamers will also like.

Why do you think the team behind games like Tex Murphey went down the casual route. They are quite open about it. You only have to look at a casual to see that they are using pretty much the same engines. Slot in the screens, slot in the objects and alter the look of a few buttons WPF like. Kerching!!:-)

All that really matters is if you enjoy them which you seem to. I, on the other hand feel a bit short changed by them even at the cheaper price. They just lack the UMPH, the depth, the quality of a real game. The closest Ive come to a decent casual
was the Drawn game as you mentioned which did indeed stand out in the casual arena. Didnt know there was a second one BTW.

Mj2c -- Errr, are you trying to be insulting to those who develop casual games? That is certainly how your first paragraph reads.

Really? Which bit?

I actually completely agree with you, mj2c, when you say that casual games lack the depth of full-length adventure games, which is inevitable as they are, after all CASUAL games. But I strongly disagree that casual games developers simply 'slot in the screens, slot in the objects and alter the look of a few buttons'. That IS rather insulting, IMO, and also unfair.

Excellent points you make, Becky, about the problems faced by adventure game developers.

I'm always willing to be educated. What else is it they add? Perhaps I just havent played enough but the ones I have played have a remarkably similar system. The last one I played was The Woman In White can you give me an example (or two) that will show me the contrasts?

Mj2c -- You are making it sound as though creating environments, a story, an inventory system, dialogs, animations, and characters is like a paint-by-number kit. Are you, yourself, a developer?

Not a game developer but a programmer. I know the mechanics of creating a program and no programmer would try to reinvent the wheel when they can slot scenarios into a prebuilt engine. You seem to think I view this as some sort of crime, I dont, I just see it as a way to produce reletively large amount of products for the least cost. If these games had large production costs they would have large prices, that's just the way it is.

So you are saying that games with depth don't use a prebuilt engine? That isn't what you're saying, is it? I agree that games with large production costs will inevitably cost more.

Are you arguing against all non-Triple A games?

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