The pleasures of puzzle-solving in adventure games : close reading Day of the Tentacle
Kangas, Pasi (2017)
2017
Informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median tutkinto-ohjelma - Degree Programme in Information Studies and Interactive Media
Viestintätieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2017-10-23
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201710262642
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:uta-201710262642
Tiivistelmä
Adventure games emerged as a new form of digital games in the late 1970s, via the release of the first adventure game, Adventure. Originally text-only in representation, and using the parser to guide the player character, adventure games soon adapted graphics and a point-and-click user interface, features that made them more accessible and greatly successful in the 1990s. Before the end of the 20th century, however, adventure games lost their position in the market, becoming a niche genre of digital games. One reason behind people losing interest in adventure games is agreed as the abundance of designer puzzles, where the connection between the puzzles of adventure games and their solutions is left unclear to the player. This problem emerged from the initial success of adventure games, which led to a multiplicity of adventure games of varying quality.
The purpose of this thesis is to study the puzzles of adventure games. Starting with the presumption that puzzles are at the core of adventure games, studying them can provide insight on adventure games as a whole. The research goal of this study is to find out ways in which adventure game puzzles are pleasurable for the player to solve. I approach this goal by analyzing the puzzles of a point-and-click adventure game Day of the Tentacle, using a close reading method. To aid in my close reading, I am going to form an analytical lens out of the theory about the nature of insight thinking, in order to highlight the pleasurable moments of puzzle-solving in Day of the Tentacle.
As a result of my close reading, I present three ways in which adventure game puzzles provide pleasure to the player: 1) puzzles are pleasurable works of art in themselves, 2) solving a puzzle through insight thinking, and 3) progression made in the story of the game by solving puzzles. These three ways emerge from the existing research, and I propose that they are also present in Day of the Tentacle. I suggest that these results can be used as a basis for a criteria to aid in evaluating and designing adventure game puzzles.
The purpose of this thesis is to study the puzzles of adventure games. Starting with the presumption that puzzles are at the core of adventure games, studying them can provide insight on adventure games as a whole. The research goal of this study is to find out ways in which adventure game puzzles are pleasurable for the player to solve. I approach this goal by analyzing the puzzles of a point-and-click adventure game Day of the Tentacle, using a close reading method. To aid in my close reading, I am going to form an analytical lens out of the theory about the nature of insight thinking, in order to highlight the pleasurable moments of puzzle-solving in Day of the Tentacle.
As a result of my close reading, I present three ways in which adventure game puzzles provide pleasure to the player: 1) puzzles are pleasurable works of art in themselves, 2) solving a puzzle through insight thinking, and 3) progression made in the story of the game by solving puzzles. These three ways emerge from the existing research, and I propose that they are also present in Day of the Tentacle. I suggest that these results can be used as a basis for a criteria to aid in evaluating and designing adventure game puzzles.