chapter11studios

The art of puzzle design Okay, yes, I’ll admit it. This column is ridiculously late. So late, in fact, that some of you may have wondered if I’d dropped off the face of the planet altogether. And the truth is, I almost did—I set off on a summer-long backpacking adventure across Europe, which was followed […]

Finding the balance—life, work, entertainment, and game design It seems like years ago, but I’ve only been working on my adventure game for about seven or eight months now. Since August of 2002, when this whole thing started, it’s grown in scale and scope to encompass a website, a series of (sometimes) monthly columns, and […]

Contributors Wanted—Dead or Alive! If you’ve read my previous columns—and judging from the e-mails I’ve been getting since last time, at least some of you think I should be writing these little missives a bit faster than I have been—you’re probably aware that I’m trying to make my first foray into adventure game design a […]

The anonymous game developers at Tierra Entertainment, who are behind such high-profile adventure game remakes as King's Quest VGA and the completely re-imagined King's Quest 2: Romancing the Stones, have some advice for anyone setting out to create an adventure game: Start small. But if you, like the developers at Tierra themselves, just can't seem […]

Forming a design team, and storyboarding the game one location at a time It turns out I’m not a very good listener. Here I am, five or six months into my first adventure game design project, and I’ve ignored the most frequently repeated words of advice for any first-time adventure game designer—I didn’t “start small.” […]

The pre-production phase—puzzles, locations, and concept art A few months ago, I set out to create an adventure game from the ground up with three important features: an engrossing storyline, a good dose of humor, and the right mix of challenging but enjoyable puzzles. I wanted to make a game that weighed in heavily on […]

Giving the game a beginning, middle, and end Adventure Game Design Journal—Day 57. Nearly two months of work has led me to write the following paragraph in my notebook: Players will take on the role of a down-on-his-luck cowboy as he stumbles across an old treasure map scrawled with strange symbols. With nothing to lose, […]

Choosing an adventure game setting So there I was, sitting at my desk late at night with the lights turned low, facing off against the dreaded blank page and wondering how to begin designing my first adventure game. A mere sixty seconds after the euphoria of discovering that Adventure Game Studio gave me the means […]

Tap, tap. Hmm. Is this thing working? Testing, one, two, three. Yep, everything seems to be in order. Okay then, welcome to the first installment of my new online adventure game design journal. You might be wondering: Who’s writing this, anyway? Thanks for asking. My name is Josh Roberts, and I’ve been covering the amateur […]

Imagine that you’re suddenly ten years old again, and you’ve just loaded up a brand new game called King’s Quest. The graphics? Amazing. The gameplay? Unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. The story? It’s the stuff of legends. Well, now you don’t have to imagine anymore, because a new group of game developers calling themselves […]