It may just be that starting with the puzzles and evolving it into story may be a better way to “reinvent adventure games” than starting with the classic SCUMM game and trying to tweak that.

Maybe, but I’m not sure that this game’s approach is the way to go, either. Although it sounds like I am, I’m not really faulting Professor Layton for not being a “real” adventure game — I’m faulting it for dragging the worst aspects of adventure games into a puzzle game. As Larry mentioned, we’ve had “solutions” for most of the problems with Professor Layton for over 10 years now. I think “The 7th Guest” and “11th Hour” type games went out of style for a reason. And I get really annoyed at find-the-pixel puzzles, even if it is ostensibly just for extra-credit.

Melanie wrote:

I hope you’ll end up liking the story though.

I think the story is fine for what it is, and it’s actually charming and well-presented enough to keep me engrossed in it enough to take my attention away from “Patapon.” But I keep feeling I like the game in spite of itself. As you say, I really wish they’d either made more effort to integrate the puzzles into the story, or else not bothered with even their token attempts — let me just explore the village freely, instead of forcing me to look for some cat.

I hope you’ll end up liking the story though.

I never thought of this as an adventure game. I thought of it as an advancement out of Brain Age … polishing it a ton and adding extras, basically. It’s kinda like when puzzles first showed up in 3D FPS shooters. Those FPS puzzles didn’t hold a match to the classic SCUMM game puzzles out there — because they weren’t trying to be.

I think it will be interesting to see if puzzle games evolve. It may just be that starting with the puzzles and evolving it into story may be a better way to “reinvent adventure games” than starting with the classic SCUMM game and trying to tweak that.

Spectre Collie loyalist Matt said in an e-mail that the game has huge crossover appeal: non-gamers and casual gamers are going nuts over it. Presumably because you can just pick it up and play, and you don’t have to feel like you’re in the middle of a story and you don’t know what’s happening, or that the game is throwing tons of vague clues at you that only make sense in context. That’s actually pretty huge; getting a game that has wider appeal than just the hardcore or niche gamers is something any company would want. But I’m not yet convinced that you have to completely abandon an integrated story to get it.

And also: I’m not sure exactly why anyone would “polish” a passenger pigeon, and I wonder if that’s part of why they became extinct. It’s a metaphor I’m not proud of.