Computer Adventures: The Secret Art

Crash

Paul Rigby

Gil Williamson £7.95 Available in books stores or contact Amazon Systems, [redacted] I've been looking for a book like this for some time. In fact author Gil Williamson said he has too - that's why he sat down and wrote it! After an introduction, Gil asks how you want to present your game. Text or graphics? Then the book delves into how to obtain your ideas, after which a number of plot elements are discussed such as puzzles, weapons, apparel, mazes and so on. Then he discusses characters, their actions, etc, followed by a chapter on developing and testing your game. He emphasises your adventure must: move forward to remain interesting, do this by giving rewords, but keep the excitement of the game world by introducing anticipation - knowing something exciting is going to happen before it does adds greatly to the player's enjoyment. A game full of surprises will make the player expect such happenings which, therefore, defeats the object. Style of images, text and sound are debated and various game systems compared. A chapter on how to publish your game talks about copy-protection (without the expense), publishing your own work, going to an outside publisher and utilising cheat protection. After a more detailed look at the components that form an adventure, Gil gives a sample transcript of one of his own, produced with an American shareware adventure creation utility called AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit). Appendices include lots of useful reference material such as a list of utilities and a bibliography. There's a handy index at the back, too. All in all, a well presented and very readable book (128 pages, 11 chapters) packed with good advice that can be thoroughly recommended to any adventure author or anyone else who is thinking about creating their own adventure game or who has a general interest in adventure games.