Designing Modern Adventure Games - Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and More ~ Design Doc 

If your favorite adventure game was from before the year 2000, it might be in the first half of this series, Classic Adventure Games: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qkMTS8NvwQA.html Games: (by order of appearance) 0:09 - Grim Fandango 0:16 - Gabriel Knight 3 0:20 - King's Quest VII 0:25 - Escape from Monkey Island 0:30 - Sam & Max Freelance Police (Cancelled) 0:41 - Syberia 1:45 - The Longest Journey 2:24 - Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 2:39 - Omikron: The Nomad's Soul 3:13 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 3:18 - Professor Layton & The Curious Village 3:30 - The Portopia Serial Murder Case 3:42 - Mystery House 4:00 - Suisho no Dragon 4:12 - Snatcher 4:18 - Policenauts 4:21 - Clock Tower 4:53 - Kamaitachi no Yoru 5:15 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (start of segment) 6:57 - King's Quest V 7:09 - Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations 7:30 - Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney 7:34 - Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice 7:48 - Professor Layton & The Curious Village (start of segment) 8:09 - Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 8:22 - Dragon Quest 8:25 - Shiren The Wanderer 8:31 - 428 Shibuya Scramble 8:34 - Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors 9:19 - Virtue's Last Reward 9:31 - Danganronpa 10:50 - Indigo Prophecy 11:18 - Heavy Rain 11:39 - Myst V 11:48 - Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek 11:56 - Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor 12:21 - Wallace & Gromit (Telltale) 12:26 - Bone (Telltale) 12:38 - Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People 12:40 - Sam & Max Save the World 13:01 - Puzzle Agent 13:07 - Tales of Monkey Island 13:20 - Back to the Future (Telltale) 13:26 - Jurrasic Park (Telltale) 13:54 - The Walking Dead (Telltale) 15:04 - Full Throttle 15:18 - Monkey Island 2 15:26 - Kentucky Route Zero 16:20 - Broken Age 17:46 - Moebius 17:50 - Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded 17:51 - Spaceventure 17:52 - Broken Sword 5 17:54 - Tesla Effect 18:00 - Thimbleweed Park 18:28 - The Wolf Among Us 18:38 - Game of Thrones (Telltale) 18:41 - Tales From the Borderlands 18:42 - Minecraft Story Mode 18:43 - Batman (Telltale) 18:44 - Guardians of the Galaxy (Telltale) 18:49 - The Walking Dead Season 2 (Telltale) 19:56 - The Walking Dead Season 3 (Telltale) 20:28 - Stranger Things (Telltale) (Cancelled) 21:15 - Machinarium 21:20 - Chuchel 21:23 - Life is Strange 21:25 - Gone Home 21:26 - Firewatch 21:27 - Oxenfree 21:28 - The Stanley Parable 21:30 - Dear Esther 21:31 - Tacoma 21:32 - Edith Finch 21:43 - Steins Gate 21:44 - Hatoful Boyfriend 21:45 - Oh...wouldn't you like to know? 21:47 - Doki Doki Literature Club 21:55 - Botanicula 21:56 - Deponia 21:57 - Gemini Rue 21:58 - Resonance 22:04 - Detective Grimoire 22:06 - Ghost Trick 22:07 - The Witness 22:08 - Her Story 22:09 - The Room 22:18 - Hotel Dusk 22:28 - King's Quest: A Knight to Remember

Dangan Ronpa AND Ace Attorney? *_oh boy, here we go_*

When DesignDoc updates the autopsy report:

"999's story feature a branching path structure that led you to multiple ending, including some dead ends." Literally dead ends.

*has danganronpa and ace attorney in the title.* *startd with professor Layton music* Oh man, this is gonna be GOOD.

21:45 Don't think I wouldn't notice John Cena's Sexy High School Adventure

Me: "I doubt he'll mention Zero Escape, it isn't as popular as Danganronpa..." Hears Zero Escape music *You found it!*

21:45 Ace Attorney and Prof. Layton are way too hot for youtube

I'm a simple man, I see Monokuma I click.

8:08 I've got such a soft spot for Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright... yeah it takes the most off-putting elements of both series and mashes them together in a ludicrously bizarre way, but hot DAMN that medieval witch-trial aesthetic rocks my socks off! :D

I think what really sold me at the end of this video was you mentioning some rather unknown games that I love. Deponia, Ghost Trick, The Room, all of these are rather niche but you listed them all, and it was really great to watch this love letter to the exact kind of game I've began loving in the past few years, not just those 3 I mentioned but also all the wonderful visual novels. So thank you for this video.

Return of the Obra Dinn is another fantastic game that takes its roots in the adventure genre! It might just be one of if not the best detective games ever made and it's really awesome to see the genre continue to innovate

RU-vid has been recommending Ace Attorney remixes to me left and right. Today, this video, with this exact thumbnail, has been posted. Today, on the day of the Game Awards 2019, today the last character of the first Smash Bros dlc pass will be revealed. Today, the stars are aligning for him. The lawyer. “Phoenix Wright defends the championship” _epic pointing at screen_

You have no clue how much you made my day by mentioning ghost trick. Also talking about how adventure games are alive and well with the main theme from the best professor layton is real nice ;)

THANK YOU for mentioning HerInteractive!! This is the only video I’ve seen talking about the modern age of adventure games that acknowledged the Nancy Drew series as one of the few stragglers that was able to keep momentum after the “death” of adventure games. Highly recommend them if anyone is curious! There’s 30+ games out there so you have plenty of options. Lol

Professor Layton was my very first game. It was amazing. Even though as a child I had some real problems with a few puzzles. And the spinoff game with Phoenix got me into that one, so ... yeah. I love those games. Danganronpa is also awesome.

Would love to know your Thoughts on Ai: The Somnium Files.

Danganronpa and Ace Attorney in the same thumbnail? How could I not click?!

This is my favorite video of yours so far. My favorite game series put under the microscope in your classic, polished fashion. Thanks man, this a treat!

Dude i loved that video. I love Zero Escape Virtues Last reward, its legit my favorite game. Ace Attorney is soooo nice too and Puzzle Agent was fun with its story. VNs are so great and it still bites me that Dysfunctional System didnt get a secont game.

I’m impressed someone else remembers those old Nancy Drew games

Nowdays, "adventure game" isn't a genre anymore, is a mix of elements applicable in majority of established genres, is almost imposible to make a successful game based only on the "adventure games" elements.

Really surprised that Hiveswap wasn't discussed as I think that was an important part of learning the setbacks of Kickstarter development for adventure games.

Excellent videos as always

I'm surprised he didn't even mention kindergarten. It's an incredible game and the groundhog's day gimmick makes it feel very special and the end of the game feels so climactic because you went around befriending other students and collecting spedcial items to finally complete the main goal and save the missing students.

Aw man I love this selection of games. I have to thank my mom for making Prof Layton and the Diabolical Box my first video game ever, and growing up with a DS/3DS meant that a lot of these games were actually my late childhood/early teens favorites. The entire Layton series, Ace Attorney, Zero Escape, Ghost Trick...

me: _sees pwaa in the thumbnail + title_ "ahh, I'm glad Phoenix is here but Layton probably didn't..." also me: *_hears curious village theme_* "yESSSSSSSSSS"

Remember my time playing Professor Layton back when I had 13 years old, some puzzles were so hard and maths never had been my strong point, so I would chase my teachers for their help to solve the puzzles XDD still need to play the 3DS games, but boy, I had so much fun with those games, also I cried a lot with the story, specially with The Lost Future, OMG I cried so hard at the end

The only I can think about is the Layton music, every time some uses it it makes so happy fjcjekg

8:14 I instantly notice the track "Ternary Game" playing and I get nostalgic about 999 Then, I think to myself: "Oh yeah! That was another great adventure game." Nice foreshadowing and amazing video overall!!! ^^

Thank you so much for the comprehensive background info as well as the corresponding background music!! It gives me some nostalgia.

you won me over with the lost future theme also good to note that more and more visual novels are being officially translated for english audiences, including a lot of releases/remasters - it's a much, much bumpier road here because this is catering to a niche audience within a niche audience, but it's happening slowly

I loved this. I grew up playing professor layton and later finding danganronpa and 999 to now where I play things like what remains of edith finch, and Tacoma. I loved how this history lesson felt so personal. I love how comprehensive your video was and I want to play more adventure games now. :)

Love this video! It actually made me change how I think about some of my favorite games of recent years: Will A Wonderful World, Edith Finch, Tacoma , Heavy Rain, Until Dawn, ect. I never really thought of these games as adventure games (I was raised on a heavy dose of the Myst franchise and Grim Fandango) but yeah these games are really a modern extension of the original point and click adventure games.

Your videos make me so happy, I'm glad to see my favorite titles being brought up in such a positive way! Thank you for your hard work ❤️

This is by far one of your best videos. I’ve played a lot of the games you mentioned, but there are still some that I need to play. Great job!

Someone was so close to speaking about HOTEL DUSK AND LAST WINDOW! Fantastic overview on adventure games! Maybe now the chances of someone touching upon the great works from Developer Cinq have increased.

My sisters and I loved the Nancy Drew games. Though me and my brother were guys, we enjoyed the tense, horror aspects of it.

Probably the best documentary on adventure games I've seen on youtube. Wonderful job

Great documentary! As a fan of adventure games, way back from the Sierra time, it was amazing seeing how each game lead to another.

3:02 So any David Cage game then.

The Zero Escape series is just so, so good. It has its narrative hiccups here and there (only natural given how heady and head-scratcher-y it gets), but the end result is a phenomenal roller coaster ride of shocking revelation after shocking revelation. I love it to pieces.

Man I love your use of the Layton OST. Great choices

I'm so happy to see The Room get some spotlight in this video, it's such an incredibly atmospheric and intriguing series of puzzle/adventure games.

Is... this...thumbnail... a siivagunner reference? I have no idea if you even know who they are, but even so... Your timing is impeccable.

I am sooo glad you mentioned Ghost Trick, is such a good game and I was afraid you were gonna forget it.

The Darkside Detective is a fantastic indie point-and-click adventure that came out recently from Spooky Doorway. There's basically no pixel-hunting because the pixels are so big, haha. It has really low resolution pixel art, which is part of what makes it so endearing. The short case lengths helps keep everything fresh. The humorous banter between the Detective McQueen and his sidekick Dooley is probably the best part, followed by the silly, but still quite sensible solutions and recurring characters.

excellent video/history/documentary. well done sir!

I discovered Zero Escape around a year ago, and damn, it’s still my favourite game series

This video left me so hopeful for the future of adventure games. And motivated to keep working on my own. Thank you.

I’ve never heard anyone mention the Nancy Drew games before! Those were my childhood computer games!

Takoma and Edith Finch are SO GOOD. I always loved adventure games, but was usually more focused on the puzzled. I never thought I would be so in love with those modern occidental spins on novels, but I did. Both Takoma and Edith Finch have a whole world of stories that make you hungry for exploration and fulfill all your expectations, with clever mechanics, interesting characters, well paced development, amazing graphics (shout out also to Takoma's physics) and most importantly, REALLY fun gameplay. I played those games more than once, and the second time I played them my young brother got curious and actually set by my side and watched the entire run for both games, and to this day we both laugh and talk about memorable experiences we had playing them.

I like that the Adventure game genre almost mirrors the way life works. There's decision making, problem solving, and all sorts of interactions. They're also technically the first games many of us have ever played! (Humongous Entertainment)

I love how Design Doc decides to just flex on us at the end by listing or showing every adventure game out there...and yet it almost feels like there's enough in that little excerpt just to do a third video highlighting all these different games and what makes them unique.

Danganronpa Ace Attorney Zero Escape Profeeser Layton and even Ghost Trick (it's Awesome but I thought no one know about it) I like this genre way more than I intialy thought

Recently found this channel and honestly i love it. Cool educational topics on games design

This vid was amazing and I love Professor Layton music!

You did an amazing and very well designed video! Great work!

Great video! Gotta drop few of my personal favourites of modern, but still really classically designed adventure game gems which weren't featured in the video: Kathy Rain, Whispers of a Machine, The Book of Unwritten Tales series, The Whispered World, The Darkside Detective, Lost Horizon, Secret Files series, Blackwell series, Technobabylon and A New Beginning. There has also been quite a resurrection of hidden object adventures, which I think in a sense the mentioned The Room series belong into as well. My Brother Rabbit and The New York Mysteries series have been really good as well.

Thanks for the video! It is a very good history rundown of the genre. Though from my perspective it is weird that you mentioned European games without mentioning Germany at all (unless I somehow missed it, but saw about TLJ, France, and then it was about Japan) which pretty much single handedly kept the classic point and click adventure market alive for years, in Europe at least. Tim Schafer even once joked how adventure games exist in our dreams, our memories, and Germany :D To be fair, not all of them saw English translation, a bunch received localization only for languages like Russian, French, Polish, Czech, countries that were still really interested in the genre, but a lot of English releases too. You mentioned Deponia at the end, which is from one of the main german adventure game developers. And while in US adventure games have collapsed, in Europe they never died, with a ton of classic point and click adventure games still releasing in the span between the years 2000 and 2012. Mostly thanks to Germany :) so that country is an important part of adventure game history.

I’m so glad you mentioned Broken Age. It was my first visual novel

who'd thunk that This channel would explore ADVs and NVLs. Awesome.

I'm more disappointed than I should be that the whole TheOddGentlemen Kingsquest and Hiveswap debacle didn't get brought up XD

10:51 THE MUSIC I love Machinarium so much

I am so happy you bring out these franchises to broader audiences. I was a great fan of almost all of them for a long time now. Good tosee Hotel Dusk, even if it is nit mentioned directly :)

im happy everytime i see my boy layton getting mentioned, that series is what brought me to play so many of the games you mentioned, loved this video :D

I think a lot of issues with genres "dying off" is the very concept of genres, and how that concept limits the creativity of many designers. It's like a checklist or template or mold for designers to fill. Of course, I'm not saying we should dismiss the concept of genres, or that we shouldn't think about them, but when you're designing a game, I hope that you at least _try_ to look outside the box, as difficult as that may be. How many games do you know that challenge or defy genres as we know them?

This video was so complete! I love it

22:05 GHOST TRICK MENTIONED AAAAA I LOVE GHOST TRICK

This was astoundingly comprehensive, thank you!

Thank you. I loved my "old school" genres, like point and click, on-rails shooter, and fmv.

Someone: accidentally included Monokuma and Phoenix Wright in the same thumbnail Everyone: “yo is that siivagunner KFAD?”

Half way through the video and having said that this video consumed much time, I thought you wouldn't mention the indie scene. I totally agree that they are the ones keeping the genre alive nowadays. Just wanted to say that this is (for me) your best video, I think you said everything that had to be said and the video in general is very well paced, it didn't feel like 23 mins at all. Thanks for everything you do, this is one of my favourite RU-vid channels for video game in depth analysis

You are the most underrated and one of my favourite RU-vidrs i know, keep up the good work!

I do love me these videos, keep up the good work my friend!

a list of games mentioned would be great

these videos made me realize that the specific genre of games i seem to love are adventure games! i never knew what name to put to it before besides "visual novel", event though the spectrum was broader than that

Thank you for your comprehensive review! You have a great channel!

I love the final shot of Graham from new King's Quest.

He mentioned the Nancy Drew games!!! Those things were my childhood, and I loved playing them with my friends. We would constantly come up with theories and would point out things the other missed. Those were good times loll

I'm just so happy you finally mentioned something about my favorite game 999 ;; I LOVED IT

Glad to see Hotel Dusk sneak in at the end. It's still my favourite adventure game and it's a damn shame Cing died.

Glad to see Ghost Trick is mentioned in the videoooooo!!!!!! BTW The music of Professor Layton and the Unwound Future makes me wanna cry...

I'm a little disappointed that you didn't even mention AI: The Somnium Files, an excellent murder mystery adventure game from Spike Chunsoft. It's amazing and honestly probably my favorite game of the year (Though I admittedly haven't played that many new games this year...). Still, a lot of my favorite series got some representation here. Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, Professor Layton... All fantastic series that I could not be happier about for their existence.

So this comes out and I just finished the first chapter of Danganronpa 2, nice.

oh this was uploaded on my birthday I was just waiting for a video from you

Wow that I get it now, it cannot be unseen, that this games are all adventure games indeed.

The perfect video for the visual novel nerd that I am ❤ AA, Danganronpa and the Zero Series? Oh boy~ You even mentioned Deponia!

As a kid, I remember seeing Sam & Max, and Grim Fandango, and thinking they looked really fun to play (yes, I'm old). However, after having played games like Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk (which is one of my all-time favorite games), and other modern adventure games, I've come to realize that what I enjoy most about these kinds of games are the stories that they tell, rather than the mechanics of the point-and-click adventure. I'm so glad that the genre never completely disappeared, but rather changed itself for the better. Thank you for covering this topic!

I cried a little tear when you got to the early Telltale games. I still treasure those games, despite what happened later.

I grew up playing those Nancy drew point and click, they are so good I am glad you mentioned them!

I'm glad someone else knows about The Room. There really good puzzle games

I think some of the examples here overshadowed how integrated puzzles were in some of the classics To every "hitting yeti with pie" in kq5 there was a completely organic and naturally integrated to the game in kq6 such as the gnome guardians puzle

That tonal rollercoaster at the end was really fun. I had never really consciously thought of VNs, walking sims, or games like Stanley Parable, as branches of Adventure Games before. Now, it seems so obvious I feel stupid for not noticing.

Shame there's no mention of the Myst series beyond a short clip, considering those were a pretty big thing in the 90s and probably the only adventure games I could properly play. I always get stuck with dialogue and inventory puzzles, but the simple setup of "here's a machine, get it to work", now that I can deal with.

I think the recent games by Pendulo Studio deserve a mention here. Especially 'Yesterday: Origins', and 'Next Big Thing' have given me new hope for the point-and-click genre.

I was sad you didn't mention the Kyle Hyde saga (both Hotel Dusk and Last Window) but at least we saw like 2 seconds of gameplay of it right at the end lmao

i was waiting for cing to get a mention and just when i thought it wouldn't happen hotel duck peaks in at the end

I liked how you added examples from other countries. Really shows just how wide adventure games have spread.

Glad to see Hotel Dusk get a quick shot, at least :)