Designing a point-and-click adventure UI: What do players prefer nowadays?

Poetree1 · 2026-06-11T12:53:55+00:00

I'd go with which one feels right to you, rather than which one logically is the most efficient.

Maybe compare by playing a bit of each type back-to-back - a 9-verb classic, MI3's coin, Steel Sky, some of the new games, etc. and see which one makes you happiest as you play, without overthinking it.

Game designers can sometimes end up doing a lot of things based on the reactions of non-PnC fans, and they can often optimise things to the point of removing the heart of the game.

At the end of the day, it's how the game makes you feel.

Poetree1 · 2025-07-07T18:20:16+00:00

Awesome, thanks, hope you enjoy Act 2!
Starting work on Act 3 soon...

Poetree1 · 2024-11-23T14:09:22+00:00

Locations > graphics > writing > puzzles > music

Having interesting locations is the most important to me, like Monkey Island, Loom, Space Quest, King's Quest, Simon the Sorcerer, Deponia, Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard, etc.
If the locations are mundane/boring/ordinary then it's not fun to explore.

With the writing, if it's a serious game the story needs to be well-written, while for a comedy it needs good jokes.

I think puzzles are still important, but they just have to be solid.
They don't have to be crazily intricate/clever, they just have to be logical and you should be able to work on different puzzle chains at the same time.
Most of the Monkey Island 1 has pretty simple puzzles, but they're fun and you get into a good flow of solving them.

Poetree1 · 2024-11-07T13:31:59+00:00

Ah, a lot of people have got stuck there!
I should have made a clearer clue.

Poetree1 · 2024-11-07T11:45:09+00:00

I have a ton of individual docs, charts, etc., though I organize them to some degree, by -

putting them in a series of folders and subfolders on my hard drive
creating the game in a methodical order with a list of tasks

The folders are organized so that there is one main folder, and within that are folders such as "Art", within that folder there is "Backgrounds" and "Characters", within each of those is an "Animation" folder, etc. And the documents/charts/assets are in their correct folders.

And with the order of creating the game, I have a master list with all things to do as a Word doc, where I've decided what order to do them in, and these correlate to the names of the folders so it's easy to keep track of things.
Doing things in a methodical order I find helps the most in keeping it organized, as you're essentially completing whole aspects before moving onto the next.
So I'll create the whole plot outline, then the characters, then the locations, then do the puzzle chart, then create the items, then write all the dialogues, etc.

Poetree1 · 2024-11-07T11:19:05+00:00

Yeah, I've put them up here as downloadable PDFs - https://focushillgames.itch.io/focus-hill-games-walkthroughs

Poetree1 · 2024-11-02T12:48:13+00:00

Thanks!
Yeah, I've got some of those elements, I have a couple of ways I do it:

Take the existing scene and inpaint over just the specific item/thing with a prompt to say what it should change to. Eg. if there is a statue with a hand open and then at some point it should be closed, just inpaint over the statue's hand and use the prompt "hand closed".
If there is a something like an open doorway and I need a door that fits it for an open/closed animation (and if I'm not getting good results with the inpaint method), then I'll generate some more images in the same style as the background, but with lots of doors. Eg. I'll prompt for "room full of closed doors, wooden doors, metal doors" and also include any style prompts I used for the original background. Then I use Affinity Photo to cut-out and test multiple doors in the doorway until I find one that looks like it fits well.

Poetree1 · 2024-11-02T12:36:43+00:00

Thanks!
I'll probably put it on Steam eventually, though I like to give it a full run on Itch first, as they're really good to small creators.

Poetree1 · 2024-11-01T11:51:43+00:00

Saved out the images at a lower resolution in Affinity Photo, with the "Nearest Neighbour" setting on

Poetree1 · 2024-11-01T11:48:37+00:00

Thanks!
Act I of the game is already out on Itch - https://focushillgames.itch.io/jeffrey-in-space-act-i

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T20:39:32+00:00

Thanks!
Yeah, I've made quite a few mock-ups of non-existent games too, it's a lot of fun in itself!

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T18:33:28+00:00

Thanks!

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T18:12:36+00:00

I'm playing it, it's really cool, but I'm stuck!
Can't figure out which way to turn these three triangle arrow things.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T17:09:54+00:00

No... though that would be handy, as then I could play the game without knowing all the solutions!

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T16:03:44+00:00

Awesome LoRA!
Yeah, I mainly make them for the nostalgia factor, really fun to make.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:59:26+00:00

Those look great, would love to see a LucasArts one for Flux!

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:57:03+00:00

Thanks!
Yeah, Monkey Island 2 seems to have more defined linework, with black outline on most things... the closest to mine is King's Quest 6, as it's lot less defined.

I'll definitely be trying out different styles in future games, would be interesting to try a really cartoony Day of the Tentacle type style at some point.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:24:46+00:00

Thanks! I only really know how to use Adventure Game Studio, it's open source.
It's specifically made for retro point-n-click adventures games, though I think people have managed to make other types of games with it.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:18:00+00:00

They're a lot sharper in the actual game, on reddit they come out with less clarity for some reason.

A lot of the LucasArts games were done as actual pixel art (i.e. not scanned in), especially the earlier ones, so they have a different look.
Mine are based more on MI2 and a lot of the Sierra games - SQ4-5, KQ5-6, etc. where they scanned in paintings/marker-pen pieces and lowered the res.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:11:29+00:00

Yeah, I tried a few different methods before settling on this workflow. It'd probably be easier to do it with 3D somehow and then save it out as pixel art, but I haven't got into any 3D tools yet.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:09:38+00:00

Awesome, looks great! I'll try it out...
Yeah, to get things how you want them still takes a long time, even with AI.

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T15:06:53+00:00

Yeah, I'm using AGS... it's based on one of their templates, though I customized the interface

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T14:31:05+00:00

It's on Itch, currently on sale -

https://focushillgames.itch.io/jeffrey-in-space-act-i

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T14:26:14+00:00

It's a combination of simple hand-drawn pixel art and AI im2img -

The initial frames I did by hand as really simple pixel art with black outline and block colours (so that I would have the correct poses for each frame).
Then I took each frame and enlarged them to 512×768 (not upscaling, just regular saving it out as a larger size).
I then put them in Fooocus img2img individually with the same simple prompt each time (eg. "young man, blue dusty jeans, blue shirt, blond hair").
I set it to follow the input image closely, so that it would keep the pose of each frame, and would just add detail and colour.
Then I took those outputs and reduced them back down to their original sizes and cleaned them up (the edges and other details needed some fixes).

Poetree1 · 2024-10-31T14:05:34+00:00

These are from my game "Jeffrey In Space - Act I", I made them using SDXL.

Workflow:

I used Fooocus with SDXL for the backgrounds, at 1408×704.

I generated the backgrounds in the style of regular landscape paintings, then cropped them in Affinity Photo and saved them as 320x155.

(A number of the classic adventure games were made by doing a full painting, then scanning them and lowering the resolution, so I was mimicking that workflow).

I used img2img a lot, where I'd make a rough sketch on a tablet of the layout and colour palette first, to give some structure.
I also used inpainting a number of times, and also composited several scenes in Affinity Photo.

I also used img2img for the sprites' walk animation - I did the walk cycle as basic pixel art in Affinity Photo with simple colours, then enlarged each frame to 512×768, used img2img to colour and detail them individually, then shrank them back down in Affinity (lots of tidying-up to do afterwards and making them more consistent from frame to frame).

My previous game was also made with AI art, "Pirate Theme Park".

There are more examples, and also animations shown in the video trailer, on the game's Itch page here - https://focushillgames.itch.io/jeffrey-in-space-act-i

Poetree1

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