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The only different thing Resonance did was the memory thingy. Which, in the end, is just an extension of inventory management adventures. It's nothing *that*groundbreaking. The narrative has a problem of pacing, the story wants us to care about stuff without having proper time to explain us why.
pippin I don' think you're giving the STM system its due. It may not have been perfect in execution, but I think it's a considerably original idea to solve a real problem with adventure game dialogue. Even if you consider it "just an extension of inventory management" (I think that's wrong, will explain), most adventure games don't use inventory as a major dialogue mechanic, so that alone would be a novelty. But I don't think it's fair to call it an extension of an inventory because the point is that the topics are almost always things you can't actually take -- he solved the problem of how to allow item-based topics beyond what can go in the inventory.
This is obviously not like inventing the concept of an FPS or a mouse-driven interface or something like that. It's a relatively small thing. And, in hindsight, it's both incremental off of an inventory and fairly obvious. But only in hindsight, I think. The fact that it's an extension of the inventory mechanic (not just an extension, but that's part of it) is part of its elegance: it builds on a mechanic players already readily understand.
The problem is, just like the four-person party, the way it works in practice is enormously frustrating. It solves one problem (letting the character offer solutions or topics that the player hasn't himself thought of, thus spoiling the player's role in figuring things out), but it creates a mirror image of that problem: many times I did know what I wanted to ask about, once the problem presented itself, but I hadn't put the relevant topic in my STM because when I was in that screen, I didn't see that topic as a key or a step to moving forward. Because the game's fast-travel system was not particularly good IMHO, I frequently had to leave dialogues, backtrack to an earlier area, add something to my STM, go back to where I was, and then try the topic. Ultimately, I found this so annoying (in conjunction with the party, more on this in a sec) that when a bug ate an hour of my progress (I was playing the last pre-release build), I quit entirely. So I never even finished the game.
The problem with the party system is similar: a large number of puzzles require you to "gather your party before venturing forth" but it's a big production do that. Not a huge production, but a couple steps too many. Transferring items was also a pain. Like the STM system, it seemed premised on some kind of "realism" (scare quotes necessary), so you couldn't just teleport party members around or having a shared-party inventory. But I dunno, that "realism" just bogged down gameplay. Combined with STM and inadequate fast-travel, the whole thing was just too "mediated" between player intention and character action. It was like the classic block-puzzle problem: you can see exactly how to solve it, and now you have to watch your guy slowly drag this block, then that block, etc., etc. My own view is that the mechanical task of solving a puzzle unless fun in and of itself must be minimized. You want the focus to be on the mental side of it, and once that flash of understanding comes, the player shouldn't be bogged down with interface.
Anyway, the further problem I think the game faced (I say this not having finished, though I got about six hours in) is that the two core mechanical novelties (LTM/STM and the party system*) didn't seem at all related to its narrative themes. (* I realize this is not a "novelty" insofar as Maniac Mansion (and DOTT) and Zak McKracken both had it, but I still think it's a fair way to describe it given its rarity.) To be honest, I can't even tell you what those themes are, but I gathered they were something about how science [power] without decency serves only to amplify man's power to harm, and thus it is ignoble to pursue knowledge for its own sake; rather, knowledge must be in service of moral decency** lest it become a weapon rather than a tool. (** "Moral decency" here meaning something like modesty and generosity of spirit, nothing rigid.) Or something like that. But I don't see how "it's really hard to get four people to work coherently as a team" or "carrying out conversations is nigh impossible because we can only remember small bits of information" advance that theme at all. They just seem totally unrelated.
Indeed, in some ways there was a real gap between the LTM mechanic (i.e., that you have a direct access to important memories of a person) and the
twist that it turns out one of the four protagonists isn't who you thought he was.
I'm not sure what to make of that.
Still, I think the game has some great stuff going on visually (the broad color palette among other things, but don't let Vic hear me say that), some really fun puzzles (like the letter substitution one), and overall a very high degree of polish compared to all the other WEG titles I've played (including Primordia). I think if we'd spent another six months on Primordia we could've gotten it to Resonance level, but I don't know that the team (myself included) had that juice left in us.
Finished it today, overall a very enjoyable game. Liked the memory gimmick and the plot twist; didn't like the nonsensical villains. Also didn't find it all that hard, most of the time it was just hard enough to be pleasantly stimulating, with only one bullshit/unfair moment (and one semi-bullshit in the sense that if you overlook a certain item there are no clues leading you back to it).
Actually, I have a question about that other item for those who have beaten the game:
Since solving the ornate cube is ultimately optional, it just dawned on me that in principle you can then move on without getting the ultrasonograph at all. So what happens in the last part of the game if you do that? Do you still find it in Ed's apartment?
Actually, I have a question about that other item for those who have beaten the game:
Since solving the ornate cube is ultimately optional, it just dawned on me that in principle you can then move on without getting the ultrasonograph at all. So what happens in the last part of the game if you do that? Do you still find it in Ed's apartment?
You can find the sonograph in the police tech room if you don't have it. What happened to me was that I didn't notice the magnet in the tech room, then in the warehouse I had no magnet for the locker puzzle and had to go back to the police room to see what I had missed and then I also saw the sonograph in the tech room. I think the game lost my sonograph in the warehouse since iniating the puzzle with locker there loses the sonograph from the inventory but I didn't solve it yet so I guess that's why I didn't get it back? So I went back to the police tech room, got the magnet and also noticed a new sonograph there that wasn't there before.
V_K said:
Also didn't find it all that hard, most of the time it was just hard enough to be pleasantly stimulating, with only one bullshit/unfair moment (and one semi-bullshit in the sense that if you overlook a certain item there are no clues leading you back to it).
I don't really remember what I meant there anymore, but I think it's the sequence you're describing under the spoiler tag. IIRC it's just very unclear what's your goal there even is, plus pixel hunting.
Yes, if you're talking about the thing I think you are, that is where I stopped playing the game entirely. I couldn't even figure out what the game was asking me to do, and the way I interacted with the UI caused behavior I didn't understand, and it just seemed like too much of a bother to continue. I have a pretty low threshold for stopping a game, even a game I really like, and despite losing interest at this point, I actually think Resonance's great strength (what makes it unique in modern adventure games IMO) is the creatively complicated puzzles and interfaces (including things like this sequence but more generally the STM mechanic).
The latest Strangeland dev blog makes a reference to Resonance's puzzles. While I remember this game's puzzles being quite good, and very challenging at times (I certainly recall checking out a walkthrough on occasion), I am somewhat surprised to find, 8 years after having played it, that my memories of it are generally sour. The UI and the general experience of playing it, navigating between the characters... is it as terrible as I remember? And the story, about which I remember... it not delivering, for some reason.
Perhaps it is more that Resonance was a good game, but not as good as games that came out after it, such as Technobabylon or Thimbleweed Park, so that it has aged poorly in my estimation.
The latest Strangeland dev blog makes a reference to Resonance's puzzles. While I remember this game's puzzles being quite good, and very challenging at times (I certainly recall checking out a walkthrough on occasion), I am somewhat surprised to find, 8 years after having played it, that my memories of it are generally sour. The UI and the general experience of playing it, navigating between the characters... is it as terrible as I remember? And the story, about which I remember... it not delivering, for some reason.
Perhaps it is more that Resonance was a good game, but not as good as games that came out after it, such as Technobabylon or Thimbleweed Park, so that it has aged poorly in my estimation.
Basically, Resonance does not play very well. The STM system is genius -- it deals with the serious problem of how to prevent the player-character's dialogue options from spoiling things the player hasn't figured out for himself. But basically it is a genius system for dealing with edge-case scenarios, and a cumbersome system for dealing with the heartland of dialogue. When you couple the STM system with the cumbersomeness of having a party rather than a single player-character, the game becomes quite a hassle to navigate, despite having some of the slickest puzzle UIs I've ever seen. I also was not blown away by the story, though people whose opinion I really respect loved the story. And a few puzzles are difficult in an unfortunate way --- hard not because you can't plot the right path to the solution, but hard because it's not clear what solution you're supposed to be pursuing, or how plot a path.
These are real gripes and the combination of them could make the game as a whole not age well in memory.
But that doesn't change the fact that it offers puzzles that are literally in a different category from those of other contemporary adventure games. The overwhelming majority of puzzles in the overwhelming majority of contemporary adventure games are "item A on hotpot B" puzzles. Once you find item A, it's just a matter of determining what the right B is (a background hotspot, another item in your inventory, an NPC, etc.). Resonance does have these puzzles, but many (perhaps most) of its puzzles are quite different. They require environmental observation, UI manipulation, the STM system, etc. And some of those puzzles are really brilliant. (The letter substitution code is perfect, for instance.) Granted I don't play a ton of games any more, but it's probably the only adventure game post 1990s where I think, "Wow, this is doing stuff with puzzles that is more elaborate and interesting than the things I saw in the 1990s."
To say that the game is important in that aspect isn't to say it's a great game, though I think other stuff (like the sprite work) is really excellent as well, and I certainly recommend the game whenever I can.
Basically, Resonance does not play very well. The STM system is genius -- it deals with the serious problem of how to prevent the player-character's dialogue options from spoiling things the player hasn't figured out for himself. But basically it is a genius system for dealing with edge-case scenarios, and a cumbersome system for dealing with the heartland of dialogue. When you couple the STM system with the cumbersomeness of having a party rather than a single player-character, the game becomes quite a hassle to navigate, despite having some of the slickest puzzle UIs I've ever seen. I also was not blown away by the story, though people whose opinion I really respect loved the story. And a few puzzles are difficult in an unfortunate way --- hard not because you can't plot the right path to the solution, but hard because it's not clear what solution you're supposed to be pursuing, or how plot a path.
These are real gripes and the combination of them could make the game as a whole not age well in memory.
But that doesn't change the fact that it offers puzzles that are literally in a different category from those of other contemporary adventure games. The overwhelming majority of puzzles in the overwhelming majority of contemporary adventure games are "item A on hotpot B" puzzles. Once you find item A, it's just a matter of determining what the right B is (a background hotspot, another item in your inventory, an NPC, etc.). Resonance does have these puzzles, but many (perhaps most) of its puzzles are quite different. They require environmental observation, UI manipulation, the STM system, etc. And some of those puzzles are really brilliant. (The letter substitution code is perfect, for instance.) Granted I don't play a ton of games any more, but it's probably the only adventure game post 1990s where I think, "Wow, this is doing stuff with puzzles that is more elaborate and interesting than the things I saw in the 1990s."
To say that the game is important in that aspect isn't to say it's a great game, though I think other stuff (like the sprite work) is really excellent as well, and I certainly recommend the game whenever I can.
Personally, I didn't mind the character switching and STM juggling all that much - most of the time, it was reasonably well telegraphed which character you need for which location. As far as Adventure games go, Resonance is fairly respectful towards the player's time - compared to e.g. VirtuaVerse with its constant snail pace backtracking. The more I've been playing Adventures recently, the more I start to think that the balance between QoL and puzzle difficulty is a zero-sum game: you can only go so far streamlining the former before the latter starts to suffer.
It has a nice set up and the first plot twist, but very meh resolution. So yeah, not delivering is the right expression. The mystery itself is fun enough to keep going though.
And a few puzzles are difficult in an unfortunate way --- hard not because you can't plot the right path to the solution, but hard because it's not clear what solution you're supposed to be pursuing, or how plot a path.
I don't think it's a fair complaint to make to Resonance specifically - I can only think of two puzzles in the whole game that do that, and one of them even has an alternative solution. Once again, as far as the harder Adventures go, that's an extremely low count.
Funny, I was actually a little disappointed by that puzzle - it's so easy to bruteforce that that's how I ended up solving it without even realizing it. Only when consulting a walkthrough for a different puzzle later I found out the intended solution.
I've always found it deeply distressing that people simply stopped buying/playing Resonance. I don't know why it happened, and I've done everything I can to reverse it, because anyone who cares re: adventure game puzzles should promote adventure games that have engaging puzzles. Resonance and Primordia were released close together (Resonance slightly earlier) and initially more people played Resonance, it received more press coverage, and the user reactions were roughly equivalent. Then suddenly Resonance started getting some bad player reviews, and then people just stopped playing it at all. Today Resonance has 354 Steam reviews that are 89% positive, and Primordia has 2,274 that are 97% positive. I don't know why that happened.
In a sense Primordia and Resonance were in competition, but Resonance is the kind of game that creates space for the kind of games I want to make, so its success is ultimately a net gain. I certainly wouldn't have Primordia trade places with Resonance, but I would be much happier if Resonance had 2000 more positive reviews.
It happened to me twice, and the second time (I think getting some item out of an evidence locker) it was so frustrating that it caused me to take a break from the game, which in turn caused me to simply never finish it. IIRC, I couldn't understand the evidence locker puzzle even reading a walkthrough.
Funny, I was actually a little disappointed by that puzzle - it's so easy to bruteforce that that's how I ended up solving it without even realizing it. Only when consulting a walkthrough for a different puzzle later I found out the intended solution.
For me, I solved it using the classic letter substitution approach: guess at what some words might mean, fill in the letters, and then use those as clues for other words, repeat until done. And it worked perfectly. Like, absolutely perfectly. Each time I had just enough to solve another word, which gave me another letter, etc. It was easy in a sense -- but in the sense of something perfectly calibrated to my limited intellect, so that I felt very clever that I was able to solve it without getting stuck.
But that doesn't change the fact that it offers puzzles that are literally in a different category from those of other contemporary adventure games. The overwhelming majority of puzzles in the overwhelming majority of contemporary adventure games are "item A on hotpot B" puzzles. Once you find item A, it's just a matter of determining what the right B is (a background hotspot, another item in your inventory, an NPC, etc.). Resonance does have these puzzles, but many (perhaps most) of its puzzles are quite different. They require environmental observation, UI manipulation, the STM system, etc. And some of those puzzles are really brilliant. (The letter substitution code is perfect, for instance.) Granted I don't play a ton of games any more, but it's probably the only adventure game post 1990s where I think, "Wow, this is doing stuff with puzzles that is more elaborate and interesting than the things I saw in the 1990s."
If I'm honest, what I remember of the memory system -- and I suppose it's obvious I remember little from the game, and though I remember the story and the twist I'm in general very bad at remembering specific stuff like puzzles or their solutions as people seem to easily do in this subforum -- is more of an alternate UI design, rather than a wholly different paradigm of puzzles (The short-term memories seemed like a convenient way to aggregate hotspots in a list, for instance). But your words carry weight and I may go for a replay, as it has been a very long time and I have played many adventures in the interim.
One strike against Resonance is its total lack of an art style, and even more so, any sort of immediate hook. It's not unappealing, but it simply does not look interesting in any way.
Get rid of the critic scores, the Steam reviews, any other context than two screenshots of the two games side by side and I will guarantee that people will pick Primordia 99% of the time. Now imagine this repeating for many other binary choices between some Adventure X and Resonance, and over time it's easy to see why interest in Resonance would decay to nothing.
more of an alternate UI design, rather than a wholly different paradigm of puzzles (The short-term memories seemed like a convenient way to aggregate hotspots in a list, for instance)
STM is like an inventory for dialogue topics, but unlike a traditional (modern) adventure game inventory, you can collect a huge number of "useless" items. In a sense it is a species of A on B puzzle, but because you have a limited inventory and because there are so many useless hotspots you can collect, it actually requires the exercise of judgment and reason.
One strike against Resonance is its total lack of an art style
I always thought its art, particularly its character sprites, were great. Very well posed and animated, highly distinct character silhouettes, and a good range of colors. Hard to compare Primordia, as I'm biased and as post-apocalyptic robots vs. real-world humans is not a good comparison. But here are comparison shots of Resonance to Unavowed and Resonance to Technobabylon.
To me it compares quite favorably, which is a high standard as I think the world of Ben Chandler and his work.
For me, I solved it using the classic letter substitution approach: guess at what some words might mean, fill in the letters, and then use those as clues for other words, repeat until done. And it worked perfectly. Like, absolutely perfectly. Each time I had just enough to solve another word, which gave me another letter, etc. It was easy in a sense -- but in the sense of something perfectly calibrated to my limited intellect, so that I felt very clever that I was able to solve it without getting stuck.
Here's the funny thing: that's the method I referred to as bruteforcing. Because when I looked at the walkthrough for a different puzzle, I found out that the intended solution was to complete Anna's dream sequence, get the cypher in her LTM, and then talk to some other character about it to get the code.
It happened to me twice, and the second time (I think getting some item out of an evidence locker) it was so frustrating that it caused me to take a break from the game, which in turn caused me to simply never finish it. IIRC, I couldn't understand the evidence locker puzzle even reading a walkthrough.
I can kinda see what Alpan is talking about. It hits an awkward middle ground between cartoony and realistic - not idiosyncratic and goofy enough do draw its visual identity from that (unlike e.g. Thimblweed Park), and at the same time too goofy for a sleek noire look (that both Unavowed and Technobabylon better succeed at).
My point was not that the art was technically incompetent (certainly it is competent, and at any rate I am not qualified to speak). But because the art [EDIT: does not distinguish itself strongly and] is not in service to anything that is immediately interesting, it simply being competent is just not enough to make the game stand out.
Here's what's going on in the comparison games (and I'll throw in Blackwell Legacy):
Technobablyon: Cyberpunk in the year 2087. Genetic engineering, AI!
Unavowed: A fucking demon possessed you in New York City, and fantasy Illuminati is here to save the day.
Blackwell Legacy: Investigate mysterious suicides with your own personal 1950s spirit guide!
Also keep in mind, though I regard Technobabylon as having a stronger art style, it is also pretty much languishing.
The premise of Resonance reads like a dry newspaper article in comparison, which compounds with the relative matter-of-factness of the art.
Technobabylon has done great. My sense is it's in the top four WEG games for quantity sold and quantity of player reviews (two things that don't always correspond), along with Gemini Rue, Primordia, and Unavowed. Putting it into the Humble Bundle a year after release turned it around; it was going the way of Resonance, and then rebounded and has remained vibrant ever since.
I agree that Resonance's setting and themes are less engaging. I disagree on the art, but de gustibus.
Here's the funny thing: that's the method I referred to as bruteforcing. Because when I looked at the walkthrough for a different puzzle, I found out that the intended solution was to complete Anna's dream sequence, get the cypher in her LTM, and then talk to some other character about it to get the code.
I got the cypher from her dream but never figured out what to do with it. I tried to talk about it with someone and got no results. Then when I was stuck on something else I figured I might try to solve the coded journal and thought that cracking the code on my own was the intended way to do it. I enjoyed cracking the code but I also found it quite easy once I gave it some thought.
I made an educated guess that the first two words might be "Dear Anna". This was enough to notice that the words followed by numbers looked like month names with dates and after that the rest was trivial.
I thought the puzzle could be harder but didn't realize until now that I bruteforced it and that there was supposed to be another solution. This kind of bruteforcing is fun though, because there is thought involved (as opposed to when you have to bruteforce a traditional adventure game inventory puzzle by using everything on everything).
My point was not that the art was technically incompetent (certainly it is competent, and at any rate I am not qualified to speak). But because the art [EDIT: does not distinguish itself strongly and] is not in service to anything that is immediately interesting, it simply being competent is just not enough to make the game stand out.
I agree with this, Resonance looked like another Wadjet Eye AGS adventure game with nothing particular to make it stand out among other commercial AGS games and I wasn't in any kind of hurry to try it. The thing that made me pick it up finally this year is that I saw it mentioned in the recent thread here about modern adventure games with challenging puzzles and it was slightly discounted at GOG at the time along with some other adventure games mentioned in that thread which I also bought.
I made an educated guess that the first two words might be "Dear Anna". This was enough to notice that the words followed by numbers looked like month names with dates and after that the rest was trivial.
This kind of bruteforcing is fun though, because there is thought involved (as opposed to when you have to bruteforce a traditional adventure game inventory puzzle by using everything on everything).
Sure thing. I'm not complaining, mind you - just find it funny that the intended solution turned out to be harder than that. The probably should have coded the numbers too, to make it less obvious.
For me, I solved it using the classic letter substitution approach: guess at what some words might mean, fill in the letters, and then use those as clues for other words, repeat until done. And it worked perfectly. Like, absolutely perfectly. Each time I had just enough to solve another word, which gave me another letter, etc. It was easy in a sense -- but in the sense of something perfectly calibrated to my limited intellect, so that I felt very clever that I was able to solve it without getting stuck.
Here's the funny thing: that's the method I referred to as bruteforcing. Because when I looked at the walkthrough for a different puzzle, I found out that the intended solution was to complete Anna's dream sequence, get the cypher in her LTM, and then talk to some other character about it to get the code.
In this case, I wouldn't call this 'bruteforcing'. The way MRY described it is actually the normal way to solve this kind of puzzle IMO.
The other solution you describe is just an alternative method offered by the game.
