Preserving the Past With Charles Cecil: Game Developer Podcast Ep. 46

Despite existing in one form or another since the early 80s, people still have room in their hearts for a good ol’ fashioned point-and-click adventure game. In fact, some folk (cough zoomers cough) are just now learning how rewarding it can be to patiently peruse a plethora of pixels in hopes of finding the precise one that matters, or how frustrating it can be to come to grips with the developers’ unique interpretation of human logic.

To learn more about bridging this generational gamer gap, Editor in Chief Danielle Riendeau sat down with adventure game designer and Revolution Software co-founder Charles Cecil to discuss Revolution’s forthcoming 4K remake of Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars.

Produced by Jordan Mallory and with music by Mike Meehan, this is episode 46 of the Game Developer Podcast.

As was the case 30+ years ago, adventure game designers in 2024 must walk a bit of a tightrope when it comes to difficulty management. Cecil’s approach is to provide hints when necessary, but be sparing. Too little help and you risk frustrating the player, but too much and you rob them and their all-important sense of accomplishment. 

“It would be better to provide these little hints too infrequently than too frequently, because if a player is close to a solution, and they’re really excited by the fact that they’ve worked [it] out, and then we give you a hint – they’re going to find that very, very frustrating,” Cecil explains. “Ultimately, people play these story games and they feel smart because they’re the ones driving the whole thing forward.”

For Cecil, writing that player-driven story is a separate but symbiotic process from designing the various puzzles that ultimately underpin the experience.

“I’ll come up with a two or three page story,” Cecil says, “which obviously imagines how the gameplay can fit into that, and then in parallel, I will start designing the puzzles.” And while these two halves of the project “stay as separate documents,” they are also in constant conversation with each other as “the story is always affected and is complemented by the puzzles. … We'll be looking for great moments where the story and the puzzles come together in some sort of climactic moment.”

In the specific case of Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged, not only does the remake provide a chance for younger players to experience the magic of the 90s computer classic, it also gives Cecil a chance to right the wrongs of the past.

“In [a] particular scene, something that’s irritated me for nearly 30 years is that there is a drainpipe,” Cecil says. If the player decides to yank on the pipe, “it comes away from the wall, and [the protagonist] says ‘Well, the clown didn’t escape that way.’” But in the original 1996 artwork for this scene, the pipe isn’t actually connected to anything, which means that the clown obviously couldn’t have used it to escape, even if he somehow fit inside. 

“It’s really irritated me for so long, so I go to the artist: ‘Please, just make me happy. Just draw the drainpipe so it looks like it goes up, beyond the top of the screen.’ There are so many little things like that.”

You too can experience the delight of finally finding the right pixel when Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged launches on September 18. In the meantime, we recommend you listen to our charming little podcast, and then check what’s going on with the similarly forthcoming GDC Showcase.