Ron Gilbert: running and jumping in The Cave exists for keeping players interested
Yuliya Geikhman November 10, 2012 - 11:00 amNews: Ron Gilbert’s The Cave features good old adventure gaming combined with some platforming elements to keep players from losing interest.
Ron Gilbert’s upcoming game The Cave is a mix of adventuring, puzzling, and platforming (as you can see in the E3 trailer). That’s because Gilbert believes that over the years our attention spans seems to have gotten shorter and shorter. In a fan-driven interview on Sega, Gilbert points out that one of the challenges of game making today is keeping the player engaged.
“20 years ago, players didn’t mind being stuck for hours or even days on a puzzle, in some ways they expected it,” says Gilbert. “Today, that isn’t true for the bulk of people playing games. There is so much that is pulling on our ‘entertainment time’.” The Cave makes an effort to find the balance between “too easy” and “too hard.” Gilbert continues: “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to put ‘running and jumping’ in The Cave. The game is not a platformer, but just having that fun activity while you go from place to place is a nice addition to adventure games.”
That’s also why The Cave will have no inventory. “The inventory can be a real crutch. You just load up the player with inventory and they will take longer solving the puzzle.” Getting rid of the inventory led to some creative puzzles that Gilbert hopes will hit the sweet spot between frustration and elation. You mean I will no longer have to spend hours trying to combine all the items in my inventory with one another? Sweet.
