the mapping niche

[dna]

a few years ago, i discovered etrian, my first dungeon crawler after stonekeep (big gap)
what make me wanting this game was the all mapping part, the way you have to draw your own map (and the ds, even with it's limitation was very great for this)

my girlfriend also liked the mapping part, but dislike the combat part, giving me the ds for the battles...

so i was thinking, do you really think there is a niche for pure exploration/enigmas/mapping game ?
like a LoG, without monsters ?
but not only caves, also outsides maps like etrian 3

besides, with new supports like iPad, you can imagine 'synchronizing*' your pc game with the iPad mapping application.

there is so few games allowing the player to draw his own map, i think there is some thinking to do here.
the best option being creating the game with two options :
with combat (with or without automap).
without combat (and of course without automap).

I think this would open the genre of game to another type of people (aka girls ).

What do do you think of it ?

* when i talk about synchronizing, i'm thinking 'using your brain, not the wifi'

[OniTako]

The guys from Almost Human are going to implement a Map Editor to create your own adventures in the future. You could do some maps with only exploration and puzzles, without any kind of monster.
And you always can play the Grimrocks Adventure in Easy mode.

[brick]

I like this idea. The thing I like in these types of games is mostly the exploration and puzzles. Most people probably want some combat though, so the market for this type of game would probably be quite small.

[Jack Dandy]

Well, that's what the difficulty options are there for- If you enjoy exploration and puzzles more then the combat, switch it to easy and the monsters won't be much problem for you.

[petri]

One maybe surprising problem of LoG without monsters is that most of the items you get as rewards from solving puzzles would be useless. Who needs better armor and weapons if there are no monsters to fight with?

[Crashbanito]

You could make a baby difficulty option where we fight cardboard cut-outs of monsters.

[Dalton]

I like this idea. The thing I like in these types of games is mostly the exploration and puzzles. Most people probably want some combat though, so the market for this type of game would probably be quite small.

I don't know. The Siera adventure games, and Myst, and their many derivatives, were hugely successful. That's exploration and puzzles. Though admittedly from watching people do Let's Plays of some of these old games, the map-making parts were their LEAST favorite.

[Hissssa]

After running several D&D games to completion let me just say that if you try to run a game purely on puzzles it is a lot more difficult from a creation standpoint compared to having monsters to fight. You also effectively cut off a significant portion of the audience; most people like to run around and kill stuff and get loot.

[Fugu]

You could make a baby difficulty option where we fight cardboard cut-outs of monsters.

I fought cardboard cut-out monsters before. From my experience, Doom ain't that easy.

[Curunir]

You could make a baby difficulty option where we fight cardboard cut-outs of monsters.

I fought cardboard cut-out monsters before. From my experience, Doom ain't that easy.

I actually laughed out loud! High five!