So you want to make your own 2D, First Person, Point & Click Adventure Game! So did I. When I first started to learn how to make a Nancy Drew inspired-style game, I was at a loss. It seemed like there was so much to learn and nowhere to learn it. Luckily for you, I have been learning how to do this myself for months, and am here to dump all the information I’ve been able to find for anyone who needs it! I will go through the major steps of creating a 2D P&C game), helpful tips/assets/websites to complete each step, and the order in which they typically are completed.
Before starting anything else, I think it’s a good idea to get a grasp on the basics of how a Nancy Drew game. Although nowadays they’re made in a fully 3D world in Unity, back in the day, ND games worked essentially as complicated slideshows- actually, many games back then did! Some of the first story-based games were just imported images with hotspots layered on top that allowed the player to interact with the world. So although it looks like you’re moving around inside of a 3D landscape, you’re really just moving from picture to picture. Characters were implemented in a similar way- Mostly, they worked as videos layered ontop of a background. Back in the late 90’s they did this because it wasn’t possible to have detailed 3D graphics without seriously breaking your computer (and even then, Secrets Can Kill originally came in two disks!). However, as time continued, it proved to be an effective way to keep graphics low while still having beautiful environments! I know many of us enjoy the point-and-click style as it’s easy on the eyes (and stomachs), so it’s definitely stood the test of time!
I will say, not all ND inspired games are made like this. Although the idea of having pre-rendered 2D backgrounds is pretty universal, many developers choose to have certain environments be entirely 3D in-game (such as character dialogue scenes or certain puzzles). Below, I will explain in simplistic terms the methods I used to create my ND inspired game!
The first thing you’re going to want to do when creating this style of game is to get a good, detailed grasp of what you want it to be like. When I started creating my game, I started with a simple bullet point outline, and kept expanding it from there. You want to have a good understanding of what locations, characters, and puzzles will be implemented before you start on anything else- When you begin rendering images, it can be a pain to go back and add things in because you hadn’t fully written your game out previously. I didn’t fully write the dialogue until I was well into game development, and that’s okay. You don’t have to have everything totally fleshed out before moving to the next parts- But you should have a pretty detailed grasp of what your game will look like.
If you’re familiar with Nancy Drew walk-through websites, I wrote my outline very similarly. The player starts at x, finds y, opens z. At each point, I made a note of a few different changes: Do I have a new task? A new journal entry? A new dialogue option? Did something or somewhere new unlock? It’s important to be detailed at every step, because you will often reference this when working in your desired game engine. Everyone has different writing styles and ways that suit them individually, so do what feels best!
Nancy Drew & Myst-style games are kind of like a giant, complicated slideshow. When you turn left or right, you are essentially moving from still-image to still-image (or in some cases, animated image). This is how these games are able to have large, beautiful environments while keeping computing and memory costs low. Each image is a rendered image from a 3D software, such as Blender.
Blender is a free, open source 3D software used by professionals and beginners alike. Almost all of us making Nancy Drew-inpsired games use Blender, as it’s not only free, but has a huge amount of information available to learn. Many of us started by following the OG Donut Blender Tutorial which takes you through the absolute basics of most aspects of using Blender (Just follow him step by step for the total 4 hours- trust me, it’s worth it). As a side note, I often used BlenderKit to outfit my scenes- BlenderKit is a paid subscription through Blender that gives you access to tens of thousands of 3d models, materials, and more (I promise this is not an ad!! LOL!). I just found it very useful to access quickly and search things immediately that I need. There are other similar Blender add-ons that you can look into as well!
When rendering an image in Blender, there’s many things you want to keep in mind. For instance, say you have a shovel on a table that the player can pick up- which means the shovel is removed from the scene for the rest of the game. Due to this, you will have to render two images: One with the shovel on the table, and one without (and possibly more if the shovel is seen from other areas). What I ended up doing was rendering the scene with the shovel on the table, cropping that render, and placing it over full rendered image in Unity. Once the player picks the shovel up, the smaller image ontop is then removed from the scene.
After creating the scene you want in Blender, you’re going to want to create high-quality still images of your scenes. I found this tutorial very helpful, as they show you exactly how to set up the camera, what your camera dimensions should be, and so on. Note that you can also use looping videos in your game as well, if you would like to say have a looping video of a bird flying outside or a windchime swaying in the breeze. All things are possible through Blender!
