Monkey Island 2: Le chucks revenge
Monkey Island is a point and click adventure game with an inventory in the more taditional format; menu based, it also has a limited amount of slots, but only to foresight how many items you're goning to be handling throught the entire course of the game. To use an item the player must first find where in the game the item can be used (e.g. a bucket full of water can be placed above a specific door at a specific time) and then procced to bring up the menu, click the choosen item and then the spot on the world it can be used.
The only thing that is controlled within the inventory is the items of the game and basic actions you can do, like how if I wanted to know what my character thinks about the item, I can choose the magnifying glass icon and click the item I want to know about. You can also use these 'looking' and 'touching' icons with (alomst) everything in the games environment, to hear the views and maybe get a hint on what to do from the character himself.
Accesing the inventory is just as easy and simple then looking or touching something, all the player has to do is click the chest icon with the green arrow to open the inventory and then the red arrow chest to close it. The icons are easily found by simply looking at the bottom of the screen in the brown bar along with every other action you can preform. This suits the game immensely in my opinion, a simple, easy to use style of inventory system for a simple ( yet not so easy game ). If you ask me the inventory couldn't be more suited to this point and click adventure game, with everything being prestented right in front of you on demand, Unlike the solution to every single one of the many puzzels on this darn quest. My only compliant about it is that some items can and will sit in your iventory for the entire course of the game, which will confuse you into what they are for when you pick them up at the start.
This inventory may or may not have an affect on what I plan to put in my inventory's design, but we shall see, I may keep it simple like this or I may go in a completly different direction as of now it's undecided.
Alone in the dark
Although an aweful game, The inventory system is one that you'll remember after you've used it for long enough, Provided with enough pockets and bottle holders to fill a small bus, Edward Carnby's jacket makes for a very unique limited style type of inventory, with a macgyver twist, the items of the game are very craft friendly. Although if you want to tape up that bottle full of coke you just picked up, your gonna have to put down those hard earned bullets you just found.
But if you do decied that throwing a sprite coverd in oil is an in-genius means of self defence then by simply pressing down on the d-pad and selecting said item to either 'equip' in either your left hand or right ( depending in what hand you put things in you can also make items that way, e.g. spray can in left + lighter in right= flamethrower) or 'combine' with another everyday item, choosing this option and slaping it together will restult in a new screen cinimatic poping up and showing you the two items being slapped together to forge a new weapon that will never be as good as bullets.
The style of inventory suits this game quite well in my opinion, it lets you pick up what ever you
want without having too much that it's silly and the combination of things is cool to mess with, just to see what you can create out of nothing. and the whole putting things in different hands matters here it leads to a rather intresting inventory, in my opinion, and to top the whole thing off it's all contained in-side his jacket.
The crafting aspect may make an apperance in some of my designs, but unless it's unique I doubt I'll be including it at-all.
The Binding of issac
If you've ever played a normal dungeon crawler like Diablo or torchlight, then you of all people would know that normally the enimies you encounter are normally varients of bandits and giant spiders..normally. The Binding of Issac is however not a normal dungeon crawler filled with happy bandits and spiders, it's however filled with giant man eating maggots, worms with huge teeth, sacks of flesh that explode, flies, blood, disembody'd heads, decapitated bodies, the four horsemen, every sin, the devil, unkillable skulls, homeless people and one odd inventory for a dungeon crawler.
First of all, you may notice you don't have to access any form of menu to get to the inventory, it's at the top of the screen and includes; your life, your keys, your bombs, your money, your weapon upgrade, and your 'useable' item. There are also passive items which serve as instant, stackable, permanent upgrades, and can be noted by the visual discusting change to Issac, such as a coathanger being shoved through his head. No matter how many things you passivly have on you, you can simply put your 'useable' item to, well, use by pressing 'E' at anytime and using it's affect, good or bad.
Key's are simply used by running into the door you're trying to get through (because it's auto, thank heavenly goodness) and bombs are the space bar, used for blowing up rocks and other rock shaped obsticles that lie in Issacs fleshy path, and money is money. And all this is wrapped in one of the most incredibly simplistic, yet extreamly in depth inventory and item system and is one of my favourites ever to be in a video game for the lack of micromanaging and just all round easy-ness of it.
It suits the nature of the game perfectly, becasue of the fact that there's already enough on the screen to worry about that we don't need an inventory to manage and stress over, just a good old fashion one item inventory.
The simple style of the inventory is something more games could and should need by todays standards, and I will attempt to keep that inmind while desiging mine. Now it's back to the world of the internet and video games for me, live long and prosper. Tah taaah~
