The seamless sewing of humour into almost every facet of the swashbuckling point-and-click adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) is the main motivating factor for players to sit through hours of dialogue trees, furiously combine inventory items and time their actions to solve puzzles. This analysis will describe and analyse the three forms of humour used to encourage player progression and exploration: narrative humour (used for exposition and plot progression), designer meta-humour (used to parody the adventure game genre) and action humour (used to include combat that contributes to the narrative instead of interfering with it). Continue reading
