Our new engine currently in development (S3Engine 2.0), is being built so that it can create games within the genre of Graphic Adventure and Adventure RPG. One of the major new features we're currently adding is a physics engine.

While it's still very early we're planning to have physics so that we can explore new realms of adventure game puzzles for adventures and more realistic and fun battle for RPGs.

An example of improvement from this technology would be in Morning's Wrath; in the original game battle was fairly static; with a physics engine it is possible to create spells that blast targets away from the center of the cast; potentially colliding with other enemies. Usage of spells could also influence environmental physics elements; such as blasting a support away from a boulder so that it rolls over enemies. Similarly having spells that allowed you to attract or repell said boulder could let you use it as a weapon further.

For pure adventure games, more complex mechanical simulations can be constructed. Where once adventure game puzzles were very strict and rigid, physics based puzzles can leave things more open ended, which can allow for unexpected solvings of certain puzzles, and that seems to be generally more fun.

Logically physics seems like a good next step for us since it allows us to work on keeping puzzle concepts fresh and develop games that are even more fun to play.

What are some thoughts from the community about this?

I don't know if this kind of question belongs here, but what kind of programming language do you use in your games?

Doesn't really belong in this particular thread; however.

We use the C++ programming language for our game engine, through Microsoft Visual Studio

We use C# for our game development tools (map editors, etc.)

And internally we use the Lua scripting language to script the game.