Adventure

An Iterative Approach to AGS

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Ben304 (author of Annie Android and Shifter’s Box) is currently doing something on his blog that warrants a mention, even if I’m not yet quite sure as to what is going on. This may turn out to be the very point of this exercise: Alienation, uncertainty, disconnection… on the outset, though, it seems as though he’s developing an adventure game thru iteration.

So far, Ben’s released six versions of the “game”, each of which have come with a new background screen to play. From the third Interactive on, you can choose which scene to play; in many ways, his approach comes close to the episodic model, but releasing the game iterated like this, erasing the previous version as he goes, does make the overall procedure a lot more eerie than it normally would. The game’s unorthodox hues and uniform palette do further contribute to this feeling, as do the barren, mountainous locations.

The game seems to be about a person trying to uncover deeper meaning – a raison d’être – in the form of “the essence” or “the source”. At the beginning of the first Interactive, the main character comes close to this source, close enough to begin a quest, a hunt for the truth.

There are temporal layers and distortions in the storyline, and while Ben304 does promise more storytelling and gameplay in subsequent versions, another tangible aspect of the project is the exhibition of meaningful feedback and responses from events and actions: There is a definite emphasis on positioning, movement and object states, as there is no inventory or control switches, just one-button point and click.

All things said, what I especially enjoy about the project is its lack of continuity: The scenes are both self-contained and related in narrative and geography, but what is normally sandwiched in-between screens seems non-existent. Interesting concept, check it out!

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Lowe Level Noise

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

But by the time I got to Larry 7, I actually did know “how to do this!” But, damn the luck, that was the last one!

In my earlier, wistful post about ex-Sierra developers, we ended up somewhat brushing over Al Lowe‘s most recent exploits. Suitably then, Noise to Signal talked to the very esteemed game designer in an excellent, good-humoured interview last November. Last November?! Yeah – I had all but forgotten about it until I recently bumped into Narrative Flood’s recent discussion of the Leisure Suit Larry series. Though the interview is ostensibly on the longer side, it still remains a breeze to read through – and more than worth your time if you’re intrigued by Lowe’s trademark topics!

Leisure Suit Larry 2
Leisure Suit Larry 2

After all, Lowe has a fantastic reputation as a soft-spoken funnyman – with a dazzling résumé to boot. Nevertheless, having been unable to auctioneer his latest game, Sam Suede, off to publishers, the Leisure Suit auteur is now fully retired from the gaming industry. The interview thus courteously chooses to focus on themes from Lowe’s past, and that’s more than fine with us here at The Slowdown: We don’t have the “Time Machine” category for nothing!

After the jump, I’ve embellished paraphrase from the review with some commentary and tidbits of my own.

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Coles, Williamses, Walls and Lowe…s

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Destructoid recently hooked up with esteemed Quest for Glory developers Lori and Corey Cole for an update in response to the recent announcement of the Special Edition version of Monkey Island. The interview mostly touches upon Sierra’s past reluctance to commit to remakes – past quite an admirable amount of EGA-VGA revisions, anyhow. However, as is evident from just a few straightforwarded questions, it also becomes clear that the Sierra we used to know has not existed for a long, long time.

Quest for Glory 3
Quest for Glory 3

Let’s look at the current state of the Sierra alumni: Al Lowe is forcibly retired, the Two Guys from Andromeda bitter and battered, the Williamses have not created a game in 10 years and the Coles have zero interest in the genre. Jim Walls worked on a game as recently as 2002, so this only leaves us with Jane Jensen, who is actually and really working on a game.

When an adventure game designer manage to bring up both Lord of the Rings and WoW over the span of a three-question interview, it’s obvious that the Coles – much like the Williamses – have intentionally and very purposely lost their touch with the adventure genre as well as game development overall. While this is a hard fact for an adventure fan to swallow, then again, it’s also utterly impossible to fault developers for doing what they want with their lives; we must remember that one person’s exciting childhood was effectively another’s daily chore.

To get back to the Destructoid interview, when the Coles are asked about playing adventure games, the answer is:

Actually, we don’t play them. The only game we both play regularly is World of Warcraft.  The last adventure games we played were LucasArt’s Monkey Island and Indiana Jones series. 1)http://www.destructoid.com/quest-for-glory-developers-only-approached-once-for-a-remake-135372.phtml

Roberta Williams, in a 2006 interview with Adventure Classic Gaming, has a similar stance:

I have not played any adventure games since then and really have no idea what today’s adventure games are like. 2)http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/198/

Scott Murphy (the other guy from Andromeda), then, in response to being asked about developing adventure games:

I’ve never given it a thought since I know that world has come and gone. Adventure games have cult status. Companies don’t have interest in the kind of money cult work might bring. 3)http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/234/

All the aforementioned developers seem to believe times have changed for good, with the last train finally departed. No going back, is there? :D To me, the last few years have felt like quite a bit of an adventure gaming renaissance, especially with great indie titiles coming out. What do you think?

References   [ + ]

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Downfall Review

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Before reading our review of Downfall below, you could also view an alternate take on the game in the form of our interview with the game’s developer Remigiusz Michalski. The interview contains intriguing side-to-side comparisons of Michalski’s work-in-progress sketches turning into the full-fledged game.

downfall-review-30downfall-review-25

The Davises are on a holiday road trip from London, but find themselves in pouring rain and lost in a tiny rural village in Devon, South West England. Suddenly Ivy’s not feeling well, and as the couple stops for a much-needed breather, Joe Davis decides to seek for medical help and a place to stay overnight at a nearby hotel. With the couple’s relationship already under some considerable strain, the hotel seems to exude unexpected hostility, and the foreboding little town seems blanketed in dirty secrets.

Joe suddenly finds himself falling, all too conveniently, into the role of the problem-solver.

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A Bugged Fate

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Being the bearer of bad news is never fun, but we do finally have to report that nothing has changed since Mixnmojo learned, last February, that Crackpot Entertainment had lost their publisher for the still unreleased second part of Insecticide. The website reported that Crackpot was considering distributing cutscenes from the second episode on Youtube “in an attempt to complete the story as best they can in lieu of the actual game”, but so far only videos from the first episode have been uploaded.

Insecticide PC Cover
Insecticide PC Cover

SouthPeak Games’ Rob Burman confirmed earlier today that Insecticide has indeed not been added to their “line-up of titles”, and Crackpot president Michael Levine did not have anything further to add to the situation (apart from a plug for Planet Cazmo). Gawrsh.

This is a very unfortunate time indeed to advertise a verbose, sibylline review for a two-part game that might never be properly concluded, but perhaps some hilarity can be found in-between the lines, especially since the review was written back when Tales of Monkey Island was still just a collective wet dream (…or a headline in someone’s secret legal papers) and LucasArts seemed to have forever abandoned their roots.

You can read the anachronism here – in the meantime, let’s keep our fingers crossed for Crackpot!

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