Still going through my backlog of adventure games...
One of my latest tries was Murder in a Wheel. The title made me think of something very strange at first ("Planescape" came to mind). But it's a lot more down to earth than that. Here, let me steal the tiny introduction from the game's very page:
A Locked Room Mystery Story: Roderick, Lady Blackwin's beloved Hamster, was murdered. It is up to you to solve the crime and find the killer.
It's as simple as that. Or is it?
The game looks very much like the LucasArts games I loved (Monkey / Indy / Tentacles), if not even better when it comes to backgrounds (they did something with colors and lighting that I like very much). The intro splash screen was enough to grab my heart and send me back 15 years. It plays like you'd expect it too: a bunch of classic verbs, an inventory, items to use and misuse and characters to talk to. The only differences come from the investigative genre: giving items to people is more about "what can you tell me about this?" than actually giving the item.
The game is not too difficult. I had to resort to a walkthrough only once, and only because I didn't do something more or less obvious with an item. Oh, there's one instance where you have to do something with no clear goal in view, but at least what you have to do is nonetheless obvious given what you know and the items you have. The game plays well, is very polished and very amusing too. Despite the contemporary and rather realistic setting, it does have a few fourth-wall jokes here and there but I didn't mind them as the laughs they gave were enough compensation for slightly breaking the illusion.
I have tried a few other indie adventure games after this one, and none managed to grab me as this one did. You can guess it's a highly recommended game from me :)
(also, I just noticed the title ends up as "MiaW", which is clever)
After playing so much Dwarf Fortress, I obviously ended up slightly fed up with it (I just can't take things in moderation and that's how it usually ends up... thankfully I don't drink alcohol!).
Last time my friend came and made me want to try out Dragon's Lair again, he brought Still Life 2, an adventure game, to show it to me. I showed him one of the indie adventure games I discovered during the last years: Spooks. And yesterday, I felt like playing it again, knowing it wasn't extremely long. Once done, I remembered reading the author had made another game: Nanobots, and I went on to try this one too.
The game was made with Adventure Game Studio (AGS) by Erin Robinson, aka "The Ivy" and is about a young ghoul named Mortia visiting the Carnage Val in the Land of the Dead. It's gray all around and looks like lots of fun! Well... okay, no, actually Mortia is quite bored there, and her cynical take on things is not helping, though it's the source of many laughs.
Soon enough, Mortia is coerced into playing a seemingly harmless game of darts. What she does win is beyond all imagination : a fish... that is "alive"! Why isn't the fish gray like everything else? What does "alive" mean? Why are these strange authority officers looking for it? This is just too mysterious for Mortia to ignore and she decides she will help the little fish get out of there. But first, she must find out more about the word "alive".
Spooks grabbed me way back then because it looked so much like the adventure games of my teen years. It's full of pixelly goodness and of rather good quality. What it might lack in graphical polish, it makes up for with its style (it has a somewhat Tim Burton feel, for lack of a better comparison). And of course, it has funny dialogues, unique characters to meet, and puzzles!
The puzzles are not terribly hard but not incredibly easy either! It's just the right dosage to get your brains running without frying them up in frustration. The game is not very long (a few hours) and considering I'm an adult with a job, it's something I appreciate now. I'd say it's possible to finish in one sitting but it might take two if you get stuck.
Overall, it's a very good mix of all its parts, making a very nice adventure game. Apparently there's a even a sequel in the making!
Nanobots is also made with AGS and, as I said, by the same author. It's not always obvious wether an author can follow a good game by another good game, but I'm glad to say Erin has been on a roll, and hopefully will continue to be :)
This time, the story takes place in a dorm where Groovy Greg, a hippie student, is trying to finish his project: build robots that can love. What he ends up with are the Nanobots, a group of specialized tiny bots with an attitude. So much attitude that they keep bickering instead of working together. Greg is desperate as it means he will fail his grade, which his thesis professor, Mr Killfun, is quick to remind him. He is also quick to reveal a nefarious plan as soon as Greg leaves to get some rest: the professor plans to crush the Nanobots so that *he* can reveal his own LoveBot to the world! Muahaha--*ding!* Oh, coffee, I'll be back in a minute.
A good thing for the Nanobots that the professor is so unfocused as it gives them the time to hopefully make an escape! Except... they're on a desk, very far from the ground, and with no obvious way down. And they're still bickering. But it's time for them to unite their strengths to get out of this in one piece!
The games I was reminded of by Nanobots is the Goblins series because of how each character has a specialty and must work as a team to get through trouble. It's not *just* like Goblins though, as there's no "timed coordinated sequences" at all, and there are way more characters in the team AND they're really specialized. I thought it was interesting because it challenged you to think a bit differently.
One other difference is that each bot can only carry one item and can't drop them. They need to exchange with another bot if they need something else. This particular aspect was not my favorite as it got frustrating after a while. I suppose one important thing in adventure games is to make sure the player is not slowed down by the interface as he's already busy trying to solve puzzles. It still worked, but it could have been better. The only good side of it I found is that it created some (possibly) emergent puzzles of the "how the hell do I pick that up when my hands are full and no other bot can pick what I'm carrying?" variety. But really, even though I'm mentioning it, it's definitely a *cough* nano-problem compared to the whole thing :)
As with Spooks, most of the fun is in the dialogues, unique characters and cute graphics. Oh, there's even a "hidden" hint system in there ;). It helped me quite a bit.
The game is moderately difficult. I got really stuck twice and had to resort to a walkthrough. One of these I could have found by myself but my brain got stuck in one way of thinking that just prevented it. The other, I didn't regret, because I just wouldn't have figured it out. But every puzzle is logical so I don't think the game is at fault here.
Again, another very good adventure game, although it needs a bit of interface polish to remove some unneeded frustration here and there. I strongly recommend playing the tutorial by the way, as it teaches you the concept through an amusing scene.
Imagine here an illustration of someone sweating or a picture of a blazing sun*
It has been rather hot in the part where I live lately and it's making my brain work rather slowly. I barely write anything and I tend not to touch anything too brainy. Sorry to the people I usually interact with! Hopefully I'll get over it... or you'll see me again in September :|
* I was going to have a public domain picture of it here but it's apparently hard to find. I might start drawing quick doodles to illustrate my posts when the Internet fails me so.
The Dragon
In the mean time, I have gone back to the Dragon's Lair series after an old friend of mine came for a visit and we shared a few bits about the game. I've first played the series on the Amiga adaptation and it was quite something at the time, seeing what looked like an interactive cartoon on "just" a computer. And I've learned now that it was indeed quite the technical feat too.
Far from perfect, but incredible considering the 64 colors, slow processor and floppy format
I also played the sequel, "Dragon's Lair: Escape from Singe's Castle" (funny title considering "singe" means monkey in French :p -- it's actually the dragon's name I think?), "Space Ace" (similar concept but in space), and "Dragon's Lair 3". I missed "Dragon's Lair 2", I'm not sure why... Given the room on the floppies of then, each of the original arcade games had to be split into two games, hence the four Dragon's Lair games on Amiga in the end.
Edit note : having watched a video of DL1 just now, I come up with two things to say : "oh the bastards!" and "still, good job". "Oh the bastards!" because the game cost about $150 at the time, and lasted about 7 minutes (loading times excluded, on a perfect run) and, the worst part maybe, doubled *every* scene except the finale. How cheap is that? ^^;... "Still, good job" because I'm still amazed this ran on an Amiga and how accurate they made it on some scenes (thankfully, the most important ones)
But originally, there were two DL games and one Space Ace game, which I only discovered years later through their CD-I versions, which, thanks to the Digital Video component of the console, were actually the same as the original arcade (at least in relative video quality).
So how did the arcade look and how did the games play? Well the following video will explain it better :
Edit note : unless I'm mistaken, the moves they give are total nonsense most of the time. Was it to explain how it work without actually giving the solution? Who knows... They also show the end of the game, which is... well... would be a spoiler if the game itself wasn't so cliché to begin with. In any case, I'm pretty sure the only ones actually interested in playing the game already did uh? (somewhat invalidating my post too, yay!) Also, "proper" TV hosts in costume playing Dragon's Lair is..... mildly amusing *giggles*.
Do note how it came out not long after Space Invaders and Pacman. Gosh, what a shock it must have been at the time! That's quite the technical prowess! It even took years before the CD support took hold of the game genre and before we got games using full video such as Phantasmagoria (at least it's one of the first games I remember going for the movie feel, but my memories might be hazy on that one).
To sum it up : incredible visual quality, but a definitely awkward game system... if you even want to call it a "game". The closest game I can think of in recent times might be... Dance Dance Revolution. Really, Dragon's Lair was more of a "step in time with the music" kind of game, except the music was video on screen and you had to guess the right move yourself. Oh, and of course, QTEs! They've popped up in games these last years, like in Shenmue and Indigo Prophecy or God of War : press the button on screen while your character does the cool stuff. It seems almost no one likes these and I'll admit I'm not *that* fond of them either. I think it's a matter of context : a game made of QTE can be all right, but QTE in an otherwise regular game is annoying. Go figure :)
Final thing on this topic : I have also read up on DL and discovered the initial plans for the game were much more complex with actual interactivity instead of the rather linear thing it is today : you were supposed to be able to choose your path, have alternatives here and there, etc... But even without this, I've realized the arcade version (compared to the CD-I version) was actually harder in some places, requiring logical timing : push towards a rope only when the rope comes into your reach, press sword only when the enemy is about to strike at you so you deflect it, etc... If you press the right move too soon, it's taken into account... but in a negative way! On CD-I, you can keep pressing the right move way ahead of time and it'll register all right. Funny.
I might make other posts for Dragon's Lair II and Space Ace. If only to post videos... I like posting videos >.>...
The Dwarves
Hmm, I'll have to be short on this as heat + typing = headache. Meh!
Simply put, here's another game I keep coming back to year after year. Not often and never for long, but still, it says something about its quality.
Dwarf Fortress is about.... managing a dwarven fortress. Yup. It's all in ASCII (look at the screenshot), though more graphical tilesets now exist, and it's all about simulation depth. At first you're just trying to survive winter by building workshops, bedrooms and dining rooms... hunting, fishing, crafting goods, etc... It's very similar to the Settlers I think. But the more time goes, the more things pile up. After a while you get nobles and special dwarves who can manage the fortress, set export bans, make foolish demands, etc... You also have to deal with enemy invasions (goblins, humans, others...), floods, magma and other things I probably don't even know about. It just changes scope as the population grows. No more micro-managing, no more truly caring about those seven initial dwarves when you have more than 50 roaming around the halls.
I keep coming back to it because it's a quiet game, where many things can happen and it keeps evolving (I just discovered how much it stores about the world it generates the first time... so many details!) And I tend to give it up because it still has a rather obscure interface (only helped by the Wiki) and it's still a sandbox game with not a *lot* of room for mistakes (it plays like a roguelike, so when you're screwed, you're screwed).
Anyway, if you don't mind the graphics and think it sounds at least a bit fun, try it! It's free.
