The game, a film noir/sci-fi adventure, is of two separate halves: Players control Azriel Odin, with the help of his partner Kane Harris, sneaking into the colony of Barracus in search of an informant known as Matthieus Howard. Interwoven between Azriel’s sections also figures the mysterious prisoner-patient Delta-Six, an amnesiac confined to and conditioned in a sterile facility with totalitarian, Pavlovian means.

An equal split between the two halves exists not only narratively, but also visually: On the surface of Barracus (a “New Pittsburgh,” as it is described), where habitable conditions are sustained by weather towers, where the constant presence of rainfall plagues the colony, its hammering rattle contrasting strongly with the sterile silence and cleanliness of the facility Delta-Six remains confined in. Where Delta-Six is a silent, worn-down man deprived of his humanity and personality, Azriel is a keen-eyed man of action and freedom, constantly entangled in danger, shootouts and the narrowest of escapes.

Indeed, in Gemini Rue, it first appears altogether unclear as to how these two different portions of the game, so completely binary and at odds with each other visually, thematically and narratively, could possibly relate to each other. Yet this is the very reason why Gemini Rue is, within the adventure gaming genre, the most sophisticated meditation of identity, destiny and memory (IDM for short – more on this later on the blog) since the Revolution Software classic Beneath a Steel Sky. Like BASS, Gemini Rue discusses the role of human-made predestination and its effects on society and the self.

The game – skilfully paced and constructed – ropes you along with the tiniest of details, notes and hints; a major portion of the game indeed consists of detective leg work done on communicators and terminals that Azriel uses to find various clues and people.  The terminal interface is well-suited to the game’s toned-down, realistic take on science fiction, and little interfacial improvements, like dragging and dropping in clues to search – that is, instead of having to type in words – will delight players.

To reach his goals, Azriel has to use his powers of persuasion and even violence to get the continuous fix of information that he desires. The same holds true of Delta-Six, of course, but in a vastly different scale: Where Azriel can use equipment and information to his advantage, Delta-Six clings to whatever he can to make some, any sense out of his predicament. In terms of controls, there are four operational modes to the interface – eye, hand, mouth and foot – and while the inventory to the game goes beyond even the most minimal of designs, the game nevertheless has an admirable and fresh focus on physical (and even corporeal!) puzzles, placing much emphasis on the main characters’ physical interactions with everything – including physically co-operating with other human beings.

Elevator music echoing in the lobbies of hotels, composed by Nathan Allen Pinard, creates a magnificent and bleak mood that is further enhanced by fantastic decisions of sound design that take into account, for example, such minor but poignant details as ambient effect volume changing based on whether a door is open or closed. The game’s soundtrack fluctuates beautifully between sombre silence, rainfall and poignant, melodic ambient electronica.

Although we have only briefly touched upon Gemini Rue here on The Slowdown before, noting Nuernberger’s interest in visually directing the player, I have privately witnessed the game improve with waves of continuous overhauls of graphics, audio and polish, rendering my personal collections of screenshots and videos from various builds of the game hopelessly redundant, and for the better. In a similar way, we have all witnessed the game shed its original, harder-to-type yet more descriptive title (psst, Boryokudan is Japanese for a “crime syndicate” or a “gangster organization”!) and transform into a hot topic amassing attention from the likes of PC Gamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

All that needs be said is that Gemini Rue is, within the rather tight confines of the indie adventure gaming sphere, such an exhaustive and sprawling study that although I have now pretty much covered the ground that an ordinary “review” would, Gemini Rue simply remains a game that demands much more attention on to its intricacies that an overview such as this can offer.

Hence the parentheses for the letter “P” in the headline. Therefore, do see the game for yourself: GameFront go go. ‘s goo’. The full game, which offers 4-8 hours of gameplay per playthrough (of which you shall most probably have more than one), is available from Wadjet Eye Games right now, for the price of $14.99.

In addition to this interview, we have also simultaneously published our review of the first chapter of the game here at The Slowdown. “Over the Edge” can be downloaded from Skygoblin right now.

The Slowdown: Starting off, I would like you to return to the origins of the series for a minute: In the manual provided with “Over the Edge,” you reveal how the game’s origins actually lie in brainstorming sessions with your colleague, Mathias Johansson. How big a catalyst, though, was simply finding the correct tool to work with?

Theodor Waern: There’s no point denying that when me and AGS first laid eyes on each other, we both knew it was love. I realized right from the start that this was THE tool for me. The learning curve was perfect. I had a problem, I banged my head at it, I solved it. I had another problem, I banged my head some more, and I solved that one too. It has been that way ever since I started production on the game and I doubt I will ever come to a complete stop.

For a guy like me who knows what he wants, knows a little about basic scripting, and doesn’t mind the fact that making adventures actually is a bigger adventure than playing them, AGS truly is the perfect tool. We have had a rather stormy relationship though, me and AGS. But in the end my bugs have always been solved and we’ve made sweet, sweet adventure game love again.

l think the Journey Down might have had a chance without AGS though , the setting and characters just needed to get out of my brain. It would however most likely not have been a game. Maybe a graphical novel or just a large series of paintings or something. I’m incredibly glad it turned out as a game though. I have learned so much from the experience it’s just ridiculous.

The game’s storyline has seen quite a few revisions since 2005. When you finally hit on the current plot as we players will get to know it – what was it that made you go “This is it!”? Four chapters of storyline is no joke to commit to, after all.

Honestly, I think what made me finally lay down the script and say “this is the way it’s going to be.” was the fact that I felt I just kept pushing things around and never actually got around to finalizing the first chapter. Let’s face it. Four chapters, as you mentioned is a HUGE effort. I certainly hope I will release all four of them but who knows?

Now at least I can be certain part one got released. I would however not have released, had I not finally landed in a version of the plot that I felt comfortable with. Simplification was the key here. Strangely I found that the more twists and important characters I removed from the plot the better it became.

Bwana, Kito and Lina

A major part of development for you indeed seems to be polish – especially in terms of pacing and balance. We already know, from your deleted scenes thread, how you ultimately decided to scrap a considerable portion of material from the game. On the one hand, how hard is it to leave materials behind, and on the other hand, how important do you consider it for a designer to be able to swing the axe?

Making games is all about swinging axes. I work with online games for a living, mostly making content. I know for a fact that when we develop new features, try unproven techniques and new ideas, 80% of what we create is thrown in the trash. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was for one reason or another, just mixing up the experience and blocking the parts that really mattered. I am convinced that throwing away stuff that confuses the player is incredibly important, and learning to do this is a must if you want to deliver a game with good flow and pacing.

To my surprise, you had stated before that “Most characters in the Journey Down are based on African masks of one sort or other”; while playing the game, I was almost certain you were utilizing Maori Tiki and/or Polynesian Moai as the foundation for the game. So, my question is this – you’ve actually not utilized a specific culture or mythology, instead going for a more eclectic mix of influences?

Kito is based on a east African style called Makonde, while Bwana, Lina and the main bad dude are all based a central African style of carving called Chokwe. Most of the other characters are actually just a big mess of different ideas and influences. There are definitely some Tiki and Moai influences in there somewhere! I have a couple of African art books that I like to skim through a couple of minutes before I go to bed now and then.

I haven’t copied any masks from them but I’m certain they have influenced me greatly. When it comes to designing characters for such a low res game though you really need to cut a lot of corners and remove a lot of the fine details, this changes everything a lot, so in short, let’s just say it’s a big mess.

What about the names – like Bwana, Kaonandodo – are these broadly African too?

Most names were just randomly given to the characters without any research whatsoever. There are however some exceptions. One of the two goons name’s is “Bunga” (not sure if this is mentioned in chapter one) his name, Bwana’s and Matoke’s are all Swahili words (Tanzania, Kenya). There are probably more of them in there somewhere I just forgot they have a meaning heh. So to actually answer your question: Correct, it’s a mess of different styles/mythologies/cultures.

While many players have already pointed out various parallels to Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – the first being thematic, the other stylistic – I strongly felt the episode also carried a Monkey Island feel to it. Apart from Kingsport, there are seven bays that surround St. Armando; will this maritime aspect return in the forthcoming chapters?

Yep. For some reason the maritime theme and adventure games go well together, no point fixin’ that which ain’t broken eh?

Aye aye! What probably reminds people most of Full Throttle, then, is probably your skilful combination of 3D CGI with 2D animation. How early in development did you make the decision to complement 2D with pre-rendered 3D?

It is fun that people have spotted the similarities with Full Throttle visually. This was my number one source of inspiration when it came to mixing 2D and 3D. I have looked at those cutscenes many a time and wondered why on earth they looked so damned good.

I think the first 3D item that appeared in Over the Edge was the crane. I knew what I wanted the puzzle to be like and I realized I would never have the patience to draw the crane in all of its angles so I made a simple non-lit 3d scene and without any real effort it melded nearly seamlessly with the 2d art. That’s when I  realized I could stick 3D in there and get away with it. After that I just kept going with the car in the intro and the airplane. I even had a quick go with Bwana as a 3D model but I gave that up fast. Character rigging and animation is a whole other science in itself and I would have no chance making that look as good as I wanted it.

Over the Edge’s puzzles gelled and rolled like no other adventure game in my recent memory. Is there a specific game or series that would exemplify the tradition and style of puzzles that you’re aiming for?

Adventure gamers in general won’t agree with me here, but my personal opinion is that a good puzzle is an easy puzzle. They make things flow and since they are easy they are more common and hence give the player feedback more often. It keeps people engaged and interested when things are happening. The only downside with an easy puzzle is that you need many of them to compensate for how fast you solve them.

What makes a puzzle a good one to you, then?

Admittedly a good difficult puzzle can be a lot of fun if it is well written and perfectly balanced, this however is seldom the case. I think the mood in an adventure game is totally ruined by “rub all items on all items” brute force puzzle solving. It flattens the whole experience. So do walkthroughs. If the player resorts to either of these, it is my opinion that the game has failed in keeping the player within the game world and has let them wake up from the experience that is the game. That is obviously a bad thing.

However, all games no matter how well written are full of moments when one resorts to brute force though, I’m sure people playing “Over the Edge” have done so as well.

A Waern puzzle!

One thing that does set your game apart from many other AGS-built adventures is your use of the 1995 “big” sprite style that is principally more about lines, shapes and forms and less about individual pixels – something that I’m sure is not lost on players. Did it take you long to discover a suitable workflow for doing art and animations in the very modest resolution of 320x and, more importantly, as a developer, what do you like best about the miniature work space?

The small workspace is great for efficiency. I love having those kinds of limitations. The more limitations you got the faster a project can be finished. On the character side however, I honestly think work might have gone faster if I had higher res and better alpha, as I would have less of a headache battling sharp pixel edges, so I’m not quite happy with the workflow I ended up with on them. Had I aimed for a more of a “pixel art” style, low res would be a blessing, now though… it mostly slowed things down. The best part with going low res is definitely how much faster work goes on cut scenes and backdrops, and the lovely retro vibe you get from the low res certainly adds to the mood as well. The low file size of low res games are nice as well.

I’d like to know a bit more about the background music. Beyond D’souza’s bubbly contemporary reggae stylings, what really stands out to me is how there seems to be a specific theme for every location, no matter how quickly they may be traversed by the player. It would be very interesting to hear about the way you two come up with a suitable tone and style for each scene.

Once I had explained the overall mood I was after, the reggae mixed with the jazz, Souza just went balls out crazy and started churning out tunes like mad to the different environments. We had a very simple workflow there where I made some short notes on what I wanted focus to be on, he made a first test, sent it to me, I give him some simple response (usually regarding what tempo things were in), he made the fixes, and we stuck it in game. He has been great at handling my feedback and implementing it immediately, just amazing.

The cut scenes were a lot more work though. I had to film the movies and send them to him so he could synch the music 100%. Also, the music in the cutscenes is split up in lots and lots of small bits, so the music wont break if people start skipping dialogue etc. I’m very proud of how well we made that work. Next time though I’ll most likely disable clicks during cutscenes, the result was good, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

The swift-but-sweet sax interludes, then, how did those come about?

That is a pretty interesting story actually. These sax samples were the first I added. Why? Back then I didn’t have any music, and I desperately wanted some. I headed to freesound.org and started hunting for jazzy little tunes to go with my slapstick animations to give them some punch. Just something temporary. When I thought I was starting to wrap the rest of the game up I figured it was the right thing to do to send an email to the author and ask if it was ok that I used his samples for a game. Amazingly enough he answered: Sure. Do you need anything else? My simple response to this was:  I need an entire soundtrack. He charged into the project head on with no sign of hesitation whatsoever and has produced things like crazy for me since. I owe him a lot.

Finally – and this is something that is very often brought up with AGS titles with great production values – what’s your take on voice acting and indie adventure games? I personally kept on reading Bwana’s lines aloud along the way, mon!

Heheh, me too, mon. I love it when games have good voice acting, it adds so much depth it’s just mad. There are actually lots of good freeware games out there with quality voice acting. Where they get the talented people from, I have no idea. I would love a voice over version of “Over the Edge” but I really don’t have a clue how to pull that off. It’s a BIG project, and honestly voice acting needs to be good, simply “ok” voice acting sinks a game in my opinion.

Hopefully, some time in the future, a voice acting solution will come my way. I too would love to hear Bwana’s nice relaxed attitude pour out of my speakers. One day this might come true!

Thanks again to Theodor Waern for his time and answers. While chapter two of The Journey Down, called “Into the Mist,” is slated for a summer 2011 release, “Over the Edge” is available right now at Skygoblin.com. Finally, if you didn’t yet get your full share of information on the game, our review can be read here, and there exists a production thread with big versions of some of the paintings for the game, and another post contains sketches and deleted scenes from Waern.

At this juncture, I would love to point you all to our interview with the game’s designer, Theodor Waern, published in conjunction with this review. In the interview, we discuss the game’s unique look and feel, Waern’s inspiration for the game and find out more about the game’s history and development.

The first chapter, “Over the Edge,” finally released after being four years in the making, tells the story of Bwana and Kito, brothers abandoned by their adoptive father captain Kaonandodo, whose abrupt disappearance left the brothers struggling to make a living. Apart for some slight “financial instability,” the duo has been running Kaonandodo’s Gas and Charter ever since, that is, until the Armando Power Company throws a proverbial wrench in their gears.

Suddenly, deus ex machina, a damsel in distress appears both willing and able to bail the twins out of their predicament; only, this mysterious bookworm – the university assistant Lina – soon reveals their adoptive father is somehow tangled up in a mysterious conspiracy related to the Armando Power Company. In the backdrop also looms the mysterious, forbidden Underland.

By far the most distinctive feature of The Journey Down is its unique graphical look and feel that, much like Grim Fandango’s (the closest point of comparison), also extends beyond the surface into a more coherent fantasy.

On the outset, I expected Waern to have utilized Polynesian materials as the base for his graphical style, but instead Waern has put together a real hodgepodge of various African sources. For instance, according to Waern, Kito – Bwana’s sidekick – was based on east African Makonde style, while some other characters, like Bwana, were inspired by central African Chokwe carvings. It is utterly striking how these designs seem to inhabit the very same space that the Calaca occupied in Grim Fandango.

In our interview, Waern also explained that while many of the game’s characters were simply given names without research, some of them are actually traceable to Swahili and other African languages. In this way, the game is, like Waern himself described the game, a “mess of different styles.”

Apart from the strikingly designed facial features for each character and the awe-inspiring presence of the metropolis that is St. Armando, looming in the background, the primary strength of the game is its immediacy and welcoming style of gameplay. The game succeeds in capturing the player’s interest at once simply by making the game’s fiction understandable in mere minutes – something that classic adventures always seemed to excel and even take pride in: A pirate wannabe? Check. A bad-ass biker? Check. An undead travel agent? Check. You’re instantly at home, pointing and clicking Bwana around Kingsport.

Now, beyond the unique visual direction and the aforementioned game influences, there exist at least three potential points of contention in “Over the Edge” that relate to the game’s allure.

Firstly, the game exhibits an uncanny ability to roll forward with superb momentum, constantly leaving you pleased with your puzzle-solving performance. In fact, some of the game’s puzzles are deviously simple, and as the game is medium length, it should offer an hour or two of gaming for most players. But this is no complaint – truly, where the game excels is in its carefully crafted balance, polish and eye for pacing; many locations were simply left out by the developer in order to maintain better and smoother playability, and Bwana indeed traverses Kingsport at true and tested LucasArts speeds (something that Telltale mucked up in their “Tales” series, for instance).

Like many adventures, the central puzzles figure around gathering ingredients – luckily made easy by the game’s highly intuitive (read: standard) interface. A directional arrow that appears when hovering over doors helps pinpointing passageways and entrances. The inventory is standard fare, too, with combination puzzles to go. Having only one save game slot is one of the few bigger offences towards adventure gaming aficionados.

Apart from the puzzles’ easygoing nature, another feature that may be divisive – and potentially a real deal breaker – is how in “Over the Edge,” Bwana has to have a reason why for his actions. If he is yet to find a meaningful use for an object or an item, he’ll simply shrug it off for the time being. I personally view this aspect to the game simply as successful writing, but others may disagree with Waern’s chosen method.

Finally, the game does utilize Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer -like meta-level comedy and writing, and thus often pokes fun at the common threads found in adventure games, including the kleptomania that so deeply permeates the genre. There may be moments in the game where these aspects of the writing can take players out of the game’s base-level fiction.

There does exist a slight lack of polish with the writing, primarily typographical, but easy to shrug off as characterization appropriately remains its chief focus. Intriguingly, several dialog trees also exist with choices that can only be accessed on separate replays.

While the game’s debt to both Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – the former thematic and technical, the latter stylistic – remains obvious, the game primarily operates closest to Monkey Island, and not only because of Kingsport Bay, an industrial cargo dock and one of the seven bays that surround St. Armando. In conversation, Waern explained to me that he simply believes the maritime theme and adventure games go well together. “No point fixin’ that which ain’t broken eh?,” he quipped.

Simon D’souza’s bubbly and energetic reggae compositions also highlight the aforementioned marine parallel; furthermore, almost every location in the game impressively has its own musical theme or jangle. Surprisingly enough, it is also the sound effects that play a major part in the creation of the game’s ambience – a fact quite hard to believe as the game’s canvas of sound has been assembled strictly with the help of the Freesound project. You wouldn’t know that, though, as the sound effects never take you out of the fiction by sounding of poor quality or out of place.

Of special note is the very final stretch of the game, during which the game takes a brilliant audiovisual spurt and leaves players on a game-high note and expectant of the follow-up chapter, “Into the Mist,” which is slated for a summer 2011 release.

Visit Skygoblin.com for a download link to the game. For those more interested in the inner workings of the game, there exists a production thread with big versions of some of the paintings for the game, and another post contains sketches and deleted scenes. Combined, these make for a neat “making of.”

Finally, do remember to take a look at our interview with Waern.

The game employs a new Progress Bar system within each chapter too, revealing how far towards solving a specific problem you are and detailing how many ‘bonus actions’ you’ve managed to solve along the way. Although not necessary to advance the plot, bonus actions allow you to discover more detail about the back-story. (They also reward you with those inexplicably tempting Gamerscore morsels on Xbox 360.) –Kristan Reed, Gray Matter Preview @ Eurogamer

(See also: Mata Hari)

Don’t forget to vote for your favourite Guybrush-ne’er-to-be (“Special Edition” is currently in the lead)!

Once more, don’t forget to cast your vote! The compo is still ongoing and lasts until the 17th of May.

Hard Space

Our first entry today, Hard Space: Conquest of the Gayliks, continues on the path already taken by Shane “ProgZmax” Steven’s previous game, Limey Lizard: Waste Wizard!, only to bring the parodic aspects even more to the fore. Stevens is also responsible for the vastly, vastly different Mind’s Eye, one of my all-time favourite AGS games.

I do absolutely have to get this out of the way: Hard Space is a parody of the original Star Trek, built entirely on the solid foundation of cock-jokery. The game, set on the ISC (or is it I.S.S.?) Penetrator, “a ship crewed almost entirely by male homosexuals,” discusses the all-star entourage of Captain Jack Hardin, “the black sheep of the Interstellar Commonwealth.”

Admittedly, the foundations for a game like this do exist; not only do we have the legacy of Interplay’s Trek point and click adventures 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites, but also this (never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be linking it here):

Also aboard the starship are the Vulvan Cmdr. Spunk and Lieutenants “Scatty” Scatman and Tagai. I’m sure you get the gist. The captain, visibly shaken by the loss of the only female crew member on the ship to a tragic accident, bounces into a pair of levitating on-screen boobs that divert the ship’s course over to Fallux V in the Boner System.

First things first: Our good Cpt. Hardin has a permanent, raging hard-on (see screenshot on the right). Now that we have that out of mind (but not out of sight, especially now that I just subjected you to a screenshot, sigh), what we have here is an extremely full-fledged one-month project, a whole package. Intro? Check. Unique visual style? Check. Animations? Check. Inventory? Check. Gadgets? Check. A music volume slider?

Chekov! In fact, the game is so full (of itself) that it simply has no regard to the compo’s rule set: not only is the game made by three people (in addition to Stevens, Jim Reed contributed backgrounds and ShiverMeSideways music), but it also blatantly breaks the one-room rule! The nerve!

Some issues with the game’s interface are inherited from the aforementioned Limey Lizard: I would have absolutely preferred a revolving cursor – especially since only three actions plus look at exist – instead of having the buttons sandwiched in a cluttered, super-duper-miniature interface. Additionally, for sci-fi tech, Hardin’s WristCom (on the left) is positively retro-grade: For scrolling text, the communicator has buttons for left and right instead of the more semantic and logical up and down. Also, while its database access works by inputting searches on the keyboard, you still have to switch back to using the mouse to actually enter one. There’s always the chance, though, that Stevens is a fan of Tale of Tales, and these gaffes in the interface have been included to illustrate the incompetence of the Interstellar Commonwealth…

To the game, then: The first puzzle proper, fixing the “Transputter,” (on the right) is unsolvable to me. Now, I don’t know whether I’m confused by the letters X, Y and Z normally being used for denoting axes in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, or whether I’m too much of a humanist to understand how the circuit board is supposed to work here, but with zero feedback from the game and several hours of cracking open the puzzle for the sake of a democratic write-up, no can do!

As the compo’s voting period is all but over, and the two games below warrant equal space, time and attention – and since many other players have reported similar troubles – we will have to leave the very tangible flaws of this puzzle for Stevens himself to solve (for instance, why does the circuit barely cover one fourth of the available screen, when more explanatory details could be shown?).

The tragedy of this all is that I have yet to see whether Stevens’ marketing of the game (“Do you love ACTION and SEX and MYSTERY?”) as an adult-oriented experience has any bearing on the game’s subsequent content. Whether the game is smart, funny, crude or simply distasteful, I cannot know until I fix the damn ‘sputter. April is the cruellest month, huh?

To end, let me just briefly discuss what I think is to blame here, that is, beyond the aforementioned puzzle: Much like Limey Lizard, Hard Space has to be considered a descendant of Space Quest. As we all know, the series is both particular and persnickety – like The Many Deaths of Roger Wilco puts it, “finding all the ways of killing off Roger is half the fun of playing” – and overall, quite the exercise in masochism (or sadism, if you happen think like the website above) and foolhardy persistence.

In these terms, in an era where the rest of the adventure gaming scene is increasingly moving away from the Sierra style and towards the more forgiving structures of the LucasArts tradition and even into the casual (see Eternally Us, for instance), Stevens’ stubbornness has to be lauded – at the very least – for retaining versatility in the, uh, the space-game adventure gaming space.

Fin.

P.S.
I’ll let you know of any progress in the comments section. Do let me know if you got the puzzle.

Snakes of Avalon

Igor Hardy, perhaps better known for maintaining the excellent adventure developer hub A Hardy Developer’s Journal, has also produced an April game together with Alex van der Wijst. Their entry, Snakes of Avalon, concerns the decidedly psychedelic and hallucinatory story of Jack the barfly, who accidentally happens upon a devious murder pact. As he begins to uncover the dastardly plot, despite his obvious self-caused no-go condition, Jack holds a meeting with his conscience and proceeds to try and make a difference – even if only within the confines of his neighbourhood watering hole.

Only, nobody else around wants to lend an ear to the poor soul; zero faith is placed on Jack’s abilities, his perceived agency so diminished that the only thing seen to move him at all is booze. In these terms, Jack often seems defined by other people’s responses to him. Bob the barkeep, for instance, predicts but an early grave for Jack, mocking him of his addiction to cheap liquor; Mike, the compulsory chiselled local tough guy, has fun at the expense of Jack’s physical shape.

A major thread to the game is then how Jack constantly tries to prove his doubters wrong despite being already somewhere far beyond mere alcoholism. Hardy characterises the game the following way:

…consider the fact that there always happen to be snakes in rat-hole. In this particular case, Jack happens upon a particularly nasty conspiracy organized by a bunch of them. He takes an oath to give his best to stop them. Too bad then that he is a complete drunk, who has trouble discerning reality from hallucinations. And of course it all happens on Avalon – the ancient, mythical island.

Avalon, the bar that functions as the setting of the game, feels like a spin-off of the legendary Lefty’s; both are decorated with the antique head of a moose, for instance, forming an intriguing lineage (see the screen captures on the left and below). Equal emphasis is placed on the presence of the bathroom, too.

But not much else here is derivative. What the game truly excels at is the decidedly unique spin it puts on the competition’s spatial restriction: By utilizing a mid-screen division of high and low, the game offers an example of what we often call the “seedy underbelly.”

Equally important, in the context of the compo, is Jack’s refusal to leave the bar, a manifestation of his psychological dependence and addiction. In this way, better than any other game in the compo, Hardy and van der Wijst’s entry explores the one-room concept to its very limit.

The titular hero, much like the aforementioned setting, is of the Lafferian archetype. In fact, the game’s graphics, while vastly more Paint-erly, are still reminiscent of the Leisure Suit Larry series, with especially the background art recalling the ever-so-slightly skewed structures of the latter-day Lowe-crafted Leisure Suits.

While the game’s looks hardly hold a candle to commercial ventures, they are nevertheless in no way detrimental to the overall experience. Indeed, a great deal of entrepreneurial diligence has been applied to the graphics: Nearly everything is animated, and the bar’s population is constantly changing and revolving, creating not only a fantastic sense of liveliness, but also of time passing.

Much of the storyline is also augmented with semi-animated cutscenes, which a great deal of work must have gone into; for a MAGS entry the game indeed sports massive amounts of action and movement. Some interesting artistic touches, like the crazy train (on the right) exist; a selection of music, which I assume to be from the public domain, is not quite as successful in creating ambience, instead serving to confuse the temporal placement of the game.

Curiously, the mouse buttons for look and use are inverted here compared to the usual paradigm, something that threw me off for a brief moment: Cognitive lock-in, I guess. As far as the puzzles go, once you get the gist of Jack’s internals, they become a smooth sailing, as the game constantly takes advantage, both in regards to its puzzles and its narrative, of its setting; only one or two inventory puzzles went decidedly beyond what could have seen to constitute Jack’s muddled-up inner life.

A thread of magic realism penetrates the internal logic of the game in a way that makes everything that happens to Jack still seem human-size and understandable. All in all, the game is a helter-skelter collage of events and occurrences that ultimately render its otherwise tragic protagonist a sympathetic – and quite a bit heroic – figure, even if only for a fleeting moment.

Two things of note: The game’s LucasArts metaphor is surely not lost on players! On that topic, do check out our story on goodwill and LucasArts. What the Arthurian Avalon has to do with all this I haven’t the faintest of clue, though.

Space Pool Alpha

Last but not least, Space Pool Alpha by Steve McCrea, Sheldon Moskowitz and Mark Lovegrove (against the rules, again?!) is a highly polished arcade experience that illustrates the inconceivable yet surprisingly potent combination of, yes, Asteroids and pool.

Let’s just… let’s stop and dwell on that for a moment: While the authors sell the game as an “intergalactic arcade sports simulation,” I don’t think that particular turn of phrase sufficiently illustrates all the different layers of the game.

What Space Pool Alpha is, really, is a video game whose mechanics are loosely based on the real-life ™ game family of cue sports, games played on a specifically designed table and with cue sticks and pool balls. This real-world game and its varying rule sets have been abstracted and subsequently brought into the computerized realm, as a symbol-based simulation, with another such abstraction – the science fiction of a space shuttle stuck in an asteroid belt, shooting its way out – layered on top of it.

This mixture of simulation-upon-simulation is then transformed together, by Mr. McCrea and co., into something entirely different. On top of everything, all this has been conceived and executed – successfully, if I may add – on an adventure game development system! Goodness, there are so many facets to this erratic entry that I simply cannot fathom how our brains cope with it all.

But I have played Space Pool Alpha and survived. In fact, it all could not be simpler as you are playing the game. The whole concept only becomes a brain-buster when you start thinking about it.

(Sorry.)

The graphics, then, pay successful homage to the original wireframe-based Asteroids style, retaining these ultra-familiar translucent shapes down to a tee. The sound effects similarly enhance the fiction, of a retro game, very successfully. The enemies, in arcade fashion, all have colourful portraits and background stories that tell players more about their opponents’ temperaments. The bots are largely competent and the gameplay is a polished experience, with no apparent issues sans some advantageous shooting methods. All in all, there are four modes of play: A quick tutorial and separate modes for practice, tournament and 2P each.

While I did find Lovegrove’s midi stylings to be somewhat more jarring here than usual, the problem has much to do with my idea of pool being better suited to a loungier, jazzier style.

That’s all from me, folks – and what a task it was! So many interesting entries this month. Again, the entries can be voted for up until the 17th of May, so you still have some time to familiarize yourself with the rest of the entries. Also, many of the games mentioned in part I, part II and here have also seen further revisions and updates since their original release. You can find more about these improvements by checking out the corresponding threads in the Completed Game Announcements section of the AGS forums.

Finally, also remember that we have quite a bit of existing Adventure Game Studio coverage on the website – feel free to take a look. Questions? Comments? Have a go below!

Eternally Us

One bad hand and it’s all over. -Fiona

Broken rules aside, context is everything with Ben “Ben304″ Chandler and Steven “Calin Leafshade” Poulton’s entry to the compo, Eternally Us. Context-free, the game is, like Steve Ince (So Blonde) calls it, a “beautiful” adventure. For a MAGS entry, then, the game is not only breathtakingly complete but also a fulfilling gaming experience.

The game is also yet another extension to Chandler’s formidable repertoire – a constant stream of short, self-contained adventures – that broadly discusses the same primary motifs, vehicles and themes, in many ways tying his output down into a more coherent whole. Conversely, Poulton is best-known for his well-esteemed (though also controversial) The McCarthy Chronicles.

Ostensibly an entry point into the relationship of two soulmates – Amber and Fiona – spending a beautiful afternoon out in the park, the game begins in subdued and relaxing tones. It also very, very quickly degenerates into a discussion of emotional distress.

In fact, whether it’s the loss of memory or knowledge, teleportation or even planar shift, Chandler has now juxtaposed the real world to a netherworld/spiritual world/otherworld in nearly all of his recent games, including Shifter’s Box, Heed, Hope and Featherweight. The same can be said of Eternally Us. While the game does technically utilize one and the same “room” as far as the concept is defined within the actual AGS engine, it nevertheless proceeds through a series of symbolic locations tied together by the thematic confines of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle. The author himself promised to explain these aspects in the form of a forthcoming post-mortem, so I won’t linger on this further.

The game seems equally informed by the standard dramatic structure of a five-stage play, from exposition to resolution. After all, adventure games have traditionally mimicked the spectators’ viewpoint in their presentation, and Eternally Us actually proceeds to acknowledge this fact.

Poulton’s dialogue utilizes a wildly poetic register, prosaic in a way that borders on the verbose. Let me quote the character of “Hurt”:

Why, when faced with the truth, do you close your heart and bear false witness to those who only wish to cleanse you of your pain? / You are bound by nothing more than your own clenched fists. By your fury at the realities that plague every one of us.

While the above clearly illustrates Poulton’s effortless lexicon and understanding of genre, these dramatic and overstated sections ultimately make out about 90% of the game and do hamper character-level relatability terribly; where overwritten dialogue in The McCarthy Chronicles is still directly used in the fleshing-out of characters, the stylings here are wasted on secondary and even tertiary characters that leave little mark on the protagonist or the player.

In comparison to Poulton’s previous work, Eternally Us also lacks the concise minimalism of Hope, as well as omits some of the more intricate details and touches of The McCarthy Chronicles, like the titular hero’s untouched revolver; his wish to be able to play the piano and so forth.

Poulton himself characterises his overall enterprise in the following way:

I only wish to create something which makes people feel truly alive and challenges their perceptions. I want to generate the power of Aesop with the elegance of Shakespeare. It’s fair to say that I want to make something special.. I want to make something which is truly Of Heaven.

The aims outlined above are, in no uncertain terms, lofty. For a writer to grow, of course, the utilization of schemas and narrative structures is surely recommendable. That being said, the structural choices here render the primary characters secondary while the narrative, though at the forefront, remains oblique and suffers from being squeezed into its formal constraints.

By now, you must have realized there exists quite the rift between the tone of my commentary so far and the actual merits of the production. There is obviously no doubt whatsoever that Eternally Us both looks and plays most excellently, with production values, polish and sheen of incredible calibre for a MAGS project.

The game also sports a wondrous cast of voice actors, with Miranda Gauvin’s performance especially of note, and Poulton’s musical score is similarly neat. Chandler’s background art is equally painterly and atmospheric as usual: Some of the latter-half scenery especially, with animated full-screen falling snow and leaves, begs to be seen in motion; speaking of motion, there is a-plenty of that, too. Only the artist’s obsession with lamps and lamp-posts is beginning to stand out like a bit of an eyesore.

Again, as outlined at the very beginning of the article, only a ludographic contextualization reveals these gripes, which do not arise much in relation to the compo at hand.

In terms of gameplay, Eternally Us is not so light on puzzles as its puzzles are light. I would draw attention to how the game forms no exception to Chandler’s recurring use of kinetic, movement-based puzzles that push the game more into the realm of the interactive novel. In my admittedly superficial and incomplete reportage of Heed I wrote that “[t]here is a definite emphasis on positioning, movement and object states”.

This is not a criticism. However, while the kinetic approach was still extremely novel in Shifter’s Box, and fresh enough in Heed, the issue of repetition is beginning to rear its head: As repeated action forms the solution to most of the puzzles here, more variation would be required for the game to create more of an illusion of a problem-solving game. As is, the term point and click could simply not be any more appropriate.

I would also like to further clarify how I find the game’s failures in the writing department to be ultimately far less about register and more about its actual use. While the game begins in the present day, and looks to be a discussion of banality, it abruptly delves into a more fantastic sphere. Sadly, these two modes, the banal and the symbolic, are ultimately irreconcilable in the game’s fiction: The main character, Amber, takes her predicaments always at face value, never questioning or negotiating her own role. Is there no lingering doubt, at all?

This, in turn, is rather dangerous to the game’s use of location- and character-based symbolism. Consider Shifter’s Box, where planar travel is beautifully motivated by the game’s in-game fiction, or even Poulton’s own The McCarthy Chronicles, which works to avert the obvious trappings of the genres of noir and hardboiled. Perhaps games like Downfall, in their discussions of the human psyche, succeed in part thanks to not relying so closely on structure and form?

Whenever Poulton lets his romantic stylings drop and subsequently allows the characters to shine through, whether cognizantly or accidentally, the game finds just enough time to deliver a fantastic payoff. In this way, the very best portions of the game in my mind are, by far, its beginning and its end.

Chandler, “Ben304,” one of (if not) the most prolific games writers currently working with AGS, can maintain an inhuman pace: Poulton and Chandler’s earlier collaboration, Hope, was completed over a 48-hour span. These men are clearly familiar with the presence of temporal constraint. What I would most like to see at this juncture, however, is for the authors to take a jab at producing a full-length; in short bursts, their games tend to dwell on the same topics each time around. Perhaps their forthcoming project in Winter’s Shadow – the second game to be released under the Infinite Grace moniker – shall be exactly that?

All things said, I hope the various references to all these wide-ranging earlier projects as well as the length of this write-up speak for (and, heaven forbid, not against!) Infinite Grace’s excellent contributions to the freeware adventure scene. Again, do not hesitate to cast your vote – there’s still enough time to check all the entries out. Please also remember to check back soon for the final portion of our reportage!

But why feature MAGS on this particular website, exactly? While we have obviously discussed a plethora of adventures both free and commercial before, doesn’t this begin to dig too deep into hobbyism?

First, whilst the basic idea of the compo may be deviously simple, it comes packaged with a twist every month: Each subsequent contest, as it stands, follows the creative guidelines defined by the previous winner! Such a constantly changing, personalized rule set makes for distinct competitions that always exhibit a different cross-section of genre, style and gameplay. Indeed, many participants seek to broaden their horizons also by battling the perceived limitations and constraints of the adventure-making engine itself.

April’s rule set was defined by Dualnames, who settled on the “One Room One Month” (OROM) format:

I know it may sound silly. But keep it simple, keep it plain. We’ve seen best of AGS games in the OROWs, and I’ve always wondered, if you had to have one room, what could you make more in a month. Keep it two people team MAX! Calin and Ben304 aren’t allowed to team up!

Second, for the very first time in five years, the compo saw no entries at all in March; in fact, this was the first-ever MAGS to not have an entry ever since the activity officially got its start in the June of 2001. April – the month that I have chosen to dissect here – was luckily vastly more successful, and as such raised my interest in addition to its prolific participants. What better moment to discuss the competition than to find it revitalized!

Third, the MAGS website places great emphasis on all voters playing through each and every entry before casting their vote. Therefore, after the jump, I have alphabetically taken a look at all of April’s titles, even if the inherent clashes of style, scope, direction and quality do complicate this task considerably.

Fourth, if Destructoid can report on Ludum Dare (which Nabeel has done on this website in the past), then we can definitely talk about MAGS. Off we go with part one – parts two and three of the article will be posted on the website over the following days.

Each segment has a hyperlink to a download for the entry in question; the general voting page for all entries can be found here. Voting continues until the 17th of May, so you still have some time to familiarize yourself with the entries.

AGS Footballer Tech Demo

Tzach Shabtay’s AGS Footballer Tech Demo seeks to replicate both the look and feel of the classic Sensible Soccer, and does so really quite admirably (though admittedly not quite so infuriatingly as Sensible Software’s TAC-2 destroying Amiga classic – whether this is a bonus or a minus is up to you!).

What we have here is a football game demo built to cope with – rather than take advantage of – the obvious constraints of the AGS engine. Therefore, the first thing of note here is not so much the actual quality of a functional AI and physics, but the fact that these exist in the first place! Chris Jones’ engine was obviously not designed with either in mind, and the developer’s effort in crafting these in is laudable.

Gameplay is built upon a two-button shoot/pass set-up. I’ve always vastly preferred the rather sensible one-button method of tapping for a pass and pressing to shoot, though, so having two buttons in AGS Footballer does go against the grain of the play style I was otherwise expectant of, especially since Shabtay merits the Sensible World of Soccer as his inspiration

“…for the controls, although I haven’t played it in years, so I did it from memory… In fact, in the first beta there was only one button like the original swos, but I couldn’t pull it off, so added the second button…”

The strict month-long time-limit of the competition therefore obviously played a major hand in the decision. Overall, passing functions better than shooting, which sometimes refuses to work how and when I would have preferred it to.

The physics are relatively neat; there’s quite a bit of vertical depth to the kicks – you can supposedly affect the kick height with the arrow keys – and even curveballs are accounted for. Every now and then, the AI (goaltenders especially) does goes perfectly ball-istic with its shots, though, and also get what I can only describe as spastic attacks.

Actually maintaining control of the ball remains somewhat elusive, further contributing to moments of chaos on the field. The problem is somewhat exacerbated by a rubbery automatic focus shift. It need be emphasised, however, that many of these issues are the by-product of the existence of the switch mechanic itself, and were similarly – if to a lesser degree – present in Sensible Soccer.

Using manual player switch redeems most of the aforementioned issues sans some accidental passes, which are caused by the same key being used both for switching and passing. According to a Making Of article on Sensible Soccer, the Sensible team sought to account for these player-selection related issues by keying the character not just based on where the ball was, but also “from the direction you’re pressing on the joystick which player you’re drawing on.”

By far the best aspect to Shabtay’s ballin’ entry to the compo is doubtless its high, high degree of polish. The game is not only extremely feature-full for a tech demo, with a good rudimentary set of graphics, controls and gameplay, but also equally polished in terms of in-game menus, available settings and documentation, which are all equally solid work and presented clearly.

Lastly, what better way to pay homage to the supportive AGS forums than to populate the teams with long-time discussants? In AGS Footballer, you’ll find yourself playing with or against Vince Twelve and Dave Gilbert, among many, many others. The teams are even set up as a contest between the Wintermute Engine and AGS!

Alphabeta – A Room of Words

Alphabeta – A Room of Words, Ivan Mogilko’s grammar-themed entry, is ostensibly a story about an evil wizard, Grammarfail, who kidnaps the crown prince of the Kingdom of Fairytales in order to, uh, pervert his literary abilities. The fair sorceress Alphabeta, our protagonist, is then booked to straighten out the whole shebang.

The game begins with a delightful and cute, play-like prologue (not unlike those of McGee’s Grimm) that cleverly taps into the otherwise questionable narrative potential of a… a spelling game? As such, the concept needs no further selling; only, as this introduction comes to an end, with Alphabeta teleporting into Grammarfail’s castle to combat the evil typographer, no “room of words” exists, and the castle is entirely pitch-black.

The author, prompted by the aforementioned zero-entrant April catastrophe, swore to take part in this month’s competition no matter what, and describes the game as a “vastly unfinished piece” and “a game without gameplay”; in other words, there’s no way to rock this thang. Too bad.

Next!

Dead Hand: Chapter 7 The Bridge

Limpingfish’s Dead Hand: Chapter 7 The Bridge is effectively a five-minute long first-person bait & switch that has been developed with the aid of the AGS Panorama3D module – admittedly to a pretty neat effect: Instead of having to work with a still screen, you can change your viewpoint, hover around the scenery for clues and even move in a slightly more spaced-out version of the classic step-by-step Dungeon Master style.

Yup, Dead Hand might only have five minutes worth of gameplay, but those five are, uh, well spent! There is a definite sense of an aesthetic and an art direction at work here, and combined with the use of an uncommon first-person viewpoint, the suspense of this murder mystery carries over rather well.

Unfortunately, the game did bug out on me on my first playthrough, with my cursor turning into a permanent red X. After restarting – with no way of skipping the introduction, boo hiss – I was finally able to get through that one last minute that I was yet to see.

The downside to the aforementioned module is that it does pixelate (voxelate? How does this thing work?) graphics considerably during camera pans, only to render the scenery properly as you pause. Curiously, this is utilized to great effect in this particular MAGS entry: The idea of having to stop to look when focusing on elements works excellently within the constraints of a detective story, but is probably bound to cause problems for other types of fiction.

Dead Hand is short and sweet, and there are decidedly no regrets for trying the entry out. In the meantime, it’s probably better to take a step back and let Limpingfish develop some more content for the game! (You could check out some of his earlier works in the same style, for instance.)

Dead Pixels

Folks, I can’t deny that Nathan Hamley’s Dead Pixels (title in reference to the pixel hunting within, I’m sure) made me reconsider my commitment to this write-up. While this uncertainty luckily came to pass thanks to the subsequent entries, at this stage I could not help but wonder about the legitimacy of the topic. The problem, simply put, is this: How to best deal with an entry that is generic yet formally incoherent, with puzzles arbitrary yet repetitive, and downright hostile towards the player?

How to best negotiate a game that sports a lead character that takes a full twelve seconds (12!) to walk from one edge of a screen to another; a game that has its background sculpted from a photograph, in which a low amount of hoverless and response-free hotspots are either blatantly obvious or altogether indiscernible?

In all fairness, it does bear mention that Hamley himself admits how he “can’t code for cookies” and that his “next project’s programming … won’t be done by me.” Ah well. What can one add? Instead of being an illustration of ability or quality, perhaps the entry served the purpose of getting the author more acquainted with the engine, or the constraints of the competition? If that was the case, then no more need be said.

Therefore, let me be brief, very brief: The frame story here is that the local net café is closed down, and what follows is that you have to rid the world of a solitary zombie. Despite all these garish flaws, outlined above and present in literally every aspect of the entry, it can be played from beginning to end and thus completed. Too bad getting through should be such an exercise in frustration.

Dead Pixels wraps up the first part of our coverage of MAGS April. The complete list of the entries in question can be accessed here on the MAGS website, and the subsequent parts of this article – to be published soon – will contain a longer discussion of Eternally Us as well as delve into the final trio of entries, Hard Space, Snakes of Avalon and Space Pool Alpha.

My question is, which of these discarded Guybrushes would have been your favourite?

For a completely different type of comparison, you can check out our earlier post that juxtaposes old and new cover artwork from the game.

The Whispered World is finally out today in most of Europe. North American fans will have to wait a little longer still, as Viva Media pushes the game out the door next Monday. We hope this week’s coverage of the game has been informative and that you will all be able to enjoy the game to its fullest when you finally get your hands on it today, on Monday, or later down the road.

As we wrap up with our coverage on the game here at The Slowdown for the time being, I thought it would be pertinent to leave you all with a thought for tomorrow. Below, a piece of concept art for Marco Hüllen’s next personal hobby adventure project, Limbus:

In the promotional image above, the snake-wrapped figure on the right instantaneously recalls the influence of variations of the Hellenistic monumental sculpture, “Laocoön and His Sons.” While Marco confirmed this, he remains tight-lipped on its role and symbolism in the game’s context.

“Limbus,” then, refers to boundaries, borders and edges – all present in the image above, whether in the steepness of the cliff, the bridge, or the sea below. Additionally, since the third statue lies wounded in the back of the foreground, and each these characters are clearly in various types of torment, this all points our attention towards the Roman Catholic concept of the Limbo, which also ties in with the Roman-style architecture of the image.

Above, a series of character sketches from the game (including Aurora and Nicodemus, two of the three lead characters, and Nox). A translation of Hüllen’s official storyline for the game is as follows:

Limbus is set in a fictional future in which the world has been in chaos for many years, as people have suddenly begun to remember their past lives. As people are no longer afraid of death, they go about living their lives light-heartedly. Crimes are abound, wars raging and nothing can prevent the madness of mankind.

But then the Triplets are born. They alone can not remember their past lives, and their task will be to end the madness of the world.

The player assumes the role of the triplets Aurora, Nicodemus and Orlando, who must return to the villa of their childhood, to uncover the mystery of their lives and the entire mankind. The three are pursued by a secret sect, who eventually will have something to do with their secret.

During the story the three will have to visit crazy places like the city of the children and the city of the elderly, and meet many crazy characters, like the child Linus, who has opened a museum of his past lives, as well as creatures such as Nox, who lives in their villa.

In our interview, as inspiration for this forthcoming project, Hüllen cites Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie and the music of Yann Tiersen. At the moment,while the author admits to currently working on a demo, he is not yet very far in development, and as such not actively looking for publishers yet.

It has been a while, has it not?

Not only is this game a long six years in the coming, but we have also not been treated to a high-resolution, 100% hand-drawn point and click adventure game in aeons, as even The Biller’s painterly A Vampyre Story and Pendulo Studios’ latest stylised offerings have resorted to 3-D in justified attempts at providing relief to the heavily budgetary nature of animation. And who could, in their right mind, blame them for doing so?

But still – one hundred percent. In light of the above games, that striking statistic alone makes Marco Hüllen’s The Whispered World stand out from the pack – and boy, does it ever: There is a breathtaking array of various character animations – actions, emotions, expressions and movements – that quite possibly has not been seen before, at the very least not since the heyday of the genre in the latter part of the 1990’s.

Perhaps the closest touchpoint in terms of the game’s graphical look and feel, then, is not to be found in the gaming medium at all, but among lead artist Hüllen’s primary influences: Japanese anime and classic children’s animations, like Spirited Away and The Last Unicorn (a cut-scene example on the left)?

As things stand, every forthcoming review of the game will surely be gushing all over the graphics in the manner above. Therefore, we should probably move away from discussing the Captain Obvious -grade graphical prowess of the game and instead touch upon other aspects of the demo, the aspects that may potentially set the game apart from its counterparts.

What? Right, sure, yes, it is a generously budgeted adventure game – you’re right in your assessment in that we don’t get those too often, either. But what I meant to venture is that video games have seldom, if ever, touched upon the rather cruel existential position of the circus performer (For your information, The Secret of Monkey Island does not count! Cirque de Zale just might); the showmen and -women of the circus find themselves perpetually outside society, bound to their work and travel, only getting glimpses of normality in their day-to-day life.

Sadwick the clown, the protagonist of The Whispered World, is clearly in the throngs of an inverted Wanderlust, aching to be rid of the travelling life, wishing nothing more than to escape into normalcy. While the unwilling protagonist as hero -set-up is theoretically nothing short of a video gaming staple, the marked difference here in practice is that though Sadwick may be extremely resistant to his current lot in life, he exhibits very little reluctance over his role in the grander scheme of things, and is ready to embrace anything that should break the boundaries of his current existence.

Sadwick would give everything to become a pira… someone, anybody, and in the demo, he indeed tries his very meek best to find a way out of his current position, out of acting as a human cannonball. Whether it be poetry or philosophy, though, his suggestions are rather mercilessly shut down, utilizing a perfunctory capitalist logos, by his family.

As soon as it is revealed that Sadwick has actually been assigned the role of the clown from the outside, forced to comply with the wishes of the rest of his entourage, it also becomes clear that we’re not really controlling the archetypal clown; instead, we’re playing a young man that has been involuntarily marked, classified and, in the process, nullified; it’s no surprise that Sadwick is trying to find ways of becoming more of a non-clown, a non-entity.

Often, you will find other characters in the game remarking on his failures as a clown, and in many ways, this is what Sadwick wants, even desires: The closer to a real clown he gets, the more he loses grip on his true identity. A contradictory one.

Though young Sadwick is presented rather dangerously in a high-pitched, nasal voice, the character ultimately comes across as sentimental and understandable instead of merely whiny and annoying, and the actor cast in Sadwick’s silly boots fills them rather admirably. Like so many existentialists in their youth (or is that youths in their existentialism?), Sadwick does seem to exhibit the side-effects of a tube vision, and subsequently comes off as single-minded in some instances, multi-faceted in others, ultimately promising enough variation and depth for the character to remain intriguing.

In fact, merely over the course of the demo, the voice actor behind Sadwick’s buffoonish façade clearly gets more comfortable in his role, loosens up and becomes more enjoyable to listen to, even if the game’s writing sometimes gets a little over-the-top verbose. Then again, players are free to click through dialogue as they please, as the game delightfully supports both line-skipping and double-click quick-exits – two elementary, baseline features that all adventure games should come with.

I can’t speak for the writing of the German version of the game, but the English-language translation comes off as both competent and polished, and perhaps offers to us a partial explanation to the rather long delay in-between the EU and US releases and the German release date.

Some of the wordplay (“compass-compote-complot-compost” – ugh!) might strike you as stilted, and its tone is often, uh, as the game would put it – loquacious. Overall, creating a successful sense of being in a completely new fantasy world, a sense of belonging, always requires more contextualization than other genres. That is the baggage of fantasy, and indeed suits some players better than others, just like fantasy literature suits different readers. Be that as it may, The Whispered World is certainly successful in making its world understandable and intriguing, and any adventure that attempts proper dialogue-based puzzles should be lauded for even trying.

For those who prefer their games voiceless, there also exist subtitles; both features can be turned on and off at will. There is little to say of the soundtrack at this juncture except that it is both outstanding and Hisaishi-like, contributing to the overall atmosphere.

In Wednesday’s interview, Hüllen emphasised how Sadwick’s character was redesigned to better appeal to adult players and convey a broader spectrum of emotion. It is incredibly easy to write both these attempts down as successes. Many of the added character animations have a profound effect on the game and its player, and I only need to show you two sequential screenshots to perfectly illustrate what the artist means:

There is a depth of expression, beyond the more common narrative means here, that often remains untapped in games; as I showed these images to Artful Gamer‘s Chris Lepine, he remarked that the team at Daedalic had seemingly very much succeeded in capturing “the miyazaki-style focus on simple/effective facial expression.”

The demo, which contains a section from the very first of the four chapters of the game, is set in the Autumn Forest location and is elegantly orchestrated overall, with unobtrusive restrictions in place, and allows players to experience enough of the game while still leaving enough locations untouched to engage players’ wallets.

For one, the download is one of the longer adventure game demonstrations that I’ve seen, and definitely offers a good few hours of active playtime as well as a brain-crunching challenge. The installer weighs in at 593mb and can be acquired from Deep Silver at this address. The full game is out tomorrow in Europe, and on Monday in the United States. So far, the game is digitally available at Direct2Drive, GamersGate and The Adventure Shop. Daedalic also promise a release on Steam.

Maro Hüllen, with Pet

In today’s interview, we talk to the original designer and primary illustrator of The Whispered World, Marco Hüllen (on the right), in the hopes of shedding more light on the curiouser details of the development process of the game – especially, on details that are still left uncertain for non-German audiences.

After all, German fans of the adventure game have had the privilege of reading Marco’s posts on various adventure gaming forums – as well as having already played the game. For those of us not yet in the know, the interview below should hopefully reveal some further facets of the make-up of the wildly imaginative ride that is the six-year development process of the game.

Finally, please do remember to take a look at our introductory post to The Whispered World – the article, written in conjunction with this interview, details the game’s history from inception to conception, between the years 2004 and 2010, and should by all means get you better prepared for the game’s release on the 23rd.

A special thank you goes to the very genial mister Hüllen, who braved our questions despite a minor language barrier. Therefore, the interview has been translated, from German into English, by Martyn Zachary and Richard Scary for The Slowdown. The original answers, in the German language, will also be published on the website later.

The Slowdown: After having worked so long on a project that began way back in the first half of the 00′s as an university project, are you feeling any fatigue now that the game is finally coming out?

Marco Hüllen: A little, but the joys do outweigh the fatigue. When I first started work on the game, I never expected it to become such a marathon for me. Much has been enjoyable, and a lot was equally frustrating. In the end it all came together nevertheless, and with that in mind it has all been worthwhile.

How long have you been working on the game, exactly?

Oh, it has already been quite a few years: I started work in the year 2004, with The Whispered World as the topic of my diploma thesis. When I completed my degree in late 2005, I made the decision to develop the game further at Bad Brain Entertainment, for whom I had done graphics on some other titles during my studies.

Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt after about six months and I did no further work on the game. After that I became lead artist at Independent Arts Software, where I worked on games for the Nintendo DS and Wii. In 2007, I came in contact with Daedalic Entertainment by chance, who then inquired if I would continue to work on the game at the studio. Thus my work at Daedalic began in September 2007, where I worked on the game, together with the rest of my colleagues, for almost 2 years as lead artist and game designer, up until its release in Germany in August 2009.

Was your graduation project more a visual arts or a game design project?

I did graphic design and illustration at the Rhein-Sieg academy of arts. Though my diploma thesis focused more on illustration and advertising than on game design, I nevertheless wanted to put on display as much actual game as possible, and developed a story, a trailer and a demo for the game in which important features of the game’s design, like Spot, some puzzles and characters were shown.

A Background Sketch

There is some mystery as it relates to the original playable demo you released for the game back in 2005. How close was the game to a full release at that time?

The demo was part of my dissertation and really just a snippet from the game. Since I did the demo completely alone it only had 4-5 rooms, but did already contain basic animations for the main characters, Sadwick and Spot. In contrast, the game now contains 60 rooms, many people have worked to improve the game and the character of Sadwick underwent a complete redesign.

How does the 2007 German-only trailer figure in all this, then? What was its function? Did you design the trailer all by yourself, as a marketing vehicle, for instance? It still contains the previous version of Sadwick, and borrows music (“Ano natsu he”) from Miyazaki’s renown anime, Spirited Away – do I see a Studio Ghibli influence there?

The trailer was, like the demo, part of my thesis and was not meant for public consumption, as it contained music from the film Spirited Away. Miyazaki’s films have been a great inspiration to me and the music was only meant to illustrate where the direction of the music and the atmosphere of the game should go.

We’ve come to understand that Bad Brain’s Wolfgang Kierdorf effectively owned, at one time, the licensing rights and the characters of The Whispered World. How did that come to happen, and how did Daedalic eventually get the license?

Bad Brain never did have the rights to the game: Only the portion of graphics and content that was created during my stay at the company belonged to them. Around the same time, the game’s story capsized completely, and really had hardly anything to do with my original vision. It wasn’t until Daedalic that my story was picked back up.

Daedalic then bought the existing parts from Bad Brain, and came to an agreement with me in regards to my rights to the game.

From what I understand, your relationship with Bad Brain Entertainment was never quite as poor as reported in the English-speaking press. For one, the contractual issues you had with them seem to have been overstated. In your opinion, does Bad Brain’s legendary bad reputation relate more to their high-profile issues with Autumn Moon and Bill Tiller?

While there were indeed many problems within the company, I’m very reluctant to talk ill of Mr. Kierdorf, who was essentially a great boss. I have never interfered in regards to his failings in successfully delivering on his promises with A Vampyre Story, and have only learned about the problems via the gaming press. It does seem that something went wrong there.

In retrospect, how would you characterize Mr. Kierdorf, who is often demonized and vilified among adventure game fans?

Ultimately, Kierdorf is just someone who enjoyed the adventure game genre as much as I did, and he had huge plans for huge games. Unfortunately, nothing ever became of it in the end, as we all know.

The absolute worst period during the development of The Whispered World?

When management of the game at Bad Brain completely changed and I was no longer able to see much of what I had once planned. I believe it’s good that that the game was not brought to completion at the time.

As the game’s credits roll, you are quite strikingly credited for a vast amount of different tasks and developmental roles; How large a percentage do you estimate your final contribution to the released version to be?

Most of my work was done with the backgrounds, which are largerly mine, and also the characters, which I have created myself with a few exceptions. Apart from that, I designed the entire interface, many items and some animations, like the running animations for Sadwick and Spot. Most of the other animations have been done by my colleagues at Daedalic, who have all done a great job.

Above all, I would like to praise Simone Kesterton and Gunnar Bergmann especially. There was a summary of my story that I had already done during my thesis, and together with Sebastian Schmidt and Jan Müller Michaelis Spitzname, we worked it out further.

I was also involved in game design as well as one or two 3D effects.

Claas Paletta’s FAQ for The Whispered World lists further influences than just the aforementioned Miyazaki: Classic fairy tales and adventure games like Monkey Island. Would you agree with these? Any other influences you had back when you first started work on the game?

Yes, Miyazaki was indeed the biggest inspiration for the game, but other fantasy films from my childhood, such as The Last Unicorn, or Labyrinth, had a great influence on me as well. The game even contains elements of the movie Fight Club, which inspired some of the plot twists.

What has most recently motivated you as an artist? A film, a work of art, an album?

I am an enormous film buff, and love stories with oddball characters; Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie, as well as the wonderful music of Yann Tiersen, have inspired my newest hobby project, Limbus. For me, music is one of the most important things in being able to dive into a new, different world.

If I’m painting a picture or two, I tend to listen to the same music again and again – I know that might sound crazy to some, but it really helps me to convey the atmosphere I’m trying to imbue the images with.

Sadwick the clown, then. How did the transformation from the old Sadwick (on the left) over to the new design happen? The previous iteration appears to me more child-like and innocent, unprepared, with the colour red ultimately striking a parallel more towards children’s entertainment.

And what became of his tail?

We wanted to develop a look that would appeal to an older audience, and subsequently a character with which we could express more emotion, which was immensely important for the game. His lion’s tail, from that time, became a casualty in the process.

The character of Sadwick, in some ways, exudes the bitter-sweet melancholy of Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp in his 1928 silent film, The Circus. How did you arrive upon the character of the clown?

What I’m referring to here is the cruel existential position of the circus performer; the showmen and -women of the circus are also perpetually outside society, bound to their work and travel. Is Wanderlust the source of Sadwick’s melancholy?

Sadwick the character was meant to be very unsatisfied with his current life, completely ready to break free of its constraints. We often have to hide our true feelings in life, like feign happiness just to make other people happy, even though what we’re feeling might be the complete opposite of that. We all have surely smiled to a loved one in mourning even though we were full of grief ourselves.

Thus, a clown that is unhappy with his own life seemed to me to have fine contrast that would then distinguish Sadwick from other characters in adventure games, and breathe enough life into him, to make him sympathetic and tell an emotional story in a world that is just as fragile as Sadwick is. I hope the players will empathize with Sadwick enough, so that they can laugh with him at the end of the game but also feel a hint of sadness.

This all begs the question: How closely does The Whispered World of today resemble your original vision of the game?

Apart from a few exceptions, the game became what I had wished for. Though surely one’s never 100% satisfied – that would be a crying shame, after all, since you should always try to better yourself.

Now that the game is nearly ready and published, did it originally ever cross your mind that the game’s development could become such a wild ride?

Never ever!

A do-or-die question, a high-priority issue the ambiguity of which is torturing non-German players all around the globe. Which is it, yes, which is it – is Spot a worm or a caterpillar?

A caterpillar, with a few special abilities to boot.

Finally, now that the game is finished and released, are you going to be working on other projects with Daedalic?

I work as a concept artist at Related Designs at the moment. But you never know.

At this point, I would like to take the time, once again, to thank Marco for his answers, hopefully we all now have a better idea of what went down behind the scenes. Here’s to hoping that The Whispered World is not the last of Marco’s fantastic graphic design on adventure games.

For Hüllen’s personal website, check out Fantastic Creatures; The Whispered World’s official website can be found here. The game is out in the UK, Scandinavia, Spain and Italy on April 23, 2010, and on the 26th in North America. So far, the game is digitally available at Direct2Drive, GamersGate and The Adventure Shop. Daedalic also promise a release on Steam.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles. –Charlie Chaplin

Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words. Other times, a video is worth these thousand words; once in a while, though, there comes a time when neither pictures, videos nor a thousand words can accurately portray a story.

One such story, in more than one way, is that of The Whispered World, an apocalyptic fantasy point and click adventure from Germany; apart from boasting an imaginative, existentialist storyline, it also comes with an origin story that is one of the wildest development rides for a video game in recent memory.

Timeline, 2004-2006

Back in 2006, things were not turning right at all for German artist and designer Marco Hüllen; in fact, they were turning all kinds of wrong: The painter, whose graphic design and illustration graduation project at the Rhein-Sieg academy of arts – a hand-painted adventure game in its classic point and click mode that showed immense promise from the get-go – had just agreed to a publishing deal with the now-infamous, ephemeral German adventure game publisher Bad Brain Entertainment. This decision, perfectly logical at the time, would later turn out to have massive repercussions on the development of the game.

Bad Brain Entertainment, founded in October 2004 by one Wolfgang Kierdorf, “a former game-programmer who gave up that career in the early 90s to start into the ‘serious’ software development business,” later became infamous for swooping in to ink a publishing agreement for A Vampyre Story with Bill Tiller’s Autumn Moon Entertainment back in 2007, only to back down from the deal shortly afterwards, for reasons that are still shrouded in folklore.

Wolfgang Kierdorf

This rather disreputable company died a quiet death only shortly afterwards, leaving behind little else to show but an October 2005 demo version of Hüllen’s thesis, a ridiculously optimistic release date of Winter 2006, and… as we all know, a bunch of broken dreams. As it soon became evident to fans of The Whispered World, Kierdorf’s definition of “serious” actually meant “dire” for Hüllen, as his brainchild languished in contractual limbo for the better part of 2007, as Kierdorf still controlled the assets Hüllen had produced during his stay at the company.

For a moment, it seemed as though the story of The Whispered World would come to an end with the demise of Bad Brain. That is, until Daedalic Entertainment scooped up the rights to the game – as well as the existing assets Hüllen had previously developed over at Bad Brain – in the August of 2007.

Today, Hüllen admits that the game had in fact progressively begun to resemble his original vision less and less during his stay at Bad Brain, until there was little left that reminded him of his own plans for the game. The original version of the story was only brought back and reintroduced after Daedalic negotiated a deal with him later in 2007. Retrospectively, the artist now looks at the game’s temporary cancellation as a positive turn of events. To satiate your curiosity, here are some screenshots from the 2005 German-language demo:

Hüllen also remains admirably philosophic over the Bad Brain debacle, holding no ill will over Kierdorf’s actions, in fact describing his former employer “essentially a great boss.” On the whole, it would seem that the gaming press latched on to the very tangible frustration borne out of the delays Kierdorf caused both to A Vampyre Story and The Whispered World.

Timeline, 2007-2010

That Hüllen is relieved to see his game see release would be an overstatement. Who could have imagined a six-year development process for a project that started its life in 2004 as a school project? Originally as a thesis, the artist produced a demo – the same demo that Bad Brain would later release – with 4-5 rooms and a set of basic animations for the main characters, Sadwick the clown and Spot the caterpillar.

While the game was languishing in contractual limbo, an unofficial German-language trailer, also animated and produced during Hüllen’s stay at Rhein-Sieg, was leaked in the autumn of 2007, prompting many adventure gaming sites to take it for an announcement of a publishing deal.

The game, influenced by Studio Ghibli and the Monkey Island brand of point and click adventure gaming, very much remains the brainchild of Hüllen, as the artist was ultimately responsible for most of the game’s backgrounds, character designs and interface. While Hüllen testifies that the game is largely as he envisioned six years ago, Sadwick’s character did undergo a revision that was meant both to appeal to a more adult gaming audience as well as better express emotions that Marco characterizes as “immensely important” for the game.

Of course, the biggest pressure has been off of Hüllen’s shoulders since the August of 2009, when the game was finally released in Germany after five long years of intermittent development. Uncharacteristically for a recent German-produced adventure game, though, The Whispered World is also seeing wide-spread, global release.

In North America, where Daedalic has an all-new publishing agreement with Viva Media, the game is slated for release on the 26th of April. In Europe, where the game is to be published by Deep Silver, with a release in the UK, Scandinavia, Spain and Italy on April 23rd. Daedalic also promises the game will be published via Steam and other digital download platforms, though no official date is yet given.

The game, then, is obviously characterized by its hand-painted, high-resolution backgrounds and luxuriously animated character sprites. To allow more insight into the creative process of the game – let us not forget the contributions of the rest of the staff, as most of the game’s animations were done by Hüllen’s colleagues at Daedalic – Deep Silver have published a “Making Of” video for the game:

Last but not least, for more information, you can visit the game’s equally luxurious website here. If you have any questions (or corrections!) regarding the admittedly complex timeline, feel free to ask in the comments section and we’ll try to figure it out.

The research for this article has been produced in conjunction with the gracious Mr. Hüllen, and is partially based on our interview that will be posted tomorrow here at The Slowdown, so check back soon!

Cover Art

This week, after a brief stretch of inactivity, The Slowdown prepares to turn its knobs to full blast with five days solely dedicated to the German-made, apocalyptic fantasy point and click adventure, The Whispered World!

I consider this week, from the 19th to the 23rd, just as much a return to my gaming roots – the adventure game genre – as it is a gesture towards the game’s only true leading man, lead artist and designer Marco Hüllen, who has in my mind received far too little attention in the English-language press for his imperative contributions to the game’s development. His omission from the game’s marketing discourse, in a way, is an example of the disconnection in-between different subsections of gamers as demarcated by language.

Therefore, the week starts with full force tomorrow, Tuesday the 20th, with a detailed timeline of the astonishing six-year development history of the game, detailing many of the turning points and pivotal moments of a process that in many ways culminated back in the August of 2009. For comparative purposes, the article also contains rare screenshots from the original demo version way back from 2005!

Sadwick and Spot

On Wednesday, we will be posting a translation of our one-on-one interview with the game’s lead artist and original designer, Marco Hüllen. Among the topics discussed were the scholastic origins of the game, Hüllen’s past and present influences, the role that the infamous Bad Brain Entertainment played in the game’s development, and the formative origins of the protagonist, Sadwick the clown. Finally, we’ll at once discover the true nature of Sadwick’s sidekick, Spot!

For Thursday, I have prepared a thickly descriptive interpretation – a review, if you will – of the very generously paced demo of The Whispered World that is currently available for download from Deep Silver.

And to seal the deal, Friday the 23rd (the game’s EU release date) comes with a tiny surprise!

Note: This post will be updated with links to the respective articles to reflect the state of the upcoming coverage, so stay tuned for more! I hope you will all enjoy these articles as much as I have enjoyed working with Mr. Hüllen for the past few weeks!

• The Whispered World Week, Day 2: Tuesday

• The Whispered World Week, Day 3: Wednesday

• The Whispered World Week, Day 4: Thursday

• The Whispered World Week, Day 5: Friday

Sam & Max, season three, “The Devil’s Playhouse.” First episode, “The Penal Zone,” April 15th.