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.

Somehow missed the bundle altogether?

• Contains five full games: Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, Penumbra: Overture and World of Goo (plus Samorost 2 as a late bonus from Amanita Design)
• The profits all go to the developers as well as two charities: EFF and Child’s Play.
• You pay what you want to whom you want.
• The games are cross-platform and DRM-free each. Arstechnica recently chatted up Jeffrey Rosen on the topic.

Notably, for the duration of the campaign, Frictional Games are also offering the remaining two Penumbra games, Black Plague and Requiem, at a 75% discount. Furthermore, you can also preorder their forthcoming project, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, at 50% off (a great idea – the team will produce additional content if 2000 preorders are made before the 31st; the meter currently sits at an even 1900):

While you’re at it – and even if you’re not buying the bundle – please also remember to subscribe to Wolfire and Frictional Games’ development blogs; they contain what can only be described as a cornucopia of information, both intriguing and useful, for indie game fans and developers alike.

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.

This particular open source, GPL-licensed shooter was first released in 2005 and has since seen a vast amount of updates and improvements, including the addition of particle effects, bump mapping, modern shaders and a smoother netcode. The game also comes bundled with NetRadiant, the team’s own fork of GtkRadiant 1.5. Overall, Nexuiz has been downloaded by more than “4 million unique users”.

Now, here’s the news: Alientrap Entertainment have allowed another company, IllFonic, to adapt and revise the game for launching as a downloadable FPS, on the consoles:

IllFonic announced today its plans to launch the futuristic arena first-person shooter Nexuiz across downloadable console platforms in 2010. … IllFonic’s remake of Nexuiz for console gamers features a new Victorian influenced art style that is simultaneously futuristic and sophisticated.

IllFonic have also negotiated a license with LordHavoc, the developer of the DarkPlaces engine. According to IllFonic’s Kedhrin Gonzalez, shared PC/console multiplayer is not in the cards, nor are mouse or keyboard support. Alientrap Entertainment’s Lee Vermeulen also clarifies that

…the PC and Console version will be completely separate entities. Development of the cross platform Nexuiz will continue to be open. No new content of Illfonic’s art will be GPL or added to Alientrap’s development of Nexuiz, although the project will benefit from advances in the engine’s technology.

It certainly is a most titillating idea to think that a Quake 1 -based derivative should see a release on the very latest generation of video gaming consoles; the fourteen long years that have gone past since the original 1996 launch of Quake certainly speak for its age-defying durability, even if DarkPlaces is a rather massive overhaul of the original codebase.

Halt. Enter The Metastreumonic Anarchist Conspiracy Movement website.

Confused yet? I know I am. The only thing that’s absolutely clear is that E.Y.E., by all means, is a labour of love (do check out the fantastic concept art above). In the game, players become a planted spy seeking to discover a traitor in E.Y.E., a twofold group of Secreta Secretorum monks fighting against the Federation:

The story takes place in a dark future that has seen unending wars between the Federation – a several worlds union, and the Metastreumonic Force – an ancient and mysterious power.

The player embodies an infiltrated spy in E.Y.E – a group of elite monk warriors – made up of two rival factions in constant internal power struggles, themselves serving the Secreta Secretorum you work for: a multi-thousand-years-old secret organization desirous to steal power from the Federation. The organization ordered your infiltration to control and survey E.Y.E actions, as well to unmask a traitor to the cause.

Metastr…? Secretoru…? (Scivela…?) Though there exists a wealth of background information on the game’s website, the more I learn about the game, the more confusing it gets, as much of the material available is multifaceted and obscure.

One simple explanation for the lack of en clair is simply that the team is all-French (a forum Q&A thread in French is available to those more fluent in the language).  Je ne parle pas français, alright, and therefore rendered unable to accurately present to you the game’s more elaborate fictions and features.

That being said, I can tell you what the core game is about: Futuristic monks, manipulation, secret organizations, strife, conspiracy, and Frenchness: In fact, the game aesthetically and thematically resembles the output of another French studio, Arkane Studios, including Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah and The Crossing, the latter two even more so due to its use of the Source engine:

The beginnings of the E.Y.E. project in fact date back to the year 2006, with the studio itself subsequently founded in 2007. To give you a better idea of the last four years of game development, an August 2007 launch trailer details some rather confusing and Half-Life 2 –textured action that is delightfully inferior to the team’s most recent 2009 trailer:

A visual layer of polish has been applied, and Streum On Studios have additionally chosen to delay the game’s original 2009 release in exchange for additional content. The curiously pitch-shifted voice acting present in the trailer above remains a curious discordant note in an otherwise polished trailer, but the controls and the HUD no longer display mod-ness, neatly illustrating the difference between a modification and a full-blown game.

Another reason for the complexity present in the documentation for E.Y.E. is that in all actuality, its origins trace into the late 1990s: In 1998, project lead Jonathan Cacherat designed a role-playing board game, AVA, that subsequently united the current Streum On Studios team. Their first finished project, also based on AVA, was the Half-Life 1 co-op multiplayer modification Syndicate Black Ops, released in 1999 and finished in 2001.

The game is still available for download and fully Steam-compatible, and positions players in the shoes of Syndicate assassins who are contracted for delicate cleaning missions and assassinations. The game displays a strange flair of humour (see weapon selection images below), a deviously high level of difficulty and, notably, vast, vast amounts of playable content. I found the game to be surprisingly fun to play with your friends, and it seems as though some of the ideas and content present in SBO will also been seen in the forthcoming game.

The developers have cited Warhammer 40K, Deus Ex and BioShock, (as well as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell) as influences for SBO and E.Y.E., and the latter promises to contain a whopping 25 weapons, ten PSI/physical powers, 14 cybernetic implants, a separate hacking mode, and most curiously, “psychological and mental traumas [sic] management”. Also to come with the game are selectable classes and occupations. Like Syndicate Black Ops, E.Y.E. comes bundled with a co-operate campaign designed for 2-4 players, and additional missions for 4-8 players. The team also promises that single player, multiplayer and co-op are all interrelated in some way. Death, too, has no penalty; whether this means Vita chambers, regeneration, instant respawns or immortality remains to be seen.

Streum On Studios’ press kit optimistically targets the following platforms for release: “PC, XBOX360 (potentially) & PS3 (potentially)”. E.Y.E. was originally slated for a 1st quarter 2009 release, but is now delayed infinitely for an extra layer of polish.

Lost at the Sea

Fan games based on more or less commercially viable licenses have always faced the unenviable task of navigating the stormy, abbreviated seas of C&D and DMCA all the while keeping a low enough profile to avoid the aforementioned corporate shallows, at the same time maintaining a public enough face to attract necessary fan interest.

Some projects, like Indiana Jones & The Fountain of Youth and AGDInteractive’s remakes have surprisingly managed to stay afloat; others, like the very latest target of this type of license injustice, The Silver Lining, a King’s Quest fan game, are fish food:

In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King’s Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.…

Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.

Closed Due to Tragedy

The Silver Lining was eight years in the making, and while this final blow in a long uphill battle must be a massive, massive disappointment to the members of the development team, it is also exactly that to the most dedicated fans of Roberta Williams’ classic adventure series; is it not the most interested of fans, after all, that come to develop, find out about and care for these underground fan games?

Obviously, fan games exist in the first place because of existing feelings of let-down: All these fans want is the current IP holder – be it Sierra, Vivendi or Activision – to respectfully commit and contribute to the existing franchise. Should they choose not to, for one reason or another, why should not the fans take the matters in their own hands?

The most overtly disappointing facet to this situation is the way Activision have chosen to treat a previous, working agreement, a move that comes off as petty, cold and corporate, as the Silver Lining team openly sought to negotiate their relationship with the IP holder with great openness and transparency. In this respect, The Silver Lining should be considered trailblazers of fan/company interaction, and Activision’s decision not to honour the agreement sets a nasty precedent and as such also strengthens the common argument for other fan game developers to stay offline and underground.

At the end of the day, it’s not too difficult to see the Pandora’s box –like qualities of granting non-commercial licenses: After all, sooner or later, the amount of interested parties knocking on Activision’s door for “non-commercial fan license” agreements would create an untenable situation for a major company. An astute observer can also obviously point out the dubious legal nature of most fan games, but it feels like a redundant argument in the on-line reality of the now, where video game companies highly value and even base games on user-created content, encourage remixing, support modding, and even offer free engines and SDKs.

Therefore, by far the easiest way for companies to deal with the issue of the fan game is to simply let fandom work the way it works: Mixing, remixing, reusing and ultimately producing all-new content for the most ardent of fans of various licenses to enjoy.

Was to Be a Joyous Occasion

The internet can be a very slanderous place indeed, but the argument for protecting the integrity of intellectual property in this manner, too, rings hollow as in my experience fan games are proven to be beyond respectful of their source material, often more so than companies themselves, with one minor exception: Some fan games do fall under the umbrella of parody or pastiche, both which are protected by fair use copyright laws in countries all over the world.

Therefore, a fan game takedown feels like a thing of the past, when your IP will take a life of its own online anyway; the question remains, and I think this is really the key here, do you want your reputation to be in the hands of /b/, or your most loyal, respectful fans – like the developers and fans of The Silver Lining? What was to be a joyous occasion is now a wasted opportunity of successful fan/developer interaction, and that is what makes me feel a great sense of loss.

The official website for the game has now disappeared off the Earth, as has the original RC1 demo for the game, but you can still visit a portion of their forums to discuss the matter. A King’s Quest IV-V-VI package was released at GOG.com last week.

From the very early work-in-progress demo that was shown, it appears that the game is about infiltration and sabotage. Where Uplink was a game of hacking and espionage on the intangible, ethereal level of the internet, Subversion takes place on the physical, infrastructural level, with the same kind of goals to accomplish. In the examples given the player was tasked with finding a secure server room in an office building, and had certain tools at his disposal including a stolen keycard and a wallscanner. A second run demonstrated a brute-force approach with guns and explosives. The way RPS’ Jim Rossignol puts it excites me:

On a wider, genre basis, it sits roughly in the Commandos area of careful execution of planned procedures. Or perhaps it is to Syndicate as Thief was to the shooter tradition…

The visuals of the game will no doubt use the neon-retro style that Introversion is known for. As you can see in the early development screenshots, flat-shaded and wireframe graphics portray the city blocks and interiors. It suggests an abstraction of the action, placing the player in the role of an overseer, able to witness the situation from various camera views.

As explained in the blog posts (and in the video embedded below), the art assets like the buildings and room layouts are all created procedurally – that is to say, generated by a computer algorithm as opposed to hand-crafted by a person. Changing certain values or randomising them produces completely different results, and in this way whole cities and offices can be created. Perhaps this will be done every time you play a level in Subversion, which would mean that each playthrough would have different maps to infiltrate.

Update:
Chris Delay of Introversion has updated the blog with a post about the Subversion demo, with screenshots of the build shown. Hit the jump to check them out.

Chris explicitly calls the game a “spiritual successor” to Uplink, confirming our first impressions. Have a look at the post for more early information including the ambitious premise.

You will be using Sabotage, Social Engineering and Grifting, custom Electrical and Mechanical devices, Distractions, Hacking, Stealth, Acrobatics, Precision demolitions, Trickery, whatever gets the job done. In the best case scenarios your enemies will never know you were even there.

The game is still probably very far from completion, but be sure that I’ll be watching very closely for updates and will post them as they come. Below, the magic of procedural generation.

At the end of its animated intro, “OBEY” reads imprinted in upper-case on the sides of two massive missiles standing upright, shining and erect, at once establishing a poignant scene of the promulgation of violence and power.

In retrospect, the aforementioned scene is rather astonishing given the game’s relatively humble origins in a ghastly, ghastly Flash flick, Albatropolis, that has quietly morphed into a vivid, mature work by the Asiatic offshoot of Ratloop, developers of the fascinating drawing game and 2009 IGF competitor Mightier, and Malice, the relatively well-known total conversion for the original Quake.

Rocketbirds, then, headlines the “Original *beep* of War,” a commando-cock called Hardboiled, on a mission to rid the world of the evil penguin dictator Putzki in a Flashback-tinged action-platformer realized in Adobe Flash. Due to circumstance, Hardboiled finds himself sandwiched in a battle between an underground resistance and Putzki’s totalitarian regime.

Putzki has, at his command, an endless swar… err, rookery of penguin mooks in addition to his distinctly (in my mind, anyway) Austrian albatross muscle, Brno [sic]. The game’s primary developers, Tan Sian Yue, James Anderson and Teck Lee Tan, have intriguingly utilized here an anthropomorphic cast of birds much in the vein of, say, Petersen’s Mouse Guard, where strife in the animal kingdom is represented in humanized scope and style. In Albatropolis, budgerigars figure as downtrodden, sidelined protestors; cardinals form the underground movement, and penguins, of course, have become goofy military overlords(!).

Hardboiled – the ma… cock of action that he is – runs, jumps, ducks, rolls, hangs and blasts his way towards Putzki. Now, before I venture any further, I should make it explicit that I consider the controls of Flashback to be the very pinnacle of the genre, and Rocketbirds, to give credit where credit is due, comes much closer to achieving comparable motion than any other game that I have had the pleasure of playing over the past years.

My personal affinity for Flashback, Blizzard’s Blackthorne, Yahtzee’s 1213 and Eric Chahi’s diamond-in-the-rough Another World certainly came in handy in approaching the game, and I should think one prerequisite for appreciating Rocketbirds to its fullest is therefore a willingness to abandon expectations of one-button shooting, fast-forward progress and hand-holding. Don’t get me wrong, though – a very thorough set of instructions on the controls is included, for instance.

But what is it, exactly, that ultimately separates this particular flavour of action-platforming from other shooters and platforming games? Perhaps a common characteristic in the aforementioned can be found in their shared treatment of motion: Where other games offer freedom as a trade-off for precision, these do the very opposite, with snap, rigidity and restraint. The underlying control-related constraints, then, erase imprecisions, awarding the player with admittedly a stricter learning curve but also further fluidity and the potential execution of extremely complex movements in a precise manner. What ostensibly should figure as limitation actually becomes liberating.

Like Rocketbirds, these games also utilize two important methods: First, level design based on the one-screen unit, which effectively turns all locations to puzzles of varying difficulty and type. Second, the cunning technique of blatant, tangible exposition of objectives and goals, with progress and reward always looming around the very next corner, and victory right at your fingertips. You’ll fail, quit, restart, knowing full well the futility and the inevitability of your return and retry. This is potent, arcade-style design, surely a factor in the success of Jordan Mechner’s original Prince of Persia, for instance. Good thing Rocketbirds saves your progress into an online account, too.

Rooftop

That being said, the game is not particularly difficult, and serves the player simple but devious physics-based stacking puzzles as breaks in the action, adding important atmospheric flavour and balancing the flow between action and exploration. While I have seen others react negatively to them, I thought they worked very well to underline the quieter moments of the game. After all, the game’s bleak military dystopia is presented in vivacious, hand-painted art instead of vector-based artwork beyond the cutscenes detailed above.

In fact, I seldom cover Flash games due to my slight disdain for motion tween –based animation, but here, the graphics of Rocketbirds look pleasantly hand-crafted, and especially the animations are fluid, full of character and often absolutely hilarious. Hardboiled walks with a toughman’s gait, the penguin mooks wobble on, and special actions have their own curious touches. At times, the game benefits from the elasticity of Flash: Unlike with pixel-based artwork, sometimes the camera’s viewpoint zooms very close to the action only to pan far away elsewhere.

The hand-painted backgrounds consist of a thorough array of locations straight from action and espionage film. The game features, overall, nine levels of slightly varying length; among others, a prison, an airfield, and a subway. The subway, a prevalent location found both in Flashback and 1213, nevertheless manages to stay relevant: I literally gasped for air when I realized what I was being asked of, and then more – even if the developers do eventually go all in with the crates, you’ll ultimately be amused rather than frustrated.

This is, perhaps, a lesson learned from Valve: Half-Life 2’s tunnel of light remains the landmark example of balancing flow with feedback in order to create a sensation of success and accomplishment after a hard-fought, prolonged battle (for the surface, in that case). In fact, like Half-Life 2, Rocketbirds manages to switch gears constantly, tackling mature themes and even incorporating questions of duty, morality, reason and even fear: An important mechanism in the game allows you to position the guards’ own weapons on their temple, forcing them to pull the trigger, for instance.

By far the most intriguing element of the game to me is its written dialogue, as the lonely monologues and conversations of the enemy guards are chock full of character and emotion:

Surprising depth can also be found in the game’s utilization of music. While the ambient soundscapes and –effects are very neat, often working to enhance the scenario at hand, major scenes feature songs from the band New World Revolution in a seldom-seen coupling of pop music and animation that actually gives the game some further character – as if any more were required for a game of such thematic eccentricity!

A minor blemish on an otherwise spotless record for the game remains: On my temporary fallback computer (an AMD64 3000+), the game borders on unplayable especially during its latter levels. Whatever settings I touched would have very little effect on the game’s performance – an issue I believe is Flash-related. It’s not that the game becomes unsmooth or laggy, but rather unresponsive; it would often take two, three, even four button presses to elicit an action, like switch to the inventory, in a busy sequence.

Full-fledged combat situations therefore became, if not impossible, far more intolerable than they were envisioned to be: I found myself inching onwards, perhaps with too much perseverance: On a different set-up, a Macbook Pro, the game ran smooth as butter and I was able to get through whichever parts I was stuck at effortlessly. This is no more than a heads-up to those with lower-end machines. Ratloop Asia have in fact also produced a downloadable launcher both for Mac and PC that allows you to play the game full-screen and free of annoying browser dependence.

The argument can also be made that the game never quite takes the ball, character-wise, and runs with it, but as the first episode of a potential series – added with the presence of the Albatropolis Flash still looming over the series – I thought restraint seemed to be, at this juncture, the right choice. At the end of the day, all that really matters is that right now, Rocketbirds: Revolution! is the next-best thing you’ll have to Flashback – a coherent work with crisp controls and stylish, cinematic wrapping.

A demo is available right now, from www.rocketbirds.com, and the full game can be bought, from Ratloop Asia, for the price of $9.95.

The chiptune soundtrack is also available to buy, for $4 from composer Souleye’s site.

After completing his first game, Michalski quickly turned his attention onto a thematic follow-up to his first game. The new game, then, is titled The Cat Lady and looks to be, once again, an atmospheric, macabre adventure game developed on the AGS platform.

Susan Ashworth has woken up to a beautiful dream… She’s in a field of barley, at a strike of dawn. Warm wind blows in her face, her hair waving as she stares at the sunrise. She’s dead. Through her dream she can barely hear the sounds of reality breaking through- the screaming of a friend who found Susan’s body on her bedroom’s floor, the ambulance crew resuscitating her on the way to the hospital.

A life-after-death game this is not, nevertheless, as Susan – an ageing woman in her 40s, better known to her neighbours as “the cat lady” – gets miraculously wooed back to life and appointed with a suicide watch. She eventually comes to accept being alive, but lives her life with newfound baggage: She has returned from death with the knowledge that she will come to meet five people, “One of them will change her life and make it better. But the other four have nothing but cruel intentions. They’ll have their own reasons to hurt her…”

The game will tout a new style of graphics, according to Michalski, “a mixture of photography, digital painting and rendering.” While I am personally very much a fan of traditional pixel art, I have also read that the game looks extremely fluid in motion and that these early screenshots below do not fully do justice to the look and feel of the game.

This is not at all surprising – after all, the first game largely benefited from its eccentric look, its ambience and its soundtrack; in fact, the game’s official website already contains a player that culls music from the forthcoming game. Highly recommended listening.

The Cat Lady is tentatively scheduled for a 2010 release. To learn more about Downfall, do read our in-depth interview with Michalski and check out the rest of our articles on the topic by aiming for the Downfall tag or checking out the related posts below.

It may seem like there isn’t much more to the game than vaulting forward at top speed, but it isn’t as simple as that. Not only must you keep up the pace so as to stay ahead of the lava and crumbling floor, but you must jump over cracks and chasms – some of which may be created suddenly by falling rocks. Add to this a thumping soundtrack of tribal drums that brings a certain urgency, and you have a game with a real sense of speed not unlike that found in the Burnout games.

The download clocks in at 114MB, and can be obtained here, but do have a look at the hefty system requirements first. The video trailer that enticed me is embedded after the jump.

In “Guiding the Player’s Eye”, Matthew “Gangles” Gallant directs our attention to the complexities of orienting the player in a three-dimensional world by illustrating, via a generous amount of example screencaps, Valve’s use of various visual cues:

The best approach is to guide the player organically, catching their eye with elements that fit seamlessly into the game world. In this school of thought, Valve is peerless.

I do think that Valve have succeeded, overall, in building a more lasting foundation of expectations by utilizing these various methods, also simultaneously educating players more about flow, timing and guidance, in turn furthering players’ trust in the company’s ability to make and implement gameplay-related decisions.

The chief role of guidance, after all, is to generate the very important feelings of empowerment and control, even reward. In his recent article, “Visually Directing the Player”, Joshua Nuernberger (Boryokudan Rue, La Croix Pan, Resonance) discusses these very same concepts, albeit from the point of view of the 2D adventure developer:

I would define it as using visual elements on screen as to give the player a specific direction to reinforce their gameplay goals. For example, a giant arrow pointing down a hallway telling the player to go this way, not that way.

The point and click adventure genre has always been both extremely reliant on and innovative with audiovisual cues (which side do we position pixel hunts on?), and to have a developer explain his or her own take on the topic makes for interesting reading.

Finally, RPS’ John Walker connects the dots, pointing out that Nuernberger is effectively giving out “the same advice Valve has been shrieking at anyone who’ll listen”. To recap: “Guiding the Player’s Eye” available at The Quixotic Engineer, and “Visually Directing the Player” at A Hardy Developer’s Journal.

At first there is nothing remarkable about finding the way forward, with indistinct backgrounds and no clear goal. But as you play the black fog of war clears away, and view pulls out, making the pixels smaller and more defined. At a certain distance you realise that the three pixels are enough to describe your protagonist and the low-def world has a charm all of its own.

The way the game leads you along a path that winds back and forth and up and around and over things, makes the deliberate revelation of the background more evident. Stepping into a flashing object sends you to a new place, and completing that area brings you back, now with a goal in mind. The haunting and thematic music complements the quiet and atmospheric environments, and you feel there is a story being told even if it’s not quite so straightforward.