Note: This is a mini review of the game as part of my Epic Procrastination Adventure Game Research Project. I later wrote a much more in depth analysis here.

I really liked this game. It was quite hilarious and engaging. They really improved over Maniac Mansion which I found to be fun but not nearly as polished. I played most of it without hints although I did resort to them in a few cases.

1,2,3 times the toilet humor.

What Worked

The playing three characters at once thing actually worked. This has been tried in other games with limited success. It helped that I could only access Bernard or Hoagie for most of the game until I realized how to get the cherry tree chopped down. Once Laverne was accessible I had pretty much solved all the puzzles in the other two times and I could focus on her.

The characters are bizarre but actually fairly well portrayed. They all behave in ways which are consistent with their character which makes the game much more polished and enjoyable. The story also was well told and “made sense”. It’s important for the story to make sense even when it’s totally wacko and out-there. I didn’t feel like the puzzles were out of left field – they fit into the world of the game.

I liked how certain items couldn’t be passed into the other times because they don’t fit down the Chron-o-John. That helped to reduce that problem of just trying every item in your inventory in every possible place because you’re stuck. At least those items which I knew had to stay in the past must apply to a puzzle in the past. It’s actually helpful when games limit your possible actions in this way so you know where you have to focus your efforts.

Humor – this game really had some nice funny bits. The part where you don’t have a quarter for the dryer and you finally end up with hundreds of quarters which makes the dryer run for 200 years… that was amusing.

What Didn’t Work

I definitely got stuck in a few places. One problem I had a few times was that you need to click a verb and then an object outside your inventory in order to proceed. Like moving the mattress from one bed to another. I was kind of in the habit of just using my own items and I missed that one. Getting the cherry tree chopped down also confused me although they did give some hints so I can’t complain.

Lessons

This game really won me over because it was fun, polished, humorous and captivating. It felt like a feature film. I felt like I was really getting my money’s worth. The characters were solid. The story was engaging and well told. The puzzles were fair! I got real satisfaction from solving them. I rank this game up with the Monkey Islands and KQIV.

Other

I found an interesting “map” of this game by an indie adventure game creator:

https://moldgame.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/130128_length_research_dott.jpg

This game was a nice, entertaining, casual gaming experience. The puzzles were really not too hard but at the same time I never felt like I was just reading a story. The graphics and backgrounds were really pleasant to look at. Very simple animation of course but they really took the 256 color palette to the limit.

The story was enticing. I could not get the game to play the intro animation for me so I was a bit confused at first. Apparently you crash your helicopter and end up at the top of a scaffolding inside a building. That never did make sense to me but I’m sure it’s covered in the intro.

The “sidekick” trope was exploited to the fullest with your little friend Joey who follows you around in various guises throughout the game. His presence was never gratuitous and a number of puzzles involved some special ability that he had.

The game started off giving me the impression that it was going to be a Blade Runner type knock-off. Especially with the trench-coat and all. Actually it also reminded me a lot of Brazil (the movie). I was concerned I’d be sneaking around afraid of the cops the whole game. Luckily that’s not the way it works out and you meet all kinds of amusing characters who generally don’t give a shit that you are the fugitive that the police are looking for. It made for a nice surprise.

What Worked

The game was just very entertaining. The dialogue was funny and the characters were well developed.

What Didn’t Work

I got bogged down a few times. The cyberspace world had one time-sensitive puzzle which I feel is always a bad idea in an adventure game. Barring that one puzzle and the fingerprint puzzle I was able to complete the game without hints.

Random Thoughts While Playing

I immediately remembered the feel of the first Broken Sword game and fell right back into the characters. I continue to love the “cell-animation” graphics and the high quality animation.

The initial scene was a bit ridiculous. Tied up in a burning house while being attacked by a poisonous spider? OK… But luckily things got a little less over the top.

They have removed the map for navigation and you just follow an essentially linear story-line. This seems to work well.

I again appreciate the ‘mini-games’ within the larger game. ie you are placed in a location and can’t leave until you have solved the puzzle. This removes those lingering suspicions that you need some piece from some other area to solve a puzzle.

I continue to dislike Nico as the love interest. She never shows a shred of interest in George. No idea why he’s so head over heels for her.

Ketch’s Landing – The worst puzzle ever

OK… the puzzle at Ketch’s Landing has me stumped and a little annoyed. It seems like I need to get this red ball from the cat so I can use it in the slingshot to hit the surveyors target so the surveyor will leave his map to come fix it so I can look at his plans. I am a grown ass man and I can’t take a ball from a cat? OK well I’ll go through the puzzle and figure out how to get a fish from the kid on the dock. Done… OK i’ll use it to lure the cat away from the ball. No actually I’ll just feed it to the cat, watch as it eats the fish and never grab the ball. So WTF. Even if this isn’t the solution to the puzzle (and it’s been hinted that it is), he should at least be able to grab the fucking ball while the cat is eating the fish, not to mention he could just grab it to begin with. This puzzle is lame.

OK I had to use the hints to solve it. The answer is to use the inner tube on one of the flag poles and put the fish on it. Here’s the problem – I already did try putting the inner tube on the flagpole before I had a fish. It just hung there and did nothing. It also gave me the option to remove it ‘I guess this wasn’t a good idea after all.’ it said when I removed it. I thought that was weird at the time because it was the first time I’d seen such an extensive red-herring. Usually the game would just stop you from doing something if it was a blind alley. OK whatever I thought and then I put the inner tube on the tree. Bingo! That must be where the inner tube is supposed to go because A) it solved the mystery of the ‘U’ shape in the tree and B) once I had attached it I couldn’t remove it. I COULDN’T REMOVE IT. Fucking idiot game. I would classify this as a bug. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the game had set the precedent early on that it would let you paint yourself into a corner and require a restore. But this game has gone to great lengths to avoid that. So the lesson is: your user is not just paying attention to the puzzles but is building expectations from the game based on the type of puzzles and the solutions already found. When you so drastically cross a boundary like this one – allowing the player to screw themselves after a full game and a half of not allowing that – they will see it as misleading and unfair.

OK I finished it. The game was good over all. The ending was a bit of a letdown but overall I did enjoy the game a lot.

Gimme an ale

Random Thoughts While Playing

Immediately this game stands out for its unique graphical style. Smooth hand-drawn animations for all the characters and backgrounds and a seemingly endless supply of natural actions for all of them. The world seems very authentic because of this, more like watching an animated film than a video game. The artistic style is very beautiful as well – obviously a ton of work went into the visual design.

The dialogue is excellent. All the characters in the game have their own personality. From the gruff street worker to the randy British aristocrat, all the side characters feel well developed and authentic.

So far (early into the game) there are very few actual puzzles. Mostly its just a lot of working through all the dialog options with each of the other characters. More like reading a book than playing a game currently.

This game is very slow but it’s also very enjoyable. The puzzles are fairly simple although getting into the crypt in the castle was pretty convoluted. There are still some long sections where you just have to iterate through a dialogue tree with some character or another. It still feels like reading a book and less like playing a game at times. The story is pretty well done (especially the dialogue) although the plot is a bit overused.

The puzzle in the museum was fairly lame. I never found the window mechanism – didn’t do enough mouse roll-over hunting. Once that was found, the rest was easy. In fact too easy – Nico is apparently a Navy SEAL in addition to her job as an out of work photographer.

The puzzles in Syria and afterwards in the excavation dig and in Spain were very good. Difficult but not so much that I gave up.

This game is very well done. The story is well written and is a major part of the game, not just an afterthought. I do wish the scenario was less cliche but it’s well done nonetheless.

I like how this game forces you to solve a puzzle in a particular place and won’t let you leave until it’s completed. For example, once in Syria you can’t just hop on a plane back to France until the puzzle is complete. When you are working on the Excavation puzzle you can’t even leave and go back to the Paris map. This removes the uncertainty that you don’t have all the required items to solve the puzzle and forces you to concentrate on what is there. In other games which don’t do this it’s too easy to have lots of open puzzles lying around with no reason to focus on any of them.

The ending was just OK – puzzles were fairly simplistic.

The love interest angle of this story could have been dropped entirely. Nico was just annoying and never did anything which would have made George fall in love with her. But there he is at the end talking about ‘the girl i love’. Other than that the story was well done.

This game was unusual – great graphics, slow pace, good story (mostly) and good dialogue. There were really only a few solid puzzles though. Most of the time things came easily by just trying some obvious inventory items.

What Worked

The puzzles were tightly integrated into the story and the plot. I never once felt that I was taking actions that the character himself wouldn’t have done or wanted to do. Nor was I prohibited unreasonably from doing things which I would have wanted to try.

It was only possible to get killed in situations where it was very obvious that George was in real danger. This let me save games before hand and not feel blind-sided by random deaths.

There was no way to get ‘stuck’ (like in Zork Zero and many others) where the game lets you do something which later keeps you from winning the game.

There were people in this game! Lots of secondary characters with lots of authentic dialogue and believable actions. This is so much better than many adventure games where you feel like you’re living in a depopulated wasteland.

Although there were a few annoying ‘pixel-hunting’ puzzles they weren’t show stoppers.

The story was good – outside of the love interest angle – and the dialogue was really top notch.

I really liked how you would be restricted to small parts of the game once you had entered them and couldn’t even leave until you had solved the puzzle at hand. This reduced the normal frustrations where you always have a lingering feeling that maybe there is some item from another part of the game which is needed to progress. So you wander aimlessly looking everywhere for shit instead of focusing on the details of the current situation.

What didn’t work

As mentioned above this game was very slow and the extensive dialogue trees felt like I was reading a novel at times and not playing a game.

The love interest subplot felt like an afterthought.

Only a few of the puzzles were really difficult. Most were solved easily once I had explored the available area and picked up the right pieces.

Random Thoughts While Playing

I was only half-heartedly thinking I would play this game. I started it up just to see what it looked like and planned to move on to something more recent. After playing for about 10 minutes though I’ve gotten hooked and now I’ll probably play the whole thing.

I can see why this game was popular. Especially for like 13 year-old boys. It’s a little weird, a little campy, a little sexy (well for an 80’s video game, we’re not talking anime tits here). The puzzles are fairly silly but not obnoxious or unfair so far.

I’ve figured out the idea that you need to use multiple characters at once to solve these problems. I think it leads to just trying everything with all your players though.

This vacuum tube in the old radio is annoying. It’s quite obvious I need to get it into the CB radio in the upstairs bedroom but all my kids are like ‘I don’t understand how this thing works!’ Who cares how it works dumbass… pick it up and put it into the damn radio.

Some weirdness… when I kill the power in the nuclear reactor room the pink tentacle comes to fix it and then it grabs my kid and throws him into the dungeon. Then it bounces off screen to the left – towards the Sekrit Lab door. But my other kid is standing right there and doesn’t seem to see it go in there. Also why would it come down the stairs but then leave to the left… weirdness.

I missed a key when I was trying all my keys and didn’t get the pantry door open. That led to a huge waste of time as I tried everything else and couldn’t progress.

So I’ve played through about a third of the game. It has some difficult puzzles which I feel probably were more acceptable at the time that now. I remember being a kid and playing games like this and having the time and patience to just try everything under the sun.

I do like this game for it’s silliness and relative complexity. Of course the graphics are super bad and all but the idea of switching between kids and getting them to work together was fun.

A very different kind of Adventure Game, Nethack is massive, monstrous, insanely complicated, challenging, infuriating and hugely rewarding. I played Nethack before I started my Epic Procrastination Adventure Game Research Project but I wanted to make some notes here because I expect it will come in handy when designing TWDAG.

Banter

Nethack is brutal. I already have complained in here about games which let you do stupid things that will come back to haunt you. Nethack is the uncontested king of this kind of behavior. Not only will it let you outright kill yourself in every way imaginable, in Nethack there is no such thing as a “saved game”. In other words you can’t save before trying something and then restore if it didn’t work out. If you die, you die. That might mean starting over from scratch hundreds of times before you even get a character to the Quest (mid-game). Nethack doesn’t fuck around.

I basically got addicted to it which I suspect is the only reason anyone would play it more than an hour or two. How bad was it? Let’s look at my stats.

My Stats

I played on nethack.alt.org and have played 469 games. Of those games I ascended (won) 4. That’s a 0.85% win ratio and I’m fucking proud of it.

How long did I play? My first ascension took over 50 hours of game play. The other three took about 25 hours each. So just the four games I won took over 125 hours of actual gametime. My total? In 469 games I spent 669 hours. That’s 27 days of actual in-game playtime. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Apparently whatever is wrong with me is also wrong with a lot of other people. My 27 days of gameplay didn’t even crack the top 250 timewasters list. The “winners” of that competition have spent literally over a year of in-game time actively logged in and playing Nethack. That’s goddamn ridiculous.

Complexity

Nethack is complex. To try to quantify it, the NetHackWiki which is the go-to source for details on all aspects of the game has over 2000 pages in it. Those are web pages, son, not book pages and most of them include a lot of specific technical detail. Take the Weapons or Spellbook pages for example. Completing this game requires an in-depth comprehension of a wide swath of this material and even then you must continually look up specifics in the reference guides.

Ridiculous

So, what lessons can be drawn from this? Why do people get so addicted to this game? Partly I think it’s an ego thing. Nethack is hard as fuck and beating it is like climbing the Mount Everest of gaming. Part of why I stayed with it past the brutal learning curve is that I knew it had a reputation and I knew beating it would be a real achievement.

Additionally it provides something I call “perpetual incremental progress”. Once you get past the initial phase of the game and you aren’t quite as likely to die every second you get into a pleasurable phase where you are slowly and steadily building your character into an unstoppable force of destructive power. With every level-up and every new resistance you are more and more powerful. This feeling is fairly illusory of course – you can still be beat down pretty quick by something more powerful than you but the feeling is important.