I'll get you, Ben Croshaw

[davidn]

NOTE: The cutscenes in this game are VERY gory and bloody, so this game is not for the squeamish. Alternatively, you could read the walkthrough before you play the game, so you won't be surprised.

I can't begin to describe how little of the mood of the game this shows.

All things considered, I should probably have heeded that warning. I had known about the 5 days a stranger series (or, as it actually seems to be called, the Chzo Mythos) for a while, but when dr_dos mentioned that they had been created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation (who is very funny in a Marcus Brigstocke kind of way) it got my interest up enough to play it. And I have now been severely traumatized by an innocent-looking point and click adventure game.

The first in the series isn't too bad on the nerves. It's a bit tense at the same "ooh, this is a bit strange" level of most episodes of Doctor Who (i.e. those not written by Steven Moffat) but isn't likely to generate nightmares. You start off as a cat-burglar planning to loot an old mansion. Little does he know, however, that it's actually a DOOM HOUSE that is possessed by the ghost of what will later become known as John DeFoe - who takes the form of people when they touch an idol kept in the living room and gets them to kill others while wearing a welding mask and apron. And the warning on the download is slightly misplaced, as there are a couple of deaths, a body at the bottom of a swimming pool and a small amount of blood, but nothing like the wanton carnage that you're asked to prepare for.

This is a bit more like it.

Then I moved on to 7 Days A Skeptic. Unusually for a direct sequel, this game is set four hundred years after the original and on a spacecraft, which led me to believe that it would be entirely different from the first game. I was wrong. Shortly after the game begins, the crew recover John DeFoe's remains, which were shot into space shortly after the events of 5 Days A Stranger, and roughly the same thing starts happening to them. One of Yahtzee's favourite tactics, it seems, is to show your characters having nightmares. He's done this four times so far in the series, and the annoying thing is that I have not seen a single one of them coming.

The first part that really got me was just after the obligatory section where the hero is accused of the murders and locked up. In the middle of your protests, the possessed body of the captain wanders in behind your captor, breaks her neck and sets you free. Through some frantic clicking, you eventually force the monster into the cell where you were trapped and close it up. And then you wander off to warn the others. Except I went the wrong way, into the maintenance decks by mistake. Realizing my error, I turned around, opened the door and he appeared right in front of me. A scream and a shock cut to my character being strangled, and it was Game Over.

Once Whitney had peeled me off the ceiling, I somewhat foolishly decided that I would be able to continue, after looking up a guide to tell me exactly how to avoid things like that happening. But Yahtzee hits you with three things in a row. After the encounter with the possessed captain, the others decide that it's probably a good idea to escape, and go to sleep while the only available pod is refuelled. (Quite why an emergency escape pod needs a few hours to warm up is never really explained adequately.) In the morning, unsurprisingly, only two of the three remaining crew members turn up. Your character goes down to investigate the doctor's room, and finds what can only be described as a slaughterhouse, with a stitched-together torso abomination on the floor and spare limbs neatly arranged on the bunk bed. You would think that the similar scenes in Silent Hill would have been worse than this, but there's something about the clear pixelled artwork here that disturbs me immensely.

So after seeing that, you grab the key, run out of there as fast as possible, get back to the escape pod, open it up to discover that it is no longer there and are sucked out into space. I died here, and as my last save was before I went into the doctor's room, I decided I'd better stop. Then checked around the flat before going to bed in case anything was just around the corner with a machete.

However, I decided to face my fear and play it again on the way to work today. Passing all those scenes quickly, I got very near to the end, knew exactly what I had to do, approached the door to the captain's room, and the Welder burst out of it and stabbed me to death in much the same way as the captain had earlier. I'm not playing it again.

Comments

[kjorteo]

Wow. I haven't even played this game (nor do I intend to after this,) but from your description, I'm getting serious Dagger of Amon Ra vibes. That's really not a good thing for me.

[davidn]

The same applies to me and Uninvited, having seen that icon from you so many times!

For amateur-made adventure games, the series really is very competent (point and click adventures are very difficult to do, although I imagine writing things in AGS must give a small head start). The only drawback is that they're very short, each day only requiring a couple of actions to get past them, with a lot of wandering around lost in between - but it's that wandering that gives it its frightening atmosphere.

And, keeping in the spirit of the older games that frightened us so much, it scares you through being alien, strange and unsettling rather than any real massive shocks - although unlike most of those, all of that is very intentional here. And there's always the obvious fear of being chased by blatantly more powerful things that could appear at any moment.

[kjorteo]

The main problem with Uninvited is that it just isn't a very good game. It's a MacVenture with the exact same controls and engine and such as any of the others, but the puzzles are by far the worst. They're illogical, arbitrary, and seemingly random. Pretty much the only thing it has that makes it stand out is its tendency to show most of the failure "you die now" moments in extreme close-up. The Mysterious Lady screenshot from which my icon is stolen pretty much tells you all you need to know about Uninvited; other than that, it's basically what would happen if Shadowgate was terrible.

Example of the arbitrary nature of the game:

You walk into a corridor extremely early on. This is the second room of the house, and fourth room in the entire game if you count the two rooms for the obligatory "find where they hid the key so that you can enter the house of doom in the first place" screens. When you do anything, and I mean anything, rather than your movement or action happening, a lady appears out of nowhere with her back turned to you. I'm sure you can guess where this is going.

Suffice it to say that absolutely anything you can do except talking to her, going back the way you came, or going up the stairs results in her turning around for the much-beloved Mysterious Lady scene and a quick game over. Talking just gives you that "Thank you for coming back to me" message but doesn't actually do anything, and going up the stairs leads to a pantry where you can find--and I swear I'm not making this up--a spray-can of Ghost-B-Gone on one of the shelves. The solution is to take the can, go back downstairs, do something to make her appear with her back to you again, then spray her with the Ghost-B-Gone to banish her, which allows you to explore those four rooms to which she had been blocking access.

Now, let's count the number of things wrong with this:
* There is absolutely no indication before she attacks you that she's even remotely evil, except if you find what she says when you talk to her creepy, and if you're suspicious enough to think "Lady that literally just appeared out of thin air probably = bad." The game even plays a catchy upbeat "hey, a cute lady" tune when her back is turned to you.
* Believe it or not, there's even less of a fair warning on the Mac version, in which trying to talk to her does lead to her turn-around game over attack.
* Once you get past the matter of discerning she's not to be trifled with, there's absolutely no hint or way of knowing what you're allowed to do. There are six ways to move (going back, which doesn't help at all, four doors, and the stairs,) and she'll kill you for touching any of the doors but you can still go upstairs. Maybe she has something against doorknobs? There's really no fair way of knowing what you are and are not allowed to do to avoid her attack.
* Ghost-B-Gone. Seriously.

Did I mention this is the first real puzzle in the game? (I don't count the "open the door and get out of the car before it explodes" and "find that the key is in a letter that's in the mailbox" pre-mansion intro puzzles.)

[kjorteo]

Other highlights in that game include a guardian ghost who's afraid of spiders for no particular reason (the solution to make him go away is to catch a spider and throw it at him, but there's absolutely nothing in the game at all to hint at this,) an honest-to-God maze near the end, and a cursed gem that kills you exactly X steps (something like 50, I think?) after you take it. You start receiving incredibly vague messages every X steps about how the evil of the mansion is starting to infect you or something, sounding more potent each time, until it climaxes with another game over. Lacking a clear Mysterious Lady-like antagonist for their extreme gory closeup fetish for this one, they just settled on a generic creepy skull. Not only is there no indication that the gem is cursed, but note in the screenshot that the game specifically says it's the general evil-ness of the mansion itself that's getting to you. The solution to this one is to either not take the gem (which was just lying in a desk drawer, by the way; not on some ominous Shadowgate-like "touch this and you will die" guardian statue or something,) or if you do have it, throw it away in the backyard. And no, the game doesn't tell you that you're allowed to throw things away in the backyard, either. So not only is this almost, if not literally impossible to know without a walkthrough or something, saving too far from the backyard with too few steps left before you die is of only two ways I even theoretically know to enter an unwinnable state in a MacVenture game. (The others in theory would be throwing away all your torches and saving too far from any new ones in Shadowgate, but I've never tested that.)

[davidn]

Oh, don't remind me about the Torch Running Out music from Shadowgate - it's not quite a Water Warning-beater, but it's close. That's another thing - I can't think of any game music/jingles like that from the last ten years that I've found quite as memorable. And I only just realized while typing that that "ten years ago" now means 1997, when we were well into the Playstation/N64 era.

I'm continually... amazed, I think is the word, at how insane and obscure some games could be in the NES and early DOS game eras. That's the double reason why the point and click adventure/MacVenture genre all but died out - first, because when you're stuck you really are totally stuck, short of using every item on every other item to see what happens, and second, because now we have the Internet it's vastly more tempting (and appealing) to go and rely on a walkthrough rather than go through all that. I know that some people say you should just resist the temptation, but after even as little as half an hour standing around clueless, what would you really do? Strange that the only reason people were able to complete these games - word of mouth and teaming up to experiment with new tactics - became too powerful.

The thing I found about Shadowgate was that your character was strangely eager to get himself killed, and not just through the obviously dangerous dragons, wraiths and various other nasty things about the place - clicking by accident on a window or examining the well in the courtyard will cause him to "investigate" by hurling himself into them. It seemed that because death didn't really have any consequences, it was an acceptable thing to happen - much like in the later Sierra games where dying only put you back a couple of steps with a warning not to be so stupid next time.

Come to think of it, I wonder if there's any value to leaving out an "instant revival" like that in adventure games like this. Normally, once I realize that it's a game in which I can quite easily die, I make a habit of saving on every room, no matter how innocent it looks, just in case something happens (like, I don't know, KQ2VGA's "examine rock" explosion). Sudden deaths like the escape pod one that I mentioned above (which came as a complete surprise) just bring your own forgetfulness into the equation - as the game is based on puzzles and not skill, all that you have to do is repeat the same actions you did before to trudge from wherever your save was to the point where you died. In my case, that involved going back through the horrifying blood-filled room, which could be said to be a consequence of the death, but it was coincidence I had to repeat that particular section.

[kjorteo]

There are some remnants of puzzle and adventure games still hanging around. Clearly, the illustrious heights of Sierra and LucasArts are gone (especially when LucasArts themselves blatantly said that no one plays adventure games anymore and killed Sam & Max 2,) but what about, say, Phoenix Wright? And I've been told that Hotel Dusk is fantastic, but I never did get a chance to play it....

And I never did beat Shadowgate, because, like you said, the hero is just too death-prone. Three examples stand out in my mind above all others as how gleefully the game kills you off:
* An open book on a pedestal that made a trap door suddenly appear if you tried to take it or touch it in any way. (It didn't occur to me that you could still read it, just don't touch....) This was, I think, about the second or third room in the game not counting the obligatory pre-castle "where's the key" puzzle.
* A room full of coffins, one of which had some sort of green ooze in it that spilled over the floor when you opened it. If you tried to move forward after spilling the ooze, you'd step in it and instantly get yourself dissolved. (Oh, hey, I guess opening that coffin and saving would be another way to enter an unwinnable state. Not sure why you'd do that, but....)
* My favorite example: A room that has three mirrors on the wall. You have a sledgehammer. What you're supposed to do is break the one in the middle, which reveals a door behind it. The game doesn't even try to pretend to hint at which one you're supposed to break, though. You just have to guess. The middle one's the door, the left one has a freaking black hole or alternate dimension or something behind it that instantly sucks you in, and the one on the right is just a blank wall, but breaking the right mirror instantly causes you to get killed by the flying pieces for some reason.

In other, not-really-related news, I always found it amusing when you basically gave up and started looking for ways to kill yourself. Obvious ones like "use sword on self" aside, my favorite was when you use the sledgehammer on yourself and it gives the same messages as the sword but with the name of the hammer: "You plunge the hammer into your chest. Blood pours fourth from the open wound," etc. That's what you call doing it wrong, I think.

[davidn]

The deaths in that game actually reminded me of the Fighting Fantasy books, in which I always ended up using just about all my fingers as bookmarks at once so that I could backtrack if a sudden and irreversible path to doom was around the corner. I experienced all of those deaths, and I even remember thinking about the possibility of saving yourself into a corner when you spill the green slime (twitch, twitch). I'm going to go and test that now.

Yes, it looks like it's possible to stick yourself there. If you save just after opening the coffin, then when you "continue" you'll be in the room before the coffins but you still won't be able to get past the room. This is doubly frustrating because "just before trying to walk over something dangerous-looking" strikes me as exactly the kind of place you'd want to save. I'm surprised that with my overcautious nature in these games I didn't ever do that.

I haven't ever played any of the Phoenix Wright games, but I have it on good authority that they're fantastic. And there are plenty of freeware examples of adventures around now as well, such as the ones above if you can get through them without diving under the bed, or another one that I enjoyed a few years ago called "Out of Order". They do share a common temptation to look up a walkthrough at the slightest provocation, though. Maybe I'm just terrible at them.

(PS: I read your message. Site exploded again. Bugger.)

[kjorteo]

Well, that's certainly good to know. Not that I was ever going to beat Shadowgate anyway, but even still, that's not so good. I'm sure you know my thoughts on adventure games with unwinnable states by now after how many King's Quest rants we've traded.

Come to think of it, now I'm not sure why I never did that, either. I guess I just knew that there was something really bad about that slime, and I'd want to preserve the "before-I-spilled-it" state. That, and as far as puzzles go, "you can freely pass this room as long as you don't open the third coffin" is pretty lenient as far as Shadowgate is usually concerned.

Wait, don't you need an item that's in one of the other coffins? I think, now that I'm trying to remember this more clearly, I must have saved before opening any of them because I just knew one would lead to instant death, found the one with the item, and didn't disturb the others. Unless I am just completely remembering this wrong.

And count me in the pile of people saying that Phoenix Wright is amazing. I cannot possibly recommend them more highly. Make sure you start with the original if you play them, though, since the overall story is a direct continuation from one game to the next.

(Perhaps we should switch to e-mail or something. husky kjorteo net.)

[davidn]

Funnily enough, I've now stuck myself in 7 Days (I was determined to get over my fear but had to do it with my eyes closed every time I ran through a room, so that didn't work that well) even though there are no intentional screw-over points in it - I've saved in a place where the Welder jumps in and hacks me to bits as soon as I load, and my other save is back at the escaping escape pod sequence again. More a result of slightly inconsiderate design rather than malice - I'm sure it wouldn't have been difficult to stop the two assailants in the "you are being hunted by an instant-death enemy that could appear through any door at any moment" sequences from popping up when you're standing outside the door in question.

In those chase sequences it has something much like the feeling of Clock Tower, like a nightmare where you're continually hunted by an unstoppable enemy. That was another thing I played for about five minutes before switching off (shortly after finding the body in the shower, as it happens. 5 Days parodies that by getting you to nervously approach a drawn shower curtain and move it aside, only for Trilby to say "Well, that was anticlimactic".

I'm fairly certain that you could get a sceptre from one of the coffins, but I can't remember what it did. The last openable one contained a banshee which escaped and screeched at you, but unusually for Shadowgate, didn't kill you.

(Continued via email, realized it was sent to wrong address, had palpitations, turned out to be a non-existent domain, PMed, emailed, or something)

[kjorteo]

Oh, man, now you just reminded me of Dagger of Amon Ra again. Most of the game is a whodunnit-style murder mystery where you're all locked in a museum and people keep getting killed off one by one, with some absolutely absurd deaths made up for by the level of detail in the gruesome closeup. Being completely decapitated by a paper cutter will seem perfectly acceptable after the lovingly-rendered close-up when you find the guy's head. The absolutely miraculous timing, aim, and coincidental standing required to cut the cord on a pterodactyl statue dangling from the ceiling and send it falling such that the beak impales someone won't be questioned when you see the gory aftermath. Hell, one person dies from--and if anything my memory could be distorting things, but I swear I am not intentionally making anything up--somehow falling or being pushed onto a porcupine that had some sort of deadly poison painted on its quills. And somehow, even if maybe I was just young, it was much scarier than it was hilarious.

Anyway, I kind of let myself get sidetracked there, but my point is that it's a typical murder mystery, but the very last chapter involves a full fledged "oh crap he's after you" chase from the killer, conveniently dressed in an identity-disguising full black cloak years before Scream came out and wielding a wicked flail. You have to run all around the museum to try and escape him, and just like absolutely anyone in an old King's Quest game who isn't you, he caves your skull in the second he's close enough. Unlike anyone in an old King's Quest game who isn't you, his movement is set to "beeline straight toward you," not "wander around completely aimlessly." It's horrible.

And yeah, I never figured out what was up with that banshee.

[davidn]

I actually find deaths like that more frightening, if anything - the application of an everyday object to kill someone, no matter how unlikely, is going to strike closer to home than the obviously fantastical deaths (dragons, black holes, hammer through chest, etc.) featured in the likes of Shadowgate. Things like this and deaths from strings of unlikely coincidences are the reasons why I just can't watch the Final Destination films.

That situation in Amon Ra sounds pretty much exactly like the final stages of 7 Days, in fact (and an exact example of the situations I talked about in the post I just made to the videogame_tales community). You're constantly pursued by an enemy that can appear without warning, and are pretty much powerless to attack it or even run away very effectively. 7 Days exaggerates this enormously just by being set on a spacecraft, as all the rooms are tiny and once the Welder appears you're pretty much dead anyway.

[kjorteo]

It's less random appearance and more being chased. The guy is constantly moving directly toward you, and this transcends all the screens in that chapter--if you leave the screen for another one about ten seconds ahead of the murderer, you know for an absolute fact he will appear on the new screen from exactly where you just came from about ten seconds later, and will resume heading directly toward you. Complicating the matter is that there's stuff in the way of your escape, and of course it's designed to give the murderer a heavy advantage. (You have to solve the puzzles to open the door with enough time and distance to spare to not let him touch you. All he has to do is walk up and touch you. Well, by touch I mean smash your head with a flail, but either way.) This keeps going until he either catches and kills you or lead him through a somewhat clever trap at the end and activate it once he follows you in and you're safely out the other side. The whole thing is just terrifying in its relentlessness; the guy is after you, and does not stop for anything. The chase is fairly long, too.

[davidn]

Another thing about Shadowgate - I'm quite happy with obvious deaths in adventures, where you're given a fair warning (preferably) or the environment just looks dodgy enough to warrant saving and being a bit careful, but absolutely everything kills you in that game. The mirror that somehow explodes into you for no reason and the book on the pedestal from your list, and similarly the bag of gold that disintegrates the balcony when you touch it. But there are things in it that aren't even remotely dangerous that lead to your demise.

The one that actually inspired me to post this is a ladder near the start of the game (I think it's where you use the sceptre, in one of the identical-looking holes in the wall where you have to place sticks, rods, and various other synonyms at random). It's a hole in the floor with a ladder clearly sticking out of it, so you move to it only to be told "Actually, the ladder was broken two rungs down. You slipped, fell to the cold hard stone floor below, broke all your legs and died instantly. You stupid git."

I should have put this in videogame_tales, really, I had no idea it would lead on to this amount of discussion!

[kjorteo]

Never too late to crosspost or post a link!

Or, how about the fact that not having a lit torch at any time equals instant death, even in rooms that are clearly not even remotely hazardous. I could understand the rickety rope bridge over a spike pit type rooms, but a random spot that looks more or less like a living room? Even the game's own description can't do better than "You stumble around blindly, and trip and fall down." I can see that, but it's a bit of a leap from "you trip and fall down" to "obviously, you're dead now." That, and some of the rooms clearly have plenty of external light sources. (I can't see a foot in front of my own face without a small torch in the inferno Hell room, huh?) Then again, this is Shadowgate, so maybe it isn't that much of a leap.

And clearly, it was obvious that you were supposed to avoid that hole until you knew EPOR. It just makes sense.