'Al Emmo & the Lost Dutchman's Mine' Demo

I must admit that I wasn't impressed with the artwork on Himalaya Studios' website, and the game sounded like a cross between Leisure Suit Larry and Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Not that there's anything wrong with those two games and those were pretty enjoyable, but I would have preferred something fresh.

Anyway, I tried playing through the demo, and was immediately turned off by the quality of the 3D cut-scenes. It was highly amateurish. The storyline wasn't engaging and the jokes fell flat. And if that wasn't enough, both the narrator and the protagonist's voices were terrible to listen to. Al sounded fake, and the narrator had this overbearing and sacarstic attitude. They were both over-the-top and it really wasn't fun listening to either of them, although there is an option to turn off the voice altogether. The 2D hand-drawn backgrounds were lovely to look at, and so it was a shame that the 3D character models were poor in contrast.

Story Presentation

The cut-scene first shows a group of people exploring a mine (which players can deduce safely as *The Dutchman's Mine* that will come into play later). One of them is the Dutchman, who's leading Rita's father and two people. Most of the exchange won't make much sense now since they didn't want to give too much away, but the Dutchman leaves after giving Rita's father some guns for protection. We would find out later during the demo that Rita's father later died, though the demo never reveals how exactly he died or where his body is (so he might not be dead in the first place). Two years later, a 40 something Al Emmo (typical balding, geeky loser) arrives in Arizona to pick up his mail-order bride in order to prove to his parents that he's not a total failure, but things don't go according to plan. As expected, the mail-order bride dumps him as soon as she realises that he's broke, he gets thrown out of the saloon and misses his train ride home, so now he's stuck for a week and is completely whiney.

The situation gets more interesting for Al the moment he laid eyes on Rita, the woman whom every male in town wants, and we'll see him trying to win her heart for the rest of the game. Why she's so special isn't exactly clear in the demo. She doesn't look attractive as a 3D model nor as a 2D portrait (but the same can be said of any woman in the demo). As for characteristics, I don't see a "smart, strong and kind" woman that the developers want players to believe, but an arrogant and shallow person who thinks she's "not like those other cows". I don't see anything in her that would make him want to work so hard to even get her to acknowledge his presence, but he spends the rest of the demo trying to figure out how to get her favourite flower off a very tall cactus, only to fumble in his "Will you go out with me" speech and watch a suave (and possibly evil) Spanish prince waltz in and sweep her off her feet. Why a Spanish prince would come all the way to Arizona to date her, who knows? Anyhow, she promptly drops the flower that Al worked so hard to get for her, walks with the prince to the door, and then thanks Al for the flower (not caring that it's still on the floor).

My sister noted that the narrator's dialogue (which sometimes serve to give descriptions of everything in the game) was often superfluous, and stated that the writer shouldn't have tried to throw in so many big words in an attempt to sound smart. She also felt that the game was trying too hard to follow Sierra's style by having comments for every single thing in the game and ended up being a poorly-done clone.

Dialogue is handled by clicking the mouth icon on the NPC, and you have no control over what conversation topics to talk about. This would be fine if there isn't much to say between the characters, such as in the KQ series, but the conversations in this game tend to be a bit too long for my liking, with characters rambling on or sharing one gossip after another (eg. the Bartender and Koko). I would prefer having more control over what topics Al wishes to discuss, and perhaps even the ability to repeat certain topics that might be crucial (like the very easy to miss hint for the drinks puzzle).

The ending was one of the better features of the game. Instead of using 3D cutscenes like what they did for the intro and Rita's performance, this was done using a comic panel. The drawings were rather well done and the timing was good. Apparently this comic approach will appear in several parts of the game.

Game Design

The puzzle logic could use more work. One puzzle involved Al finding a spare key to get into his room. Right at the moment where Al breaks his first key, the pianist goes "Darn that key!". That's actually a hint to the player to talk to the guy and find out that the pianist is using the spare key as a substitute for one of his piano keys. Can a room key make music? Also, the pianist couldn't be spoken to before the first key was broken, so there's very little reason for the player to *want* to talk to a character he/she couldn't speak to earlier. After finding out that the only way to get the spare key is to distract the pianist with a drink, Al has to learn how to make one from the bartender, but the hint he gives is also very easy to miss and doesn't get repeated once the puzzle starts, so if you missed it the first time, you'd be stuck and have to redo the puzzle in order to hear it. And after all your trouble, you get an item which has no use in the demo.

Solving this spare key puzzle also triggers the next game event which has no relation with said puzzle at all, and that game event is required to get the necessary item to solve the main puzzle. There's no reason why solving this puzzle would trigger this event, and it shouldn't be the case.

Rita only appears a second time if Al gets the flower she likes. If Al has another flower, he can't show it to Rita then to find out that he should have gotten the difficult-to-reach flower. A few player had wondered how they were going to show that flower to her, not realising then that it was the wrong flower.

There are no dead ends in this demo. It's supposed to be one of the game's selling points. Player death isn't available in the demo, but it's possible to die in the full game, but I hear that it's rare and the game will have its own measures to ensure that it won't frustrate the player.

GUI

The developers tried to come up with their own menu system whereby the options appear at the top left of the screen when the cursor is in that area, while the other player controls ("Hand", "Mouth", "Eye", "Inventory") appear on the top right. They didn't use any icons at all for the menu system, which is rather surprisingly. Instead, everything is in text. Someone pointed out that it makes no sense to label the controls as "Hand", "Mouth" and "Eye". The LucasArts' labelling method is more intuitive, he says.

The Quit option isn't easily accessible, unlike Save and Restore. Instead, it's found under "Settings".

The hand, mouth and eye cursors have a small white circle, which is suppose to help make sure that players would be able to click exactly where they want to, provided they even notice the pixel and understand how to use it. There were no smart cursors, and LucasArts fans actually complained about this, while the Sierra fans didn't seem to have any problems.

The walk icon is in a shape of a x, with a hole in the centre.

There isn't any exit highlighting in this game, and again, this was something that the LA fans took issue with. Because of that, the team is now working on creating exit highlights.

An in-game map will appear in the game, but it's not available in the demo. This map will allow players to teleport around, so those who complained about having to walk from place to place will at least be happy with this.

The inventory appears at the bottom of the screen at the click of the wheelmouse button. It's a single row with arrows at both ends for you to scroll through your list. You can't see all your inventory items immediately if they exceed the screen's length.

They still have a long way to go, though the fact that they managed to produce a non-remake at a much faster pace than Hero6's is quite an accomplishment.

A Note About Spoilers

This blog isn't designed to inform potential consumers whether a certain game is worth playing, so there will be lots of spoilers. I may even go so far as to record themes I noticed from the game and character motivation. If you don't wish to have the game spoiled for you, it's best not to read what I write.

King- Errrr.. I mean "The Silver Lining" Demo Review

The Silver Lining (TSL), formerly known as King's Quest 9, is one of the most anticipated Adventure games to be released this year, or at least the first part of it, Shadows. The team behind it has a lot going for them - VU gave them permission to continue production after their fans fought for the C&D order to be removed, they've been interviewed and mentioned by several online and print magazines (including MTV), and they've made it on TV. They've gotten their PR and marketing skills down pat, but in terms of game designing, they still have a long way to go, and here's why.

When I first discovered the script excerpts Caser Bittar posted to demonstrate the quality of TSL, I was both underwhelmed and apprehensive. It really wasn't comforting to read that the game boasted "1500 pages script", especially since the examples he posted weren't at all funny. So when the demo finally came out, I didn't have very high expectations about its quality, though I tried to remain somewhat hopeful. I guess it was the foreknowledge that kept this game from being a complete disappointment. If you haven't tried it out yet, here's the link. Bear in mind that this was the demo made specially for VU to try to negotiate talks with them in removing the C&D. VU probably saw potential in it, or maybe they just couldn't stand the KQIX fanatics trolling their forums and spamming their emails with "BRING BACK KQIX!!!". :P

Story Presentation

I was expecting a video clip for the introduction, but what appeared instead were a bunch of words detailing the tragic events of the Royal Twins' birthday party at the Green Isles, followed by Graham's short mission. The game starts with Graham in his royal clothes, and he has to get changed in his famous red and blue adventurer's garb and visit the Oracle to find out how to save his family (again). Since this demo was slapped together in only three weeks, the story itself in the game was very short as well as straightforward, so there's very little to comment on. You can talk to the NPCs to hear their take on the tragedy, though it doesn't add very much storywise. What's worth mentioning though is Hassan, the ferry captain. When Graham approaches him to use his ferry, Hassan objects. Not sure *why* he doesn't make use of the opportunity to simply make a quick buck from it, but he does. Graham then reveals himself to be King Alexander's father, and therefore a king, but Hassan doesn't believe him. Silly Graham, that's what you get for walking around in those peasant adventurer's clothes instead of that royal attire you wore earlier, and I'm pretty sure Hassan wouldn't have doubted your story if you didn't change your clothes. Why Graham doesn't think of changing back, I don't know either, but lucky for him, he has a coin with his face on it, and Hassan believes him right away... except he still refuses to grant Graham's request. Hassan, you're dealing with a king here, and kings are usually loaded. Instead of being difficult and reject the request because you have to feed your crew, why not offer your services for a high fee? Graham offers him a sackload of gold, and Hassan greedily accepts right away. The game ends with Graham visiting the oracle, who proves to be ultimately useless in giving out information because the great evil clouds her vision, but knows someone who might be able to offer more help (read: less cryptic). Even my Oracle in KQ3VGA gave information more freely than theirs.

Dialogue and messages weren't all that interesting, and apparently also riddled with typos and mispronunciations. The same few messages got old pretty click whenever you clicked the hand, eye or talk icon on yourself or on any area that isn't important.

Game Design

Again, not much to comment here, but there are some notable bugs and one design flaw. Hassan's conversation was not thought of carefully enough. When Graham has paid for his passage and Hassan asks if he's ready to set sail, there is no way for Graham to say "Yes" or "No" with the talk icon. Instead, Graham must click his hand on the ferry in order to leave for the oracle. Apparently most didn't have a problem with this, but for those of us who respond with our talk icons than with our hand icons, we were stuck. It was because of this that I stumbled onto a bug. Sometimes previous conversation options that shouldn't be there would appear, and Hassan would develop partial amnesia by either not recognising you or forgetting that you've already paid. For those who thought of using their hand icons, but forgeting to pick up an item along the way, the game would prevent them from leaving. That's good in a way, because at least you know that you've forgotten something, but said item is found in a place that isn't exactly on the way, so there were people who got stuck and wondered where it was.

Conversation was done using branches, a first for a KQ game. As noted earlier, there were bugs in Hassan's conversation tree (and I read that they're still trying to debug it).

Travelling between the islands was done using a large ship sprite to travel on a map. Travelling this way would be fine as long as you go to the proper destination. Try any other, and the game would crash.

At one point during the game a tree trunk would fall and block one of the paths. Problem with this move is that the trunk itself didn't appear large enough to be an insurmountable obstacle, and fans have asked why Graham simply couldn't climb over or walk around it.

Perseus brought up a good point about the 3D environment. For a 3D game, it didn't make use of its environment. There's really no gameplay reason for it to be in 3D other than to look cool in today's world, and would have worked just as well with 2D.

GUI

(Not too sure if some of the things I write here fall under GUI or under Game Design, but whatever)

The menu is pretty similar to the traditional Sierra menu. It hides itself at the top unless the cursor enters that area. The design is rather pretty, but there's still much to be desired. There were no tooltips. While most of the icons were self-explanatory (footprints = walk, bubble speech = talk, hand = use, eye = look, bag = inventory), the options button and the few blank squares next to the bag icon weren't. The options was in the centre of the menu, and its symbol could have meant anything, so having tooltips for that would have been good. I had no idea what the few blank squares were for, and they didn't seem to have any purpose. What were they even doing there?

I noted three misleading exits in total. The first was in the starting room, where you can't tell whether there's any room to the right of the screen. It turned out that there's supposed to be a wall, which I had deduced from Graham's restricted walkpath, but visually, you couldn't see any wall, so there's no way to tell at a glance whether the area can be explored or is blocked. The other two misleading exits are probably that way because they're meant to be explored in the full game.

The inventory has a finite number of small squares on the left where the items are placed, and a closeup view of the selected item on the right. I don't recall if every single object rotates, but the coin certainly did. I thought that was ironic, because Roberta Williams (the original KQ designer) felt that objects shouldn't rotate around uselessly unless there's a reason for it. It's a strange way to honour Roberta, but meh, it's their game.

For a game that's supposed to be heavily inspired by The Longest Journey, I'm surprised that they didn't think of bringing over the helpful smart cursors and exit highlights that Longest Journey had. This would have at least made it easier for the player to see which areas he/she can and can't explore, without having to click on so many doors and find out that Graham's not supposed to enter them. It also would have made it easier to find the exit hotspots, since they weren't large enough for players to click on to exit the area.

The cursor icons and the words were very small. Personally, I would have liked them to be bigger, especially the words. It wasn't always easy reading them, especially against a translucent textwindow. The yellow words against the yellow floor was the hardest to read, and the translucent textwindow provided very little contrast.

It's hard to say whether the full game would be worth playing. Critical as I am of their demo, I do understand what it's like to be rushed into producing a game in three weeks, thanks to "Hero of Infamous Kingdoms". I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best, nonetheless.

Purpose of this Blog

I've been playing a number of adventure games over the past few months, and I want to note down the good, the bad and the ugly. It'll be useful to know what they did right, and how they could have improved so that I'd know what to do when I design my games. I'll examine them mainly in terms of story, game design and gui. I'll also note down what feedback the fans from the forums provide and which elements I'll want to borrow/explore further in my game projects.