'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.
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.
posted by Swift at 4:04 AM
1 Comments:
The use of 3D also makes it pretty cool that they finished something original faster than hero6... however they did pay people to produce the assets so the situation isn't exactly similar.
The cutscene put me off so much that I haven't even been able to persuade myself to test the full demo. Similar to the wsad effect and falling through the floor in KQ9's demo, which is a real pity. I was really looking forward to KQ9.
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