Lets wind the clocks back. Sierra Entertainment was "the" point-and-click adventure company. If it had the word "quest" in it back in the 1980's to 90's, it was a damn-near certainty that Sierra was the company behind it. King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest...these games could be frustrating endearments in trial and error, but those 78 screens were nothing but quirky goodness.
But when you knew what you were doing, these 78 screens took little time to beat.
While many of the aforementioned games are available on gog.com, alongside other popular titles like Phantasmagoria...there is a series missing. A series I hold very near and dear to my heart...a series that took the time and effort to get a fake band to crank out a soundtrack just to make clues for the game itself. It's that level of charm I don't get to see or experience nowadays, the game that takes the time and effort. Shivers and Shivers 2 are, by and far, my favorite puzzle games.
But that always bothered me. It took a kickstarter and a lot of love and effort to even see something remotely similar to this, in the form of Tex Murphy. Chris Jones and a lot of original actors came back for one last hurrah to finish the sequel intended for the cliffhanger done in Overseer. Considering that game was released in 1998 and this is now 2014, that says a lot about certain cliques in the gaming world. They're willing to bring an old IP back from the grave.
But that has me thinking. Why don't we see more of this? Why don't more people make these kind of games? Both iterations of Shivers would be unbelievably cheap to make in this day and age; and they wouldn't look terrible at all. The charm after all these years has not faded from the design of Shivers 1 and 2; the atmosphere, the soundtrack, the design...it's all held up well in my humble opinion. The puzzles were challenging but not unbeatable, with a built-in puzzle solver for the second game just in case you were well and truly stuck. Some were simple, and some could stump you for a long while. The acting could be hokey, and it had the odd flaws of old FMV technology that plagued the Sega CD...but it's still forgivable, and the stories are entertaining enough to dig into.
The game was made back in the day with a team of 17 people, so this is within the realm of small-team game production. Tex Murphy was a refreshing glance at the past, but there was something missing from the world itself, that sense of tight, atmospheric design. I won't say the old Tex Murphy games were masterpieces, but I did expect something a little more out of the environments in this day and age. The FMV quality just harshly contrasts this: while the environments are a little cheap, the quality of the cutscenes are damn near flawless in terms of lighting and frame rate.
I want to see it again. I want to see the quirky puzzle games right out of Myst. I want to relive Shivers. I want to be challenged again, not in terms of reflex, not in terms of coordination in a rage game; I want a puzzle game again. I want the puzzle games to evolve past Candy Crush Android/iPhone apps. I want my brain to break trying to understand how the puzzle is to be solved, in a world of pure imagination.
But that's just me. People are free to eat up all the First Person Shooters they'd like. But they're dime a dozen, getting horribly played out. They need a break.
But that always bothered me. It took a kickstarter and a lot of love and effort to even see something remotely similar to this, in the form of Tex Murphy. Chris Jones and a lot of original actors came back for one last hurrah to finish the sequel intended for the cliffhanger done in Overseer. Considering that game was released in 1998 and this is now 2014, that says a lot about certain cliques in the gaming world. They're willing to bring an old IP back from the grave.
But that has me thinking. Why don't we see more of this? Why don't more people make these kind of games? Both iterations of Shivers would be unbelievably cheap to make in this day and age; and they wouldn't look terrible at all. The charm after all these years has not faded from the design of Shivers 1 and 2; the atmosphere, the soundtrack, the design...it's all held up well in my humble opinion. The puzzles were challenging but not unbeatable, with a built-in puzzle solver for the second game just in case you were well and truly stuck. Some were simple, and some could stump you for a long while. The acting could be hokey, and it had the odd flaws of old FMV technology that plagued the Sega CD...but it's still forgivable, and the stories are entertaining enough to dig into.
The game was made back in the day with a team of 17 people, so this is within the realm of small-team game production. Tex Murphy was a refreshing glance at the past, but there was something missing from the world itself, that sense of tight, atmospheric design. I won't say the old Tex Murphy games were masterpieces, but I did expect something a little more out of the environments in this day and age. The FMV quality just harshly contrasts this: while the environments are a little cheap, the quality of the cutscenes are damn near flawless in terms of lighting and frame rate.
I want to see it again. I want to see the quirky puzzle games right out of Myst. I want to relive Shivers. I want to be challenged again, not in terms of reflex, not in terms of coordination in a rage game; I want a puzzle game again. I want the puzzle games to evolve past Candy Crush Android/iPhone apps. I want my brain to break trying to understand how the puzzle is to be solved, in a world of pure imagination.
But that's just me. People are free to eat up all the First Person Shooters they'd like. But they're dime a dozen, getting horribly played out. They need a break.
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