And, I think I understand why so many people adore this game. There's a few things I think are really interesting design-wise, but for the most part it's not really about the game's game-ness...
a. The interface when you're moving around/driving on the map is really slick. It feels quite natural and it works well when you change roads and so on.
b. The game changes perspectives A LOT. In most games you make dialogue choices for your characters. Here it feels like you make choices for all the characters - sometimes alternating even within the same conversation. It's a bit unsettling but really interesting in a special way. I do feel like I have to pay closer attention to see who's saying what and what I want the responses to be.
c. The game really does a good job in being cinematic in the sense of having interesting camera movements and positions and framing and so on. So, it's like the photographic direction is really good. The camera pulls back after a minute in some areas, as you move around the camera follows you but may also zoom in or out and show more/less stuff. It's quite clever. My guess is that it was hand/custom coded for each scene/moment?
I have no idea where the story is going, the plot is all weird and all over the place, but I am curious to see/know where it all ends.
It's been a while since I've played a game, at night, and completely lost track of time...and went to bed super late as a result. So, this one's special in that sense at least.
I as trying to describe it to a friend and it's...a few things? There's lots of reading, and lots of choices - and there's a rich narrative with plenty of scripted things (I think!) and lots of branches and characters to interact with and so on. Options open up depending on what your attributes are - and the game is set up such that you cannot max them all out - you have to kind of pick how much time you want to dedicate to each. So, this opens up new things to do with the characters, and more possibilities of "tasks" (each task is one month of game time, and you play from age 10 to 19...with, I think, 12 months a year. You also gain stress so every now and then you need to spend a month resting).
And the tasks? Each tasks causes stress but also results in increases to character stats (boost Engineering and Charisma!) and, possibly, increases to relationships with the other characters.
Each task is a card game. You draw a hand of cards and then you have to play five of them and hopefully beat a target number. Beat it by a lot and you might get a bonus. For some tasks, meet the difficulty exactly to get a bonus. AND, cards get bonus points when they are next to each other in certain patterns: straights (increasing numbers), suit (there are three colors, matching is good), and value (same number neighbors is good). As you play you pick up new cards, some are better than others and they often have special effects, like boost neighbor and so on.
The game was hard at the beginning because I did not understand the system really - but when it all clicked, it got super easy. As in, I never failed a challenge again. BUT, you also pick up items that you can use to help out (boost a card, draw an extra card, etc.). BUT, i still enjoyed the puzzle of getting to the difficulty number from the cards in hand.
As for the story - it's really neat. You play a kid, and the kid has other friends as kids. And you basically grow up together! They change over the years, they specialize in new things, get crushes, date, etc. And all of this on an alien planet that is very dangerous and you're trying to survive (the colony is) and stuff gets worse and harder and worse. And. There's a whole mystery as well. I only figured out some stuff, but there's more to learn.
I'm really loving what Digital Eclipse is doing. Karateka, Llamasoft, etc.
This one's a strange collection for me - unlike, I'm guessing, most non-UK game players, I am quite familiar with Jeff Minter. Not through his games, but sort of one step removed. I've been reading Edge magazine for almost a quarter century at this point and he's someone who is often brought up, interviewed a few times, and so on. So, he's a name that was familiar to me, I know of his reputation within the UK scene. But, I had never played any of his games. So, it was nice to finally get that chance. More fairly, I'm thankful that I was able to create the circumstances that resulted in my playing his games and having a closer-to-first-hand experience of what he's done. At least the old stuff (up until Tempest 2000 pretty much, but if I recall Minter then went heavily into light synths and stuff like that...returning later to videogames).
Actually, to be fair, I had played some of his games - but his much more recent games on iOS app store. Sort of early ipad days. I don't remember the names of any of them. But I think I played two games?
Anyways, back to the old retro original Minter stuff...
If I was mean I'd describe his early games as "clones" with zany characters thrown on top. They play well, are really hard, but it's super clear that he's working on top of other ideas, trying to find new spaces within those. And, this work continued even across ports from one computer to another. A mean person would say that he's just re-hashing his stuff all the time, few big new ideas, and blablabla. And, that might be fair to an extent. Minter isn't the kind of developer/designer who seems to always be looking for another crazy idea, to really push game designs into uncharted territory and so on. That's not a bad thing. Or a good thing either. It's just who he is. He's stuck to his guns doing what he likes and refining and working on that. He's sort of like a carpenter who only makes chairs - and iterates, refines, etc. But his chairs are still chairs - and they're interesting. He's the super specialized craftsman. Other carpenters migth make tables, and then try chairs, and then decide to make a closet, and then a table chair combo, and so on. So, broad in their skills and interests.
And so Digital Eclipse's work really does a great job of laying all his stuff out in front of you so you can see it, in context, and with great additional documentary details. I loved it.
So far, which is only 30 mins or so into the game, this is not what I was expecting! It's more "interactive" than I thought - with the 3D frozen-in-time scenes a particularly surprising stand out for me so far.
I'm currently on the 2nd "scene" (chapter?) and I'm not sure I understand how the pocketwatch is meant to work - sometimes within a scene it'll be vibrating - and then I'll press X on some other part and it'll flash and then you'll see a trail of "smoke" - and I'm kind of confused as to what it's all supposed to mean. I think for now I'll just continue to play along until I get horribly stuck? I'm just worried that it's a key mechanic of sorts that has some meaning that helps fill out the blanks in the case.
I liked the "fill in the blanks" in Curse of the Golden Idol - and this is similar (though earlier!) - but harder in a way? I just need to identify who died, how, and by whom. The names seems to be the hardest thing so far. We'll see how it goes.
