Saturday 9 February, 2008

Gameplay:

Continuing the story, you end up stealing a premium client from your rival Domino, but when Manny tries to book a travel plan for this client, named Mercedes Columnar, he runs her name through the computer, and despite her bio indicating she lead a virtuous life, she doesn't qualify for any of the better travel packages. Before Manny can puzzle this out, he's paged to his boss' office.

Manny's boss has discovered Manny's subterfuge, and threatens to fire him, until it's revealed that Mercedes has left to start her walk to the land of the dead without waiting for the situation to be resolved. This causes Manny's boss to go ballistic, and he locks Manny in a room in the Garage until the local authorities can come to question him. It is implied that Manny is in big trouble. But Manny eventually escapes the city, and sets about trying to find Mercedes so that he can rescue her and clear his own name.

Design:

The gameplay isn't very innovative, with the exception of the inventory system. When you press the inventory key, the camera switches to a view of Manny pulling things out from under his coat. You can cycle through his inventory in this view, Manny will put away the current inventory item and grab another from his coat. In this way, Grim Fandango avoids having obtrusive inventory screens that are common in adventure games.

There's never a point where Manny is in real danger in the game, the player is always given as much time as he or she needs to think of a solution. Also, the game doesn't penalize you for making bad decisions, other than having to backtrack a bit to retrieve an item. It is impossible for the player to get stuck by throwing away a necessary item. This is a good thing, because the solutions to the puzzles in the game are strictly progressive, and the player has to solve them in exactly the way that the designers intended them to be solved. Since the game takes on a humorous tone, the way designers want puzzles solved is often in some very arbitrary way, which adds to the humor value.

The reward that the game gives the player for solving the puzzles is strictly narrative. The player advances the story, and so learns more about the mystery. The player also gets access to more funny dialogue, which is the main thing that keeps players playing. I see this game as having no replay value until the player forgets every line of dialogue in the game.

This is close to what we are looking for. You have a wonderfull description of your gameplay, though the second gameplay section is not long enough and not two paragraphs or more, but you still lack analysis which you provide in design instead of having a design section. "This should follow the same guidelines (no play-by-play" http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps080k/Winter08/gamelog.html

Alon chanukov(grader)