Underground Scenes of the Week - 18 June 2007 (Madness Week!)
 

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartf.../samorost2.png

OK, I've been informed that the screenshot last Monday was somehow ill timed. With any luck, the game chosen to kick off the Underground SOTD week of madness is more appropriate for today's date.

Happy Samorost day! :D

I always kind of dug the hookah guy* (even though he was a little bit creepy) :)







*I wonder whose picture that is?

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartf...iacmania33.png

What better game series to pick for Underground Madness week? In terms of raw quantity, Princess Marian Reality-on-the-Norm still has this universe beat, but the Germans are catching up quickly. A few (very few!) of the games are also available in English, for those who'd like to give them a try aber Deutsch nicht sehr gut sprechen.

Ah, why didn't you SAAAY that quantity was the key to getting mentioned?

* SSH goes off to work on Princess Marian LXXIV *


Although, I think that I'll keep Princess Marian XXX to myself ;)

So are you not doing the Wednesday posts any more then, Squinky?

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartf...ges/arcane.png

When adventure game developers and publishers think madness, they (more often than not) think H.P. Lovecraft (cf. octopus-headed statue). Though I have to say, this online Flash game series, created by Sarbakan and hosted by Warner Bros., raises questions about their own sanity.

Why does a game whose greatest asset is beautiful, Broken Sword-esque graphics use brutal JPEG-compression on the backgrounds? Why is the gameplay full of annoying trial-and-error puzzles involving switches, crates, sliders, mazes, and other player "favorites"? Why is there a "time limit" based on the number of clicks, when there isn't even a hotspot indication? Why is Warner Bros. hosting only the second season, rendering the story nearly incomprehensible? (Earlier episodes can be found around the web, if you want to start from the beginning. I found the first one here.) Why is Warner Bros. even hosting the game at all?

Nobody can answer these questions, and I fear that pondering them too deeply will drive you, well... mad.

Probably not on a regular basis; this week, I didn't really have much time to go looking for screenshots. I might continue posting a few in a spontaneous, whenever-I-feel-like-it fashion, but that would usually require me looking for games I haven't played yet. So, in other words, I'd like to open up the floor for others to contribute if they so desire.

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartf.../heartland.jpg

Yes, I'm still sticking with the madness theme. Not just as a major motif of this game (which, if I understand it correctly, is the prologue to the vignette to the "real" game), but for the people who figured that they would make a first-person node-based game with 360-degree spinning in the AGS engine, which was never designed to do any such thing. It's a testament to what lunatic persistence can achieve.

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartf...s/Hero6_02.jpg

There are some Underground projects that could be termed "venerable" by now, if it wasn't for the fact that it seems wrong to honor them for never actually getting done. This game is one of those. The project has suffered some setbacks (I could have sworn there used to be a much bigger demo available a few years back), but is supposedly still limping on after eight years. The game is developed on a custom engine, MAD, which seems like a good name for the choice to steer clear of AGS, WME, AGAST, SLUDGE, or any of the other options available. Well, maybe it made sense in 1999!

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartfast/images/grr.png

Madness week continues into the weekend with this little favorite of mine. (Download to be found here.) The graphics may look cheerful, but this is in fact psychopathically homicidal entertainment of the kind commercial studios just don't dare to provide. They don't call it the Underground for nothing, I suppose. Well, I for one maintain that seeing a guy wearing a ridiculous bear suit and a note that says "kick me" finally snap and go after his coworkers with a modified BB gun is cathartic.

http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartf...s/prodigal.png
Great! Because really, the chances that they are an evil cult are negligible, right?

Alright. This game marks the belated end of madness week for the Underground SOTD (phew!). I have to say that although the blocky 3D graphics used in the rest of the game are charming, the comic book cutscenes are a cut above in stylishness. The game was very well received in the AGS community, and a while back there was some talk about a commercial sequel. Hopefully that might still happen. A good first step might be to make a proper website for the original (hint hint).

I had a love/hate relationship with the anger meter. Great idea but really annoying if you have to work out how to get it higher before you can perform certain actions.

Good fun though.