#oneaday Day 259: Excavations

I successfully did what I planned yesterday — for two nights in a row, even. Last night I spent some time with Smashing the Battle on Nintendo Switch, which I'll write a bit more about once I've spent some more time with it, and tonight I have seemingly spent nearly six hours playing The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, a point-and-click adventure by Cloak & Dagger Games, published by modern adventure game specialists Wadjet Eye Games.

It always does my soul good to see how not-dead the point-and-click adventure genre has been for quite some time now, because there was definitely a period in the mid 2000s and early 2010s where it felt like there weren't any being made. 3D tech was getting better and everything was suddenly all about cinematic action games — something that certainly hasn't gone away in more recent years — but, looking back, it's clear that adventure games never really went anywhere. And these days, I'd say they're thriving more than they ever have done, even in their supposed golden age. Because not only can we enjoy the established classics from that golden age, there's a host of new ones seemingly being made all the time.

I'll write more specifics about The Excavation of Hob's Barrow when I've fully completed it — I've pressed pause on it for this evening as it's a quarter to one and I should probably sleep. Suffice to say for now that it's very good, though.

In The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, you take on the role of Thomasina Bateman, an antiquarian who has made it her mission to document the various ancient burial mounds scattered around the English countryside. We join the story as she arrives in a remote Northern village, supposedly the home of the titular Hob's Barrow, but she's immediately confronted with mysteries as her contact is nowhere to be seen and no-one seems to want to talk about Hob's Barrow.

That's all I'll say on the plot for now. The interface uses a pretty standard two-button system, with left-clicking "doing" things and right-clicking "looking" at things, but there's plenty of thinking required. Thus far there has been no real "moon logic" to speak of, just a sequence of tasks to complete that provide a sense of relative freedom without overwhelming you with possibilities. In fact, the game is quite cleverly designed in that the "freedom" you feel is not really present at all; there's quite a fixed sequence of things to do with a chain reaction of dependencies, but the fact you discover the beginnings of all these various threads before you start figuring out which order you need to solve them in is what makes this game really work.

It's beautifully presented in low-res pixel art combined with modern graphical techniques and greater colour depth, which gives it a wonderfully distinctive aesthetic. The voice acting is very good, too, seemingly making use of native Northerners in many cases.

I'm intrigued to see where it goes, but not quite enough to pull an all-nighter on it. After all, GOG Galaxy says I've already spent 5 hours and 28 minutes on it this evening and I've only completed two of the in-game "days". I don't know how many there are in total, but it does feel as if the third one is going to be somewhat climactic, so I estimate I'm maybe a little over halfway to two-thirds through? We shall see, I guess.

Anyway, if you're jonesing for a modern point-and-click adventure, I can definitely recommend this one. It's kept me pretty enraptured for the whole evening and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all concludes.

For now, though, sleep. Sleep!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 239: Two Quests in one day

I recorded some videos earlier. I really like doing adventure game playthroughs, so I decided to play through both King's Quest II (I've already done the first one) and Space Quest, the latter of which I've never played all the way through by myself, but which I've fallen asleep to Dan from Game Grumps playing on numerous occasions.

I was hoping to get The Dagger of Amon Ra done also, but it turns out playing and beating three adventure games in one day is just a little too ambitious, so I've settled for just the two mentioned. The Dagger of Amon Ra is still on the list, though; I found The Colonel's Bequest far too interesting to just leave Laura Bow hanging like that.

I mostly enjoyed the experience of these two games. King's Quest II is a game I have fond memories of playing as a kid, though I'm not sure I ever actually beat it when I was younger. Space Quest was mostly a pleasure, also, save for two truly awful and mandatory sequences you have to endure: a "skimmer" race where you have to dodge incoming rocks, and a slot machine sequence where you need to earn an obscene amount of money using a purely luck-based system. (If you're playing a later revision of the game, there is a cheat to bypass this sequence, but sadly, the ST version I was playing was not said later revision, so I had to do it "the hard way".)

I always find it fascinating to go back to adventure games, because when I was younger actually making it all the way through one seemed like a literal impossibility. Particularly if we're talking about Sierra games, which most certainly are not afraid to kill off the player regularly, or leave them in a situation where they forgot an item earlier in the game that is mandatory to progressing later. King's Quest is probably more notorious than Space Quest in this regard, but as it happens, of the two games I played today, King's Quest II was probably the gentler, fairer of the two, while Space Quest had several opportunities to miss important objects and completely screw your entire playthrough over.

But no. Those games that seemed impossibly huge and insurmountable as a child are almost laughable in their length today. Actually, no, I don't mean that; both King's Quest II and Space Quest (annoying bits aside) are just the right length to be satisfying, so far as I'm concerned, but I do feel like if a modern equivalent of both of these was released today, they would be quickly review-bombed by entitled Steam kiddies whinging about "lack of content" and "no updates, abandoned game".

For me, though, it's nice to be able to power through a game like this in the space of a couple of hours — possibly even quicker if you know exactly what to do and the best order to do it in. I certainly enjoyed recording these two videos today — and I'm looking forward to publishing them over on YouTube over the course of the next few days. Now, though, it's 1.15 in the morning and I should probably go to sleep. Adventure is calling, but an adventurer also needs his rest, to be sure!

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#oneaday Day 238: The Sims is still good

The rumours were true! Just ahead of the series' 25th anniversary, EA dropped rereleases of The Sims and The Sims 2 on their own storefront and Steam earlier today, for the eminently reasonable price of £34.99 for the both of them. Considering they both come with all the expansions (well, I think The Sims 2 might be missing the IKEA "stuff" pack, but that's about it), I'm perfectly happy to pay up for them both, particularly considering The Sims has never had a digital release, and The Sims 2 has been unavailable for a long time.

"But you can get them both for free!" the entitled corners of the Internet shout. "They're abandonware, and that means you can legally download them for free!" Well, firstly, one, no it doesn't, because abandonware isn't actually a thing, legally speaking, and two, it is important to support official rereleases of stuff like this, because it gives a thumbs up to companies making a commitment to actually preserving their history and making it available to everyone, even those who weren't there for it first time around. It's no good carrying on about "preservation" if you don't support actual attempts to do that. Piracy is all well and good if there is no other way, but official preservation efforts should be supported. Yes, even if they're by EA.

Both rereleases have been updated so that they work just peachy on Windows 10 and 11, and The Sims is able to run in much higher resolutions than it ever has before, and in widescreen. Okay, the game could arguably do with a UI scale option when playing at 1080p or higher, but it's not unplayable by any means, particularly if you're playing on a big TV as I have been.

I've spent a few hours revisiting The Sims this evening by making a rough recreation of my original "Hartley Family" save file, which featured me and the other members of my hall of residence flat at university struggling to survive. I am reminded that the original The Sims is actually surprisingly challenging compared to some of its follow-ups; thus far, keeping on top of six people's needs has been quite difficult, particularly with a lack of substantial income. Things will get easier once some of them start getting promoted and bring in a bit more money each day, but for the moment it's very much in "scraping by" territory.

Also one of them has died already after burning down the kitchen, but I managed to "Plead" with the Grim Reaper quickly enough for him to be able to return as a zombie. I have made a promise to myself that I'm not going to save scum at all, I'm just going to deal with the consequences of everything that goes on as it happens. Emergent narrative and all that.

I'm interested to spend a bit more time with the original The Sims, as back when it was current, I had a lot of the expansion packs, but not all of them. I don't think I had Superstar, Unleashed or Makin' Magic, and those are three that have some substantial additions to the gameplay — the pursuit of fame, pets and the ability to cast spells using appropriate components respectively.

At present, I've got one of the six Hartley family members equipped with a magic wand and (thus far) the ability to turn someone into a toad, and another who keeps slipping off to the "Studio Town" area to go and sing karaoke badly (earning a whopping 5 Simoleons per performance at present) but so far, it's a struggle to keep their mood high enough to be able to truly take advantage of those features. Much as with real life, getting a solid and stable income stream is important if you want to start doing anything out of the ordinary.

So that's that. The Sims and The Sims 2 are both available on Steam and EA's own storefront right now, either separately or in a bundle together. You also get a "free" copy of The Sims 4 with them, but since that went free-to-play a while back anyway it's probably best ignored unless you want to get into DLC hell. The rereleases of both The Sims and The Sims 2 are complete, meanwhile (aside from the aforementioned Ikea pack for The Sims 2) and should keep you busy for a very long time indeed.

I'll probably write more about one or the other or both at some point, but for now, I'm happy. It's been a nice bit of nostalgia to revisit The Sims — and a reminder that as cynical as people got about the series over the years (not without good reason), it's still just a damned fine game at heart, too.

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#oneaday Day 234: The return of The Sims?

Supposedly The Sims and The Sims 2 are getting the rerelease/remaster treatment at some time around the end of the month. It is the 25th anniversary of the series this year, and it appears that EA is actually listening to people for once and (supposedly) bringing back two of the most fondly regarded entries in the series, neither of which have been available for a very long time — and I don't believe the original The Sims has ever been available digitally, since it came from that dark and mysterious time where you had to go to a shop to buy PC games. (Yes, I miss it. I would be much more of a PC gamer if it was possible to have a physical PC game collection.)

I used to really enjoy The Sims. The original game came out at an absolutely perfect time for me: while I was at university. As someone who had previously enjoyed the SNES version of SimCity (aka the best version… apart from the bugs) and Sim City 2000, I was intrigued to see creator Will Wright doing something a little bit different. The idea of a "life simulator" was something that had captured my imagination from around the 16-bit age; Activision's Little Computer People existed, but I wondered what something with a bit more "game" to it might look like.

Something really enjoyable, as it happened. The Sims, just in its base form, was an absolute revelation. Not only did I have fun with it, but everyone in my flat at university enjoyed getting involved, too. I'd made virtual versions of all of us, and everyone liked to check in every so often to see how we were all getting along. Because I rather overdid the size of our house when I started playing, we all had to sleep in recliners in the large communal living area for a while, but as everyone got jobs and started bringing in the Simoleons, we were able to live a rather luxurious life.

The Sims is interesting to think back on, because it's from a time where you could release a "sandbox" game and it wasn't anything unusual. Moreover, these games didn't need anything like achievements, daily quests or other engagement-bait to get people to enjoy playing them. They were enjoyable just because… well, because they were good. I'm actually rather interested to revisit the original The Sims just to see how well it holds up today. Obviously the graphics will look a tad dated, but I bet the gameplay still has it where it counts.

The Sims 2 I remember owning, playing and enjoying, but I don't recall playing it quite as much as the original for one reason or another. It certainly wasn't because I didn't like it or anything — I recall picking up several of the expansions for it — but for some reason it doesn't stick in my mind quite as much as the original. I know it's an especially fondly regarded entry in the series, though, so it might be fun to have another look at.

I really enjoyed The Sims 3, even though that was really the point that EA started truly taking the piss with the number of expansions and "Stuff" packs — something which has been taken to a frankly obscene degree with The Sims 4, which I've never played. I had a lot of fun with the World Adventures expansion in particular; I really liked the "dungeon crawling" subgame that added to the mix, as it made you make use of the game's mechanics in a rather different way.

I'm normally loathe to give EA money, particularly as they seem all-in on the AI fad right now, but I might make an exception if they don't fuck up the ports of these games — which is, of course, a distinct possibility. But we'll see; sources seem to reckon we'll see them by the end of the month, and there ain't much left of the month. Further reports as events warrant!

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#oneaday Day 176: Take a Bow

Today, I played through all of the first Laura Bow game, The Colonel's Bequest. I enjoyed it a lot! You can read more about my thoughts on the subject right here, and a full Let's Play of the game will kick off on my YouTube channel from tomorrow. It's just three (long) episodes rather than a lot of 30-minute episodes like I did with The Case of the Serrated Scalpel last year, as I felt that fit the format of the game a bit better, and the overall structure of The Colonel's Bequest is… well, quite different from pretty much any adventure game I've played.

But enough of that. What's next? The Dagger of Amon Ra, of course! This is the follow-up to The Colonel's Bequest, and I'm going to do my best to play it through and record it tomorrow. I don't know if it's longer, shorter, easier, harder… the only thing I do know is that it uses point-and-click controls instead of The Colonel's Bequest's text parser, and it quizzes you on what happened at the end, so you need to make notes, just like Laura herself.

Then after that, I'll start having a look at The Crimson Diamond. Plus alongside all this, I might do something similar to what I did last year ("3 interesting DOS discoveries", "5 DOS games I always wanted to play" and "5 of the best early FPSes") if I can figure out what I might want to cover for videos in that style. I haven't started looking yet. Racing games is a possibility — a good excuse to bust out the Screamer series, perhaps? — or flight sims. Space combat sims? I don't know. I haven't decided yet. Looking at shareware stuff I used to like is also a distinct possibility, perhaps from the perspective of "shareware games I always wanted to try the Registered version of", since the only Registered shareware game I had back in the day was Wolfenstein 3-D, which I got for free after making some levels that were included in the official "Super Upgrades" expansion pack.

I've probably told this story at least once on this blog before, right? Well, regardless, I'll tell it again, 'cause you might be new around here. It's a story of delightfully happy coincidence.

Back at the time I was playing Wolfenstein 3-D on the family PC, I was involved with a local shareware library. I did a bit of part time work helping them out at local computer fairs, writing their catalogues and that sort of thing. I don't remember getting paid for this, but it was decent experience and I got lots of freebies from the shareware library, which was nice.

Among those disks that I got for free were numerous Wolfenstein 3-D editors, and they worked with the shareware version. So I made a bunch of levels.

I forget the exact circumstances of how the next bit came about, but I was browsing the GAMERS forum on CompuServe one day, when I found myself in contact with a gentleman called, as I recall, Carlton somethingorother. He was a representative from Apogee, and he was looking for new Wolfenstein 3-D levels to include in the upcoming data disk for the game. There was money on offer for anyone whose levels were included. After consulting with my parents — online safety and all that — I submitted my pack of ten levels to him, expecting never to hear from him ever again.

Imagine my surprise when a few months later, I got a package from the United States containing a cheque for $200, plus a registered copy of Wolfenstein 3-D and the new Super Upgrades pack, which included my levels, along with a bunch of other community contributions. So technically I'm a professional game designer.

But anyway. Yeah. That copy of Wolfenstein 3-D was the only Registered shareware game I had, because it was the early days of the Internet (in fact, via CompuServe, our "ISP" at the time, you couldn't even access the Web, and had to append "INTERNET:" to any email addresses you were sending messages to outside of the CompuServe service) and my parents weren't super-into the idea of sending $40 overseas in the hope of getting a video game back, and they absolutely weren't going to share their credit card information online. As such, I became intimately familiar with a lot of "Episode 1s" and not a lot else… so exploring the "Episode 2s" and beyond for some games I liked back in the day might be interesting, for sure.

I'll think of something. For now, I think it's time to just play something fun for a bit without thinking about how to turn it into an article or video. Come to me, Donut Dodo…!

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#oneaday Day 118: I left this too late again

Oh dear. Half past midnight and I haven't written anything. Time to quickly think of something off the top of my head!

Err… quick! Video games! I bought Victory Heat Rally today. This is a game I've had my eye on for a while (though not as long as some other people have, from the sound of things) after I played its excellent demo a few Steam Next Fests ago. I'm going to do a full writeup and video on this at some point in the very near future, but suffice to say for now that it's very good.

It's a game that takes aim at Sega's "Super Scaler" racers in style, with Power Drift being a particular inspiration. It doesn't slavishly try to ape the retro style, mind — though there is a nice "pixelise" filter option for the visuals — and rather makes use of some nice pixel art for the characters, cars and some roadside objects, and low-poly environments. It moves along at a fair old clip even on my mini PC that doesn't have a graphics card, and it's a lot of fun to play.

Besides Power Drift, it also draws inspiration from Ridge Racer (drift-heavy handling, '90s rave soundtrack), Sega Rally (rally stages with exaggerated handling), Mario Kart (multiple tracks set in a limited number of environments) and probably some others that I can't think of right now because I'm tired. It takes all these elements and blends them together to make an immensely compelling game that I've played for about 5 hours this evening.

The first series of championship challenges is a bit easy, but the second ramps things up nicely to a good challenge level. There are also some truly infuriating bonus stages known as "Joker" levels where you have to race through checkpoints against the clock while performing some sort of precise driving task. The one I'm presently stuck on requires you to take full advantage of the "drift boost" mechanic the game has borrowed from Mario Kart and boost through various checkpoints. This is a lot harder than it sounds, particularly with the awkward placement of some of these checkpoints, and it has cause many expletives to belch forth from my mouth this evening.

While these levels are infuriatingly difficult, the rest of the game seems pitched at a pretty sensible difficulty level. The opening championship eases you into things nicely, then things ramp up from there. I suspect the third series of championships will be genuinely quite difficult, if the escalation in the second series is anything to go by.

But anyway. Half past midnight, like I said, so I should probably close everything down and go to sleep. There can (and probably will) be more racing tomorrow.

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#oneaday Day 93: The Truly Tragic Tale of the "Woke Content Detector"

One of the most truly insufferable things about the "gaming community" over the course of the last decade has been the rise of the "anti-woke" crowd, which started to really raise its head around the same time as the Gamergate saga — and, indeed, which many people still point to as the real point behind Gamergate rather than any legitimate concerns over ethics in games journalism.

To be clear and completely transparent, around the time of Gamergate being active I may well have expressed some sentiments and concerns that might have got me lumped in with this crowd.

However, I made an effort to distance myself from the movement as a whole, because I could see it was something of a scarlet letter, regardless of whether or not an individual had legitimate, worthwhile concerns.

My issues were always to do with the games journalism side of things, with my particular focus being on reviews and articles that treated Japanese titles (particularly those which featured sexually provocative content) unfairly and from an ill-informed perspective. I steered well clear of any discussions where it was clear people were being full-on racist and sexist — i.e. objecting to a game because it had a woman in a leading role, or a non-white person appearing prominently. I was entirely concerned with how certain portions of games journalism were treating specific games — and the people who enjoyed them — like absolute shit: nothing more, nothing less.

To put it another way, I always thought the people who were objecting to "woke" content in games were being massive weirdoes, and I didn't want anything to do with them. Where games did feature obnoxiously over-the-top "look how progressive we are!" content, I tended to just steer clear of those — or perhaps comment on them in terms of alternatives that did the same thing, but better. To date, my favourite example of this is Read Only Memories and VA-11 HALL-A. Both of these games unfold in the same "world", with the latter being a spinoff of the former, developed by a completely different team. Read Only Memories is absolutely obnoxious about how it handles progressive themes; VA-11 HALL-A integrates them extremely well into the plot.

But I digress. I have zero time for people who object to games purely on the grounds that they contain "woke content". Particularly when the definition of "woke content", as defined by the Woke Content Detector group on Steam, is so broad. I invite you to take a look at their official spreadsheet of which games are and are not "woke" and have a good laugh at it, and we'll pick out some classics below.

Starfield

A screenshot from the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains overtly Pro-LGBTQ+ messaging. Contains overtly pro-DEI messaging. Pronoun selection including the option for they/them. All populated areas are equally diverse. Many important people are POC."

Here's a prime example of what this list is actually about: being sexist, racist, transphobic and homophobic. I'm not sure much more needs to be said about this definition, other than to clarify for those who are somehow unfamiliar with Starfield that it is an open-structure role-playing game set in space, in which you play a self-insert character. Therefore having the option to select your name, gender, ethnicity and appearance makes a lot of sense. The implication of "many important people are [people of colour]" is that in The Future, we will have moved beyond white dominance and oppression of non-white people, but this is a bridge too far for the anti-woke crowd.

Civilization VI

A screenshot from the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains overtly pro-DEI messaging. Contains overtly pro-climate action messaging. Race swapped Suleiman and added historically unimportant female leaders. Global warming and carbon capture mechanics."

This one is particularly hilarious. A game about running a civilisation on our planet, and considering important matters that both occurred in history and which might occur in the future is "woke" for acknowledging things like climate change. I guess we add "climate change denier" to the "sexist, racist, transphobic and homophobic" list. Some racism and sexism on open display there, too.

BioShock Infinite

A screenshot of the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains overtly anti-western society and overtly pro-DEI messaging. Colombia's residents are hyper-exaggerated, racist caricatures of 19th century Americans. Heavy social commentary on racism."

Another good one. The funny thing about this one is that they clearly got the point of BioShock, but then got offended by it.

Forza Horizon 5

A screenshot from the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains overtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging. Prnoun selection including an option for they/them. Uses unlabeled presets instead of clearly defined male and female options during character creation."

I have to include this one just for how stupid it is. Forza Horizon 5, the game in which you spend your entire time in a car, is "woke" because it allows you to choose how the in-game characters refer to you. Because only big strong boys play car games, you know.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales

A screenshot from the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains overtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging. Contains overtly pro-DEI messaging. Prominently displayed pride and BLM flags. The new POC main character overshadows Peter Parker."

This one is brilliant, because it's criticising the fact that the protagonist named in the game's title is "overshadowing" the character who is explicitly not the protagonist. Because he's black. Let's not beat around the bush here: this is racism. Again.

Disco Elysium

A screenshot from the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains overtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging. Features multiple LGBTQ+ characters, including the player character. Heavy social commentary regarding communism. Whether pro or anti is unclear."

I'll take "I played Disco Elysium and didn't understand any of the big words" for 2,000, Alex. If you played Disco Elysium and didn't understand whether it was pro or anti communism, you don't deserve to be playing video games that have words in.

Final Fantasy VII

A screenshot from the Woke Content Detector database. Reads "Contains subtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging. Contains subtly pro-climate action messaging. Forced cross-dressing. You start the game working for an ecoterrorism group."

And I have to include this one just for the giggles. Final Fantasy VII features "subtly pro-climate action messaging". Yeah, Final Fantasy VII is real subtle about its environmental message, guys. Real subtle.

I'm utterly amazed at how committed these people are to being pathetic and weird. Because that is exactly what they're being. There are 386 entries on their "Recommended" (i.e. "not woke") list, while there are 746 "Not Recommended" ("WOKE!!!") titles and 299 "Informational" ("A BIT WOKE!!!") titles.

That's a thousand and forty-five games that these people will refuse to consider because they might be exposed to a black person, a gay person or, heaven forbid, a woman. There's no way you can look at that and not think it's utterly pathetic.

Unless you're one of them. In which case fuck off. I don't want to know you.

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#oneaday Day 57: The evolution of interactive fiction

I've been playing Disco Elysium for the last couple of evenings. I finally got around to nabbing it in its The Final Cut incarnation last GOG.com sale, and I felt like playing something a bit "different", so I fired it up. (I'd also been waiting until the hype surrounding it had died down so I could approach it with fresh eyes and zero expectations or prejudices.)

This is a very good game, although it's also a game for a very specific type of person. Despite having console versions, it is very much a game for those who grew up with PC gaming in what old men like me tend to vaguely refer to as its "golden age" — around the turn of the century, approximately. No, I'll be a bit more specific; it's for people who grew up with text adventures and subsequently found themselves particularly enjoying CRPGs on PC in the late '90s/early '00s.

The reason I say this is because Disco Elysium has a significant text component. All of it is voice acted — and for the most part voice acted very well, I have to say — but at its heart, it is a role-playing game in which the majority of its major happenings are conveyed almost entirely through text rather than flashy graphics or even animations. It takes some strong cues from the legendary Planescape: Torment in this regard, but it also successfully distinguishes itself as something that builds on what that game was doing, rather than simply aping it.

For the unfamiliar, the big Thing with Disco Elysium is that it's a role-playing game that focuses almost entirely on non-combat situations. I'm not even sure there's a combat system at all — after playing for (checks GOG Galaxy) 8 hours so far, there has not been a single fight. Instead, everything has occurred through a combination of exploration and text-based interactions.

This isn't to say that Disco Elysium is a kinetic novel, either. Not only do you have a lot of choices in terms of dialogue options in most conversations and interactions, but the wide array of skills your player character has play a significant role in almost everything that happens in the game. And, unusually, this isn't just the form of "SUCCESS/FAILURE" rolls to perform particular actions based on your skills — although those do feature at various points — but rather the various facets of your personality actually "speaking" to you, offering suggestions and commentary on what is going on.

For example, if you've put points into the Empathy skill, at various points in conversations your Empathy trait will actually chime in to "conversations", giving you greater insight into how the person you're talking to is feeling, or how you might be able to get through to them. Your Perception skill will "speak" to you and notice little habits people have. Your Drama skill will flamboyantly point out opportunities where you might be able to express yourself. And there are tons more besides these examples, suggesting that playing Disco Elysium with a different "build" of skills and stats will end up being a markedly different experience; it'll still cover the same basic plot beats and events, but doubtless you'll end up resolving various situations in different ways.

This is really cool, and it feels very much like a natural evolution of interactive fiction. While you don't have quite as much freedom as in a traditional "text adventure" style piece of interactive fiction by virtue of not having a text parser to type in whatever you want, there's a really strong feeling that you're seeing the world through the eyes of the character that you have designed. And, interestingly, that character is designed not as an "ideal", but as an absolute wreck of a human being.

Amnesia is an overdone trope, particularly in role-playing games, but having your player character waking up with a raging hangover and no memory of what got him into the situation he starts the game in is a great means of bringing the player into the game almost in medias res. You, the player, are discovering things about the game world and the story as the protagonist character is (re)discovering them, and you have a lot of scope as to how you want to play that protagonist, who is canonically a policeman.

Do you play things by the book and attempt to impress your partner with how you get your life back together and work hard on solving the investigation that has brought you together? Do you lean into the "weird" and start freaking people out with how you behave around them? Do you start spouting particularly extreme political ideologies at every opportunity? You have the option to do all of these things in Disco Elysium, right up to deciding that you're the one who is going to bring Communism to the people, becoming a massive racist or turning into someone whose sense of self-worth flew out of the window along with his shoe prior to us joining the narrative at the start of the game.

A lot of it is smoke and mirrors, I'm sure, but I can't remember the last time I felt like I was so completely being invited to inhabit the role of a game's main character. The way Disco Elysium works strikes a great balance between having some things that are canonical fact about the protagonist, and allowing you to mould them as you see fit.

I'm not sure it would have quite the same impact if you had a completely freeform self-insert protagonist, because the temptation there is always to go down the "idealised" route, and a significant part of Disco Elysium involves how one deals with one's own flaws — whether that be accepting them, attempting to overcome them, ignoring them in the hope they don't mess things up further for you, or leaning hard into them. By forcing us to inhabit this absolute disaster of a human being, we're put in a position where we can explore how we might get out of a situation that is pretty much rock bottom. Will we rise to the challenges life has thrown at us — at least some of which are our own fault? Or will we crumble under the pressure?

It's a game that I feel could have only been made these days. I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops — and if my take on the protagonist manages to survive to the end of proceedings.

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#oneaday Day 31: Hypnospace

Decided I wanted a break from Dawntrail this evening, so I decided to give Hypnospace Outlaw a go, since I'd always been curious and it was cheap in the GOG summer sale.

For the unfamiliar, Hypnospace Outlaw is an adventure game of sorts, but rather than controlling a character you're manipulating a computer from a fictional 1999 as it navigates around the "Web" of sorts. Technically "Hypnospace" is a Web-equivalent that people browse in their sleep through a special headband, but so far that doesn't seem to have mattered all that much.

The fact it's set in 1999 does matter, however, because most of your interaction involves using a delightful parody of the early(ish) Web — a land of personal Geocities pages, primarily. Hypnospace is a managed service rather than a completely open free-for-all, and divides user pages into specific "Zones" according to their subject matter. As you progress through the game, you're given access to more Zones and thus more pages to browse.

Honestly, just browsing through the wealth of information that has been composed for these fake Web pages is a lot of fun in itself. The world of Hypnospace Outlaw has clearly been thought about in great detail, and even though it is, by necessity, considerably smaller than the "real" Internet — even as it existed in 1999 — there's a sense that you really are exploring a community, but through your computer screen, rather than on foot.

The actual "gameplay" part of Hypnospace Outlaw places you in the role of a volunteer "Enforcer" for Hypnospace's manufacturer MerchantSoft. This affords you special privileges — among them the ability to wield a literal banhammer — but also effectively stops you from "existing" online for the duration of your contract. Your job as an Enforcer is to seek out violations of MerchantSoft's "laws", which include copyright infringement, harassment, illegal (disturbing or offensive) content, distribution of malicious software and commercial activities carried out via non-approved channels.

This starts pretty simple with you wielding your banhammer on some obviously copyright-infringing pages, though the game makes sure you're aware of the consequences of your actions through the way the page's owners update their sites as the game progresses. In subsequent cases you'll have to track down cases of cyberbullying via "hidden" pages, only accessible via certain means, and infiltrate rebellious groups by effectively using social engineering techniques to glean sensitive security information.

So far — I estimate I'm about halfway through the game — no real "judgement" has been placed on the player character for the things they do, though only the most hard-hearted won't respond to the anguished frustration expressed by those who feel they had the rules applied to them unfairly. It's satisfying to find your way into what the creators of a page clearly thought was a safe, hidden inner sanctum and then effectively wreck it by blasting its most important components for rule violations — but it's also hard not to feel a little uncomfortable about it. That, I suspect, is kind of the point.

I'm intrigued to see where the story ends up going, as it's definitely been intriguing so far — even though it's mostly been little threads you can tug at as much or as little as you want up until the point I'm at. I suspect some sort of "big plot" will reveal itself before the end, though, and I'm looking forward to investigating it further. I'll post some more in-depth thoughts about it over on MoeGamer once I've finished it.

For now, then, a thumbs up, particularly if you lived through this era of the Web. While it's very much a parody rather than a completely loving recreation, a lot of it is bang on for how things really were back then — and it blends this nicely with a thoroughly modern tale about controlling the flow of information, censorship and self-expression. Good stuff.

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2494: Space Rogue

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I was pleasantly surprised earlier today to see GOG.com release an elderly Origin (old-school Origin the software company, not Origin the unnecessary piece of EA bloatware) title called Space Rogue.

I was particularly surprised to see Space Rogue on GOG.com, primarily because they had already released a game of the same name that had no relation to it — although in retrospect, given that a considerable amount of discussion around the newer game was along the lines of "hey, remember that old Origin game called Space Rogue?" I should have perhaps seen this coming. Still, it's a pleasant surprise regardless.

I have very fond memories of Space Rogue. It was a game from the 16-bit computer era with everything that entailed, which usually meant a box packed with stuff other than the game disks. In Space Rogue's case, there was a wonderful "in-character" manual for the spaceship you pilot in the game, complete with sarcastic notes scrawled "by hand" in the margins. I really miss this kind of thing; the only place we tend to get "feelies" like this any more is in limited edition releases of games, and those tend to be considerably more expensive than standard editions.

But I digress. Space Rogue was an interesting game for its blend of genres — part space sim, part RPG. Origin proved themselves to be masters of both over the years — with their most well-known series including Wing Commander (space sim) and Ultima (RPG) — but Space Rogue was an early example of mashing the two together, which makes it, to date, still pretty distinctive in its respective genres. Sure, titles like Star Citizen, No Man's Sky and Elite have all taken a few tentative strides in the direction of allowing you to get out of your ship and do stuff other than fly around, but none yet have captured what Space Rogue did, which was include a fully-featured "walking around" mode as well as its 3D polygonal space flight sequences.

Details of the plot of Space Rogue elude me, though there are odd bits that I still remember. Of particular note was a lengthy sequence that I was thoroughly enamoured with as a youngster in which you play messenger boy between two sisters living on different space stations. The sequence culminates with one of the sisters throwing her arms around you and thanking you for all your hard work. I found this to be a satisfying conclusion to the episode, even presented purely in text as it was.

I also remember the space stations having various different designs, and greatly enjoying the experience of landing on the one that looked like an aircraft carrier in space. Elite Dangerous does very good space station docking sequences, but 20 years ago, Space Rogue was my favourite.

I also remember the spaceflight sequences having a peculiar "Newtonian" movement option, in which rather than adopt the usual space sim convention of always thrusting forwards and simply turning the direction you're moving, you could spin your ship around and face one direction while moving in another, allowing you to, say, shoot enemies who were on your tail while running away from them.

Due to technological limitations of the time, not all of the space flight sequences took place from the 3D cockpit view. Long-range navigation unfolded from a top-down map that clearly used the same engine as the on-foot segments. While relatively primitive in comparison to the 3D graphics, it gave the game a good feeling of "context" and of moving across vast distances.

I have no idea if Space Rogue is still a good game, but I'm interested to try it again anyway. While it's not a game that ever went down in any Great Gaming History books or whatever, it's nonetheless a game I consider to be a defining experience in my youth, and as such even if it plays like a dog in 2016, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for it.