Gonzo Game Journalism

March 8, 2008 6:50 AM

Gaming journalism at its silliest. What do you get when you have the designer of Grim Fandango and Psychonauts Tim Schaefer play a game that you make up on the spot? Text based adventure hilarity. More of the same feature here.
posted by Del Far (10 comments total)

This isn't really Tim Schaefer humor, he's just typing short "commands". It's moderately cute.

Also: learn the use of commas. The FPP is painful to read.
posted by Malor at 7:36 AM on March 8, 2008

I was interested in reading the rest of the series until I realized none of them played the game like a game of IF.
posted by flatluigi at 7:51 AM on March 8, 2008

I generally don't like plugging my own stuff on Mefi, but this is an exception. In Perplex City, we held two 'live action' text adventures where we had a team of three writers 'be' the computer. While we obviously plotted the direction of the story in advance and pre-wrote things like scene descriptions, most of it was all done on the spot (including some fairly enormous plot changes). For each game, we had several hundred people watching, and people could take the 'controls' one at a time.

'Receda's Revenge' happened in 2005 for about four hours, and you can read highlights of the logs, or the raw logs themselves.

At the start of the game, players were spending a lot of time investigating useless stuff in the first room, which was a problem since we had to keep to a semblance of a schedule (which we overran anyway). The solution? We kept on killing people, in silly ways, until they got on with it. The shtick of killing people continued throughout the first game and extended into the second. Occasionally people would argue with the cause of their killings, which usually provoked some further response from the 'advanced AI' that ran the game.

Due to the overwhelming popularity of Receda's Revenge, we followed it up in 2006 with 'Receda's Revenge 2: The Revenge' which saw the addition of some fantastic elements such as a way for players to draw stuff on the screen, murderous sock puppets, and sound effects. More logs here. Also, a shoutout to the story team (David, Jey, Naomi)!

The whole experience was so much fun that I've been keen to repeat it, and I'm pretty certain it'll end up in a future game (in a different guise) sometime soon.
posted by adrianhon at 8:17 AM on March 8, 2008 [5 favorites]

This would have been better if the roles were reversed.
posted by TwelveTwo at 10:17 AM on March 8, 2008

Also: learn the use of commas. The FPP is painful to read.

You mean the one sentence that could have been formatted better?

"What do you get when you have Tim Schaefer, designer of Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, play a game that you make up on the spot?"

NABD.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:20 AM on March 8, 2008

My sister and I spent one morning doing this over AIM - I was the text adventure game and she was the player. It was set in the office where I worked. I think she killed about five attorneys and almost set the place on fire before we ended it.
posted by Lucinda at 11:38 AM on March 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

I love Tim with all of my heart. I haven't truly enjoyed a game since Grim Fandango too many years ago. What's the deal with this new one?
posted by willie11 at 1:05 PM on March 8, 2008

Score: Burnt Sienna / 330

This is pretty great.
posted by lostburner at 7:06 PM on March 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

Tim's awesome. It's the true adventure game grognard that's so conscientious about saving their game.
posted by juv3nal at 12:20 AM on March 10, 2008

"This game takes forever to save" made me laugh. Fine post, Del Far.
posted by nobody at 12:32 PM on March 10, 2008