The magic of Loom
Why I Love: Eidos Montreal's Rayna Anderson explores how LucasFilm Games bucked convention for a project that "felt like a conversation with the game's creators"
Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This installment was contributed by Rayna Anderson, senior narrative designer at Deus Ex: Mankind Divided developer Eidos Montreal.
If you've ever asked me what my favourite game is, you've probably gotten many answers over the years. But lately, 1990's Loom has risen to the top and I have finally figured out why my appreciation of the design of this simple point-and-click adventure continues to grow.
The game opens by welcoming you into the world. The kind, grandmotherly narration is set over the soothing orchestration of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. This opening isn't foreboding or intended to set your nerves on edge like other games that came before it. Instead, it tells you to relax, settle in, that everything is ok. The mission you're given isn't to destroy something or kill someone, but to amass knowledge, help others, and rejoin your family.
While the mystery of what's happening in this world feels large, your motivation to move forward remains personal.
And with that, you're released into this unique world where magic does ordinary things for ordinary people. I still appreciate the story's brand of magic, which doesn't involve fairies, or elves, or wizards. Magic is musical, woven into the very fabric of life. There aren't ancient, forbidden tomes to learn this magic from. You learn it by observing it in the natural world and the actions of its inhabitants. In Loom, rewards are received for passively watching life unfold.
The game also rewards you for being clever with how you use the magic you've learned. Each problem has several solutions and you're never punished for experimenting. Unlike many adventure games from this era, Loom has no dead ends, no unsolvable puzzles. What the game expects you to do is always clear and the puzzle solutions are always logical.
In fact, I was surprised when, just a few hours later, it was done. I didn't die or hit a dead end; I completed the game. No way had I ever gotten anywhere close to finishing Maniac Mansion! We're talking very early '90s here. There was no internet, no walkthroughs. If you got stuck on a game, the best you could hope for was another nerd friend with "lateral thinking" abilities. Reaching the end of Loom was an experience that brought with it a new feeling that I'd never felt playing a game before: resolution. This was not the satisfaction of having 'won', but the feeling that Bobbin's story was over and his inevitable ending earned. I walked away from it enriched by the experience.
Since then, other favourites have come and gone, those that are innovative, exciting, or compelling. But my love for Loom has continued to grow over the decades. As a player and designer I think about it often, and I finally understand why I enjoyed it.
The majority of games, especially back in the '80s, are confrontational. They tend to be a challenge between the designer and player to see who can be smarter. They got harder and harder until you ran out of quarters, died, or glitched out. Or, if you did get to the end before your mom unplugged your console, you got a single title card congratulating you for conquering the toughest challenge yet. Then, unceremoniously, your quest was over. Finished. Complete. And you, the developer assumed, should be pleased with that accomplishment alone.
Loom was the first game that I experienced in its entirety. And it's stayed that way in my memory: a complete experience. In an age of confrontational games, Loom was the first to invite me to experience its entire vision, from start to finish. It felt like a conversation with the game's creators. I wasn't taunted to prove myself with memorization or motor-skills. Loom encouraged me to see their story, to participate in the transformation of Bobbin and his world. Their game presented nothing to block me from consuming it whole.
This is why I've been so enamoured with the recent boom of walking sims. I don't need endless hours of trying to outwit the devs to see what the meaning of the game is. Walking sims don't want you to experience the first hour, with some sections on repeat until you can master them. They want you to play through the whole game so you can understand the creator's intent. It's the journey that's the message, and without reaching the end, the message is incomplete.
Loom may be a short experience, but what I continue to learn from it will last me a lifetime.
His last game looks fun in theory, I don't how challenging or repetitive it is in practice : https://dansodic.itch.io/hide-the-body
Along with the game itself, you can purchase a set of physical props (or "feelies", as we used to call them in the old days) designed and commissioned especially for the Illustrated Edition:
Both of these items can be yours for only $10 USD. Shipping is free within the U.S.!
- A genuine pewter replica of the amulet featured prominently in the game, on a leather cord. Suitable for formal and informal social engagements. Handy for warding off the evil eye and other pernicious ancestral influences.
- An antique perspective map of the town of Anchorhead and environs, commissioned by the Miskahawnee Valley Surveying Authority. This is not a PDF; it is printed on a real, 8½ × 11-inch sheet of quality paper that you can frame and hang on your wall, or scribble crazed, conspiratorial rantings in the margins, as you like.
These items are only available through this website, and supplies are limited. Click the PayPal button below and provide your shipping address.
#WarGames, new FMV thing from the creator of Her Story:
Not gonna happen -- MGM licensed it to the developers.
The making of Sam & Max Hit The Road
By Ashley Day 12 hours ago
Creator Steve Purcell discusses the characters' origins and the classic adventure game in this archive interview.
Welcome to the first Retro Gamer guest article on PC Gamer, where we feature PC-focused articles from across the magazine's long history. This making of Sam & Max Hit The Road was originally published in issue 22 of Retro Gamer all the way back in 2006, and here it's presented online in full for the very first time.
Great double acts are commonplace in the world of film, television and comedy, but games have very few duos that stick out. As far as we’re concerned, one such pairing stands out above all others—and we don’t mean Firo & Klawd. Whether they were gracing the pages of a comic book, the television screen or a PC monitor, Sam & Max is the strangest of teams.
With his trademark suit and dry wit Sam is a typical gumshoe, except, of course, he's a floppy eared dog. His sidekick Max, meanwhile, is a completely naked bunny rabbit with a set of teeth that would put Jaws to shame. The pair starred in LucasArts’ Sam & Max Hit the Road, a hilarious adventure game in which the two ‘hit the road’ in search of a missing Yeti. Along the way they found themselves visiting some bizarre tourist hotspots like the world’s biggest ball of twine and an alligator-infested crazy golf course. The game was both a showcase for the madcap title characters as well as a parody of America’s weird and wonderful tourist sights.
The 1987 comic “Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple” was the first appearance of Sam & Max, courtesy of creator Steve Purcell. “My brother made up a pair of characters called Sam & Max when he was a kid,” recalls Steve. “My version grew out of my own cruel parodies of his comic books. At some point he lost interest and I continued drawing them. Over the years, The Blues Brothers and Penn and Teller have also had an influence on Sam & Max and one of our family cars was a dead ringer for Sam & Max’s 60’s patrol car.”
The comic soon gained a strong cult following and eventually grabbed the attention of a few employees at LucasArts. “Ken Macklin, an artist at what was then called LucasFilm Games recommended me (based on my first Sam & Max comic) to the Art Director Gary Winnick.” I started on a role-playing game that was cancelled shortly after I was hired and found myself without a job. Fortunately, they hired me back to paint the Zak McKraken box cover. After that I animated on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Working at a game company on Skywalker Ranch was like going away to Geek Summer Camp. It was great.”
It was only a matter of time until Sam & Max were transported from the comic page to the computer screen. LucasArts had been turning around more and more funny adventure games (most notably The Secret of Monkey Island) and Purcell’s wisecracking duo were perfect for the relaxed pace of the genre. “The way Sam & Max work best is that you need to spend time with them as characters. You get used to the way they interact with each other the way you do with a friend when you come to speaking a common language of references and shorthand.”
In 1992, then, LucasArts set about creating a Sam & Max adventure. With only seven-and-a-half months until release, Purcell and the team needed to get a story in place quickly. “We employed storyboarding for the first time at LucasArts, mostly because we needed to plan ahead to keep everyone busy.” says Purcell, who came up with the story by adapting the comics and incorporating events from his own life. “I love the book Roadside America, which is a hilarious travelogue of America’s goofiest tourist stops. My childhood road trips across the US with my family also helped inspire my second comic as well as Hit the Road.”
The Sam & Max comics were pretty adult in tone and there was always the possibility that LucasArts would want to cut back some of the edgier material for the game, but Purcell was very pleased with how much they allowed him to stick to his original vision. “I think the game is really close to the spirit of the comics. There’s violence, mild cursing and a commendable lack of respect for authority, not to mention circus freaks and yetis. There’s less gunplay in the game simply because a gun is a terrible object to give someone to use in an adventure game unless you carefully guide the player to use it in a more interesting way. I don’t remember anything getting cut by management. Much to their credit, I think they trusted our judgement.”
With the story in place, and relatively un-meddled with, the team carved the narrative into an enjoyable adventure. With the aid of fellow game designers Sean Clark, Michael Stemmle and Collette Michaud, who had all previously worked on Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Purcell was charged with the difficult task of creating a game that got the balance between story and puzzling just right. “You try to be aware of the amount of time you have players sitting and watching as opposed to interacting. Fortunately a lot of the humour came out of the way that the characters would respond to the player’s actions. Even observing something in the room could produce a funny response, in which case the interactivity is doing the work of the story.”
The Sam & Max team also decided that the SCUMM engine, which had powered all of Lucasarts’ adventure games since Maniac Mansion in 1987, was due for a spring clean. A single mouse pointer, the function of which could be cycled through by clicking the right mouse button, replaced the traditional method of selecting a verb from the bottom of the screen then clicking on an item and/or location. This freed up screen space for more expansive backgrounds, and also made interaction quicker and less laborious than in previous games. In Purcell’s opinion as a writer there were other advantages to the loss of verb lists and dialogue trees. “It may have been Mike Stemmle who first proposed the icon-based interface. I think it’s great for a game that’s driven by a lot of verbal gags. Nothing would kill a joke worse than reading it before you hear it.”
Purcell had another twist he wanted to bring to Hit the Road. LucasArts was aware that difficulty peaks in puzzles meant that adventure games could often “bottleneck”, leaving players with nothing to do if they were stuck. To alleviate the traditionally slow pace of the genre, Purcell added several minigames to Hit the Road, such as Car Bomb, a suitably dark version of battleships. “They were meant so that when you were tired of trying to solve obscure puzzles you could take a break and play something short and silly,” explains Purcell. “I liked having a grab bag of content so you could jump from thing one to another and try something different.”
As well as the floppy disk version, Sam & Max Hit the Road was due to be released on CD-ROM and, as such, was to be one of the first adventures to feature voice acting. For Purcell, this was a dream opportunity to hear his creations talk for the first time. “I always thought of Donald Sutherland as Sam. He sounds big and intelligent but with a bit of a lisp that gives him sincerity. Although Bill Farmer sounds nothing like Donald Sutherland, I liked his demo tape because it was very dry. He wasn’t trying too hard to sell the lines and he made me laugh. I call his Sam Johnny Carson crossed with Jack Webb, two people that a lot of your audience have probably never heard of.”
At its release in early 1993, Sam & Max was particularly praised for its starring duo, interface, tone and dialogue. LucasArts’ latest classic was incredibly popular with adventure fans and, perhaps partly due to Purcell’s characters, had some crossover success with those who wouldn’t normally buy a point ‘n’ click game. “I’m probably still not allowed to reveal sales figures but over the years it’s sold much better than any of the marketing projections. I remember a lot of people seemed to appreciate the weirdness of it when it came out but others were confused, thinking it was meant to be a cutesy kid’s game. Hit the Road won some awards that year and was on Entertainment Weekly’s Top Ten list for best software.”
Purcell has his own thoughts on why Hit the Road stood out from its LucasArts stablemates: “I think it has the impression of being edgier and meaner, because of the language and aggressiveness of the characters, but as with the characters themselves it’s mostly bluster. Most of the violence and aggression is hearsay, not really played out.”
The game’s popularity has remained strong for the last thirteen years. Re-releases have kept Hit the Road on the shelves and ScummVM (the best emulator ever made?) has opened up virtually every platform to the charms of Sam & Max. Purcell couldn’t be happier that his game is still being enjoyed, despite advancements in technology. “I’m always amazed that people are still playing Sam & Max after all these years. I know that it’s been fan-ported to PSP as well and I’m told the old graphics look great on that little screen. I meet grown people who first played Sam & Max when they were little kids and still take time to revisit it or share it with their friends. Sort of makes it all worthwhile.”
