The Random Adventure Game News Thread

[jfrisby]

Someone from a Sierra fb group has one of the only? original paintings, and it was surprisingly smooth in gradients/textures. I think a lot of the great grit and noise came from whatever scanning and automated dithering Sierra did at the time. These do push the black outlines pretty hard.

Original:

ERGSAN:

edit: there's a folder of every Sierra background upscaled here:

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I always considered the graphics of the backgrounds in the Sierra VGA games a kind of meh. Serviceable, but nothing particularly good. They were painted and then digitized, but it always looks like the digitizer was kind of defective.

An opposite approach, and better imho, was the one by Westwood Studio
(Legend of Kyrandia, Eye of the beholder, Lands of lore, Bladerunner, etc.), in which they directly created the graphics in the digital medium, pixel by pixel.

 

[Neuromancer]

Someone from a Sierra fb group has one of the only? original paintings, and it was surprisingly smooth in gradients/textures.

Do you have a link to this?

 

[jfrisby]

Someone from a Sierra fb group has one of the only? original paintings, and it was surprisingly smooth in gradients/textures.

Do you have a link to this?

This was posted in the Big Box PC Game Collectors group a few years ago, guess its a print of the painting, watermarked for whatever reason. :

Guessing thats William D. Skirvin signing

 

[LESS T_T]

Shibukawa, capital of Japan, 2054. Water drips from the cracked ceiling onto the edge of your bed as the incessant rain masks the whine of a refrigerator and the neon hum of the city outside. You don’t recognise the heavy breath in your ear nor the warmth of the body lying next to you...

The world’s gone to hell, and it’s taking you down with it.

Welcome to Shibukawa. You are Anna Isobe, a cybernetically enhanced cop in a world that’s left you behind. Once a shining hope for the future, cyborgs have become taboo, replaced by drones and automata that make even your heightened abilities obsolete. Stuck in a thankless job surrounded by indifferent eyes you still have a duty to protect and serve, and that’s just what you’re going to do.

The Sundew is a dark adventure game set in the aftermath of a devastating future war, where the world as we know it was twisted by flames into a terrifying new dystopia. What begins as a normal day quickly becomes something else, and soon a lonely beat cop will hold the fate of the world in her hands.

The Sundew pays homage to classic adventure games of old while reflecting contemporary issues and gameplay. Beautifully drawn pixel-art and stunning sound design brings this dark future to life and grounds you in a vision of humanity’s progress that is both alien and strangely familiar...

Japan lies in ruins, save for the bustling haven of Shibukawa. Guide Anna through this new megalopolis and beyond in her search for the mystery behind a growing conspiracy. Travel from the backstreets of the city to far-flung isles, and the most notorious prison this side of the Steppe.

Alongside classic point-and-click gameplay The Sundew will ask you to make decisions that will change the future of humanity. Playing off contemporary issues, the choices offered are never black and white. Where do you believe mankind’s interests lie, and what means are acceptable to achieve them?

Features

• Guide Anna Isobe, a cyborg cop with a dark past, through the unravelling of a global conspiracy.
  
• Experience a diverse cast of characters, each with their own secrets and history.
  
• Explore Shibukawa and the remnants of the old world.
  
• Make decisions that will change the fate of humanity, for better or worse.

 

[infidel]

SQ4 running with 'high-res' ERGSAN upscaled backgrounds

Wow, that looks pretty incredible, even with the bugs. But the low-res sprites break the integrity a bit.

I think a lot of the great grit and noise came from whatever scanning and automated dithering Sierra did at the time.

I'm pretty sure they've had a manual postprocessing cleanup, everyone who scanned artwork did. The noise would be even worse without it and it's just a result of having like maybe 200 RGB paletted colors available for a background image (some colors were locked for the GUI and NPC sprites). The color budget constraints were real.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

You can put it also in this way: VGA graphics by Westwood is true "pixel art", VGA Sierra are just scanned paintings (and the originals aren't even so striking). Indeed, I prefer the EGA Sierra games, there is more ingenuity to work around the limits of EGA than in the plain scanning of painting.

EGA Sierra graphics:

VGA Westwood graphics (crystal clear, every pixel matters):

VGA Sierra graphics (every pixel matters.... not)

 

[Neuromancer]

Torin's Passage is actually a SVGA game and from a different time period, so you can't compare it.
And the graphics for SQ4 had a slight graphic downgrade from the floppy to the CD version due to some weird technical reasons.

The graphics of the first two Legend of Kyrandia games are nice, but a little bit too cartoony and kitschy at places. (The graphics from the third game is downright terrible - as is the game itself).

The graphics of the Sierra games from the VGA era have their ups and downs - but overall are superior to the Westwood VGA games in my opinion.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The third game of Kyrandia is not more hand-crafted "pixel art", but it is basically a 3D rendering. And I agree that is bad. I am thinking about pre-Kyrandia 3 hand made pixel graphics (in this era, every Westwood game with VGA graphics is very good, you can pick any you want).

For the same reason I think that the Sierra approach based on just scans of paintings gives as a result a "cheap" aspect to the graphics, with some few exceptions where they actually cared and improved the scan by significantly correcting by hand the scans (such as in KQ5, but this is more an exception). It could have been considered more advanced at the time ("Wow, real digitized paintings") but painting and digital graphics are different medium, in the end the result is inferior when compared to working directly on the pixels by hand (the latter approach requires very specific skills and techniques, see here some examples).

 

[V_K]

Don't forget that this images aren't quite representative of what Sierra games actually looked like on era monitors - they'd be crisper and much less pixelated.

 

[infidel]

I agree that Westwood's art is top-notch (and music for that matter) and I also agree that Sierra's 640x480 offerings look bad (that Torin's Passage background and UI is all rendered and it shows - all early 3D looked like plastic garbage until Westwood started doing it probably). I've to point out that you're using a badly upscaled screenshot from SQ4 as an example, here's a similar one from Mobygames which looks better:

I disagree that painted and scanned art automatically looks worse in general. Here's an example from Monkey Island 2, still looks gorgeous and uses the same process. I think that the palette choice and art technique were paramount for getting a good image in 320x200 256c and some companies did better than others.

 

[WallaceChambers]

Mindcop is a non-linear „whodunnit“ detective game. It mixes a story driven adventure
with real-time puzzle gaming.

As the infamous Mindcop, you can dive into the minds of your suspects to
uncover their secrets and unravel their lies.

Time in the game doesn‘t go by in real-time. Instead, every action comes with a time
cost and you will have to set priorities while figuring out where you want to spend your time.

Looking at every little thing in a room, or showing a suspect every single item you picked up,
is probably not a good idea. You will be forced to make tough decisions on what is
really worth your time and what will just lead you to another dead end.

Can you catch the killer in 5 days?

"Mindsurf" is what it is called, when the Mindcop attempts to sneak into the mind of one
of the suspects. This plays out as a real-time puzzle game.

Some minds will be harder to surf and you can level up your Mindbullets
to make things easier for yourself.

Complete a Mindsurf to explore the "Sea of Thoughts" in that person‘s head.
Here you can find clues and topics to use in a conversation with your suspects.
ACCESSIBILTY
There are no language options. English only!

TEXT
Text size or font type can‘t be changed in any way.
The size or appearance of the User Interface can‘t be changed.
Example of actual 1:1 text size when playing in fullscreen at a 1920x1080 Resolution:

There is no Text-to-Speech option.
Keep in mind that reading is a big part of this game.

COLOR
The game frequently features a Mini Game that asks you to distinguish between
4 colors (red, cyan, purple and yellow). The Mini Game uses up to 3 of these
colors at a time. Examples:

This is not possible in the Demo, but the full game will have an option to turn the Mini Game
off entirely. The Options Menu provides a Color Blind Mode. This Mode adds Symbols
to the Mini Game. Example:

CONTROLS
The game can be played with only the Mouse (Mousewheel or Middle Mouse Button
are not used). You can also use Mouse+Keyboard if you prefer walking around with
the Arrow Keys.
The game can also be played with Gamepads. Most Gamepads are supported.
Most Buttons of the Gamepad are used with the exception of the D-Pad and the
Analog Stick-Buttons (Where you have to press into the Control Stick).
The Shoulder Buttons (Triggers) are only used in the Mini Game.
You don‘t have to use them and can instead use the Bumpers or Face Buttons.
There is no option for any kind of Button Remapping.
The only times the game asks you to do anything under time pressure is during the
Mini Game. This is not possible in the Demo, but the full game will have an option to
turn the Mini Game off entirely.

AUDIO
Every spoken dialog comes with subtitles.
Sound is not necessary to complete the game. There will sometimes (not often)
be optional things (hints, storytelling) players can pick up on in music and sound effects.

 

[WallaceChambers]

It’s a new day in the realm of Glome. Sunlight creeps across the land revealing a lush, vibrant world brimming with magick, beauty, and artifacts from a mysterious bygone culture. The Munchkin call this land home, but they share it with the Seven Witches, Tin Knights, talking beasts, fearsome monsters, and trader caravans.

Scarlet awakens in this strange land after getting tossed by a tornado. Through a series of unfortunate events, she finds herself in charge of leading a hapless Munchkin troupe through the Wicked Wood to safety. One problem - the cantankerous Black Witch, LeFaba, has a habit of incinerating would-be travelers that detour through her forest. Scarlet may be woefully outmatched, but a hex has her reliving the same day. Can our fledgling pathfinder take up the mantle of the Red Witch and summon the moxie to overcome the disaster that awaits her at every turn?

Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is a story-driven adventure game. As Scarlet, you must relive seven days of misfortune, and make a series of decisions to guide your Munchkin troupe safely out of the Wicked Wood. Experience branching outcomes based on your decisions. Most importantly, immerse yourself in a bewitching story of fantastic adventure!

• Solve exciting puzzles.
  
• Survive a narrative time-loop.
  
• Make key decisions that permanently affect YOUR story.
  
• Evade a hungry wolf.
  
• Ogle the hand-illustrated graphics.
  
• Use Scarlet's witching skills to avoid detection.
  
• Unlock multiple endings based on how you played.

 

[MRY]

Late to the party, but I find those Sierra upscales incredibly off-putting -- they remind me a lot of Torin's Passage, in a bad way. I believe the answer to why (looking at the Google drive) is that what's happening is that relatively detailed paintings became somewhat noisy VGA digitizations, but the noise implied the detail of the paintings. (We can debate how well that worked, but it strikes me as descriptively true, even if it didn't work well.) The ERGSCAN thing treats the noise as noise (not implied detail), and removes it. The consequence is that the scenes suddenly become sort of stylized watercolor and ink sketches. Not only implied detail gets lost, but also the higher resolution causes, or at least draws attention to, an absence of shading, texture, etc. Like if you were actually rendering that scene at that resolution, you'd normally use a variety of brushes and textures to give a sense of depth, lighting, focus, etc., but none of that is there.

It jumps out to me in particular with GK1 and PQ3, but even QFGVGA. Honestly, none of them work for me, except maybe Conquests of the Longbow. To be clear, these BGs also clash horribly with the pixelated sprites.

 

[CryptRat]

I am not sure at what point they'll lost any interest in working in the game, but if they never do the game will end up very special for players who managed to resist playing chapters as they come (when they release this one, the game will already be a big, and likely superb based on what they released so far, game) :

 

[Dexter]

For anyone interested, there's still a bunch of Point & Click Demos for Upcoming games that can be played till tomorrow (or maybe longer if downloaded before the Steam Game Festival ends?): https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamgamefestival?tab=2

I gave these a whirl:

And wrote some stuff up in the Steam thread:

Slender Threads: Surreal Point&Click Adventure game set in a dilapidated town. You play a writer visiting said town in search for inspiration and there's Horror-y stuff happening around you and a seeming Murder mystery. Has a bit of a Lovecraftian vibe to it with strange and odd people. Short and interesting enough.

Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood: Starts a bit like a lame VN with a Blonde lead singer named Scarlet that wants to become a star. She promptly leaves the real world behind to never see any of the kinda retarded characters again by being "Wizard of Oz'd" into a magic world where she becomes a Witch and might bring the End of the world. It's a Controller-friendly Adventure where you can move left and right and interact with stuff, pick up items or talk to people. She quickly finds out that she can apparently Groundhog Day through bad outcomes and there's a battle system (HP/energy) you need to find Gold coins to buy support items for, but it ain't in the Demo yet. Most of the puzzles so far seem to be about recognizing the solution in background art. It's kinda funny and I didn't think I would, but I liked it. Seems to be from a South Korean dev that made Horror games and a party-based TB Dungeon Crawler before: https://www.devespressogames.com/games

Spoiler

Nine Noir Lives: You play as Private Detective Cuddles of Furrington and have to solve a big Mob Murder case. Adventure Verbs are Inspect/Use and Lick, there's Hotspot highlighting. Eh.

Children of Silentown: Art style seemed intriguing at first with hints of Horror, but what is there in the Demo is a really simplistic and a bit childish Point&Click Adventure that's Touch device friendly e.g. one Click does everything.

Spooky?

 

[V_K]

The Aggie Awards polls are open now. Among the Codex darlings, Beautiful Desolation, Roki, Paradise Killer and VirtuaVerse received a bunch of nominations.
Say what you want about VV, but it being nominated for best story is hilarious AF. It's like Unavowed getting readers' award for best gameplay some years back.

 

[CyberWhale]

For anyone interested, there's still a bunch of Point & Click Demos for Upcoming games that can be played till tomorrow (or maybe longer if downloaded before the Steam Game Festival ends?):[/QUOTE G

Unfortunately no, they will probably get disabled after a certain date (at least that's what happened last time around). An incredibly stupid and annoying policy.

 

[Jenkem]

is virtuaverse good? i've had it on my wishlist for a while.. didn't realize it was a "codex darling"

 

[V_K]

is virtuaverse good?

Personally, I would say no. Story is nonsensical, MC is preachy, puzzles in the second half of the game venture into very unfair territory, and backtracking (of which there's a lot) is excruciatingly slow. But some people here seem to love it.
For what it's worth, it is the most challenging recent adventure I've played, it's just that it's challenging for all the wrong reasons.

 

[V_K]

The Aggie Awards polls are open now. Among the Codex darlings, Beautiful Desolation, Roki, Paradise Killer and VirtuaVerse received a bunch of nominations.
Say what you want about VV, but it being nominated for best story is hilarious AF. It's like Unavowed getting readers' award for best gameplay some years back.

And the results are in.
There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension won most categories, including best non-traditional adventure and best adventure overall. I guess that's the big adventure title of the year that everyone here missed.
Röki won best traditional adventure and readers' choice in best adventure overall and visual categories.
Beautiful Desolation won best graphic design - congrats, Pyke.
Paradise Killer won best music.
Beyond a Steel Sky won a bunch of story-related categories (mostly readers' choice).

 

[Neuromancer]

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension won most categories, including best non-traditional adventure and best adventure overall. I guess that's the big adventure title of the year that everyone here missed.

Not everyone.

And yes, the title is well deserved.
For me, it was not only the best adventure, but simply the best game that I played last year!

 

[V_K]

Not everyone.

Where's the thread then?

 

[Neuromancer]

Yeah, you're right, "someone" should have started a thread about this in the adventure forum.

I actually followed the great tip from Unkillable Cat in the GOG forum: (Thanks again!)
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/gog-com.69065/page-455#post-6971558

He mentioned it again for best game 2020:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/your-favorite-games-from-2020-any-genre.136348/#post-7077115

 

[V_K]

The Aggie Awards polls are open now. Among the Codex darlings, Beautiful Desolation, Roki, Paradise Killer and VirtuaVerse received a bunch of nominations.
Say what you want about VV, but it being nominated for best story is hilarious AF. It's like Unavowed getting readers' award for best gameplay some years back.

And the results are in.

Oh, and there's also this lovely piece of shade I missed the first time around:

Best Games No One Has Played: The Last Campfire, Lost Words: Beyond the Page
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