#this could be about a bunch of point-and-click adventure games/flash games in general i played as a kid but its mostly about wkm NFDSKNF

[glassphinix]

you ever go back to something you watched/played as a kid and went "oh wow this is so cool and mysterious and puzzley i love it" but with an older mind capable of stuff like Clarity you go “ah. it was just obtuse.”

[talenlee]

With Sam and Max Hit The Road tucked away, I have to take a quick detour to describe a very different game, a game that is, nonetheless, very important to talking about the point-and-click adventure game, and more importantly, which provides useful context for its sequel episodes. But don’t worry, because the game we’re talking about here is Vlambeer’s Nuclear Throne, which is super great and I love it to bits because it’s super great, so this won’t take long.

Okay, Describe How It Plays

This is always the easy one, right? Nuclear Throne is a top-down game with a real sense of activity. You press the button, you move in that direction until you stop pressing that button. Your gun is a purely responsive thing too – you press the button, you pull the trigger, it shoots the gun. You want to shoot more, you press the button more. You want to shoot in a direction, you point the gun in that direction with your mouse or joystick. It’s a very responsive game, and after a bunch of turn-based games and playing older games that tried to do arcade sequences with engines that were not going to pull it off, Nuclear Throne plays like a dream.

It’s not a nice dream, though, because Nuclear throne is a truly merciless roguelike. Set in a post-post-post apocalyptic setting where the humans are gone and life that remains is mostly Extremely Weird and Extremely Extremely dangerous.

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This propogates to the gameplay, too! Because Nuclear Throne is hard as nails and it’s not shy about it. The game has a loading hint saying simply it isn’t fair, and it’s not lying. The game spawns big arenas of random monsters to fight and some levels can be a linear spaghetti-like thread of cover-bouncing back-and-forth shooting, with bank shots and clever positioning, where your weapon choices are all artful and brilliant and some times you get an open field and everything you pull has the same ammo type and hey you’re just screwed.

One of my personal measurements for the quality of a game with frustration-based mechanics is just how it handles a good, sharp alt-f4 quit, and how long it can take to slink back to the game after you’re done being mad at the same for being too hard. In this regard, one of my hallmark games is Hotline Miami, which gets out of your hair fast, but does take a few screens to get going before it comes back. Nuclear Throne is gone in an instant but it also loads in a flash too.

Uh But Have You Finished It?

That said, this difficulty does do its job of keeping the game fresh – sort of. I’ve played the opening sections of this game a few dozen times now and sometimes a run doesn’t even get past the second level. That’s fine, it’s how it’s meant to go. I haven’t finished it – I don’t know if I ever will finish it before I’m done with this singular experience, if there’s going to be a point where I’m done trying at the difficulty curve that feels a bit more like trying to wall-run like a teenager in a mall parking lot.

The issue of play skill has come up with reviewers recently, and while I’m firmly in the it doesn’t matter camp, for all I know, The Nuclear Throne completely bottles it at the last minute. It might have a total wet fart of a conclusion, the final denoument of the narrative may be awful and maybe after twenty-five hours of progress through the game it’ll stop being fun. I don’t know. I can’t tell you what that’s about.

I can tell you how I feel about it, how I feel about the experience. I can tell you how the game responds. I can tell you about the themes and ideas and concepts I see in the game and I can share that with you.

If you want a strategy guide, a or an absolute summary statement of all the content in the game as a final product, sorry. I can’t give you that. I can’t tell you what it’s like to finish The Nuclear Throne.

Sorry.

Now with that tawdry excursion into Gamers Are Breathlessly Concerned About, back to talking about things in this game that are actually interesting:

The Sympathy For Monsters

There isn’t a lot of sympathy in Nuclear Throne for the player’s plight of trying to get to the throne. Players are interruptions in this progression, strange deviations from the norm, people who aren’t already attuned to and okay with the world. They are, in this context, the world’s people.

The people of the world of Nuclear Throne are monsters. Not in their own context – they’re just people, and none of them have any reason to regard one another as weird at all. They’re not even monsters to us – not properly, they don’t inhabit that narrative space. But they are movie monsters. They look like and inhabit the space of apocalyptic movies – Triffids and sea monsters and death robots and horror monsters evolved from the ashes of our civilisation. They are the schlock monsters, the B-movies, the citizens of camp, the princesses and princes and princex of pulp, and the game is quietly and sincerely sympathetic to them.

They are presented as cool little monsters, as funny, as weird in their own ways. The image the story starts with is of a campfire, of all these characters taking a moment with one another. There’s a gentle calmness to it, a cool warmth. Now there’s no reason it should be this way: the character select screen could look like all sorts of other things, if they wanted it to. Instead, Vlambeer chose to frame this story with this moment of the monsters sitting around, enjoying a quiet evening before they set out on their big, troublesome journey.

For a reckless game about shooting and dodging and bullet helling and at least one monster that pukes rats on people, this is an important frame. It means there’s always a sign of some moment – rare as it is – of these characters having time to stop and thinking, time to be safe, time to be calm. It’s humanising, and it’s healing, and in the context of these rounded up monsters, oddball beasts in a land of violence, it reminds me of how many times these monsters were stand-ins in movies for the marginalised and the left behind.

The monsters of Nuclear Throne are most interesting to me because they have, as expressed in such a tiny amount of space, personality. They have identities and style – even when shown as squat, jubbly little sprites and icons on mutation icons. Yet even within those small spaces you learn who is calm and quiet, who is aggressive, who is bloodthirsty and rageful. This isn’t something I think Vlambeer set out to do. I don’t think they said ‘we want to make our monster representation really humanising and comforting.’ I think they designed these monsters to look in a way they liked, and what they know, what they care about showed through.

That’s the thing that Nuclear Throne has at its core: The things it’s doing, the things it’s about, are all things that the people involved clearly love and care about. I’m not doing to do some advanced textual reading about what they think of old schlock movies or post-apocalyptica beyond they clearly like those movies. Let that be the lesson of Nuclear Throne even if I never finish it, even if I never can finish it: What you love shows in what you do, and knowing that is powerful.

Verdict

You can get Nuclear Throne on Steam, GOG, and Humble.

Verdict

Get it if:

You want a rewarding frantic click-and-shooter

You like procedural map generation and fast decision making

Avoid it if:

You need to feel, the second you pick up a game, that you will finish it, even if just as a creative fiction for yourself

You’re not into losing a lot

[continuity category=8]

Game Pile: Nuclear Throne With Sam and Max Hit The Road tucked away, I have to take a quick detour to describe a very different game, a game that is, nonetheless, very important to talking about the point-and-click adventure game, and more importantly, which provides useful context for its sequel episodes.

[itsclydebitches]

Summary:

Just days after Balem returned to his adult self, Jupiter is thrown head-first into another adventure - one she, frankly, really doesn't have the energy for. But when has the universe ever taken her desires into account? Mysteries, promises, and desperate moves forward; bees, splices, and awkward family dinners. It's enough to make even her seasoned head spin.

...which doesn't even include the chance to play at 'Mother' once more. Only question is: will Jupiter take it?

(DIRECT SEQUEL TO "ROCK THE CRADLE")

Fandom: Jupiter Ascending 

Words: 9,779 so far 

Warnings: Will eventually mention previous neglect/abuse of children

Pairings: Jupiter/Caine 

Where to Read it: Below the cut or on AO3 (AO3 recommended for formatting) 

Chapter Six

“This went from ‘kind of cool’ to ‘seriously annoying’... oh, twenty minutes ago?”

Jupiter irritatingly swatted at another cloud of bees (careful not to actually hurt them) as they made a desperate dive to try and burrow into her hair. Another batch was settling in all the crooks of her body (collarbone, beneath her chin, in the hollow of the backs of her knees), while still others seemed to seek actual skin contact, bypassing her already covered arms and legs to flit up beneath her shirt. Jupiter grit her teeth at the feeling of foreign bodies crawling everything, stupidly glad that her skinny jeans didn’t allow them to burrow anywhere else.

“Enough of you,” Caine growled, mimicking her swat with a lot less patience. Jupiter caught his hand and brought it into her lap instead.

“It’s fine,” and no sooner had she sighed it than the bees were back, landing wherever they could and taking whatever she was willing to give. Jupiter wondered if she looked somehow regal like this—or if she was just a cheap monster out of some low-budget horror flick.

Kiza’s expression suggested the latter. Her phone click-click-clicked as it took a million, horrible photos. No way was she buying her a better phone. This girl did not need more storage space.

Jupiter thought about pointing out the obvious though, that there was no photo album to fill anymore. Or there was, but it was gone, and she doubted Balem wanted her to send updates. The mere thought of him painstakingly adding pages to the back of the book and gluing in new photos was so ridiculous it had Jupiter releasing a slightly hysterical laugh.

Kiza slowly lowered her phone. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah. Yeah I feel that.”

The whole party was largely off kilter and a massive swarm of bees invading the living room was only part of the problem. Jupiter was high-strung of course, and Caine had a tendency to follow her in all things, even emotions. Same with Kiza and Stinger now that she thought about it, some hereditary loyalty rising to the surface as they honed in on their queen, and okay, shit, was everyone in a bad mood just because she was?

Three pairs of eyes stared at her intently. Huh. Maybe “I feel that” was less a common phrase and more a literal expression of truth. Jupiter mustered up a smile.

“Whoooo’s gonna explain what’s going oooon?” she sang.

Stinger sighed, throwing up his hands. He obviously needed to do something with them though, and without a weapon to point at a concrete enemy he just ended up fiddling with everything in reach: the throw draped across the couch Jupiter sat on, the edge of his shirt, a pencil he’d stuck haphazardly behind his ear. In the end Stinger settled on pouring her another cup of coffee even though Jupiter had barely touched the first.

That done he spread his arms. Whole strings of bees followed the movement.

“You’re more equipped to answer that than I am, Your Majesty. You say you were visited by a fox splice?”

Caine nodded. “One sent by Kalique. You think there’s a connection?”

Kiza snorted. “Between her suddenly changing the game and an attack on our house? Absolutely. Though what the hell would she want with our honey?”

“Nothing,” but Stinger’s hands made fists just thinking about it. “She has the resources to pull off a theft like that of course, she could hire any group she’d like, but why the hell would she want to? There’s no commercial value to it—at least not compared to her own vast wealth—and as for personal reasons...” he trailed off, shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”

Jupiter scoffed. “When has anything involving Kalique ever made sense?”

“The fact that she’s actually the most logical and methodical of the three is kinda sad. And by ‘sad’ I mean hilarious.” Kiza dodged Jupiter’s whack to the head.

“You didn’t hear anything?” she pressed. “Earlier?”

“Nope. Slept in, did my chores, went to do more chores outside—” Kiza sent a nasty glare her dad’s way. Stinger challenged it stiffly—”finally got to the hives out back, called you, and discovered... that.” ‘That’ was clearly the missing honey, though Kiza made the absence sound like a foul addition instead. Like an enemy. Or no, something that grew. A cancer.

Jupiter felt Caine shifting on the couch beside her. She gave his hand another squeeze and was relieved to feel him doing the same.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “I promise. And not to make light of that situation, but...can we focus on one emergency at a time?”

“Dinner,” Caine said solemnly.

“Politics,” Stinger countered.

“Food,” Kiza finished. “Wasted. Which I am very happy to eat for you anyway.”

“You’re welcome to the steaks,” Jupiter sighed, like she didn’t already know that Kiza had squirreled them away for a late night snack sometime. The girl’s appetite was easily the most alien thing about her. “You’ll all come then?”

Stinger’s hand settled on her shoulder. “Don’t be foolish, Your Majesty. Where you go, we follow.”

She actually wanted to say something appropriately thankful in response, but the movement was—once again—ruined by a flash from Kiza and an exaggerated “Awww.” She raised her phone in the air as Jupiter rubbed at her eyes.

“I like this one,” Kiza announced.

“Good for you,” Stinger said. “Caine. With me. I won’t be going into another Entitled’s lair blind. Not again. Kiza? Entertain your Queen.”

“Sir, yes sir,” she said and as the two boys went off to discuss super cool space weaponry she threw herself onto the couch beside Jupiter. A massive cloud of bees rose up like a wave.

Jupiter carefully extracted a bee that had gotten caught in the belt loop of her jeans. “Can you make them go away?”

“I’ve tried.” Kiza actually sounded apologetic about it. “They’re really... just...” she blew out a slow breath. “They need this right now.”

“...and so do you,” Jupiter said, realizing the words were true as soon as she’d said them. Kiza was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with Jupiter, much like how the bees themselves were seeking her touch. If Jupiter focused, she could feel the lightest tremble running through Kiza’s body. She lifted an arm and settled it around Kiza’s back. The younger girl nestled there, vulnerable.

“It probably seems stupid to you,” she muttered, face now pressed into the fabric of Jupiter’s shirt. “Just honey, yeah? Got plenty of that. And sure, sure the bees themselves are fine, which is the important thing, but... it’s an invasion, you know? Someone was here. In our home. They took something that didn’t belong to them!” Kiza was trembling harder now and it had little to do with disquiet. “Ugh. I sound like dad. I know he’s super mad too, even if he’s better at controlling it. I’m a second generation splice. I love our bees, alright? But even I’m not connected to the spirit like he is.”

Jupiter’s fingers had found their way into Kiza’s hair. She paused there before resuming her slow, soothing movements. “Spirit?”

Kiza hummed. “It’s not really a religion, like you have here on Earth. You gotta remember its all tied up in our biology too. It’s more that we understand all the layers.”

“Like onions,” Jupiter intoned and was relieved when Kiza shoved her lightly.

“Don’t quote Shrek at me. But yes, layers. Or—or connections. Like how one bee isn’t just a bee. They’re part of a hive, an ecosystem; they’re connected to you and to me. It’s the same with honey. It’s not just a food source, it’s something they made. It’s exploration and life and they always create more than they need so we can have some too and—” Kiza drew in a massive breath. “It’s just important, okay?”

“Okay,” Jupiter agreed. She sometimes forgot just how young Kiza was, not only compared to her but their group at large, everyone either in a genetically enhanced middle age or outright ancient. Kiza was the little sister Jupiter had never, but who she was thrilled to have now that she was here.

She also felt a little like a daughter.

Jupiter twisted her earring.

“Good talk,” she said, because Jupiter was nothing if not awkward when it came to heart-to-hearts. There was a little part of her mind that whispered, ‘I love dogs’ and she firmly stuffed it into the deepest, darkest pit she could conjure up. “So… whatcha got there?”

Still curled against Jupiter, Kiza had her phone out again, though for once it wasn’t pointing and clicking. It looked like she was online, though what website needed such a violently blue background, Jupiter didn’t know. She shooed a bunch of bees out of the way to get a better view. Kiza helped by tilting the screen.

“Tumblr,” she said, like that explained anything at all.

“Tumbling?”

“Tumblr. Don’t you ever waste your life online?”

Jupiter considered. “Yes, but you’re talking to the girl who grew up in a poor, super large family that always monopolized the one desktop. Also, excuse you, but I’ve been busy. Saving the world? Or did you forget?”

To Jupiter’s horror, an unexpectedly evil grin stretched across Kiza’s face. “Oh, I didn’t forget, Your Majesty. I documented it.”

“You—wait what?”

Over the next mind-boggling ten minutes Jupiter got a crash course in current social media, complete with the distinction between those parts of the website that humans had access too, and the sprawling, galaxy-wide network that catered to everyone else. Scrolling through pictures, news articles, and GIFs of funny cats was one thing, finding out that Kiza had been blogging about Queen Jupiter on the equivalent of Space Facebook was something else.

“You’ve made me kind of famous,” Kiza said, sounding infuriatingly smug about it. “My follower count skyrocketed when I started posting these pics. I mean sure, we get the stupid anon or two, but pretty much everyone else is supportive. They want to know you, Your Majesty. It’s the classic rags to riches story, plus you’re the first Entitled in, what? Ever, who isn’t a dick? You should totally start your own blog. Provided I help, of course.”

“Oh my god,” Jupiter whispered. Her finger felt numb as she scrolled through an endless stream of stories, questions, and, yes, pictures of her. Most of them were candid, shot when Jupiter had been otherwise engaged. There was one of her upside down on her bed upstairs, a half-piece of toast dangling from her mouth. She couldn’t even remember when she’d done that, let alone how Kiza could have gotten a pic without her noticing. The ones of her and Caine were particularly popular, at least according to the number of ‘notes’ each one had. Jupiter was torn between flattered and mortally embarrassed.

She scrolled down further and found a picture of her holding Balem. Jupiter snapped her hand back.

“You’d be good at it too,” Kiza was saying, oblivious. “You’re pretty, famous, and rich, the trifecta for getting a good following. Plus half of what you say is basically shit-posting, so.”

“Kiza—”

“I can—”

Whoom.

Too late for talk: at that moment a massive crash sounded from somewhere outside; too short to be an earthquake, not quite large enough for an explosion. Still, it knocked Kiza back into Jupiter’s shoulder, the both of them slipping halfway off the couch and their cloud of bees scattering with worry. The two filled coffee cups splattered onto the carpet. The throw fell down across their backs. Jupiter ended up jarring her hip and watched as Caine and Stinger store sideways into the room.

What now? was her first and completely justified thought.

Jupiter pushed up quickly, righting the boys in her vision. They looked ready to take on a whole army together. Which tended to happen when you carried whole armloads of weapons into the room.

“What the fuck?” Stinger growled. He’d already hefted something large and glowing blue over his shoulder, marching towards the door. Caine stopped only long enough to pull Jupiter to her feet.

“My thoughts exactly,” she grimaced.

“You’re okay?”

“Fine, fine. Do we know what—?”

Whoom! Again, but closer and with a bit more... solidity. This time Jupiter felt the foundations of the house shake.

“Oh, but it’s never boring with you, Your Majesty,” Kiza breathed. Jupiter watched with a mixture of disbelief and respect as she began composing a new post.

“We’re talking about this later,” she said and grabbed them both by the arm.

Careful of what they might find, Jupiter, Caine, and Kiza followed Stinger out of the house.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 117: The Legacy: Realm of Terror (1993) – Introduction

By Voltgloss

In 1992, Infogrames released Alone in the Dark, which put the player in the role of an unsuspecting investigator who experiences the horrors of the mansion of an eccentric magnate, after said eccentric magnate committed suicide. The player tries to escape from the mansion, the unspeakable lurking fears that haunt it in the dark and from the raving madness that the secrets of the mansion could deliver. It is exciting, deadly and … why do I suddenly have this overwhelming sense of déjà vu?

All the pictures into the mind/There’s a flashing in my eyes (Image still from here)

Yes, it’s time for a horror double bill here on The Adventure Gamer. The year after Alone in the Dark saw, not only Infogrames’s own Shadow of the Comet, but a competitor’s entry placed even more solidly in the “haunted house” genre. Because in 1993, Microprose released The Legacy: Realm of Terror, which puts the player in the role of an unsuspecting inheritor who experiences the horrors of the mansion of an eccentric Massachusetts family, as said family’s last surviving heir. The player tries to escape from the mansion, the unspeakable lurking fears that haunt it in the dark and from the raving madness that the secrets of the mansion could deliver. It promises to be exciting, deadly, and … why do I suddenly have this overwhelming sense of déjà vu?

We’ve just been in this place before

So the setup for Legacy is decidedly familiar. What about the gameplay? What we’ve got on our hands here, based on the manual and a bit of make-sure-everything-works tinkering, is an Adventure/RPG hybrid: a game where the player controls a single character exploring a “dungeon” (the mansion) in first-person perspective, with tile-based mapping and over fifteen different character statistics, all apparently with gameplay significance down the line. Something in the Elvira and Waxworks vein, then – but leaning even more heavily on the RPG side. Will the game stand on its own as an Adventure? Will it navigate the narrow straits of hybridization successfully, or will both halves combine to make less than a whole? We’re about to find out.

Higher on the street

The Legacy: Realm of Terror (also called simply The Legacy outside the United States) was the last game developed by British adventure game developer Magnetic Scrolls, after their acquisition by MicroProse. Between 1985 and 1990, Magnetic Scrolls had previously developed six graphical parser-based text adventures (and one “mini-adventure” offered to those who joined the short-lived “Official Secrets” adventure gaming club): The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves, Jinxter, Corruption, Fish!, Myth, and Wonderland. We’ve not covered any Magnetic Scrolls games previously on this blog – perhaps some Missed Classics treatment is in order down the line? [Admin note: Well, a reviewer did start Wonderland as our sixth Missed Classic, but he vanished after barely scratching the game. A replay is definitely in order.]  For now though, I’m playing through their first and only foray into mouse-driven, RPG-hybrid adventuring, published in 1993 for PC (and released digitally on GOG in December 2019).

See your body into the moonlight

Loading the game treats us to a cinematic intro where someone (our protagonist? someone else?) drives up to the spooky Winthrop House, accompanied by lightning flashes and tense, fast-paced music. Between the glowers of gargoyles our perspective passes through the front door, into a foyer (that we’ll see “for real” soon enough), up stairs and through a door – and promptly face-plants into the floor in a dimly lit hallway, blood filling our vision. An omen of things to come? The fate of the last visitor before us? We may never know! What we do know – as the game next tells us after showing a newspaper about the “Winthrop House heir” (us) being located – is that it’s time to select (or create) our character.

The fiction is gonna run it again

Character selection/creation lets you pick one of eight different protagonists, each with different backgrounds, character model design, and statistics. You can also manually adjust statistics for any one of the eight characters to tailor their attributes to your liking. The manual also promises that skills can be improved as we progress through the game, although there doesn’t appear to be any dedicated “experience” score or character “level”; rather, the game suggests that repeatedly using a particular skill can increase your proficiency at it, Quest for Glory-style. There are seven primary statistics, three of which have four secondary sub-skills, as detailed in the manual:

1. Knowledge – ability to “perform various operations requiring special training.” Sub-skills:

Electronics – for opening “electronic locks” and dealing with other “electronic objects”

First Aid – for restoring health via first aid kits

Meditation – for restoring magic power via “Power Crystals”

Mechanics – for opening “mechanical locks” and dealing with other mechanical objects

2. Strength – prowess with hand-held weapons, and boosts Health. Sub-skills:

Brawling – bare-handed punching prowess

Club – prowess with club-type weapons

Force – for forcing open doors

Lift – for picking up heavy objects

3. Dexterity – a “value for basic agility.” Sub-skills:

Blade – prowess with bladed weapons

Dodge – ability to avoid ranged weapon attacks

Firearms – prowess with firearms

Throw – ability to throw objects or weapons

4. Stamina – poison resistance and boosts Health

5. Willpower – prowess with magic and resistance to magical attacks

6. Health – our character’s life meter; death at zero “hit points.” Derived from Strength and Stamina.

7. Magic – or “magic points”; expended by casting spells.

And now, let’s meet our eight potential protagonists. Whom shall we pick? That’s up to you! I’ll be accepting votes in the comments to this post as to your first, second, and third choice of protagonist; I’ll then assign 5 points per first-choice pick, 3 points per second-choice pick, and 1 point per third-choice pick, and then using whichever character gets the most points. Ties will be broken by random roll. I’ll accept votes up until 72 hours after this is posted. Here we go!

Brad Norris. Sophomore at NYU, ski team captain and Debating Society member. Planning a “mondo party.” Never claimed to have deep motivations.

Brad is the default choice if you’re just clicking through as fast as possible, and perhaps by design he’s one of the most well-rounded statistically, with equal Knowledge, Strength, and Dexterity scores. Most of his sub-skills have a few bonus points added (the gold line segments extending to the right of the blue, red, or purple line segments below each sub-skill’s name).

Charlotte Kane. CEO of the charmingly-named Golgotha Holdings. Planning to turn Winthrop House into a luxury hotel and conference center.

Charlotte is one of the four options who comes with a spell already learned. No idea why a CEO knows the secrets of the Crimson Mists of Myamoto, but apparently it’s a spell to reduce physical damage taken. Statistically, she’s got very low strength, mediocre dexterity, but high knowledge (and particularly good at patching herself up with first aid kits). Lower health than Brad, but higher willpower.

Charles Weiss. Stage magician and self-described astrologer and occultist. Implicated in the Arlington “sacrifice” scandal. We don’t talk about the Arlington “sacrifice” scandal.

Charles eschews protective magic for a good old-fashioned fireball spell, leveraging the arcane power of not one, not two, but three words ending in “-eth.” Base statistics are generally low across the board (even his Knowledge score is just equal to Brad’s, though he’s specialized in Meditation where Brad isn’t). Where Charles put his bonus points is into his fire magic; see the length of the gold line segment below the “Flames of Desolation” spell name.

Lucy Weston. Sophomore at UCLA. Orphan who worked her way through school. Tennis and volleyball player. Thinks her inheritance is “totally rad” and “almost tubular.” 

Possibly modeled on horror films’ “final girl” trope, Lucy here is just as strong as Brad, has extremely high dexterity and health, and is apparently a crack shot (with the best skill in firearms out of all eight characters). As a tradeoff, her knowledge is at rock bottom.

Henry Jones. Head of the Department of American History at Penn State. Authority on the Salem witch-trials. No word on whether he has a son named Junior.

What horror game is complete without a university professor character? Henry here brings impressive knowledge to the table, with mediocre dexterity (though he’s spry enough to dodge and throw surprisingly well) and lots of points devoted to his “Sight of the Dark Walker” spell. I don’t have any information on what spells do beyond the description you see here; I’m guessing this lets you see in the dark and, maybe, helps with discovering secrets. Of course, all those points need a tradeoff somewhere; Henry has the least strength and health of all eight characters.

Jane Olson. Investigative journalist with the New York Daily Post. Looking to uncover the truth about the Winthrop family’s enigmatic disappearance.

Jane is our second well-rounded choice. She has very similar stats to Brad, with equal knowledge, strength, and dexterity scores and with solid health and willpower. Jane’s a bit better than Brad with at punching, dodging, forcing doors, and tinkering with electronics/mechanics; while Brad has the edge in first aid and throwing skill.

Robert “Boomer” Kowalski. USMC (retired). Purple Heart and Navy Cross holder. Veteran of actions in Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf.

Someone has to have the most strength of the bunch, and that someone is Robert. He’s best situated of the eight to beat down eldritch abominations with his bare fists, and is also ready to swing a mean blade or shoot a mean gun. Average dexterity and mediocre knowledge (though with combat training in the use of first aid kits). His weak point is very low willpower. What’s that going to mean in gameplay? We’ll see, but the manual suggests your protagonist can become terrified or go into shock at the horrors they’ll face. If willpower determines resistance to such effects, our friend Robert here is well-equipped … to go mad.

Isobel Gowdie. Widow and distant Winthrop family relative. There’s always been one Gowdie resident in the area, dating back to the 17th century.

Isobel, like Charles, is a fire-slinging offensive spellcaster. Mediocre stats across the board in exchange for very high willpower and a pumped-up Flames of Desolation spell. Compared to Charles, she has less knowledge (though is a bit better at first aid) and less prowess with weapons; but she actually is better at magic (in both raw magic and in her Flames spell) and has more stamina and health.

So, there’s our cast! Whom shall be our avatar for this spooky adventure? You all tell me. I look forward to your choice!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it’s an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won’t be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It’s also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-117-the-legacy-realm-of-terror-1993-introduction/

[wakingwriter]

When and why did you begin writing?

My first story was in third grade, where Mario, Link, and Zelda had to stop an evil wizard. Sadly, I never finished it. As a teenager, I wrote a narrative/humorous diary of a few family vacations. Then I started on a novel, which was terrible, put it down, picked it up again in college, put it down again, and started seriously writing after I had been working a couple years. After reading so much science fiction and fantasy growing up, I needed a way to process what I had read, which turned into novels of my own.

What are some day jobs you have held?

For my day job, I’m a mechanical engineer working at a large construction company doing performance engineering. I also teach karate. I studied Wado-Ryu Karate in college, and now teach a group of about 16-18 students. The elements of my other interests influence my writing. You can usually find some cool physics or martial arts in what I write! In my spare time, I play video and board games. My wife and I cosplay at a few cons each year and also force our pets to cosplay for the annual Christmas card.

What have you written so far?

I have two novellas out Tuning the Symphony and Merchants and Maji both in the same universe.

The Dissolutionverse is a society of ten planets connected by music-based magic instead of space flight. Merchants step from one planet to another to sell their goods. Alien cultures and languages spill from one world to another. Members of all ten species gather inside the Nether, the center of the society, to debate trade, law, and the economy of the Great Assembly. Only the maji can make the portals that link the planets together, and so the maji are central to keeping the economy going. Some of the stories focus on the maji, some on regular folks.

Remember that first terrible novel I wrote? After about 20 years and 4 or 5 complete rewrites, the ideas behind that original story have become “The Seeds of Dissolution.” After so many rewrites (and a lot of great alpha and beta reader feedback), I think it’s good enough to publish, and I’m running a Kickstarter from August 15th to September 16th to raise funds for adding more art, maps, and better editing. You can read the first two chapters here, and the Kickstarter is here.

I also have a couple works of flash fiction and I’ve written a couple (unpublished) YA books. One is about a boy whose father is killed, and he and his mother decide to change history to get him back, with his father’s time machine. The other I bill as “X-Men Evolution meets High School Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

I’ve completed an epic fantasy, which I’m currently subbing to agents, where magic comes from eating seasonal fruit. The story uses Babylonian names and architecture, and in it two sisters escape slavery with a box marked by the gods. They work to discover the secret of a fifth godfruit where there should only be four when each fruit is blessed by the god of the corresponding season.

Tell us more about your main character. What makes him or her unique?

The main character for Seeds of Dissolution is Sam van Oen, who comes from Earth, and is accidentally thrust into the society of the Dissolutionverse. As such, he’s unfamiliar with it, which means he can learn along with the reader.

What makes Sam unique is that he has anxiety issues with crowds and new places, so showing up in the Nether is really freaking him out. There aren’t a lot of SFF main characters I’ve found that not only have anxiety issues but have to cope with them, rather than something magicking them away. I specifically show that magic can’t just cure him, and if it’s used to help, there are side effects, just like any medication.

In addition, Sam is bisexual (or pansexual, as this book contains species with multiple gender norms). I try not to make a big point of him deciding whether he “is” or “is not” bisexual. It’s a part of his character, and it comes out in the people he meets and the friends he makes. In the rare case of a bisexual main character, I’ve read of only a few males, and their sexual orientation is usually a main point of the book. I prefer it to be just one part of the experience of reading, like when you meet someone in real life.

What is your next project?

Most likely, one or two Dissolutionverse novellas, and after that, the next full novel. I have several novella ideas, ranging from a Sherlock Holmes-type mystery to a heist story, to a romance, or a Jules Verne-like adventure story.

Non-Dissolutionverse, I have two other novels outlined, one about colonists who land on a planet completely occupied by a sentient fungus, and the other about a society based on Incan culture, where body kinesthetics (like martial arts) create magic.

What are some ways in which you promote your work? 

I’m slowly working through all the ways I can find!

I have a website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed. I may have driven a couple sales from Twitter, but I’m not sure. I also belong to a few indie author groups, and when a bunch of authors put together a group event, that gets the most attention and sales by far. Paid services will promote books, but I’ve never actually made money on a promo. Generally, they’re good for attention and a few sales, but probably not worth the price. I’ve also run ads on Goodreads and Amazon. Both generate clicks, but only a couple books sales. Finally, I go to various cons, both to sell books at a booth, and to be on panels. The con booths actually make some money.

Finally, there’s Kickstarter! For my latest novel, I’m attempting to offset the printing cost, and hopefully pay for some cool additions to the book while also giving some extras to the backers, like a new short story, wallpapers, buttons, maps, and even original artwork. If this is successful, I’ll likely do the same for my future self-published works.

As an independent publisher, it’s important to try a lot of methods, however, it’s also important to realize that any work you do on marketing is taking away from time you could be writing.

Do you work to an outline or plot sketch, or do you prefer to let a general idea guide your writing?

When I start a new full-length story, I’ll take a few days to type out connected thoughts about the story. When I hit an interesting thread, I start a bulleted list of events. I usually end up with 9-12 pages in the overall outline.

While writing, I paste sections of my outline below to guide how I write. So far I have not written a story that followed my original outline all the way, because I end up writing something that works so much better. Somewhere in the middle, I will stop to readjust the path of the story to reflect that and keep going.

Usually, I have several major changes to the story during the first edit, and less during the 2nd and 3rd.

How do you feel about indie/alternative vs. conventional publishing?

Self-publishing means you control everything about your book. It also means you have to do everything for your book. It takes a lot of work, and you won’t sell as many copies as a traditional publishing house, but you keep a lot more of the profit.

I’m not yet published traditionally, but I am still submitting and one day hope to be. Having books available by both methods means you can develop your brand in different ways. Your traditionally published books can boost your name further, whereas with self-publishing, you have the opportunity to write experimental stories and subject matter or genres that are not considered “marketable.” More and more traditionally published authors are using indie publishing as a way to make a little extra on the side and to give their readers something more for being loyal.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Keep writing. I’ve heard, at least for self-published authors, that you need about five books out before they start to really get noticed. When my second novella came out, I sold more of my first novella than my second, though that sounds contrary. Of course, if you land a deal with a publisher, they take care of a lot of the marketing work, but that’s why they also get a cut of the profit!

Who are some of your favorite authors that you feel were influential in your work?

I started out with Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, and Moorcock, and worked through Piers Anthony, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, and David Eddings. These inspired me to start writing and to branch out in my reading.

Some of my current favorite authors are N.K.Jemisin and Brandon Sanderson, for their sheer imagination and worldbuilding. Lois McMaster Bujold and Mary Robinette Kowal have awesome characters, Jim Butcher has incredible plotting and sense of timing, and folks like Larry Niven, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, and James S.A. Corey obviously put a lot of research into showing how real science fiction can be.

If it’s not clear by now, I try to learn a little from each book I read, whether in style, art, or prose, and apply that to my own writing.

How can you learn more about William and his work?

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon Author Page | Kickstarter

Book Links:

Tuning the Symphony | Merchants and Maji

  William C. Tracy, author of Tuning the Symphony @wctracy When and why did you begin writing? My first story was in third grade, where Mario, Link, and Zelda had to stop an evil wizard.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 333: Waxworks (1992)

The box CamelCases the second “W” but the title screen doesn’t. There’s a similar issue with whether the company is called HorrorSoft or Horror Soft.

            Waxworks

United Kingdom

HorrorSoft (developer); Accolade (publisher)

Released in 1992 for Amiga and DOS

Date Started: 11 June 2019          

Waxworks is the fourth major title from HorrorSoft, after . . . A Personal Nightmare (1989), Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1990), and Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus (1991). (It is also the last; the company would re-brand itself AdventureSoft in 1993 and from then on publish essentially nothing but Simon the Sorcerer entries. That annoys me a little bit. I mean, “AdventureSoft” is too generic a name to be taken up by a company that just publishes one series. They should have called themselves “SimonSoft” and left “AdventureSoft” for a developer with a more diverse catalog.) I think I could make a case for the game not really being an RPG, but part of me is curious to see how the developer does without Elvira as the game’s centerpiece. I never really cared for the character, which I’m sure dragged down my enjoyment of the two previous titles.           

Like the Elvira games, Waxworks is fundamentally an adventure game that does offer RPG-style character development, combat, and inventory. The interface is slightly redesigned from Elvira II. (The engine is called AGOS, a graphical version of an open-source engine designed for MUDs called AberMUD.) The system of health to individual body parts has been dropped, as has the useless beating heart. The compass is moved from the lower-right to the left, and character stats are on the bottom rather than between the two main windows. A control panel of icons in the upper-left lets you check inventory, manipulate objects, ready weapon, and attack.

         I bought the GOG version and was confused for a while until I looked it up and discovered that the game came with two manuals, one of which GOG doesn’t offer. The second, The Curse of the Twins, explains the backstory in 13 pages of text by Richard Moran, who also wrote the manual to Star Control II.

          The backstory casts the unnamed protagonist as a twin whose brother Alex disappeared when they were teenagers. They had been exploring an old mine. The siblings lived in the seaside town of Vista Forge, where their rich, eccentric Uncle Boris built a wax museum in his creepy mansion. Now an adult, the main character has returned to Vista Forge to attend Boris’s funeral. All kinds of mysterious signs, portends, and disasters accompany the trip, including the collapse of Boris’s grave, and disappearance of his coffin when a sinkhole opens beneath the cemetery. During the chaos of this event, the protagonist thinks he briefly sees Alex in the mine tunnels that run under the cemetery.          

The hallways of Uncle Boris’s waxworks.

          The protagonist remembers a tale that Uncle Boris once told, about a family ancestor who caught a witch named Ixona stealing one of his chickens. In retaliation, he chopped off her hand, for which Ixona cursed the family: “In every generation in which your family bears twins, one shall belong to Beelzebub.” The curse nearly immediately came true, when one twin son of the family became Vlad IV of Walachia, or Vlad the Impaler, who lived up to his name by tracking down and impaling the witch. Generations later, other twins in the family included Torquemada, the Marquis de Sade, and a female witch burned at the stake in Salem. [Having lived in Salem, I am obliged to point out with indignation that no accused witches were burned in Salem; they were all hung, except for one who was crushed under rocks. Also, they were all innocent.] It was these very individuals that Uncle Boris chose to populate his waxworks. Determined to lift the curse, Boris also funded a dig at Vlad’s castle in Walachia and recovered a crystal ball from the impaled corpse of Ixona. 

The character enters the tunnels and returns to the location where Alex disappeared, finding evidence that someone has been living in the tunnels, eating bats and fish. The next day, at the reading of the will, the character inherits Boris’s estate. A letter left by Boris indicates that Boris knew Alex was still alive, and possessed by evil, and that the character can save him by using the waxworks to travel back in time and undo the curse.          

Uncle Boris’s creepy, disembodied head speaks to me from beyond the grave.

         The game begins at the door to the mansion, with Boris’s butler inviting the character in. The butler gives the protagonist (whom I guess I’ll describe in the first person from now on) a crystal ball in which I see Boris’s face. He tells me that I must use the waxworks exhibits to enter the worlds of the previous twins kill them, “destroying the power that feeds the curse.” I then find myself in front of an Egyptian exhibit. The Egyptian siblings technically predate the curse, but one of them was evil, which gave Ixona the idea in the first place.          

Death is only the beginning.

        I move throughout the mansion. Given the backstory, I expect to find exhibits depicting the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, Dracula, and perhaps even the persecution and assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as performed by the inmates of the asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade. But I guess those were just examples. What I see instead are:

         A mine being overrun by a mutant plant

            Did that happen in this town? If so, the authorities sure hushed it up.

          Jack the Ripper approaching one of his victims with a knife

          You’re not even stabbed yet, woman! Don’t swoon–run!

          A bunch of zombies lumbering through a graveyard

               I’m not sure this event was “historical.”

             There are other closed curtains throughout the museum. I’m not sure if they’ll later be opened and reveal other exhibits.

I wonder if I’m supposed to take these on in a particular order, but the game has me covered there. I turns out I can talk to Boris by clicking on the crystal ball. He tells me that no, it doesn’t matter what order I choose–all of the scenes need to be “cleansed.” I realize later that talking to him has cost me “psy” points, so I’d better save it for when I’m really stuck.

            . . . except that I’ll be Level 1 for the first one and like Level 20 when I go to the last one.

           I decide to go in chronological order, although I’m not entirely sure where the graveyard fits into it. My best guess is that the order is Egypt – Graveyard – Jack the Ripper – Mine. Thus, I head back to the Egyptian exhibit and choose “Enter.”

A couple of flashes of light later, and I’m in a pyramid. A nearby room shows someone labeled “pyramid designer” stabbed in the back, his body hunched over a table. A piece of papyrus underneath the corpse has an image of Anubis and a set of nine hieroglyphics.            

Some kind of puzzle already.

          The room is full of baskets, jugs, pitchers, and other objects, and it turns out that, just as in Elvira II, you can pick up just about everything. Unlike Elvira II, there’s no spell system here that’s going to make use of all these items, so there’s probably no point in loading up my inventory. I do it anyway, mostly because I want to see if the 16 items the window holds are all I get, or whether it scrolls. It turns out that it scrolls. At this point, I realize that I can’t figure out how to drop things. Clicking and dragging them back to the environment doesn’t help. The manual says that “Drop” is supposed to be an object action when I click on an object, but it never appears. I hope there’s no limit to my inventory, then. I walk out of the room with a scarab beetle brooch (found in a chest), a dagger, a lamp, a bowl, a beaker, a stylus and ink block, two pieces of papyrus, three baskets, six jugs, a jar of oil, and a mat.          

The scene in the first room. Most of this stuff will end up in my inventory.

       Returning to the hallways, I start wondering if I’m going to have to map. I decide to try following the right corridor first, and if I get lost or confused, then I’ll map.        

I turn a corner and meet a pyramid guard with a sword. Combat hasn’t really changed since Elvira II, either. You hit the sword icon to activate your readied weapon, then click in the screen itself to indicate what part of the enemy you want to target. The guard defeats me three times in a row.           

And here’s where we learn that Horror Soft did not skimp on its customary gruesome death screens.

           Finally, on the fourth time, I manage to kill him–with no hit points lost. That suggests that luck is going to play a big role in combat. From this one battle, my level increases to 2. I also get the guard’s sword.          

                  As I walk, I realize I’m getting 1 experience point for every square I’ve never stepped in before. I soon go to Level 3. This is accompanied by an increase in maximum hit points.

         Continuing down the hall, I meet another guard, who also slays me two times in a row. I finally kill him on my third try. I hit him about five times for every time he hits me, and I do hundreds of points of damage to him. These guys are tanks. I begin to wonder if I was really supposed to level up in one of the easier scenarios first.           At this moment, let’s pause to note that the graphics are quite nice. Many are animated, which isn’t coming through in these static shots. But the only sound effects I’ve experienced in the game are the swishes and thuds of weapons connecting in combat. There’s music, but it’s loud and relentless and I turned it off.          

This guy was a little easier. He looks easier.

       After picking up some piles of sand, I meet a new enemy: a priest with a dagger. He dies a lot easier than the guards. At the end of a corridor, at a statue, I find a tuning fork in a pot. But it isn’t long before yet another guard kills me. I reload, kill him, step a few paces past him, and find a little pond. There, a crocodile kills me while I’m trying to fill a jug with water. Man, this game is rough.            

          Reloading, I walk a few paces past the crocodile, then meet an Egyptian guy with a spear:            

             The problem is that hit points don’t seem to regenerate automatically as you move. It occurs to me that Uncle Boris might be able to help. I contact him and, sure enough, using the bits of papyrus and pen that I picked up, creates three healing scrolls. Each one seems to heal 10 hit points. They don’t really help: the spear guy destroys me in two stabs.

I start paying attention to the statistics, and when I finally kill the bastard, I’m convinced the game is just making things up. When you strike someone, the box in the lower-left corner tells how many hit points of damage you’ve done. There were times that I hit the guy for over 200 points in multiple blows and he didn’t die. When I did finally kill him, it was after maybe 80 points of damage.

I come to a treasure room! Too bad that’s not why I’m here. Five pots, a weight, two cat statues, a golden calf statue, and a tile all join my overflowing inventory.             

In a real RPG, there would be lots of cool stuff in a room like this.

          I soon come up against a thick glass panel. Nothing will smash it. This sounds like a job for the tuning fork! After 15 minutes of rummaging through my stuff, I find it–somehow I accidentally put it into a basket. I use it and the glass shatters and collapses.

A few paces on, two blades come out of the ceiling and kill me.         

         Okay, it turns out that the blades are the result of a trap, indicated by the presence of a very thin piece of string stretching across the corridor. I’ll have to watch for those in the future.

I finally make it to a set of stairs upward, where I’m confronted by a puzzle: a pentagram with the number 0 at each point, plus four numbers (1, 3, 4, 6, 7) at each intersection of lines. Clicking on any of the 0s causes them to cycle through numbers 1 through 9, but it also starts an hourglass timer at the bottom. If I run out of time, as I did the first attempt (before I realized the hourglass was even running):              

The mechanism by which this happened is unclear to me.

          My guess is that it’s like a magic square: each line has to add up to the same number, with no number being used more than once, including the ones in the middle. That means I have to make do with 2, 5, 8, 9, and 0 at the points of the pentagram. It doesn’t take me long, though, to realize that isn’t going to work. The best I can do with no repeating numbers is make the totals come out to 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.

So I focus on just getting them to add up to the same thing period. I spend some time messing with it in Excel and I finally come up with the answer, but I’m unsatisfied with my method. I know there’s a way to do it algebraically, and I just couldn’t figure it out. Solving math puzzles via trial-and-error never seems right. Anyway, I go up to Level 6.              

Caught it just as the door was opening.

         A few steps down the corridor and:               

How did I end up barefoot, exactly?

          I think I’ll leave it there. So far, it seems like a brisk game, but much like Elvira II, the RPG elements are unsatisfying. The deaths are kind of funny, but I wouldn’t be laughing if I prized myself on low reload count.

Time so far: 3 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-333-waxworks-1992/