Oh the nostalgia! I remember that first scene like it was yesterday. And also never making it past that first scene either. Games were hard. Or I was stupid. Not sure.
No, some games were hard (don't remember Beneath that well as I only ever played the first 20 minutes and wasn't hooked in) and some classic point'n'click had really illogical and weird solutions. It's not so much that they were hard but some puzzles really had no rules and you could only progress by sheer luck or means of clicking everywhere or combining anything. It was unfair.
I loved the monkey island serie's art and lore but some of its puzzles are just a waste of time. But there is a very vocal minority screaming on the internet at the top of their lungs that those puzzles are the best thing ever. shrug
edit: Just googled that car hair mustache thing from a sibling comment (couldn't remember which game it was, AAMOF I didn't play it) and look the first comment of that article:
I think part of the death of adventure gaming is due to the internet and FAQs. The majority of people will burn through a typical adventure game in an hour or two by looking up what to do any time they get even mildly perplexed. Yeah, there will be those of us who refuse to look, but there will be a large share that spoil their own experience and then complain about it.
See ? You have to suffer to enjoy it and those who didn't or took a shortcut are just whiners who ruined their experience of the game.
I remember spending a lot of time very frustrated with a game called Teenagent because IIRC to open the inventory you had to move the mouse to the top left corner and keep it there for a while. As far as I remember there were no indications that this was the case, and it just seemed to me that the inventory would randomly pop up somehow.
Of course it's possible the game might have told me that in text somewhere, but back then I did not really understand English, so I'll call it bad UI design.
Some era adventure games were famous from simply being illogical.
It's always nice having to pick up cat hair to make a fake mustache to impersonate someone that does not have a mustache.
I even took a trip to the city in France where the game takes place purely because of the game.
Not to mention it's also the game where Scott Bilas started experimenting with data-driven workflow that informed his work in Dungeon Siege and influenced Entity-Component-System architecture.
Also, there's not one, but multiple people trying to recreate the engine of the (very unsuccessful) game, more than twenty years after it was released. [1] [2] [3]
...but the cat-hair-mustache puzzle is indeed the lowest point of the genre.
# dnf info beneath-a-steel-sky beneath-a-steel-sky-cd
Available Packages
Name : beneath-a-steel-sky
Version : 1.3
Release : 16.fc32
Architecture : noarch
Size : 6.8 M
Source : beneath-a-steel-sky-1.3-16.fc32.src.rpm
Repository : fedora
Summary : Beneath a Steel Sky - Adventure Game
URL : http://www.revolution.co.uk/_display.php?id=16
License : Freely redistributable without restriction
Description : After the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy setting of Revolution's first game, Lure
: of the Temptress, Revolution decided to go down a completely different avenue
: with its second adventure game, Beneath a Steel Sky, that of Science Fiction.
: A bleak vision of the future was imagined, where mind control and medical
: science combined forces to repress the populace. Leading comic artist, Dave
: Gibbons, joined the design team to visualise this desperate landscape. The
: result is the cult classic Beneath a Steel Sky.
:
: Notice that this package contains the floppy version, the CD version is also
: available in the beneath-a-steel-sky-cd package. The CD version contains
: additional / longer cutscenes and voice acting, but also is much larger: the CD
: version ways in at 70 MB where as this version is only 8 MB.
Available Packages
Name : beneath-a-steel-sky-cd
Version : 0.0372
Release : 19.fc32
Architecture : noarch
Size : 65 M
Source : beneath-a-steel-sky-cd-0.0372-19.fc32.src.rpm
Repository : fedora
Summary : Beneath a Steel Sky - Adventure Game - CD version
URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_a_Steel_Sky
License : Freely redistributable without restriction
Description : After the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy setting of Revolution's first game, Lure
: of the Temptress, Revolution decided to go down a completely different avenue
: with its second adventure game, Beneath a Steel Sky, that of Science Fiction.
: A bleak vision of the future was imagined, where mind control and medical
: science combined forces to repress the populace. Leading comic artist, Dave
: Gibbons, joined the design team to visualise this desperate landscape. The
: result is the cult classic Beneath a Steel Sky.
:
: This package contains the CD version, which contains additional / longer
: cutscenes and voice acting, but also is much larger: 70 MB where as the also
: available floppy version (package name beneath-a-steel-sky) is only 8 MB.
Indie game dev is one of the hardest programming there is. Doing web dev feels like child's play in comparison.
The sheer amount of work that goes into making a game or did before things like unity came into picture. I remember reading super long articles on NeHe just to detect collision between two items. On top of that you need amazing graphics and a good story plus your usual marketing to sell.
Also gamers are usually the most vocal critics of your work (they either love it or hate it). It's just amazing that so many new indie games are released.
Oh, fond memories from 1995 or so.. This game was very different from LucasArts quests, and was very tough to beat, especially in an age without walkthroughs available online. It took me and my friends roughly three weeks to solve all puzzles.
The only other game that was as tough to beat was the great BloodNet.
17 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 55.0 ms ] threadI loved the monkey island serie's art and lore but some of its puzzles are just a waste of time. But there is a very vocal minority screaming on the internet at the top of their lungs that those puzzles are the best thing ever. shrug
edit: Just googled that car hair mustache thing from a sibling comment (couldn't remember which game it was, AAMOF I didn't play it) and look the first comment of that article:
https://kotaku.com/how-we-survived-adventure-gamings-most-ha...
I think part of the death of adventure gaming is due to the internet and FAQs. The majority of people will burn through a typical adventure game in an hour or two by looking up what to do any time they get even mildly perplexed. Yeah, there will be those of us who refuse to look, but there will be a large share that spoil their own experience and then complain about it.
See ? You have to suffer to enjoy it and those who didn't or took a shortcut are just whiners who ruined their experience of the game.
I remember spending a lot of time very frustrated with a game called Teenagent because IIRC to open the inventory you had to move the mouse to the top left corner and keep it there for a while. As far as I remember there were no indications that this was the case, and it just seemed to me that the inventory would randomly pop up somehow.
Of course it's possible the game might have told me that in text somewhere, but back then I did not really understand English, so I'll call it bad UI design.
A nice 3 page rant from 2000: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
I even took a trip to the city in France where the game takes place purely because of the game.
Not to mention it's also the game where Scott Bilas started experimenting with data-driven workflow that informed his work in Dungeon Siege and influenced Entity-Component-System architecture.
Also, there's not one, but multiple people trying to recreate the engine of the (very unsuccessful) game, more than twenty years after it was released. [1] [2] [3]
...but the cat-hair-mustache puzzle is indeed the lowest point of the genre.
[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/gk3tools/
[2] https://github.com/kromenak/gengine
[3] https://github.com/shff/GK3-extractor
Just bought it because of your comment. Thank you.
Available Packages Name : beneath-a-steel-sky-cd Version : 0.0372 Release : 19.fc32 Architecture : noarch Size : 65 M Source : beneath-a-steel-sky-cd-0.0372-19.fc32.src.rpm Repository : fedora Summary : Beneath a Steel Sky - Adventure Game - CD version URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_a_Steel_Sky License : Freely redistributable without restriction Description : After the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy setting of Revolution's first game, Lure : of the Temptress, Revolution decided to go down a completely different avenue : with its second adventure game, Beneath a Steel Sky, that of Science Fiction. : A bleak vision of the future was imagined, where mind control and medical : science combined forces to repress the populace. Leading comic artist, Dave : Gibbons, joined the design team to visualise this desperate landscape. The : result is the cult classic Beneath a Steel Sky. : : This package contains the CD version, which contains additional / longer : cutscenes and voice acting, but also is much larger: 70 MB where as the also : available floppy version (package name beneath-a-steel-sky) is only 8 MB.
https://de1.eu.scummvm.net/extras/Beneath%20a%20Steel%20Sky/
The sheer amount of work that goes into making a game or did before things like unity came into picture. I remember reading super long articles on NeHe just to detect collision between two items. On top of that you need amazing graphics and a good story plus your usual marketing to sell.
Also gamers are usually the most vocal critics of your work (they either love it or hate it). It's just amazing that so many new indie games are released.
The only other game that was as tough to beat was the great BloodNet.