Troels Pleimert

Happy 1-year anniversary to the SQH podcast!

This is basically turning into a written episode of Back Seat Designers right here. ;)

I lol'ed. :)
 
Okay, scary games. Well, for my money, you need the threat of death for something to be truly scary. Even if it's the sort of "zap! right back where you started" try again-type deaths. The psychological implications of just having gotten someone killed -- by extension yourself -- is the sort of primal fear that is so deep-rooted, it's a given.
 
Okay, so you could conceivably imagine a game where you don't outright die, but are captured and either thrown in a dungeon or a pit, or horribly mutilated, or whatever. That still counts as a death scenario in my book. (And, for the record, Maniac Mansion had both!)
 
If you take away the threat of incapacitation or death, stuff merely becomes creepy, not scary.
 
That's not to say you can't do creepy without deaths -- I mean, The 7th Guest was pretty creepy, at least conceptually -- and you can't die in that game ... because, well, you're already dead. Oops, spoiler.

I think I forgot to mention it here, but Frede and I are doing a little podcast on the side where we bitch and rant about adventure games in general.
 
It's a phenomenally low-effort kind of affair, so you may have to get used to the audio quality. It is quite literally produced by me calling up Fred, recording the call on my phone (using the Record My Call app) and then throwing the whole thing online without any editing.
 
It does, however, boast a pretty kick-ass chiptune intro theme by MusicallyInspired.
 
Check it out: http://backseatdesigners.podbean.com
 
RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BackSeatDesigners
 
It's on Stitcher, too: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/back-seat-designers
 
(Sorry, no iTunes yet. Because I suck.)
 
Please, feel free to comment on episodes here, or suggest new topics for us to cover!

Simple: The GK remake was in the works long before Activision dug up the Sierra brand from their back yard.

I think I forgot to mention it here, but Frede and I are doing a little podcast on the side where we bitch and rant about adventure games in general.
 
It's a phenomenally low-effort kind of affair, so you may have to get used to the audio quality. It is quite literally produced by me calling up Fred, recording the call on my phone (using the Record My Call app) and then throwing the whole thing online without any editing.
 
It does, however, boast a pretty kick-ass chiptune intro theme by MusicallyInspired.
 
Check it out: http://backseatdesigners.podbean.com
 
RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BackSeatDesigners
 
It's on Stitcher, too: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/back-seat-designers
 
(Sorry, no iTunes yet. Because I suck.)
 
Please, feel free to comment on episodes here, or suggest new topics for us to cover!

This is basically turning into a written episode of Back Seat Designers right here. ;)

I think I forgot to mention it here, but Frede and I are doing a little podcast on the side where we bitch and rant about adventure games in general.
 
It's a phenomenally low-effort kind of affair, so you may have to get used to the audio quality. It is quite literally produced by me calling up Fred, recording the call on my phone (using the Record My Call app) and then throwing the whole thing online without any editing.
 
It does, however, boast a pretty kick-ass chiptune intro theme by MusicallyInspired.
 
Check it out: http://backseatdesigners.podbean.com
 
RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BackSeatDesigners
 
It's on Stitcher, too: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/back-seat-designers
 
(Sorry, no iTunes yet. Because I suck.)
 
Please, feel free to comment on episodes here, or suggest new topics for us to cover!

The "puzzle" probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the cash register in St. George's books is said to contain about $20 worth of change that Gabriel cannot pick up. A couple of millions worth of blood money, giving away a $20 gift certificate (seriously, what is it with Jane and her 20 bucks?) and stealing from the dead? All peachy. But using your own revenue to help you save the world from the clutches of evil? No way. Someone needs to introduce Jane and her team to Occam's Razor; if I need $20 and the cash register miraculously contains $20, then the game better allow me to pick up the $20 without throwing divine critters at me.
 
Of course, I wasn't aware that Activision had Phoenix on a leash to that extent, so I guess it makes sense that the game had to come out now. Okay, that makes me a bit more forgiving, but I still think Phoenix are repeating a few too many old mistakes.

This is basically turning into a written episode of Back Seat Designers right here. ;)

I lol'ed. :)
 
Okay, scary games. Well, for my money, you need the threat of death for something to be truly scary. Even if it's the sort of "zap! right back where you started" try again-type deaths. The psychological implications of just having gotten someone killed -- by extension yourself -- is the sort of primal fear that is so deep-rooted, it's a given.
 
Okay, so you could conceivably imagine a game where you don't outright die, but are captured and either thrown in a dungeon or a pit, or horribly mutilated, or whatever. That still counts as a death scenario in my book. (And, for the record, Maniac Mansion had both!)
 
If you take away the threat of incapacitation or death, stuff merely becomes creepy, not scary.
 
That's not to say you can't do creepy without deaths -- I mean, The 7th Guest was pretty creepy, at least conceptually -- and you can't die in that game ... because, well, you're already dead. Oops, spoiler.

I agree to a certain extent. But if Hitchcock had worked with death the way Sierra often did, Janet Leigh would just have tripped and hit her head in the shower.
 
Jane Jensen tended to do death the right way. In KQ6, GK1 and GK2, death always adds to the tension and never feels totally unfair the way King Graham's fabulous five-inch falls do.

He also recently went back on the abuse front with a prominent adventure game community member because they had the temerity to click on his LinkdIn account. (Seriously - who pays that much attention?).
 
The positive for me is that he seems to be a parody of himself. As someone who hasn't had to deal directly with his bullshit, he's just brilliant as a muse for writing criticism of the gaming industry. I mean, blocking someone who tried to promote his games? That's almost literally a word-for-word enactment of a sketch I wrote for the SQH podcast.
 
Melon.

At least something good came from the whole Replay debacle: I got to know Jeroen, Tom, Serena and other magnificently magical people who deserved so much better.
 
Jeroen's a truly cool guy who loves adventure games and has fantastic facial hair.
 
Tom is a true friend who barely sleeps but stays up making cool shit all night instead.
 
Serena is, well ... need I say more?
 
And, for better or worse, it totally brought the community even closer together.
 
So there's that. ;)

Caldric: Hey, good point! I'll bring that up on the next show.
 
Suejak: Heh, yeah, they do take up a lot of room. The idea was borne out of me doing "nerd talk" about old music devices after Seibert/Mulvale's SQ3 commentary. Ken just came out of nowhere and said he had an opportunity to interview Klepacki, and I thought it was kind of a scoop. I agree it's not completely, totally SQ related. But it is tech related. :)

I will definitely second (third? fourth?) the Klorox II mood in SQ5. The music had a lot to do with it, but also the desolation and the foreboding realization that something awful happened here. And then that guy's head just silently retreats in the corner, just as you enter the greenhouse. Wow.

At least something good came from the whole Replay debacle: I got to know Jeroen, Tom, Serena and other magnificently magical people who deserved so much better.
 
Jeroen's a truly cool guy who loves adventure games and has fantastic facial hair.
 
Tom is a true friend who barely sleeps but stays up making cool shit all night instead.
 
Serena is, well ... need I say more?
 
And, for better or worse, it totally brought the community even closer together.
 
So there's that. ;)

At least something good came from the whole Replay debacle: I got to know Jeroen, Tom, Serena and other magnificently magical people who deserved so much better.
 
Jeroen's a truly cool guy who loves adventure games and has fantastic facial hair.
 
Tom is a true friend who barely sleeps but stays up making cool shit all night instead.
 
Serena is, well ... need I say more?
 
And, for better or worse, it totally brought the community even closer together.
 
So there's that. ;)

At least something good came from the whole Replay debacle: I got to know Jeroen, Tom, Serena and other magnificently magical people who deserved so much better.
 
Jeroen's a truly cool guy who loves adventure games and has fantastic facial hair.
 
Tom is a true friend who barely sleeps but stays up making cool shit all night instead.
 
Serena is, well ... need I say more?
 
And, for better or worse, it totally brought the community even closer together.
 
So there's that. ;)

At least something good came from the whole Replay debacle: I got to know Jeroen, Tom, Serena and other magnificently magical people who deserved so much better.
 
Jeroen's a truly cool guy who loves adventure games and has fantastic facial hair.
 
Tom is a true friend who barely sleeps but stays up making cool shit all night instead.
 
Serena is, well ... need I say more?
 
And, for better or worse, it totally brought the community even closer together.
 
So there's that. ;)

What Frede said.
 
So far I've come across two additional puzzles. One involves an extra bit of plot and is just about the most contrived bunch of bullshit you could think of (apparently they changed that a little due to negative backer feedback, but I haven't played that part in the final version). I did come across the wordpuzzle slot machine and that was total, unneeded shit. And seriously, a sliding puzzle?!? Sorry, but the RPS dude is totally in his rights to call this out for the superfluous rubbish it is.
 
Other than that, I'm really pleasantly surprised so far. The animations may not be top notch, but they did some REALLY good work on some of the things which might have ended up really shitty (such as Gabriel slipping into his coat, which looked atrocious in the beta, or a scene where the fortune teller picks up a snake and dances with it). Some of the animations are really surprisingly well done.

I had too much time on my hands and made a YouTube video about Space Quest III. If you're incredibly bored, you can watch it. If you've got something better to do though, I totally understand lol.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clmwg4Xoe6k

:D

"While we await a fully formed thought from Roger" ... I love this line. :)

Agreed. If the zombie's Future-Roger, then that scream of his just became ten times more traumatizing.