Remember, both Emily and I like to lean into ideas that cater specifically to the prose format. Stuff that would be absurdly expensive or difficult to render graphically.
The whole point of Counterfeit Monkey is these offhanded lists of evocatively described items. I mean, look at one line of the source:
The description of the art is “It’s a very plausible copy of [one of]‘Still Life with a Bunch of Rapes’ by the great feminist Atlantean painter Annamarie Rosehip[or]‘A Portrait of Whistler’s Other’ by Thomas Whistler Rosehip[or]‘Still Life with Bead Loaf’ by the surrealist painter Lewis Rosehip[or]‘Flight of the Turtledoes’ by the surrealist great Lewis Rosehip[or]the narrative painting ‘If Wishes Were Horses, Bears Would Ride’ by the great Atlantean socialist painter Lawrence Rosehip[or]Théophile Rosehip’s surprisingly erotic classical work ‘The Aft of the Medusa’[sticky random].”
Are you going to hand that to a 3D artist and say “Here, whip these off for me?” And repeat for the other three thousand object descriptions?
For my part, I had a lot of fun with lines like
You wave the sprig, and inhale its distinct resinous aroma. But the ritual feels ungrounded and adrift.
You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation. But the words lack directionality.
The aroma of zafranum melds with the smell of the ocean, provoking images of sea-travel and distant lands.
The non-visual descriptions are very much on purpose.
However much I like some cross-medium adaptations, this talk about “Wouldn’t it be great to transfer IF-game X into Graphic-game Y” as if it were an upgrade or a bid for an expanded audience feels like someone were to try and adapt Tolkien to the big screen…
There’s another approach maybe. The player’s choices could affect the styling of the graphical display. Reflecting the mood of a player who wants the ‘nasty’ path for the character by darkening the tones of the frames and controls.
Or a generic diorama in SVG which can be lit for night and day, or where some characters grey out when they die. All these things support the text as the main vector of ideas, hopefully not to contradict the visual imagination of the player.
Very fair point! I was honestly picturing a pretty stripped-down presentation where text remains the primary form of feedback. Like, I just finished playing the Last Door, where the pixel graphics are sufficiently chunky that you need to rely on the text to convey what you’re seeing, much less what your other senses can tell you.
I enjoyed it too - it’s why I said “largely” rather than “completely” - albeit ultimately felt like its mechanics had less room to be elaborated than I wanted. Fortunately it had the good sense to end at about that point, rather than extend things to the point of tedium!
A Mind Forever Voyaging might transfer well. It’s a highly experiential and visual-heavy game light on puzzles and riddles. Perry’s actual experience in the simulator could be beautifully rendered via first person, and showing the same maps over time jumps to show the effects of “The Plan” and the ravages of time seems like the sort of thing that 3D engines excel at. (Brings to mind the experience of playing the same test chambers between Portal 1 & 2, for example) That said, the juxtaposition of switching to the real world, that only shows flat security camera imagery and text menus as Perry’s limited perception of the real word, could be an interesting and jarring experience for the player. Good luck getting Microsoft to green light it, though, as I’m pretty sure they own the rights now.
Seeing this, I am struck every time I watch a movie where they say “Your mission is:” how perfectly Spider & Web could work as a movie. Like, just think about some of the stuff like the package collection at the beginning in an iconic location, contrasted with collecting your gun later on. Okay, it could be a 30 minute film or a feature film. Either way, I’d watch it loads of times if it ever comes out (provided they don’t do a rubbish job of it).
Since this thread was necroed anyway: a 3D graphic adventure based on Vespers was in development for a long time; in the end I think it proved too much work for a small (one-person?) team, but it came surprisingly far along.
I’ve just noticed the new IFDB listing for Murder in the Monastery by Fender Tucker, and my eyes did whatever the ocular equivalent of pricking up is†, because I’ve heard that name before — in fact I’ve exchanged emails with the guy.
I know Fender Tucker as the founder of Ramble House, a publisher which was (initially) dedicated to reprinting the works of Harry Stephen Keeler, one of the strangest mystery novel writers ever to have put fecund typewriter to paper. I’ve never read any of Tucker’s own novels. I wonder if they are as strange as Keelers?
† Shakespeare might have said that my two eyes, like stars, started from their spheres, but Wodehouse stole this phrase so many times that I associate it with him.
Yeah, he’s definitely a unique character from what I’ve read about him. Not the usual sort of guy you’d stereotypically think would be involved in writing computer games. I popped some interesting links on our CASA page for the game :: CASA :: Murder in the Monastery
Including one where you can read his novella. Writing up a walkthrough as a novel is an interesting approach.
I popped some interesting links on our CASA page for the game