Caper in the Castro thoughts

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: C.M. Ralph
Year: 1989
Genre: Adventure
System: Mac

menu screen for caper in the castro showing someone leaning against a lightpole and text saying "It's not just a game, it's a gayme!"

Caper in the Castro is a short point-and-click adventure game created in Hypercard and the earliest known queer game, so I thought it would be fun to check it out during Pride Month. You play as the lesbian detective Tracker McDyke who must find her friend, the drag queen Tessy LaFemme. It’s a very straightforward adventure game where you navigate up and down a street, going into buildings and poking around for clues. Since it was a simple game built in Hypercard, it doesn’t have any inventory items and progress is gated by various notes you take in the game that you will need to use elsewhere. There are death scenes that will force you to restart the game but it’s incredibly quick to get back to where you were before.

game screenshot set outside a bar at night. The bar is titled "The Gayme Room"

I have known about the game for a while but never actually sat down to play through the entire thing and I’m so glad I did. Any flaws the game may have from the lack of depth or the fussy parser, which you briefly use at a few points, was easy for me to overlook because of how charming the game is. I am an absolute sicko for this era of Macintosh games and Hypercard and I loved the art. The game was obviously made at a really dark time and the game encourages people to donate to AIDS charities as a form of paying for the game. I get very emotional seeing people creating queer art during this time and the fact that this was created to be charityware to help others was very moving to me. I was a baby during this time so I also always appreciate any queer art and writing that lets me see what the queer community was doing at this time. The game itself is very campy and messy in a way I really enjoyed (other than the dated language the author apologizes for on the Archive.org page) and I think it would fit in very well with what a lot of experimental queer games that folks are making on Itch.

I’d recommend it, especially if you are interested in queer and/or retro adventure games. It’s not the tightest puzzle design given that the author was working with a limiting tool they didn’t have a ton of experience working with, but I think the art and writing are very charming and it’s an interesting time capsule.

Caper in the Castro is available for free on the Internet Archive and you can repay the author by donating to your LGTBQ+ charity of choice.

Things Every Video Game Should Have

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

This is not going into the manifesto jam because it’s more of a goof but at the same time I do get excited about this stuff anytime it shows up so maybe it’s entirely serious.

A Moose – Well yeah, obviously. Playing as a moose is the best part of Wacky Wheels and Moose Life is one of the best Llamasoft games.

That song from The Incredible Machine 2 – Maybe you can’t get this exact song for licensing reasons but throw a New Age song into your game. Your players will thank you.

FMV – Doesn’t have to be a lot. You don’t need to get Malcolm McDowell in your video game. Even a tiny bit of stock footage of a train will make me happy.

Samples, possibly unlicensed – I love all the samples that show up repeatedly in Llamasoft’s games. I feel like some of them are maybe unlicensed but clearly no one has said anything yet because they keep popping up. Build up a nice little library of sound effects and other assets that you keep throwing into your games and people can recognize. Folks get annoyed about asset reuse and they’re wrong and should be pushed into a volcano.

Each chapter ending with the player hanging out in a homoerotic hunt club – Maybe some explanation for this one. We all love the Hunt Club in Gabriel Knight 2 but I understand if you don’t want your player character needing to talk to any hunting enthusiasts or shitty libertarians, but I do really like when games have the player coming back to the same place to hang out with other characters so more of that please. It should also be gay.

Someone that taunts you – Your game should have some kind of asshole that keeps taunting you like Rudy in Funhouse or Sinistar.

Someone that hangs out – There should also be someone that’s just hanging out near the beginning of your game but doesn’t do a whole lot. Maybe they give advice if the player is stuck. You probably can’t license Peter Gabriel for your person that hangs out but they should probably be listening to music or reading.

Things It Should Not Have

AI usage – Even code. You’re still wasting massive amounts of energy and polluting communities if you use AI for coding. Fuck you, I won’t play your game.

The Manifesto Jam

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

The Manifesto Jam, where folks write manifestos on game design, is about to wrap up in two days and there’s already a lot of great stuff submitted. I don’t have a manifesto in me but I’ve been enjoying reading the entries. Some I agree with, some I don’t, but that’s kinda the fun of going through them all. I’m surprised none of the sickos (complimentary) in the adventure games community have made a manifesto. It’s a little fascinating seeing a couple people who don’t make games get mad at the jam when it’s not a thing that impacts them at all, unless people start taking these manifestos very seriously. Throw it in the pile of all the other stuff on Itch that Aftermath will continue to ignore I guess.

Maybe I should have posted about this earlier so that anyone who sees this can write their own manifesto but there’s still two days left, you can do it!

A Lost Man adventure game demo explores life during World War 1

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment
a soldier in an old church

Maybe I should play more adventure game demos. I almost never do because I figure that if an adventure game looks interesting to me and people like it then I’ll probably get it at some point and playing a demo would just spoil a chunk. But that seems a bit silly now after trying a few recently such as A Lost Man, a point-and-click adventure where you are a lost soldier during World War 1. The demo (available on Steam) gives a very brief look at the game and one or two puzzles but it made me far more interested in the game. I felt the game does an excellent job of conveying a place that is close to the front lines but isn’t quite pulled in yet. There is some dry humor but it’s not a silly game and everything felt tonally like it should. I wasn’t sure how I would have felt about the art but it looks really good in motion. My only real complaint about that is that I think it needs a run animation instead of making the player walk fast, but it’s a unique style I haven’t seen in other adventure games.

I’m curious about the stuff I see in the trailer that wasn’t in the demo. Everything I played felt very grounded, so I’m not sure how the more puzzle-like parts will work but I’m guessing that it feels more natural when it’s all spread out over an entire game and not in a very short trailer.

Anyway, the demo is very short (about 15 minutes) so consider giving it a shot if it sounds interesting to you. Maybe I’ll try to do some demo roundups on here during the next Steam demo event.

Enigma Heart Demo Bring Back Zelda 2 Style Adventuring

~ mpklamerus ~ 3 Comments
a woman in a temple by a pool

I have always loved Zelda 2. I realize it’s a flawed oddball in the series. It’s nothing like the rest of the games, other than the CD-i games (a post for another day), and it’s a bit too obtuse and difficult for its own good, but I always loved that it combines rpg elements with 2D platforming and weirdness of the boss design. So I was very happy to see that the Zelda 2-like Enigma Heart now has a demo. This isn’t really a review since I’ve only played for a little bit so far (and liked it), but since this style of game is so rare, with the only other Zelda 2-likes I can think of being the Gunmetal Arcadia series (Steam/Itch), I thought I would let people know about it. It’s very gay as well. You can get the demo on Steam and Itch.io.

On a related note, I also started poking at a Zelda 2 romhack called Zelda 2 Redux. It makes a lot of little tweaks like improved translations and adjusting the difficulty a little and it’s amazing how much these small changes can improve the game. If you bounced off the original game, maybe give this one a shot. If the changes in that are too drastic, there’s this one that just improves the translation.

TOWNSQUEER Zine And Games Bundle Available for Limited Time

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two columns of text describing pressure inside someone's head
PARA//LAX

TOWNSQUEER, a bundle containing games and a zine put together by the folks at gamedev.lgbt, is now available on Itch.io for $20. It made me happy to see this community put together a bundle of wonderful games and immediately picked it up when it went on sale last night. I’ve played a few of the games before so it was nice to support those, as well as have a whole new batch of games to play. I wrote about PARA//LAX before, but I also really enjoyed other games in this bundle like the fmv documentary To All the Rocks That Bear Me, platformer Nice Disc, and the first person interactive fiction Breathe. Not only is it an excellent collection of games but I was impressed with the production of the zine as well. A great amount of effort was put into the layout and it contains a lot of writing from the bundle contributors about game development and other topics. I really can’t recommend the bundle enough. It’s good to support queer art of course, but I also just think it’s a very good deal for the amount of high quality games you’re getting and I think it coming with a few Steam keys is a nice little bonus too. Go check it out! It runs until June 15.

I hope the bundle is very successful and we see more volumes of this, even though the organizers have run into some headaches with Itch. I also hope it inspires other communities to do something similar. I know some Discords have organized bundles before but it feels extra special to me when a community that hosts their own site, whether it’s a mastodon instance like this or a forum, has their own projects like this.

first person view of someone riding a bike
To All the Rocks That Bear Me

Exit 8

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

Developer: KOTAKE CREATE
Publisher: PLAYISM
Year: 2023
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a business man standing in a long hallway

Exit 8 is a short first-person horror game where you are trapped in an endless repeating hallway and must escape. I was curious about the game after seeing that it got a film adaptation and was glad I finally checked it out. The core gameplay (literal) loop has you looking for any differences in the repeating hallway. If you see any, then you need to turn around and go back, otherwise keep walking forward. You have to successfully repeat this pattern eight times in a row, so you can get to Exit 8. If you fail a loop, it resets the counter back to zero. None of this is a spoiler, it’s all listed on the very first sign you see in the game. There’s really no plot here and it boils down to a Spot the Difference game where you are occasionally placed in danger. I’m being reductive in my description of the game but it mostly works for me. The game successfully creeped me out without doing any jump scares.

The main issue I have with the game, and one that I see plenty of other folks also state in their positive reviews, is that when you find a difference/anomaly, it’s temporarily removed from the game. This happens until you find them all, and then they’re all returned to the game and it becomes very easy to solve the game since you’re an expert at recognizing them. The part where this becomes an issue is that it eventually turns the game into a bit of a checklist of things to look for since you probably have entered a loop of spotting some of the obvious and more interesting differences, removing them from the game, and then missing a more subtle one and the counter being reset to zero. After repeating that a few times, you get into a flow that feels like a bit of a slog where you find one or two subtle differences, miss one, repeat until you find them all and everything is added back to the game and you win. It’s certainly possible that players do not run into this and beat the game before seeing everything, but if you do stumble into this cycle it makes the game very tedious for about 15-20 minutes. It’s unfortunate because most of the game does work for me and I’d still recommend it. It was very nice playing a horror game that only took 90 minutes and was creepy without stressing me out with health systems and monsters I need to fight. It just needed a little more to elevate it to being a great horror game.

Exit 8 is available on Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox, and smartphones

Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard

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Developer: Grace Bruxner, Thomas Bowker
Publisher: worm club, SUPERHOT PRESENTS
Year: 2019
Genre: Adventure
System: Mac

a rhino named Mary saying "Have you heard of extortion?"

I continue to replay the Frog Detective series but this time with my middle child. This one has you investigating a parade in a small town prepared for the arrival of an invisible wizard that has been ruined and it’s up to you to find out who did it. It plays very similar to the first game, which is not a complaint at all because I really enjoyed that one. The mystery itself has a cute resolution and I liked exploring the small town at night more than the island in the first game. There’s a bit more to look at in this one so I felt it was a more interesting environment to explore. The game also features a little notebook that tracks clues for you and you can mark who you think is suspicious or not. None of this is essential to completing the game but it’s all very fun to play with and my 6 year old treated it all very seriously as she would change who was suspicious or not after talking with each person. It was the perfect game to play with her since it let her roleplay being a detective without having to make any actual decisions on who ruined the parade, which has a happy ending anyway. The game only takes 60-90 minutes to play too, the perfect length for something to play in a sitting. I always liked these games but I appreciated them a lot more after playing them with my kids.

Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard is available for Windows and Mac on Steam and Itch.io, PS4/PS5, and XBOX.

What Bands Have Played Myst?

~ mpklamerus ~ 5 Comments

This Sunday morning I am thinking about multimedia cd-roms by musicians in the 90s and thinking: “did they play Myst?” I do not care about if any musician was actually a gamer, but because I am a huge dork I keep thinking about the band Queenscryche, in their stage gear, crowded around a desktop computer and trying to figure out the marker switches on Myst island. Because I have nothing better to do, here are my thoughts on various musicians with computer games and if they’ve played Myst. Many of these games are abandonware and playable on modern Windows thanks to The Collection Chamber.

Peter Gabriel, star of Xplora and Eve: Yes, absolutely. He seemed to be very interested in the cd-rom format since he started a games company that produced his two games as well as Ceremony of Innocence. He also contributed music to URU: Ages Beyond Myst and acted in Myst 4

Laurie Anderson, Puppet Motel: I think it’s likely she tried it for a few minutes to see what it was like since she’s stated she has an interest in new technologies and using them when no one really knows what to do with them. She has also done VR installations when VR was becoming a thing again in the mid 2010’s. But according to this interview last year about Puppet Motel, she doesn’t really enjoy games and winning/losing states so I assume she moved on once she “got it.” People should play Puppet Motel.

Aerosmith, 9: The Last Resort, Revolution X, Quest for Fame: Why did people keep going to Aerosmith to ask them to be in their computer game? Only one of these is an adventure game (produced by Robert Deniro) and they just act in it so they barely qualify for this list, but I think they’re aware of what a cd-rom is and that’s it. They’ve probably played some pinball. This is the most I want to think about Aerosmith.

Dan Ackroyd, The Blues Brothers: We know he actually played The Blues Brothers video games but I do not think he played Myst or else we would have seen some sort of cd-rom. Since John Goodman was in the Blues Brothers in the sequel, this is also where I can say that I do not think John played Pyst.

The Beach Boys, Surf City: Absolutely not. Mike Love cashed the paycheck and that was the end of that. If I had to pick the Beach Boy most likely to have played a computer game, I think it’s Al Jardine.

Earth, Wind, & Fire, Isis: Today I learned they had a computer game! I don’t think it’s likely they played them but now I want to play this.

Herbie Hancock, Virtual Nightclub, Living Jazz: He must have at least tried Myst, right? He seems too curious about technology to not have. Anyway, Herbie Hancock rules.

Devo, Adventures of the Smart Patrol: I think Mark and Gerry at least tried it and saw games as the future of the band. This did not happen since the game wasn’t very good and flopped, but the promotional video has that energy. They poked at smartphone apps a few times so new technology is something they have an interest in but I don’t think they ever dug too deep.

Queensrÿche, Promised Land: As much as I want to imagine the band playing Myst, I do not think they have. However, I am fascinated by the MobyGames credits for this game. The brother of one of them is all over the place on this and all the band members are listed as co-designers of their worlds. I don’t buy it.

The Residents, Freak Show, Bad Day on the Midway: Yes, but the band were all in costume when they did. From reading the Laurie Anderson video, it sounds like Voyager and Inscape were the ones reaching out to the bands to make something and not the other way, but I do think the fingerprints of The Residents are all over these and their involvement was more than just cashing a paycheck.

Motörhead, Motörhead: This predates Myst and Lemmy absolutely did not play computer games, but lets all imagine him playing Myst anyway. EDIT: I’m wrong about this one. Lemmy did play arcade games. See the comments below.

Prince, Prince Interactive: I have no idea how much he was actually involved with his game but I think it’s very likely he tried Myst. He was too interested in computers and the internet not to have. He was also probably one of the first people ever to have played The Oregon Trail.

David Bowie, Jump: The David Bowie Interactive CD-Rom, Omikron: He was too interested in technology not to have, since he also had his own multimedia cd-rom (that he wasn’t a fan of since it wasn’t ambitious enough) and Omikron. I think Duncan Jones is over answering questions about his dad since he has his own career and art to talk about, but maybe he would still be up for answering “What computer games did you play with your dad?” since I think most folks like to talk about that.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Frankie Goes to Hollywood: They broke up before Myst and I don’t think they were involved with their game either but this Making Of article about the game is good.

Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge: Absolutely not, but I think their producer Don Was has.

Rednex, Inbred with Rednex: Well they know what a computer is because they keep taking down videos on YouTube of people playing their game but I think that’s as far as that goes.

Well that’s all I have to say about all of that. Feel free to comment with your thoughts about other musicians and if they’ve played Myst.