How to get money by playing video games

This week, as the holidays are upon us, were going to tackle Christmas Quest, a point-and-click animated adventure game created by the staff at www.adventuregamers.com as a short, free, seasonal treat for Christmas 2005.  It was written by Jack Allin and Emily Morganti, with programming by Berian Williams, music by Robert Lacey, and art and animation by a six-person team.


The game was created using Chris Jones invaluable Adventure Game Studio, a creation tool and runtime engine without which many fine contemporary adventure games would not exist.  This game is meant to be a quick, entertaining play, but it looks and sounds very professional, something that would not have been possible on a limited budget without AGS to handle all the technical details.  And Mr. Jones has always made his tool available free -- a fine example of a generous spirit all year round.





As always, interested readers are encouraged to take on Christmas Quest before reading my notes below.  Its also free, and can be downloaded at AdventureGamers.com (click on the games title screenshot, the same image shown above, to download the installation package.)  Beyond this point, Ill be describing my complete experience with the game, and there are certain to be...


***** HO! HO! SPO!LERS AHEAD! *****


After we start a new game, a few screens of text (with voiced narration by Doug Tabacco) set up the plot -- were certain Santa Claus has delivered the Best Adventure Game Ever, and (compulsive sort that we are) we must solve some puzzles to restore the perfect holiday setting before we can sit down and indulge in all its Besty Everness.



We fade in on our living room on Christmas morning, with a wilting, unlit Christmas tree, a locked closet door with a keyhole, a star that has fallen off the tree, a fireplace, and a bulky, unattractive turquoise couch.  Theres also a staircase leading upstairs, but we cant make use of it -- "kinda defeats the purpose of coming down, doesnt it?"  And the power is out, so the tree lights and our trusty gaming computer are both out of commission.

Most of the items onscreen can be interacted with, though many of the responses are just for chuckles; for example, concerning the lit fireplace, "I really should have put this out last night.  Santa cant have been pleased."  The main character isnt voiced, but the writing is light-hearted and gently funny, with in-jokes tailored to people like me (us, I whisper conspiratorially to long-time GA40 readers.)  Just to set the tone, some of the Christmas cards on the mantle are from Sierras Ken and Roberta Williams, Steve Purcell/Lucasarts/Telltale Games Sam & Max, Sierras Gabriel Knight and friends, and theres a portrait of Lucasarts Green Tentacle on the wall.

Examining the presents under the tree yields a bulky, pink, unopened present, a multi-purpose Ulti-Pan, and a refusal to open a present that isnt for our hero ("What kind of a take everything that isnt nailed down klepto would take someone elses present?")  We can pick up the fallen star, but cant put it back on the tree just yet as it will just fall off the wilted treetop again.  We can take the empty glass of Santa milk milk for Santa, which the text reminds us is always useful in adventure games, just like a rope.  We can also acquire a candy cane ("not drawn to scale") from the tree.

We can open the window to the chilly, snowy outside world -- I was hoping we could catch enough falling snow in the pan or the glass to water the tree, but that didnt work out until I realized I was clicking on the Window and not the Snow.  Of course, we have to melt our glass of snow in the fireplace, and now we can water the tree, miraculously restoring its turgor pressure in the blink of an eye.

Now maybe we can get the star back on the tree... but, of course, now that the tree is standing upright, we cant quite reach its top.  We cant seem to move the couch or use the sticky candy cane to extend our reach.  We can, however, revisit a classic, oft-employed adventure gaming puzzle -- we can observe something is jammed in the locked closets keyhole, slip our brothers Christmas card under the closet door, then poke the blockage with the candy cane. ("Ever notice how the key always falls RIGHT on the paper?")

Unlocking the closet reveals "a circuit breaker, a goat, and enough cobwebs to knit a scarf."  We can just use the Darkness to turn the lights back on (having avoided the goat, as well as the grue alluded to earlier if we try to use the ulti-pan on the keyhole.)

Now we just need to get the tree topper back on the tree top.  This solution didnt occur to me earlier, but as were running out of options now it becomes obvious that we need to stack the portable pink present on top of the non-portable green present, and voila!  All three puzzles are solved and everything seems suitably cheery again:

 

The music shifts from a cheery, repetitive rendition of Deck the Halls to the more portentous Silent Night, we open the Best Adventure Game Ever, put it into the computer... and find out this was just Episode 1 of a projected Christmas Quest trilogy (which did in fact materialize in later years).  For the moment, its a happy ending, and a victory of sorts:





Christmas Quest was actually a little more challenging than I expected -- the contained space and limited number of items notwithstanding, I had to do a little more trial-and-error experimentation than I thought I would.  But its a pleasant, straightforward, and entertaining little game, and the perfect title to post about on Christmas Eve.  Ill likely be coming back to this series in years to come.

And thank you to everyone who visits and reads the Gaming After 40 blog; your comments are some of my favorite gifts of all.  Happy Holidays, everyone!

After ripping my way through King’s Quest I, it’s now time to move onto the next game on the list, King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne. This is another game that I’ve played through previously, but again that was a long, long time ago. Unlike the first game, I can’t recall ever playing King’s Quest II a second time, so perhaps I’ll find it a little more challenging. Developed way back in 1985, it wasn’t particularly surprising to find Sierra quickly pumping out a sequel after the success of the first game in the King’s Quest series. Roberta Williams decided she wouldn’t try to push the technology too far with the sequel, particularly as disk space and memory restrictions couldn’t cope with any dramatic improvements. The graphics and animations would be created the same way and the text parser would also use the same technology as were used first time round. She did feel however that there was one area in particular that she could build on while staying within the restrictions of the time, and that’s the story.


The story of King’s Quest 1 was a rather simplistic affair. Find three magical items for the King and be rewarded with the kingdom itself. The King of course very conveniently passes away the very moment the player returns with the items, leaving Graham seated on the throne as King of Daventry at the conclusion of the game. King’s Quest II picks up one year later. The year that has past was one of great prosperity for Daventry, ruled by a King who possessed a bottomless chest, an invincible shield and a mirror that tells the future. When looking in the mirror one day, Graham is shocked to see former King Edward, who warns him that Daventry will soon become weak if he fails to find an heir. The Prime Minister of Daventry, Gerwain, suggests to Graham that he hold a celebration where women from all over the land can come and try to win his favour. Unfortunately, while Graham does take Gerwain’s advice, he doesn’t manage to find his perfect match. Amusingly, his reasons for rejecting them are fairly finicky, such as “one maid squinted, another tripped over everything in sight”.


While standing in front of the magic mirror, Graham wonders aloud why he can’t find a woman that touches his heart and his dreams, despite there being hundreds of lovely maidens in the kingdom. The mirror immediately displays the most beautiful woman Graham had ever seen, and yet she looks sad, with a tear rolling down her face. The mirror tells him that this woman is Valanice and that she has been imprisoned in a tower by a witch called Hagatha and which is guarded by a ferocious beast in a land called Kolyma. To rescue her, he must venture forth and find three keys which unlock the doors to Kolyma. So…it should be pretty clear by now that Roberta spent a little bit more time on the story this time round, but that merely makes it longer rather than more intelligent or less cliché than the first. It will be interesting to see whether the in-game dialogue is improved upon, or whether the characters that pop up throughout have more personality than they did in the previous effort. I really can’t remember.

Download now and give it a vote if you dig it.

Well here we are! When I started this blog, I was already looking forward to replaying the Quest for Glory series. In fact, that was one of the reasons I placed criteria on what games can or can’t be added to the playlist. The last thing I wanted to do was create a scenario where I’d never get to the likes of the Quest for Glory and Monkey Island games, both of which gave me many happy memories. I specifically remember playing the first Quest for Glory (called Hero’s Quest at the time). I don’t know if others out there experience something similar (I assume they do), but I can also very easily recall a lot of other aspects of my life that occurred around the time I was playing the game. I know what music I was obsessed with and I remember which friends I was spending a lot of time with. In fact, one of those friends and I would play through adventure games at the same time (similar to the way Chet and I are about to do), calling each other up if we got really stuck. I believe Hero’s Quest was the first game we did that with, and I’ve listed it in my top five games ever since.


Many of the scenes are permanently implanted in my memory, as is the music, which I can bring to mind at any moment of any day. There are not many pieces of music in the games I’ve played so far where I could say the same thing, although the Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest themes were also very memorable. The big question is whether or not Hero’s Quest can possibly come close to the lofty position it holds in my memory. As excited as I am to play it, I fear I may tarnish the nostalgia, the way I did that time where I watched Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal back to back (neither have aged well, let me tell you!). I’m also a little daunted at the prospect of playing and blogging about Hero’s Quest at the same time as Chet, who is by the far the better writer, not to mention doing so under the no doubt intrigued eyes of Corey Cole himself. Speaking of Corey, it looks as though the Cole’s next game, Hero-U, will get the funds it needs on Kickstarter. Exciting times!


Enough chit chat, what’s Hero’s Quest all about? Well the first thing I should cover off is the name. Why was the game called “Hero’s Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero?” and then later changed to “Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero?”? The answer is that the Milton Bradley Company had already trademarked the name HeroQuest (for their board game that I also played as a teenager), so it was changed to Quest for Glory to avoid confusion. Hero’s Quest was designed and written by Lori Ann Cole (wife of our good friend Corey). It was programmed by Corey, as well as Larry B. Scott, Robert Fischbach and Jerry Shaw (the latter two having already worked on Police Quest 2). Interestingly the graphics appear to have been handled by four Sierra employees that would all go on to work on Codename: ICEMAN (Jeff Crowe, Gerald Moore, Kenn Nishiuye and Cindy Walker). Finally, that highly memorable music that I talked about earlier was produced by Mark Seibert, whose list of games during this era is almost as long as my playlist.


Hero’s Quest is renowned for being a genre-defining game, being a genuine adventure / role-playing game hybrid. It has a lot of standard adventure game features and is built on Sierra’s SCI0 engine (the same one that was used for Leisure Suit Larry 2, Police Quest 2 and Codename: ICEMAN), yet it also contains many characteristics of the RPG genre. These include character class selection (fighter, magic user or thief) and character statistics that really do influence play. There are abilities such as strength, intelligence and agility, and skills such as parry, stealth and magic. I believe Beyond Zork had introduced a strong RPG influence to adventure games some years prior, but since that was Interactive Fiction, Hero’s Quest was the first graphical adventure game of note to do so. The game also introduced an increased level of realism, with day and night impacting play both visually and from an encounter perspective. The main character has to eat regularly and becomes tired from running and fighting, requiring rest and sleep. I don’t really recall having to eat, but I definitely recall having to watch my stamina while fighting. I’m genuinely interested to see how the combination of my favourite genres holds up today!


I believe I have played both the original SCI0 version of the game and the SCI1.1 version that was released in 1992 (both in my early teens), but I can’t be sure of that. The remake drops the text parser for an entirely point and click approach, and while it’s once again tempting to play the shinier version, I’ll be playing the original so I can make a fair judgement of the game compared to others of the same period (I’ll likely play the remake when we reach 1992). Thankfully both versions came in the Quest For Glory Collection that I purchased from GOG in preparation last year. Quite a few readers have also made that purchase, and others have since won the collection for predicting what score I will give each game. Since Lars-Erik (our awesome sponsor) has already sent me the GOG gift key for Emmanuelle and I’ve temporarily skipped that game, I will be offering the collection to the first person to solve my riddle below (the next game is on me Lars-Erik). Regular readers will know where to find it. I do hope the winners play along with me, and make sure you all visit Chet’s blog at http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com in the coming weeks to see his take on things. I believe he’ll be playing as a thief, while I’ll be entering Spielburg as a fighter. Why? Well, as Chet would say...because!



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