Stefan Gagne
@stefangagne
Lead writer for Fiction Factory Games, creators of Arcade Spirits and Penny Larceny. Also wrote a lot of online YA novels. Trying to be a generally okay he/him.
Last Night: you know, my elbow is feeling a lot better today. Maybe the worst of it is behind me. Tomorrow morning, I'll get up, take my shower right away, do some writing and Today:
Got blocked by another AI bitcoin enthusiast. You can tell that they're a vibe coder because there are three "has added you to the" and only two "moderation lists." I don't think this code is going to compile.
When I was a kid, I told myself "I want to work at Sierra On-line when I grow up!". I knew when I played this game that I wanted to be a game designer. I wanted to make stories and worlds people loved and returned to, again and again. It inspired me with stars in my eyes to reach for more.
The final box on the shelf is a doozy. Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (1989) was my first "AAA" computer game, with eye-popping graphics (for the time) and amazing music (for the time). I hadn't even played SQ1 or SQ2 but this called to me, and I responded. The vibes are immaculate.
Notably this let me play as a game designer, thanks to the "Mission Architect" system, which let you create story arcs with NPCs and more. When CoH shut down I was devastated. Once fan servers popped I played again for a time, before disability and a fan dev difficulty ramp-up lost me.
I made dozens and dozens of original characters; "OCs," if you will, to experiment with different builds and narrative concepts. I roleplayed. I even prototyped characters that'd end up in visual novels, like Penny Larceny. I made friends, I wrote stories, CoH was everything I'd ever wanted.
Box #12 is City of Heroes (2004-2012), a superhero MMORPG. I am not kidding when I say this DEFINED my life for over a decade, on official servers and beyond. It was the first MMO game to have a modern urban setting and to divorce character stats from appearance, allowing amazing customization.
It feels so good to be seen for who I am and what I believe in. (Although for the record, no problem with VR. I just can't use it because my glasses are too big and I have mobility problems.)
OK, but what is the game? Yeah, it's the hacking mini game from BioShock as a standalone experience. It's become shorthand for so many different little puzzles in other games that at this point it has no identity of its own. I love it, despite being a failed attempt to take the crown of Tetris.
As a kid, I was completely drawn to the Lucas version of the box art. This cute little plumber guy, the maze of pipes, the whole aesthetic of it screamed to me. But that aesthetic was not consistent from platform to platform! They got buck wild with some of these pieces of art.
Box #11 is Pipe Dream (1989) which is, confusingly enough, a Lucasfilm Games release. Or maybe it's a Bulletproof Software release! Or Microsoft...? So yeah, the original was made for Amiga and then the rights got sold all over the place to everyone for a series of very slipshod budget ports.
It's not the peak of this team's capabilities, I believe that would be Monkey Island, but even their later games would not reach this level of interlocking puzzle complexity and physical space. I'd love to see a remake which omits the few cheap deaths and softlocks but focuses on the core strength.
The game takes place entirely within one mansion, with a strong sense of place and connectivity. Puzzles can be solved in different ways depending on your party composition. There's a real feeling of a living locale in interactivity between the different rooms and the mobile Edison family members.
Box #10 is Maniac Mansion (1987). An absolute classic. It got an NES version, a forgettable TV show, an amazing legacy sequel, all the trimmings. And I would argue that this game is in the ancestral tree of modern immersive sims, with a fascinating non-linear design structure. Very ambitious!
I played this one with the bad C64 160x200 fat pixels. It was also released in full EGA, and weirdly enough, nearly VGA on the obscure Japanese only FM Towns Marty console. See screenshots. Games released during the transition between decades can be a real mixed bag of technology.
One more box that I think I need to unplug from Bluesky for a while. Being in the spotlight has not been fun. Box #9 is Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988). It's less well-known and then it's younger brother maniac mansion, and a more sprawling and confusing game. But still a classic.
Box #8 is The Secret of Monkey Island (1990). Quite possibly the pinnacle of the point-and-click, doing away with cheap deaths, soft blocks, and many other frustrating conventions. It valued humor over punishment, staying approachable to all players. Modern games could learn from that.
They did a complete reimagining of it recently with impressive volumetric FMV for the characters. But a lot of the charm has gone at this point because it just feels like a standard iPad puzzle game with a thin story stapled on top, lacking any camp. You can't recapture the originality.
This did make the game very clunky to play, as you had to sit there and wait through the various transitions even when solving a puzzle. The writing was also ridiculously campy with community theater acting, but that was likely intentional. Amazing soundtrack, either way. Absolute bangers.
Box #7 is the game that single-handedly sold CD-ROM drives, The 7th Guest (1993). Functionally very similar to Myst, but using full motion video for transitions between scenes. Everything completely pre-rendered, with ghostly people overlaying the images. Low tech but high impact.
Fun fact about this game is that it's built on the back of what's basically PowerPoint for Mac... a system of "hypercards" that were designed for interactive business presentations but quickly adapted to play point and click games. See also Cosmic Osmo, a black and white precursor, and The Manhole.
Sadly we're out of obscure 80s jank, so it's on to the popular titles. Box #6 is Myst The Surrealistic Adventure That Will Become Your World. (You gotta say the whole thing, it's like A Tribe Called Quest.) I own this game like six times over; digital, remasters, full 3-D versions, and more.
"You can make a game entirely with a one-button joystick" is a hell of a promise... but it has to do so with the clunkiest UI ever. It's like a complex gearshift knob on a car. Graphics being kinda weak and slow did not help matters! Still, what it lacked in power it made up for in simplicity.
Box #5 is Adventure Construction Set (1984). Like Pinball Construction Set, I was immediately drawn to a game that can make other games. It provided a simple (VERY simple...) toolset to make games similar to the original Ultima. They could even be self-booting and standalone for distribution.
Box #4 is "In Search of the Most Amazing Thing" (1983). It's from an educational software publisher, promising a vast world to explore, alien diplomacy to learn, trades and auctions, and searching for a lost relic. And it is an absolute hot mess of barely playable, incomprehensible jank.