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EGA Games w/Julia Minamata
0 Playsin 1 hour
Ben & Jess are joined by Julia Minamata (The Crimson Diamond) to talk about why EGA era games still look so darn good. We also talk a bunch about her game The Crimson Diamond.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
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Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:30
Speaker
It's Quest Quest. The adventure game podcast. Oh, Jess, let's let's let's ah jump right into it. We have a special guest this week.
00:00:42
Speaker
i So excited to bring her in. Could not be more excited. This is a real treat. Yeah.
Julia Minamata's Game Design Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
ah Julia Minamata is an artist and game designer who's worked on art for games like Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator and Space Warlord Baby.
00:01:01
Speaker
Trading simulator. I need to play the the second one. I have played the first. I really enjoyed it. ah She launched the the game, the Crimson Diamond in 2024 in the EGA adventure game mystery like Laura Bow, the Colonel's Bequest. We'll definitely be talking about that.
00:01:18
Speaker
Welcome in. Hello, Julia. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, what a thrill. ah Jess has been playing the the guest Diamond ah these past weeks on his stream.
00:01:30
Speaker
Yes, it is delightful as everyone else. I'm guessing lot of our listeners have also played it or watched streams of it. What an accomplishment. What joy to to get to play. And what joy to get to talk to you about it.
00:01:42
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much for streaming it and sharing it with your community because... 2024, don't know how you guys feel about it, but it feels like a long time ago me now. Yes. And a billion, trillion games have come out since then. And there's just so many amazing games coming out. And there's there's only so much time in a day and a week.
00:02:02
Speaker
And anytime someone, now especially now more than ever, decides they're going to play it, stream it, all that stuff, it's super important to me because it just, you're kind of bringing it back up in people's minds or introducing it to them for the first time. And there's like that's really important to me. So thank you so much for playing it and for streaming it.
00:02:21
Speaker
ah it is a pleasure. Absolutely. No, thank you. And it's also because of the ah the graphic style and the fact that it's a text parser.
00:02:34
Speaker
It's also like it's kind of out of time. Like, you know, I don't think like it's not a 2024 game. It's not like it kind of it it lives. It has a very special timelessness. Yeah, it exists simultaneously in 2024 and 1989, which is of beautiful because I feel like I do as well. I exist in 1989 and two years before the current day, roughly, is where I also reside. So that checks out. Yeah.
00:03:01
Speaker
I'm a little behind on everything. Aren't we all, though? i And we'll we'll ah we'll we'll talk more about that when we
Hosts' Personal Updates
00:03:11
Speaker
get to... ah the the ah overall topic of today.
00:03:18
Speaker
but first, ah how are how are ah both of you doing Jess? I'll start with you, Jess, how are you doing today? I'm doing terrific. You know, i was saying before the stream, I'm nearing the end of my semester. My day job is is teaching at a university and we are in ah the the tail end of our spring semester right now. We're about to enter what we call dead week at our university, ah which I believe is called that because everyone at the university wishes they were dead by that point in the semester. So, yeah, but doing well. I'm cruising toward the cruising toward the end and had ah had a nice day of classes today. But I'm well. How about you, Ben? Are you been having fun with public transit?
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah. ah Yeah. So, ah Julia, you might not know, i live in Chicago. um And ah immediately before this, I have a class that I take.
00:04:14
Speaker
And usually I come in and have about 20 minutes before the podcast to kind of, ah but there there was a train derailment and ah everyone's fine.
00:04:25
Speaker
No one was hurt other than a train. The train was probably hurt, but no people were. So that's very, yeah very important. Very glad about that. Not to diminish the suffering of the train. No, no,
00:04:39
Speaker
But um i ah ah what it led to was i rode a train and then the conductor is like, all right, this is as far as we go.
00:04:51
Speaker
and And then like riding a bus and then running up the street. And it's also a a very warm day ah here. ah And I refuse to turn my air conditioner on this early in the year.
00:05:07
Speaker
Just don't want to. I just don't want to. Right. Come on. but i But I probably should at this point. It's pretty warm. It was warm here today, too. We had flurries last weekend, which is very upsetting. But yeah, it has been warm recently.
00:05:21
Speaker
ah And yeah, so and you're up in where like what what region of Canada are you in Ontario, toronto Toronto. Oh, you're in Toronto. yeah Oh, cool. Okay.
00:05:32
Speaker
Which I hear is very similar to Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys are, I guess, windier, I'm assuming. But yeah, I mean, it's basically the same type of weather, I'd say. And and how are you doing today?
Post-Launch Projects and Collaborations
00:05:45
Speaker
I am doing well. Yeah, I have been, after the Crimson Diamond launched, I decided I wanted to focus on just some small little projects because that game took a while come out. It took many, many years. And yeah, it's been a wonderful time, not only working on my own small things, but collaborating with other people and also working on, yes, Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator pixel art, which is really nice.
00:06:11
Speaker
Oh, it's so fun. It's so fun to work because it's it's basically like one bit art, really. it's Yeah. And it's in it's so much fun and and lower resolution than even the Crimson Diamond is. And i also um did a Playdate Season 2 game with Golosso Games called Change is Lucky Escape. That is an adventure game as well. um And it's black and white. That was so much fun to put together with him.
00:06:32
Speaker
And i also made over the garden wall, a tiny over the garden wall adventure game, which is free to play on my itch.io page if you want to play that. You can even play it in browser. And that was a commission that I got last year.
Creative Processes in Game Design
00:06:45
Speaker
And I don't know if you guys know the show.
00:06:48
Speaker
but you guys know the show over the garden wall? No, I'm not familiar with it. It is, I recommend it very, very highly. There's about 10 episodes, I think, but they're all like 23 minutes long or something if you were going to stream it. So it's a couple hours tops to watch the whole thing.
00:07:02
Speaker
And is one of the best cartoon series probably ever. And it came out about 11 years ago. And I remember when it came out, i I loved it so much and I was a big fan of it. And when I got this opportunity to to work on a a tiny adventure game for it, I like totally jumped at the chance.
00:07:19
Speaker
And I got to work with some of the people who worked on the show even, um includ including Elijah Wood, who was the whoa the main character um who voiced the the character in that. And i so I got to like write lines for Elijah Wood and he did them for me. Oh, wow.
00:07:35
Speaker
you know I'm looking at, I Googled this and it's one of those things where now that I've Googled it, I realize I've seen images from this on social media and just had no context for what it was. ah ah Now it's like, okay, now I have a name to put to this. It looks adorable. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's really, they wanted it to be for just this Halloween event they had last last Halloween. and And the brief was something that's going to take like 15 to 20 minutes to play, ah you know, two or three backgrounds, like rooms in it. And that's it. So very, very, very small game. And even still, there's like a PDF walkthrough of it. If anyone wants to play it, we please go ahead. It's absolutely free to play. um
00:08:13
Speaker
But yeah, stuff like that, where I just got to do something in it for a few months and then put it out and then it's out there and people get to to enjoy it. And yeah.
Streaming and New Game Projects
00:08:22
Speaker
That's been my year. ah and And now right now what I've been doing, and and I also stream um on Tuesdays at 8 p.m.
00:08:28
Speaker
I've been making a tiny adventure game next. That's my next thing. Is that the AGI style? Yes, the AGI style. Or is it in AGI or you? No. Okay. I'm using A-Sprite for artwork. But I've always loved that AGI style artwork.
00:08:47
Speaker
so much and i knew i didn't want to commit to like a multiple year-long project for that style but i knew i wanted to explore that style at least somewhat and i've been taking the opportunity to yet to make a tiny little adventure game the working title is the deadly bluff and also take that opportunity to learn more ace bright because it's a really really good pixel art program that i dabbled in slightly with the crimson diamond but Because the development cycle was kind of like had all this momentum already. I didn't want to change you know anything that I was using midstream or anything like that. So um this has been a wonderful way for me to learn about this this program and also yeah delve into this this even more retro style of EGA graphics.
00:09:28
Speaker
That's ah what a like we we just ah our our last episode was on ah Gold Rush. Yes, yes, I saw that. I'm like, yes, exactly. I've been looking at a lot of Gold Rush screenshots. It's a gorgeous game.
00:09:45
Speaker
Beautiful. Yes. Did you ever, did you ever play um AGI games either like at the time or emulated in the way where it will draw in the colors on the screen?
00:10:01
Speaker
I did play them. I remember playing King's Quest III in the day. I remember playing king Space Quest one um ah Yeah, I played a few of them. I didn't play Gold Rush. I didn't play Manhunter, any of those or anything. But i yeah, did I did have distinct memories of playing like that when they draw on the screen, I think King's quest as well. Like it was magical to me. Like I love that effect so much.
00:10:24
Speaker
it's And yeah. Yeah. It's such a cool. And, and, you know, we, we've talked about ah ah on here. It's such a cool effect because it's like, you know, especially like even as a kid, I was like, Oh, it's because it's a storybook. Yeah, yeah that's always as soon as I can. I didn't realize it was a technical load bearing sort of decision, you but I mean, it looks so elegantly done. i mean, it feels like the sort of thing that would be like a crazy filter you would find. in a video editor to get it to do something like that, to layer in the vector lines and colors and everything. Yeah, but as a kid, it's like, yeah, it's just coloring in a coloring book for me. And occasionally i would feel like, you know, as you'd see the layers come in, you might get little hint of a location that was like clearly, you know, separate from the rest. might occasionally get a little peek behind the scenes of how these games are put together. ah It was just just such a such a great part of the experience. I would love to see ScumVM and some of the other emulators. ah really incorporate that more directly. um it oh grab it's So it's possible to to do that still. There's a a program called SCI Companion, kind iville forte but yeah, I'm not using it. So you will not see draw steps in this time, unfortunately, to my regret. But yeah, it's it's one of those things where I tried SCI Companion for like five minutes. I'm like, this is, I'm not going to do this. ten times about this too Too much. way an older Older piece of software, right? Has that been updated in recent years or am I just behind on it?
00:11:54
Speaker
I don't know, actually. i'm not too sure. I might be wrong about that. I'm just taking wild stabs at things. But no, uh... Yeah, that I think, you know, Ben and I have a little bit of a gap in age between us. Like for me, AGI was where I started out gaming. King's Quest 2 was my first PC game. And I really devoured a lot of those AGI games as they were coming out. And, you know, for me, when it was like time to, know, when me and my friends made StairQuest, it was all about like, how can we take this
00:12:29
Speaker
AGI aesthetic and recreate it And sort of the difference we ended up splitting, it's like, ah you know, how true to the form are you versus where do you cheat a little bit to create kind of the version of AGI you remember in your head? i think we cheated a lot more than you did. Like we have, I think sometimes there were like 19 colors on the screen at once. So a few little shortcuts like that. And, you know, but it is such ah a fun, you effort. I say this is the person who wasn't the artist. that you to I'd be like, we should really recreate this look. Tell me how that goes. I'd love to see her
00:13:05
Speaker
ah Yeah, no, it's, I think that there is such nostalgia in this community for that. And, you know, Ben and I have talked ah about this before as well. You know, I suspect a lot of the artists working on it back then probably found it hugely frustrating to be limited to this, you know, low resolution and this limited palette. And for it to be an aesthetic choice that a lot of creators choose to embrace today, I'm sure is baffling to a lot of the people who were in the industry at the time.
00:13:35
Speaker
Absolutely. ah Because yeah, when i when i played these games, I was a kid and I didn't have to deal with like the blood, sweat and tears that it took to get the games to be like that. I only was coming at it from childlike wonder and not thinking like this was a compromise, you know, whatever was on the screen. It was just pure joy to me. And that's why I was so interested in recreating that look is to recreate that, yeah, the feeling I had when I was a kid.
00:13:57
Speaker
And I feel very fortunate that the tools nowadays are at the point where If you have very limited technical knowledge, which I still consider myself being one of those people, you can you can still make stuff and not be an engineer or anything like that. You can actually have these wonderful accessible tools like Adventure Game Studio, which is what I used for the Crimson Diamond and I'll be subsequently using i'm going forward because it is the wonderful tool with an excellent community around it and and just being able to get help from other Adventure Game Studio developers when I'm stuck on something.
00:14:28
Speaker
um I could not have finished anything had it not been for the community. So i we'll we'll detour because now we're going way too on topic. I'm so sorry. no No, no, no. This is just shocking to all of our listeners. Usually Ben and I take 45 minutes to talk about anything relevant to adventure games. So this is this is great. They're all like, finally, can we can we switch to this format? okay ah But i I have a question.
00:14:55
Speaker
ah And ah Julie, i I'll ask you. what Have you been playing? No. And I can throw up to Jazz if you don't want to be on the spot. No, no, no, no. no this this I'm prepared for this. Uh-huh. Is Jazz going to playing the entire time? Oh, yeah. yes That's an important part of it. yeah To transport you into a cool club where you're playing a game.
00:15:21
Speaker
Right. That's what we do all the time. Yeah, that's right. You got to a Jazz club with your laptop. Well. I did mention I stream, and I stream on Tuesdays, and I do game development, but I also play retro games.
00:15:33
Speaker
And what I've been playing and very much enjoying recently is a game from 1986, published by Enix, which later became Square Enix. yeah And it's a game by Yuji Horii, who is of course famous for creating the Dragon Quest series. Yeah.
00:15:49
Speaker
But before then, he created three mystery adventure games. What? The first game is Portopia Serial Murder Case. Okay. Which in Japanese is Portopia, Renzo Kasetsuji Njiken.
00:16:02
Speaker
And I did play that on stream. I had a fabulous time with it. I'm playing, i think accidentally I'm playing the third one right now, which is, um... Kurizawa Yukai Anai, and then there's a third game that is Hokkaido Rensa Satujin. And they're, you know, they have the draw steps as well, even though it's completely different yeah engine that they're using. I'm playing and it on emulator, on an MSX emulator.
00:16:27
Speaker
yeah Having a ball with it, like what he's playing with in terms of the UI for it, it's got... um Kind of like a scum interface, but there's no mouse yet because it's 1986. Right. and you gotta if you want to do like a particular verb, then you have to press like an action button, like you know one to talk to somebody or two to investigate something. Then you get a list of things that you can, you know, one is fire hydrant, two is telephone booth, three is, you know, lawn. And then you press the three if you want to investigate the lawn.
00:16:52
Speaker
But then, when you get to different state, I'm in chapter five of this game, and sometimes, like, now it's like a point-and-click interface where if you want to investigate, you then have to use, like, the arrow keys to, like, move an icon with arrow keys, and then you have to, like, activate that, try to activate that particular hotspot.
00:17:07
Speaker
They even have a part that's got text parser where you have to, like, look in, ah like, ah a roster of names, and you have to, like, enter in the name in Japanese. yeah So I'm fascinated by it because it's doing so many different types of input methods in one game. Yeah.
00:17:22
Speaker
and having a ball because I, of course, I don't have any background with these types of games. I didn't even own a console growing up. And I've been really happy that I've been able to use some of my time on my stream to set that aside to actually sit down and play stuff because a lot of game developers, myself included,
00:17:40
Speaker
We don't seem to really make time to actually play stuff so much, and I really wanted to to correct that. Because not only is playing retro games just fun from a nostalgic perspective, but it's also really educational.
00:17:52
Speaker
Because it it reminds us of like, here's some game design stuff that we really love, and here's maybe some stuff maybe we want to like not do anymore or or just improve upon. And I was constantly thinking about that when I was making the Crimson Diamond.
00:18:04
Speaker
So that's what I've been playing. that's That is so fascinating to me that he was like, because I didn't, because I poked in and I watched you ah playing this and I did notice this really interesting like interface. I was like, well that's really, um and and I just kind of wonder what,
00:18:31
Speaker
like what And I mean, I don't know if you you have an answer to this. I'm just like curious. like I wonder what he was drawing from, if anything, in in that game. like if If it was inspired by like anything from over here or other Japanese games. like I know that like Dragon Quest has some lineage from being inspired by wizardry, is my understanding.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so I wonder, like was there like another like ah similar thing? Because I know Wizardry was, like when it went over to Japan, it was a massive hit. So I'm just curious, like was he inspired by something? like Where did that come from? I'm i'm just so intrigued by this.
00:19:20
Speaker
That's a really good question. And i'm there's actually this really beautiful longstanding tradition of Japanese mystery games that I'm just learning about now. oh There's another developer, Rika Suzuki, who is ah a lady, of a female of Japanese game developer who has developed a number of mystery games, including stuff that even made it across to North America, like Hotel Dusk on the Nintendo DS. Oh, Yes, of course.
00:19:41
Speaker
And she also made other games like these JB Harrow games, maybe Murder Club and things. I'm wondering if they were in the same cohort or if one inspired the other, I'm not too sure. but yeah, i've I've really been... interested in just digging into that stuff and and getting taking advantage of all the emulators and available. And another thing um also that I kind of took into account when playing these is I'm playing them in Japanese because I actually don't think Kurizawa Yukai Anai has an English translation, and I don't think Hokkaido Rensasachujin either does, but I'm also trying to learn Japanese at the same time. And so it's kind of like my way to, to you know, practice my my reading and pronunciation and comprehension. Of course, I've got like Google Translate on my phone up with me as well to kind of try to help me learn things. And Chad has been wonderful too. And there's something like super niche or something cultural that I'm kind of missing the nuance on.
00:20:32
Speaker
um Sometimes somebody can help out with that as well. And so, yeah, there's like so many really good reasons to just be playing these retro and playing the ones I'd never played before. It's been it's been a wonderful experience for like dozens of reasons.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that that is so cool. I love to hear that. i love I love to hear, like, I was talking about this on our Discord ah like earlier this week about like...
00:21:01
Speaker
I'm really fascinated by a lot of ah computer games specifically from like kind of before the 90s from outside of the United States because like in Europe and in Japan and like in elsewhere.
00:21:20
Speaker
um and i'm I'm sure like this could also be true. And like, I don't know in South America and Africa. I don't know. um Like There, uh, before, like, the ninety s it seems like each of these had, like, completely their own kind of computer culture.
00:21:41
Speaker
Before we decided, like, exactly what a computer game was supposed to be and the industry kind of locked into, you know, a few ways that you that you choose to make one, it's such a fascinating period. Yeah, and I know so little, but it's just this undiscovered country. for me to literally and figuratively to get to to look at some of these and and and try to learn about them. Like, ah you know, I was looking at some screenshots of Portopia and some of the perspective that it uses in the in the graphics.
00:22:16
Speaker
really reminds me of Wizard and the Princess, the the earlier Sierra game back in the online systems days. But no, it looks fascinating. And yeah, the interface looks pretty neat. No, that's awesome. Thank you.
00:22:30
Speaker
Jess, what have you been playing? What have I been playing? Well, I am in a game. It better be as interesting. it I spent all day writing up this statement. Let me just find it. No. Um...
00:22:44
Speaker
I mean, it is interesting and that may be the problem. a who I've been going back. I need to capture some some footage for a little project I'm working on and I've been playing Manhunter again. Oh no. Amazing. And let me tell you, yeah, I thought It's like I played through Manhunter for the first time maybe a year and a half ago or so on stream. I never played it as a kid. Honestly, all the screenshots I saw of it creeped me out too much. was like, I don't know if if like 10 year old me was ready for Manhunter. It would have terrified me. Yeah, yeah.
00:23:20
Speaker
um And when I played it ah couple of years ago, i was like, okay, this is super interesting, but I don't think I get it. And I want to get I want this weird game that doesn't fit anywhere with the rest of Sierra's catalog. It's just like a strange use of the AGI engine.
00:23:37
Speaker
Everything about it feels wrong. And I'm like, I think there's an interesting game here. i just couldn't appreciate it when i was playing it for the first time live and like had a walkthrough up in one tab and the, you know, stream up in another. So I like, I'm really going to appreciate it this time through when I sit down and actually give it a chance. And you know what?
00:23:53
Speaker
I still find it mystifying and upsetting. And it could be, I'm just never going to love Manhunter, which means, of course, it's almost time I need to stream Manhunter 2, right? And maybe that's the problem. Maybe I should. Maybe once I have the whole series oh sure that'll fix all of my misunderstandings with like why the first one seemed like an upsetting slog. So yeah, I've been back at Manhunter and still utterly perplexed by it.
00:24:23
Speaker
And so on the topic of graphical ah throwbacks, I've been playing the game. I believe it's still in early access. Let me i have it pull it out. Yeah, it's still in early access. the game X Zodiac.
00:24:42
Speaker
m ah X Zodiac is a Star Fox SNES throwback. So it has those flat vector...
00:24:58
Speaker
like kind of the moon. Look at those polygons. Yeah, it's like just solid color polygons, bright colors, little animal pop-ups going right remember like Oh, look those explosions. Look at those bit mapped explosions. Now, I do have to warn you, it's very difficult.
00:25:22
Speaker
yeah can never yeah I could never play Star Fox. Like, it was too difficult for me, so I'm sure this will be worse. Like, Star Fox, it's funny, Star Fox 64 is actually more my my star fox Um... Hashtag got my Star Fox. Yeah. Uh, but... You know, like, I am still... I do love the... Like, the 16-bit era a faux 3D trying to make, like, a 3D... Because I remember I could put myself in my my mind as, ah like, a kid at that time...
00:26:05
Speaker
And the idea of something being in 3D on my Genesis was like, it was like, holy, I can't believe and this is in 3D on my Genesis. That's one more D than most of the games I'm playing.
00:26:23
Speaker
and And so, like, it scratches this little... part of my brain when I see these these graphics and like where it's like, wow, we're getting away with something.
00:26:38
Speaker
We were doing three d on the like in 16 bit. And I remember I was like so recently when I was playing Xodiac,
00:26:50
Speaker
I was hanging out with a couple friends on on ah like ah a private Discord channel with some of my close friends.
00:27:00
Speaker
i was just sharing my screen and I was like, I said to my friend, I never beat the first level. That's how hard this is. And because I said that, I was so locked in that I made it all the way, like, to the third, like, I... last them you did I started to lock in when when I said to my friend, I was like, Lara, I'm not, um you're just going to see me, like, crash and burn on the first level.
00:27:26
Speaker
I played this first level, like, a dozen times, and then... that was that was the moment that's the breakthrough that's the breakthrough i mean that's how it goes like in a game especially of that era it's like you're stuck you're stuck you're stuck and then the one time you finally get past it you like blow past it a few no more levels down the game I mean that is as the classic especially i think retro console game experience, And then the one part you couldn't finish and then once you finish, it's like, okay, i beat world for three and now I'm just gonna power on through to like world six one. That was the only thing holding me back.
00:28:03
Speaker
The the the the kind of like a way that they they make it a little more modern is that it's like well number one I don't think like an SNES could could quite have this many but it also it runs at kind of a higher frame rate which also like looks it actually looks really cool to have like these flat ah polygons and these big chunky graphics moving so smoothly like my brain is like how'd they do that it's like e says is probably that part was probably the easier part
00:28:39
Speaker
But yeah, so that's what I've been playing. ah And also, you know, it it kind of ties into the theme. It is not ah a ah EGA game, but it is a purposeful ah throwback, a celebration of of a specific aesthetic that was thrust on the people that made Fox.
00:29:03
Speaker
That was the best they could do. But um so so, yeah, let's let's get into it. we were We were talking a little bit before we we started, Julia, about, like, we, Jess and I, we've and we've said this on this podcast before,
00:29:22
Speaker
that we love the look of the SEI Zero games. And honestly, I couldn't even really tell you which one I think is the best looking one because I think they all, like even Codename Iceman, which is mostly kind of static, it doesn't have that many, it has that beautiful sunset scene.
00:29:42
Speaker
It does. they' They're standing up. Like, I don't know if you're familiar with with that sunset scene, but it's like, I think it's really beautiful. But it's like, ah ah both of the Quests for Glories, I think, are beautiful. ah Laura Bow looks spectacular. Like, all of those games... Space Quest 3, oh my goodness. Yeah, like, have always... and And I've always been like, oh, that's one of my favorite. And when I... You put out a demo. When did... Do you recall when you put out the the demo for for Crimson Diamond?
00:30:16
Speaker
I think it might have been something like 2018. Like, late 2018. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I remember like somebody retweeting it and, and I download, I was like, someone's doing this. cause someone Someone's making a game like this.
00:30:33
Speaker
And I downloaded that demo and, and, uh, uh, played like just 10 minutes of it. And I was like, I'm not going to play any further because I know this is exactly what I want.
00:30:45
Speaker
And I don't, I don't need to, I'm sold. um And so, like, you know, it's it's exciting to have you both as an artist and a designer who also like appreciates this and and hopefully can help us unpack why is it so great?
00:31:05
Speaker
And maybe before we dive too far into it, maybe for our listeners that aren't familiar with the Crimson Diamond, could you tell everyone what the Crimson Diamond is? Yeah, absolutely. The Crimson Diamond is a cozy mystery adventure game.
00:31:20
Speaker
it ah yeah it's It's very retro styled. It's got that 16 color EGA color palette. It's got a text parser interface. It's got a soundtrack composed on a Roland MT-32.
00:31:33
Speaker
A genuine, real Roland M-P-22. I didn't know that. i didn't I didn't either. That's amazing. Yeah, Dan. Dan Policar is incredible. The incredible composer for the soundtrack. He made more than 40 minutes of music for the game. we We composed, we collaborated on the soundtrack, most of it on live on Twitch, in fact. Oh, cool.
00:31:53
Speaker
He kind of hooked up somehow the Roland MT-32 to his Pro Tools, and we were just we were away. We just composed most of it that way. ah Really fun way to work on a soundtrack because we were we was me giving him feedback or chat giving feedback.
00:32:08
Speaker
um really fast way of working. Dan works really super fast, even despite all the limitations that that hardware has. So yeah, the game looks and plays and sounds like the old stuff, but also like talking about playing old retro games and and kind of trying to take lessons from that and saying, well, you know, that was not so enjoyable. um Maybe we don't want a limited inventory. Maybe we don't want, you know, hard locks, we don't want soft locks, we don't any of that stuff. I want to get rid of the stuff that bothered me.
00:32:36
Speaker
Even something very specific, like when you look at something like the Colonel's Bequest you've got that accidental progression of the game when you kind of stumble into an encounter. Stuff like that, like I was very aware of that stuff and not wanting to do that necessarily for what I wanted to not Not to say that that is like a mistake for them. like I think the Colonel's Bequest is really revolutionary in a lot of ways, and especially compared to what had come before.
00:32:57
Speaker
but it's not really the the way I wanted to to go about it. And, uh, yeah, so the, so the game is old school, but with some modern ah quality of life design improvements. And, um, it, uh,
00:33:10
Speaker
Is that it? like Well, I guess I should talk about what the story is. ah Yeah, it's it's I'm a Canadian. I'm here in Toronto, Ontario, and the game is set in Ontario. And it starts in and in downtown Toronto. You play Nancy Maple, ah which is kind of like this weird combination of like Miss Marple and Canada and Nancy Drew. And you're a clerk at the museum and they send you on assignment up to Crimson, Ontario, which was an old garnet mining town. And you have to investigate a diamond claim there. And while you're there, of course, hijinks and schemes happen and you have to kind of unravel everything that's going on while you while you're there.
00:33:45
Speaker
One of the the things you talk about kind of like kind of. like making it a little more like ah like a couple modern touches. One of the things I really appreciated playing the game and and and just, you know, chime in, I know you're playing it right now, is it feels...
00:34:04
Speaker
the The text parser is ah a lot friendlier and responsive than the the the games that I played from from the time. Jess, would you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the the text parser. Yeah. I've been really pleasantly surprised at some of the interactions that I've been able to pull out it. I'm a text parser nerd. You know, again, part of when we worked on Dare Quest, a big part what want to there is just create the most ridiculous parser we could on it. And that's really, to me, just rewarding to get a game to respond to something you never imagined.
00:34:46
Speaker
that the uh that the developers would anticipate you saying and uh there's a lot of that and a lot of it is does a good job of of hinting you i think the game does a really nice job in the parser of giving you a clear sense of when something isn't going to work to maybe ease off of a little bit like no matter what i can't hand somebody a raw cookie i've been carrying around in my pocket And the game makes it very clear. It's like, just quit trying, dude. Like, just leave it alone. Which, you know, i think back to games like, yes, I started on King's Quest 2. And it has those sorts of parser responses. Like, you can't do that, at least not now. Which as a kid to me, man, it's like, oh, so I can do it later. I'll just keep doing this over and over again until it does work. And yeah, I mean, that sort of quality of life having a robust ps parser and, you know, nice signposting and a lot of those messages goes a long way. it really is a quality of life feature that's I think easy to overlook.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of things that I wanted to put in that didn't really exist back in those times. Stuff like, yeah, the the notebook that that kind of shows you your objectives and and the game progression steps that you have to take. The hint book that opens up in browser that's kind of like a universal hint system style. And also, yeah, the flexibility of the text parser, which I also think back in the day was there was a bit of a limitation there as well when it came to like the technology at the time. Adventure Game Studio does have a text parser bart baked into it.
00:36:14
Speaker
didn't know that. Yeah, it's very easy. mean, it was relatively easy to implement. And I'm able to you know give it synonyms and kind of give it different ways of phrasing different sentences. And I did really try my best to to make it so that people could phrase stuff different ways. um I always say that the the the item in the game that has the most synonyms is like the trash can, because different places have different ways of saying that. They say like, waste paper basket or bin or trash can or trash. Um, and that was the one that def, I don't know how many synonyms it has, but I can tell you that that one has the most.
00:36:49
Speaker
h Did, was, uh, was making a reflexive parser. Was that something also like, uh, testers helped with or like, okay. Or even developing on stream. Did, was that a useful way to, to get some of these synonyms locked in?
00:37:06
Speaker
It was definitely, um whenever there was, I would get feedback about, you know, i think this word would also work for that, or this is what we call that here. like i would always try my best because it's relatively easy to do that in in in the game. And, you know, there was something like, oh, actually, I don't want to spoil anything. but Well, Jess, how far are you into the game? i am a bit way through chapter four.
00:37:29
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay, you're pretty far in. Okay, so let's see. Did you already hit? Maybe you haven't got to this far, so I'm not going to mention it. But, um you know, like for instance, certain items of clothing are called different things in different places. And so I'm always happy to accommodate um those those suggestions. um Not so much. I wouldn't, I was very careful when streaming the game. I didn't want to have any spoilers um showing because it's an adventure game. It's like very narrative focused.
00:37:52
Speaker
And I didn't want anyone who was going to come visit me on my streams to be worried that anything would be spoiled for them. And so most of the time that I was i would spend working on the Crimson Diamond was kind of updating the introductory sequence artwork, which was all placeholder.
00:38:06
Speaker
And it was placeholder for a long time. and there's a lot of artwork in that that intro. um And so no one knew ah what was going to happen in the game past the demo until the game launched. Yeah, that's fantastic.
00:38:18
Speaker
Except for Roberta Williams. Yeah. m Because i got to i got the opportunity to meet Roberta Williams um at the Adventure Game Fan Fair. Was that 2024, 2023? I don't remember.
00:38:29
Speaker
But they did have one. And they had a lot of Sierra alumni come in. And I got my Colonel's Bequest box signed by her and signed by Ken Williams, signed by Doug Herring, who did the artwork, who's a hero of mine. love his work so much in that game.
00:38:42
Speaker
as concept art for Dagger Vamanra is gorgeous. It was Yeah. um And so I sent her the demo and so she played a bit and she wrote a nice little blurb for my Steam store page. And she asked me, you know, about, you know, is there any murders in this game or anything like that? And I told Roberta, cause I'm not going to not tell Roberta what's what's happening in the game. yeah um And I just said, you know, well, this is is kind of what happens, but please don't tell anybody cause no one else knows. And she didn't, you know, so she was the only one who knew, but you know, besides my testers, of course, no one else knew.
00:39:15
Speaker
And I was very careful about that because yeah, like, i you know, and it's really nice that um you didn't, you didn't end up playing more in the demo because some people are very conscious about not wanting to spoil it. Some people saw the trailer and like, oh, well, i don't need to even play the demo because I know I'm going to want to try this later on. um You know, so I'm as careful as they are because yeah, that's the last thing I wanted for something I spent that long on for anyone to get spoiled about it later.
00:39:38
Speaker
And even now people don't really talk about, you know, about what's actually in the game too much. I don't think, which is nice. Yeah. um and And one thing also I appreciate from when I played it is also like there there is a degree of of kind of replayability in that like when I when i played it, and it again, well, you know, without giving anything away, there were certain mysteries that I didn't like fully pursue.
00:40:10
Speaker
And so at the end of the game, it was like, you might want to check this out. There's, you know, this whole thing that you you left aside. And so it's like, oh, well, there's there's even more. there's ah yeah there's There's a lot of game in there. Which I love as someone who like...
00:40:25
Speaker
as a kid went through Colonel's bequest, like maybe seen a quarter of the plot for several playthroughs as a, as a child, like I appreciate that. I mean, the fact that, you know already my chat has been pointed out to me that on some of the puzzles, ah multiple solutions that I, you know, that I, I solve some of these things a little bit differently. So that replayability is, is a real treat.
00:40:49
Speaker
it It can be really tricky to build replay replayability into an adventure game because it's, um Adventure games require so many assets and backgrounds and stuff. A lot of stuff doesn't, you know, doesn't get reused really. um You know, you might take hours and hours and hours on a scene that, you know, is up for three seconds and no one ever sees it again. So when it comes to stuff like branching plots and stuff like that, you really, you know, at least for me, I don't want to spend a lot of time on something that, you know, 15% of people are going to ever see. So when it, when it came to the replayability aspect of the game, I was really careful about being,
00:41:26
Speaker
kind of not wanting to, yeah, like develop a lot of assets that were going to have be one branch of something only really. Like the the game is not, I'm not going to talk about how the game is, is branched, branched and and how that works yet, because of course, yeah, Jesse have not finished the game, but yeah, I was very conscious about like, well, in terms of what, how I'm going to show difference in the game and, and and it's more like,
00:41:48
Speaker
the detail of the knowledge that you, you eventually uncover. That's, that's what is different. The degree of detail that you, that you start to learn about more than, you know, um a whole path, a side path that you would take or not. Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis. You're not, you're not doing the, there's no the nancy you have you exactly man yeah. Yeah. There's no fist path in the diamond.
00:42:16
Speaker
um And I think part part of it is because of the the way that the story is actually designed. it It's just, it's a kind of a mess um of like interconnecting things. And I think to in order to do something that's truly branching, you have to be a lot better organized than I was.
00:42:34
Speaker
um and And kind of think about think about it in a more modular way where you can kind of drop different things and replace things. And I just, it simply doesn't work like that. You tug on one thing and like five different things, you're like- Yes. Moving. So I i did not feel confident enough. So that's another reason why there's not a lot of like true branching in the game is is first of all, it would have been a lot of extra assets that a percentage of your players aren't going see. And second of all, I just don't even know if I could have like actually like done that design wise, because um i was learning how to make a game. This is my first game that i ever made. And I did not know how people design games or how they document their design process.
00:43:09
Speaker
And i would I did not have a design document until Chapter 4. Oh, wow. Because the game started to get really complicated by the time Chapter 4 rolls around. And I was having everything in my head up to that point. And it was just getting, it was really hurting my brain.
00:43:23
Speaker
yeah And by that time, I had done, you know, contract work for Strange Scaffold, the people who make, you know, a Space Warlord. Oregon Trading Simulator, and I worked with them on a number of other things. And by then, I had become privy to how people actually make games and know how know what they're doing. And, oh, people have these design documents, and they write down like what should happen and what assets they need and all those things. I thought that was a really good idea and very welcome um for when the game was getting really super complicated um to to design. And so chapter four, five, six, seven seven, Are there seven chapters in my game? I don't think so.
00:43:54
Speaker
No, four, five, and six have have design documents. And that did really help me to to get to design those. And i that was when it kind of came at the perfect time because, um yeah, it was it was becoming just too much to hold in my head at once. yeah You said there are all these ah moving pieces and and you sort of described it earlier as a mess. yeah But ah I like this, you know, as as a player.
00:44:19
Speaker
And again, it's something that I loved about Colonel's Bequest growing up as well. You really feel like Nancy is in over her head, much the same way that, you know, it can feel like that in Laura Boe, if you're missing out on a lot of key conversations, like I know there are bodies popping up and stuff like that, but you know, what the heck's going on here is a mystery to me, which feels kind of right. mean, you know, Nancy nor Laura is like a professional detective, but it's the imagination. And I feel like that works. And that rewards a player who wants to go back and be like, well, I think I can actually do better than that did that first time around and and wrap my brain around more of what's going on here so i want to return a little bit to like this the the the the question of the the 16 colors of of ega what what appeals about that that for you yes they're okay there okay there's something about
00:45:20
Speaker
simpler graphics that I always find more appealing, more compelling, more engaging than super hyper-realistic graphics. Mm-hmm. And I would have to say it's got to do with kind of like when you're reading like a novel, you know, those tend to have any pictures. You kind of are left up to the reader's imagination to create that in your head. And I've always felt that simpler graphics leaves room for the player's interpretation of what is going on with what things look like, what people look like, which I think is a lot more fun than having something that's incredibly...
00:45:55
Speaker
realistically depicted. um There's just so little wiggle room for imagination when it comes to stuff like that. mean, just taste-wise, those games are incredible achievements, you know, technically, creatively. I'm not going to, like, say that they're not because they absolutely 100% are. I'm very impressed with with what is possible nowadays. But that's never really been what has made games fun or interesting to me.
00:46:15
Speaker
And when you have these limitations, like the 16 color EGA color palette, it it does force you to be creative. and If you can't do everything, you have to choose a few things that you can do. And those choices are what are interesting to me.
00:46:28
Speaker
And specifically when it comes to EGA, the colors are not, I don't want to say they're not great because that's, yeah colors are very subjective. They're very taste-based, but yeah,
00:46:42
Speaker
People who are far more technical than me have have informed me that that particular palette was, again, ah technical consideration based on, well, what is easy to depict. I mean, whatever the coding or hex or whatever they're doing there, it's it's very efficient to to have these colors. And it was not i just it was not an aesthetic choice. And the colors are all very, very bright. yeah that's kind of what i love too i love the brightness and then also how like purpley and ah like night is oh yeah night scenes in each day like glow they're beautiful yeah purple and that dark blue
00:47:23
Speaker
And then a little, be then you get like the bright oranges for any light source. I don't know. How about like the nighttime sky in, uh, Shapir uh, quest for glory too. Uh, just, yeah.
00:47:36
Speaker
It's, it's, it's like luminous and it's a type of thing that only really works on a display, like a computer display. Um, it reminds me of like stained glass, even it's just, the light is shining through to us in this, these very bright colors.
00:47:49
Speaker
And what's amazing to me is the, yeah, the ability of the artists to create all kinds of moods and atmospheres with what are like Lego, like basic Lego brick colors, like not even the stuff they have nowadays with Lego, but, um,
00:48:03
Speaker
That's fascinating to me. Also what's fascinating to me is that um when you look at those screenshots, everything, yeah, crystal clear, crisp pixel graphics, because we all know what came after EGA, which was VGA, which was, you know, was scanned in painted backgrounds that were then down sampled because for space for space considerations. And it was blurry. That stuff was very blurry. And And I don't mind that as a style, but I've always liked the crispness of seeing every single pixel and what it's doing in an EGA background. And I think that crispness did help me as I was kind of studying the style of EGA to to learn how to do it myself.
00:48:40
Speaker
um Because you knew exactly, okay, well, we we know we're working with 320.200 resolution. We know we're working with the 16 colors um and nothing else. There's there's no mystery there. And that part was really was really fun to me too. Also, I just really love super bright colors. Yeah.
00:48:58
Speaker
I agree with you. It's all like, you know, something I think about a lot is when I play newer city builders, like say City Skylines or City Skyline 2, I always go back and I go, think SimCity 3000 looks the best because SimCity 3000 has like, especially...
00:49:24
Speaker
Because that came out in what, like the late 90s, early 2000s. It has that Maxis super bright palette that you have in The Sims 1.
00:49:39
Speaker
And you have like in a couple of other things that they were doing at that time. And I love like the bright... green, the bright, like when to me, that's what a city builder city looks like is like the candy colors. yeah Yeah. And I love this comparison that you made to stained glass. Like I'd never thought of the EGA graphics like that, But you said that it's like, oh, yeah, no, that's that's that's a great comparison. You know, it does feel almost like yeah the the colors are shining out of your monitor at you. And yeah I mean, it it really is for someone.
00:50:16
Speaker
ah yeah I played King's Quest 2 when I was nine years old or whatever, and it was amazing. Like it was an open world, hyper realistic simulator in my head. Because again, you know, those graphics leave so much room for imagination. Like I was happy to fill in all the blanks of everything that was going on on that screen. And yeah, it really is just sort of magical in the way. I think leaving the room for imagination, as you said, really goes a long way.
00:50:46
Speaker
I think a bit ah about the ah catacombs in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in the EGA version, yeah which are all just like kind of black with just some light outlines. yeah And there's a lot of like negative space.
00:51:07
Speaker
And when you look at, you know, what is generally in circulation, like you have to track down the EGA version the Last Crusade. Yeah, which I did played that last one.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah. um If you play the the the, like the VGA version of it, it loses a lot of that atmosphere and a lot of those look like the the secret of monkey island yes to 256 is pretty good and that's like i'm i'm like i prefer the the the 16 color version of it especially how they draw a lane's hair yes here and all these like spirals in it which are really beautiful um but uh
00:51:49
Speaker
But then like you look at the ah the versions of ah Last Crusade and especially Loom. i Yes. Yeah.
00:52:00
Speaker
All those deluxe paint gradients running wild. You don't need gradients. You need dithering. Yeah. Yeah. Dithering. Oh, I love the dithering. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, and and and also even from like a game design, like a practical consideration when it comes to EGA versus VGA is when you had those early VGA games and you had the sprites and then you had objects you could interact with, those objects and those sprites had a limited palette and they stuck out like sore thumbs on those backgrounds.
00:52:30
Speaker
And EGA games, everything was perfectly integrated. The sprites had the same palette as the background, had the same palette as the objects in the in the scene. So you couldn't say, okay, well, I know I can pick up that bucket because that bucket is clearly, know, pixeled in a way that the background is not.
00:52:46
Speaker
And I love that part of it too. It just feels truly, everything is is integrated harmoniously. Yeah. never like I always noticed that I always knew that like because it's like yeah you're playing any any game like you'll see like kind of the items that you interact with kind of you're like I know I'm i'm going to interact with this I know I'm going to pick it up exactly but you don't do that with with ah the earlier ones I didn't ah I didn't think of that as a palette thing but that makes a lot of sense I just was always like don't know it looks different
00:53:23
Speaker
I mean, nowadays nowadays, obviously you could just do whatever you want because anything is possible. But yeah, back in those days, yeah, that's kind of how it was. And in some ways I did kind of appreciate that because yeah, you could clearly see what you could interact with. But at the same time, i did I did like the fact that EGA was the way that it was in that i i wasn't i it wasn't signposted. like I wasn't being told what what I needed to look at. I kind of needed to to pay attention myself.
00:53:48
Speaker
where're ah Were the SEI Zero EGA games, were those the first ones that you were playing as a kid? No, the first game, the first adventure game that I played was King's Quest one. oh And I played it, I think like on a Tandy 1000 or something. So it was kind of, I think it was, was it like a black, just a black and green version of that game? Or did I play it in CGA first? I don't remember.
00:54:09
Speaker
um But yeah, that was the first. And then from there was the next one, it was King's Quest three, I think. King's Quest four, ah King's Quest five. Yeah. So, so like going on and on ah upwards.
00:54:21
Speaker
But I did find that, yeah, my absolute sweet spot for me was those EGA text parser games. And I think a combination, the fact that it was EGA and text parser was this magical combination for me. Yes. um Because i so I also feel like that that the point and click interface of the stuff like, you know, King's Quest V and everything, it's not it's not for me as engaging. Like, you know, like, I mean, Jess can talk about StairQuest and talk talk about the fun, the delight people have when they type something and they see and then you have anticipated that and then you have a response for them for that. Like that that is something you really cannot, you can't you can't compare that to a point click experience.
00:55:00
Speaker
Yeah, i was like when Sierra released that first batch of point and click games, I remember just being So bummed out by Matt came around to love a lot of those early games. And they got better at doing them as they went on. those point in clicks got a lot more sophisticated. That first round of like King's Quest 5 and Space Quest 4 and Larry 5 that all kind came out at the same time.
00:55:25
Speaker
I remember things like, hi, you know, I just missed my parser. idea You hear stories like I probably have most familiarity with like the development of the Space Quest games. And I know that the guys from Andromeda talked about what a bummer it was for them to find out, I think,
00:55:41
Speaker
during development that they were switching over to the point and click because yeah I know that Scott Murphy in particular loved hiding messages in in a parser to be discovered later. And, you know, I think that they they've even made it took a little while to figure out how to to to work around. I think for players, what was lowering the barrier to entry.
00:56:04
Speaker
But for them, i think probably felt like a real compromise at the time of having to to engage it. Yeah, talking about all like them kind of refining that point-to-click interface, I've recently been playing gabriel Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers, which I had played not that long ago. I didn't play back in the day. But um i'm I'm part of this YouTube channel called the Level Zero NPCs, and we've been playing all the Sierra games, the mainline Sierra games.
00:56:27
Speaker
And we finally got onto to Gabriel Knight. And there are so many... like cursors in that game. It's ridiculous. Thank goodness we have open and close and yeah. Operate and move and push and like, oh my gosh. So, so, you know, we're watching Luke, who's the one that was playing and where we're, you know, where were comment, commentating. And it's just like we're watching him cycle through the different cursors, trying to open the door or trying to operate the door knocker and just like, wow, it's just this is stressing me out mildly to watch him cycle through eight to nine or 10 different cursors.
00:57:03
Speaker
Yeah, I the the amount of verb like a lot of verbs that we don't need.
00:57:13
Speaker
In in that and just need look and solve. so it wasn't in indiana jones and last crusade i think they used turn on and turn off like once in the entire game yeah so yeah you so i believe and maybe because that's a multi-branch game kind of um at least when i played it uh last time i played it uh it you because it was a Lucas game at that point, like you'd had, it was the third. Yeah, it was the third one. And so you had Maniac Mansion and Zach McCracken, which had constant character swapping.
00:57:59
Speaker
And then Last Crusade has a moment where, at least in my playthrough, where you swap and play as Henry Jones Sr. for like 45 seconds.
00:58:11
Speaker
huh like you get to be you know sean connelly for just a moment and i'm just kind of like i guess it's because they're like well this is what we do this is their is our signature and actually fate of atlantis does that with sophia you get to be sophia and you have a slightly you have a purple in her face for a second like for just um just a moment ah So maybe, you know, maybe they just want that for the indie games, I guess. I don't know
00:58:44
Speaker
um know. I am curious, and I think i ah we have talked about this, or I've talked about this on on earlier podcasts,
00:59:00
Speaker
i How difficult, without giving anything away, how difficult was it to to kind of formulate a whodunit? Because I've written a mystery and I thought it was a nightmare.
00:59:17
Speaker
ah and so I just want to know because in my case and again I think I've said this already on the podcast but in my case like working and this was for a play and like so we would like change something or we would cut a scene or maybe like change a line and then be like oh, ah like, forget that that contained an important clue.
00:59:46
Speaker
And then like not pick it up until like way later and be like, oh, wait, we forgot to say that this guy always eats peppermints. That's really important because that's the important clue. but you know, so how was it? How was it for you? Yeah, it's ah it's tough. and And when you're making a game, it's it's tough. It's tough anyway. making game Making a mystery game is really tough because, yeah, it's there this this idea that you have to give players access to the information that they need. You probably need to do it on multiple occasions for them to actually register that information. You don't want to make it too obvious, but then you don't want to make it too oblique.
01:00:26
Speaker
um You also, for me, the part that was Well, what you mentioned like just changing it with detail and then forgetting that it's connected to all those other things. Like that is a nightmare, 100%. um Another nightmare is just the logic of it. Because it had like for me, I wanted it to always make sense. Where um when it comes, to not even just to practically like who can do this and when can they do this and and how can of this be done, but motivations. Like is this person motivated to do this? Like why would they do that?
01:00:54
Speaker
um Does this make sense for them to think this at this time? Like all that stuff when you have multiple characters and they're that you kind of are thinking they all have different ideas about things. They want to do different things. They would their threshold for what they're prepared to do to achieve those things is are all different.
01:01:09
Speaker
That was really important for me that that would all, you know if if I presented something to somebody that a character did, they would say, okay, that does make sense or or something, you know a puzzle in the game. Like, okay, well, it makes sense that that you would would do it this way. That's really hard to gauge. And and part of the part of figuring that out is is is testing, watching people stream the game, you know, events, you know, watching people play it at events.
01:01:32
Speaker
um But a lot of it, and this is the scary part, is a lot of it, for me anyway, when it came to designing it, was by feel. You know, how does this feel, you know, and then, you know, you have to come back to it after a while to see with fresh eyes,
01:01:49
Speaker
um does that is this going to work for players? Is this something that they're going to understand? That was really, really, really important to me. And it's, it's yeah, it's it's it is a nightmare. There's no other way to say it. um it's It's very difficult, but i I really enjoy the process. And someone like me who, like I said, this was the first game I'd ever made.
01:02:12
Speaker
i hadn't done any creative writing since like middle school, probably. I hadn't even written anything. um ah it' I think that if i knew starting out that that's what I would eventually make,
01:02:25
Speaker
I think that would have been really intimidating and I might not have wanted to try to do it. But because I was kind of doing it over a really long period of time slowly and just learning stuff and just enjoying the process, it it was easier to get through it.
01:02:39
Speaker
But I mean, even now thinking ahead to, you know, I do want to make a sequel to the game that will be about the same size and same scope of the game, I would say, in terms of the gameplay time. um even like thinking about just going through that process again and knowing what it involves is really daunting actually how how can I do that again like because because I can I'll forget the game came out you know Two years ago. Two years ago. years ago came out. But then people will play it and they'll find something I forgot that was in there or a piece of writing that I'll forget that I wrote. And I'll be struck by, oh, wow, okay, there is a lot going on here because I forget it. I forget to appreciate all this going on in it anymore because don't think about it so much.
01:03:24
Speaker
But when people play it and I do what sometimes watch people stream it i'm like, okay, well, that actually does work out fairly well. and i And it's just thinking I want to recreate that same type of complexity and interconnectedness. I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know. i don't know um if I can pull that off again. We'll see. You know, way, I'm sorry, way back in the early days of the podcast, Ben and I did sort of an episode where we talked about mystery games as as a subgenre. And one of the things that we discussed quite a bit there was just the fact that
01:03:58
Speaker
you know, I think to tell a good mystery story that the, the sorts tropes of the adventure genre don't always neatly mesh with it. Like, I think it's a great genre for telling stories, but in terms of players piecing together evidence and information, i think sometimes adventure games can feel a bit linear. It can kind of tell you you're solving a mystery because you picked up something off the ground, but it doesn't allow for that sort of free association. And yeah, I think that,
01:04:28
Speaker
it's something that the best mystery games, and yeah I would say Crimson Diamond, absolutely, you know, managed to do this blends a little bit of that that element of, yeah, you're you're still playing an adventure game that's somewhat on a linear path, but allows the player to feel like they're having aha moments along the way, which is difficult. I'm curious how you sort of achieved that from a design standpoint.
01:04:55
Speaker
When I read Steam reviews, and I do, so please, if you like the game, please leave get a positive Steam review. I do read them all. um When I read the Steam reviews, there's a few things that I love seeing. I mean, i love seeing a positive review no matter what, but you know sometimes people will will will kind of point out particular things that they love. And one of the things that I love to see, one of my favorite things is when people say, it actually feels like I'm doing detective work.
01:05:18
Speaker
in this game. That feels amazing to me. Because like you said, it can be really difficult, especially in a linear game, to give people the feeling that they're actually doing the thing and versus kind of sleepwalking forward to the next plot point. That's difficult.
01:05:33
Speaker
Another thing I love seeing people say is when they say that they really love the story and the characters. That is really important to me too, because um Like I never took any creative writing courses. I'd never written anything before in my life. I was doing it all. Yeah, just like with the design of it by feel of like, well, how how would I want to do this? And how would I write this? I have no idea. I don't know. I'm not trained in this. So if someone says that I did a good job with that, it makes me feel like I had really good instincts and intuition about it, which is amazing to think of because you just never know until you put something out there how people are going to feel about it. So those two things are my top. But yeah, in terms of making the game feel
01:06:09
Speaker
detective like with those actions and and how to go about that. It's honestly, i knew that there were certain things that I wanted the game, the game to ask people to do. so I mean, you're in chapter four, or so,
01:06:21
Speaker
You already know about like the fingerprints and things like that I was going to say, I love that. Like that was such, you know, I just felt like a detective writing around this lodge, you know, figuring out how I'm to get fingerprints. and And I love that, you know, some of it is a technical challenge. Some of it is a classic like inventory puzzle challenge. Some of it is just thinking outside the box and some neat ways to collect fingerprints from everyone.
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, and honestly, the idea for that in the first place came to me from the Colonel's Bequest because the Colonel's Bequest has a couple fingerprints in that game, but it's not that well integrated. And I felt kind of disappointed by that. And that was one of the reasons I knew that I wanted to have a better integrated version of that in the Crimson Diamond.
01:07:00
Speaker
but So that's definitely where that comes from. um And just in general, I feel like with it with a text parser game, you're going to feel more like a detective when you actually have to formulate your own questions. It is interesting thinking about like, ah because i'm I'm now thinking about the games I've played that because it's a it's a kind of a special feeling that you have in your brain, right? Like it's kind of a different feeling than ah like even like solving a puzzle in King's Quest or Monkey Island or whatever.
01:07:30
Speaker
is like it activates kind of a ah different part of your brain. And I'm thinking about like the detective games I've played. And we talked about this a couple months ago. Like one of my favorite detective games is Tex Murphy Under a Killing Moon.
01:07:47
Speaker
And the way that you explore in in that game in particular, and I still haven't played the Pandora Directive, um really made me feel like a detective, like kind of sneaking around and and finding in the same way that in like in in Crimson Diamond, like you're, you know, you're using the the loop um and looking at, you know, like little things you find and comparing.
01:08:18
Speaker
it's it is It is funny that how important mineralogy factors in. Yes. It's like, oh, thank goodness she's a mineralogist because this is extremely useful.
01:08:30
Speaker
It's yes's not a detective, but she is a mineralogist. That is remarkably important. Maybe better. It is neat that you're like, I think a more recent mystery game that that I've really enjoyed or series mystery games. I've really enjoyed a lot of, uh, frog wares, uh, Sherlock Holmes games, uh, which don't if you've played, uh, any of those, but, um, they use sort of a mental mapping system where you go into Sherlock's mind palace and you begin to connect together, you know, pieces of evidence you've found with suspects, with theories and,
01:09:04
Speaker
it does a nice I mean, it's like, ultimately, it allows you to get some wrong conclusions and things like that. But there are only a few ways that all those things go together. But even then, just having to piece it together by dragging stuff on screen to make connections gives you that sort of aha moment. And yeah, it's it's not easy to get in an adventure game. So yeah, when it's when it's working, I think it's one of the things that can make mysteries you really delightful in this genre.
01:09:30
Speaker
Other... Oh, go ahead. Oh, was just going say it's incredibly satisfying for sure. Other than ah Colonel's Bequest, are there other like kind of mystery or detective games ah that that you love, whether or not you use them as like inspiration?
01:09:47
Speaker
um I did not use it as inspiration. I just am very much in love with this game. is I love Return of the Obra Dinn. Yes. Which it's not you know so much of an adventure game necessarily. It's more like, yeah, what we call, I guess, nowadays we call deduction game.
01:10:02
Speaker
Um, but it's, it's one of the most incredible games I've ever played because of just the way that it's structured and, and how you're required to investigate these tableaus and everywhere, you know, people have played this game.
01:10:14
Speaker
Um, that, that, that is this wonderful feeling of actually feeling like, yeah, you are a detective. You're finding stuff out, um, based on, you know, all these different things, like what people sound like, what, what, you know, what's the sound of of the scene and people, what's, what are people wearing the actions that they've been caught um in that moment? Um,
01:10:31
Speaker
that that That is incredible to me, for sure. um yeah Unfortunately, i don't play a lot of like recent stuff, but I did play a bit of Seance at Blake Manor. i heard that was really good. I've not played that yet.
01:10:43
Speaker
I've only played a little bit about it, but it does that same thing about like kind of like structuring like your deductions and like connecting stuff and everything, which I did find very enjoyable. um Yeah, all that... um I can't i even even remember what the question was at this point. it was, have you have you played any... And maybe even these, ah like... Because, i you know, i kind of want to go back. This has been kind of scratching at the back of my my brain. kind of want to talk about these Japanese mystery games a little bit more. Because I've been thinking about this.
01:11:15
Speaker
Does that have, like, a detective... aspect to it like is is that activating that that part of your your your brain i'm i'm curious some of it yes because for the most part those games are are fairly simple mechanics wise but what's really satisfying is yeah when you talk to people you show them things they tell you things and sometimes you can catch them in contradictions um that that's that's really nice where someone will say well yeah that's not my you know cigarette lighter and then someone will also will say oh i go to that store all the time and that's for sure that guy's cigarette lighter i've seen him use it
01:11:47
Speaker
That kind of stuff is is just really, I don't know, it's very simple, but again, it's still very satisfying to get to um to to get to so catch somebody out like that. He's lying. and He's lying. But what's so funny about those games actually is that when we talk about pixel hunts in in adventure games nowadays, um they they have nothing on the pixel hunts in this game. I mentioned that part of this game actually kind of becomes like a point-and-click game, but without a mouse. And you kind of have to use your arrow keys to kind of position the spot that you want to interact with on or try interacting with on the on the the um the background.
01:12:22
Speaker
And there are there are instances in this game where... There's no visual cue that there's even anything in that area. It's just like an empty, empty ground. And there's no reason to indicate that there'd be anything on, and it's only one spot. And there's about, I gritted it out. It's actually, blessedly, it's low resolution. So, you know, like 25 across by 15 down or something like the actual different points that you move your, you know, the cursor one, one, one like this, and one like this.
01:12:47
Speaker
And so it's about 324 different points on the screen. and And it's only that one. And there's no visual. great There's no, um there's no writing to indicate that, you know, there's something in the corner of this room or anything like that. And so you just kind of have to just tippy, tappy, tappy. And,
01:13:02
Speaker
so that does not feel necessary. Okay. it kind of feels like a detective because I feel like in real life that that is what detective work is. Like you kind of grid something out um and you just are like looking at a patch of earth and then you move to the next inch and you, you know, so that, that is physically what it would be like, but it's not necessarily like the most,
01:13:23
Speaker
engaging aspect of what these games would be. But of course, um i will always say this was 1986. And when we talk about the earlier, like pre-'90s especially, when we didn't have the genres as codified as we have nowadays, it's kind of fun to see just whatever they came up with. they don't There was no no, one had any idea what they were doing. And that's fun and really interesting to see.
01:13:45
Speaker
uh are you are you playing with a walkthrough are you solving this yourself i i mean is there even a walkthrough for i mean yeah like would there be like certainly not in english here's the thing yeah so this game the game of this kurizawa yukai anai um is there is no walkthrough that i could find in english there was no walkthrough that i can find in japanese the only source that i have for getting i would not have gotten through this game to any extent as I have now. um There is somebody doing a playthrough with no commentary using the MSX version and it's on it's on YouTube. okay And so you can kind of see what they're doing because you can see kind of what numbers they're pressing to like do the things. But sometimes you can't see at all what they're doing because sometimes the number press doesn't register on the screen. But you can kind of guess what they're doing. um That's what I'm using. That's the only documentation of actually how to get through these games that I have found. I've not dug that deep into it but um it's kind of hard to find information and it's kind of amazing to me that it's hard to find information on this game because yuji hori made this game he's a legend and fact apparently he was solo deving these things because ah people go on mobi games they check the the credits for this game and they're like he's the only one on this game like he did everything wow and i don't know why it's not more famous i don't know why it hasn't gotten um like a fan translation or anything like that but um That's what the terrifying part of this because when I've been, stream I've been, I've streamed and finished a lot of games over the years. Like I've been streaming for about, don't know, five or six years by now.
01:15:16
Speaker
And I've been able to finish everything except for Neuromancer, which I don't know if you guys have played Neuromancer. haven't. it's It's based on the William Gibson novel. And it's it's it's just got this battle system. Like it's got this hacking battle system that you have to like level up different skills and like different like security systems have different vulnerabilities. And I just could not. And that's the only one I was not able to complete. And I i feel very unsatisfied about that. But with this game, it's scary again too, because i i I could get stuck in this game. And I did get stuck for a little bit um until I found this playthrough.
01:15:54
Speaker
And I really badly want to see the rest of this game.
Streaming Challenges and Discoveries
01:15:57
Speaker
I really want to finish it. um But the problem is even people in chat, know people in chat they know everything they can't they don't know either um which is scary but also kind of exciting because i think if you play something that has been very you know well trodden like something like loom or something like monkey island everyone knows everything about these games and there's no danger that you're not going to finish it there's so that ex that that that's that frightening aspect of it is kind of exhilarating in a way and that's that's about as exciting as i get in my life in terms of risk taking Maybe I won't be able to finish this game after all, but thank goodness I've managed to unearth that one playthrough that just is completely silent. And always think it's, you know, it's interesting, know, all three of us stream these games and we've all been in a situation where we have been stuck live on air for an extended period of time. And, know, I'm like, as I go on, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes on a puzzle, I can't figure out. I'm starting to think it's like, oh my gosh, there are people watching me right now. And not only are they bored, but I look like a giant dummy up here right now. And it's always interesting. I've actually said before, it's like, you know, when I'm making like bods of this, you know, should I like cut out those bits or fast forward through them? And it's like, no, it's a lot times where, you know, some of that thought process, I think is what oftentimes viewers want to see. And, you know, it's always fun when you have that breakthrough. You know, I think for me, increasingly as my adventure gaming has become
01:17:29
Speaker
you know, sort of participatory in the sense of doing it, you know, with an audience watching it. It really reminds me of what it was like to play games, you shoulder to shoulder with friends as a kid. And, you know, it makes you appreciate parts of these games you might buzz past otherwise, you know?
01:17:49
Speaker
i oh a hundred person I am looking at screenshots of Neuromancer, a game I've never played and have no knowledge of, but boy, oh boy, do I love how it looks. It's gorgeous. It is. So this is another EGA 16 color game.
01:18:08
Speaker
ah And boy, oh boy, like, because the thing is, is you know, we just talked about ah Beneath a Steel Sky, which obviously owes a bit of a debt to William get william Gibson.
01:18:21
Speaker
Oh, wow. And, you know, one of the the the really fun sequences in Beneath a Steel Sky is when you enter like the computer space. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so I love how they render this in, in this game with all these CN cubes and all the, like the, the two, the two ah tones of green that you have available.
01:18:48
Speaker
ah It and actually like I think it works extremely well for cyberpunk. Yeah, yeah. It's the it's definitely a palette that plays really nicely with ah cyberpunk.
01:19:05
Speaker
it's It's so cool. like that the Even the story of the production of that game is really cool. like like um Brian Fargo designed it. If you ever try this game and you load it, they've got this loading screen music that's Devo. It's a Mike Mothersba. Wow. Really? It's like a PC speaker? Yes. It's really good. It's shockingly good.
01:19:26
Speaker
like it's first feeling good I love mean, for a PC speaker, right? They can't expect PC speakers to sound good, but this one actually is ah kind of amazing. How they managed to make it actually sound like, okay, you can actually recognize the song that this is. You know what? Note for myself when I edit, I'll drop that i'll drop this in.
01:19:42
Speaker
We'll hear it play a little bit under us for the next bit. So you said earlier that ah for a while, at least, you were playing ah ah specifically, you were sticking to EGA games.
01:19:58
Speaker
Yes, yes. i again, like I haven't seen a ton of your your streams because we stream at the same time. But every now and again, when I would pop in and and watch for a bit, like at first I saw you playing like I think a lot of what I'm really familiar with a lot of like, you know, ah like Sierra and some of the Lucas and I, I think you played some of the, the Apogee, uh, share wears. Is that right? Or am I just crossing you?
01:20:30
Speaker
Because I know you were involved with a give Cosmo pants. Um, No, I play, but I play biomenace. Oh yeah. biomedist ominist But, um, but then I started popping in and watching you play these games. I had never heard
Exploring Unique and Obscure Games
01:20:48
Speaker
of. And i was like, where did these come from?
01:20:51
Speaker
Like, I've never heard of this. And, and so I'm, I'm curious, are there any games from that? Because the, the 16, like the 16 color era is relatively short.
01:21:03
Speaker
I kind of think. Yeah. what What kind of interesting games have you found that are are kind of off the beaten path, if any? Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did find some really good ones. Hold on. Let me open up um my own my own youtube my own YouTube channel. Sure. So I could i could tell you the ones, because I do them all set up on playlists. And of course, my memory is no good.
01:21:25
Speaker
So let's see here. Let's look on my playlist. Yeah, there I found some really, really some hidden gems, actually, that are EGA. um Okay, Omicron Conspiracy yeah um was it was kind of amazing. it's it's It's a bit difficult in some places, but what what's kind of amazing about that one is...
01:21:42
Speaker
um It's got a very unique interface. It's EGA. It's a sci-fi game. And what I loved about this one was when I started to play it, somebody who was actually doing a remake for the game, who's basically remade the entire game from the ground up, including adding ambient noises, music tracks, another ending, a notebook feature, ah redrawing some of the portraits and everything, um His name is Streaksy and Streaksy sent me a build that's basically finished. And I got to, um I was playing the original and I was having a good time. And he said, you know what? I've been remaking this game. So I played i so i switched over immediately see his remake um and it teaches everything, every aspect of it, UI, everything he's improved upon. And so when you if you watch my play play or you skim through it, you'll see me start playing it with the original version. And then I transition into Streaksy's version.
01:22:29
Speaker
And it's just amazing to see what he's done with it. So so for those reasons, also, another reason I love this particular one is Streaksy put like an a Crimson Diamond Easter egg oh that's into lovely into this new Omicron Conspiracy build. Like, I don't know if it's ever going to be publicly available, but if you do want to see what he's done with it, um for the first year, that one is is is really beautiful. um ah There's a game called Chamber of the Psy-Mutant Priestess. Yes. Incredible title.
01:22:54
Speaker
yes It's incredible. It looks... the The book is incredible. um The title is incredible. The art is incredible. The game makes almost no sense. um it's It's almost unplayable. It's actually, yeah, it's kind of unplayable. There is a walkthrough if you want to see it for yourself. But it's just so different from just anything else you could possibly play. um i cannot recommend it as a hidden gem to play, but I would recommend you just to take a look at it because it's kind of fascinating to see. Mm-hmm.
01:23:22
Speaker
Another game that is genuinely good to play from beginning to end is a game called Earthrise from 1990, which it is a text parser. It's is an EGA adventure game, another space one, um mostly made by this one person. And I heartily recommend it to play it. it's It's kind of like it's kind of space quest in a way. Hmm.
01:23:41
Speaker
but But with its own feeling to it, I love the graphics. I love everything about it. So that would one, 100% Earthrise, 100% recommendation. Oh, wow. Yeah, 100% that. I love this one. Yeah, i have I'm leaving that that for you, Jess, because I know You know, I'm looking for new Space Quest maps. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Look at this. It's really cool. Yeah. Gameplay is really cool. I do like the look of it.
01:24:07
Speaker
Yes. It does look really cool. um Another game that I've played that I don't know if I could recommend it because it's really difficult, but there is again, there's a full walkthrough for this when you want to experience it yourself.
01:24:21
Speaker
Legend of the Sword from 1988. It's got the most incredible ui that you'll ever see. It's kind of ingenious, actually. I want to make a game like this where the UI dominates like 90% of the screen and like 10% is actually like a little graphic that shows you like the region that you're in or whatever's happening in the game. oh yeah, this is like postage stamp graphics. this is Yeah, exactly. Look at that. Yeah. It's great.
01:24:43
Speaker
It's ingenious. um And yeah, I love like, it kind of looks like an RPG, but it it is a full-fledged adventure game. It's another text-pricer adventure game, but it's it's kind of brutally difficult, I would say, but I do love it for its uniqueness. And you probably kind of could get through it, or at least you'll have a fun time with it for a little bit. um just Just the way that it was i think with like four people made that one.
01:25:03
Speaker
um Oh, and i'm I'm looking here at Mortville Manor. I'm scrubbing through. oh gosh. This has that like high res mode EGA where it has like the this verticals. Yeah.
01:25:18
Speaker
Yeah. ah What a funky look. Yeah, I don't know if I could responsibly recommend Morphill Manor to play. It's tough. It's very, it's a French game. I don't know that means anything to but it's a French game. It does mean something. Yes.
01:25:37
Speaker
Because also Chamber of the Side Mutants Priestess, I believe, also is a French game. Okay. um But it's a translation. So the version that I played on stream was translated, um but it is very difficult to understand. Mm-hmm.
01:25:51
Speaker
And I did not, I played it with a walkthrough. i gave up really, really quickly on that one. um But I have seen streamers play it and figure it out with a lot of help from their chat. um There is ah a sequel to that game that's not EGA called Malpedy Manor, which is kind of borderline impossible. I don't know if you guys have ever played it or heard of it. Is that the, that's a ah mystery game, right?
01:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's another mystery game. We um have talked about that because Robot Spacer, who's the streamer, ah ah completed it. and ah Yeah, we're we're well familiar with that, in fact. Okay, I watched that very same playthrough, and i would I would actually be sitting in on his streams watching that because yeah that that was an incredibly challenging game, but it was really satisfying to watch him me get through it with a lot of help, of course. I don't think anyone's getting through that game without a lot of help.
01:26:35
Speaker
um But yeah, i mean I would say those ones for the most part were kind of, yeah, i've really kind of, as we said, like back in those days, anything went and and what a fascinating um time to to have made games and we get to play them even to this day, which is kind of amazing.
Cultural Influences in Pixel Art
01:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's so cool. And where, where have you like, because some of these I've like, as I said, you know, they're kind of off the beaten path. You're not going to find them on GOG or Steam or whatever.
01:27:08
Speaker
Where, where like, are you just looking at like abandoned where sites or, or how are you finding some of these EGA games? What I did was I went on Moby Games and I looked at everything between like 1988 and like 1991 something like that. Perfect. yeah No notes. Perfect. Maybe 87 to 91 maybe. It's just like 300 games or something. I just kind of looked through all of them. to find um that that's That's how I did it. But then also, um you know, Twitch has been amazing in terms of like finding other retro Twitch streamers who who don't just play DOS. Like a lot of people like, yeah, they play MSX games or PC 88 games, 98 games.
01:27:44
Speaker
And that's a whole other education about stuff I had no idea about, like that Japanese market of of games. And I love watching retro Twitch streamers playing, yeah, the most obscure stuff I'd never heard of. But um a lot of those PC-88, PC-98 games have the most gorgeous pixel art you're ever going to see. Wow. um and with you know some really difficult gameplay or some story or their RPGs or something. And it's really nice for me to put put that on a second screen while I'm working and get to see this other yeah this other part of game culture that I had no idea about that that is beautiful and maybe something that I not necessarily might want to get try to get through myself, but it's wonderful to see just stream streams about that. And I think
01:28:23
Speaker
the fact that I started to watch people play that really obscure stuff kind of did encourage me to play more obscure stuff. Like, yeah, like Portopia. Well, Portopia is kind of well-known, but like, yeah, the it's the sequel games, like the Yuji Horii sequel games.
01:28:35
Speaker
um That kind of encouraged me. And like, yeah, i mean, one of my friends, Anne Kay, who plays a lot of retro stuff, she actually like, you know, said, okay, well, Julia, if you want to play this and here's an emulator. And so, cause she kind of helped me figure out how to even play this stuff. Like her, one of her friends actually developed this emulator that I played Portopia on.
01:28:51
Speaker
And so it's all these, it's it's incredible to me, all the different kinds of communities you have around games. just There's like dozens and hundreds and and you know thousands probably of them. And they all are super passionate about that one area. And then there's so much to learn in that area. And they're always happy to help um share ah share that knowledge. I've really benefited from that. And that's one of the that's a big reason why I started to stream like these this Japanese stuff.
01:29:14
Speaker
i You know, ah you you mentioned PC88. And again, that's something I have zero knowledge of. And so I just Googled PC88 while you were talking, pulled up this like Reddit thread, PC88 Cityscapes. And I'm just seeing the most beautiful. I've seen this exact Reddit thread. i know this one you're talking about. Yeah, know. It's gorgeous. Unbelievable. Gorgeous. Yeah.
01:29:40
Speaker
Yeah. and and And what that arises, that the reason that arises is there's a few factors that that kind of created this incredible um culture of incredible pixel art in Japan. Like one of them is um the computer displays had to be higher resolution to display Japanese text, right? Because, you know, we have like, you know, this very complicated characters you can't, you know,
01:30:01
Speaker
Can't draw in eight pixels. Exactly, exactly. It's impossible. So so they would have very high resolution modders, but then of course, then the the trade-off was in performance. Like they couldn't, so that's why a lot of these games are fairly static images, but beautiful images. And then you also have this tradition of like manga artists, yeah comic artists, right? Who have this incredible draftsmanship that then they, then they, you know, brought that over to to this gaming aspect. So the fact that these were a bunch of like very static images that are just gorgeous was perfectly in line with what they were used to in terms of what they would produce um in that other media.
01:30:32
Speaker
And you have those together. There's probably more factors in it as well that you just get this completely other type of gaming. And I actually really like mostly that that that static type of game, like a lot of movement on the screen. I'm not, oh, sorry, hit the mic. and I'm not too crazy about a lot of movement on the screen. I'm not too crazy about 3D games, but like these very static stayed gorgeous 2D pixel art games are completely up my alley.
01:30:55
Speaker
um And so, yeah, like, I don't know if I'll ever like delve into that stuff, because a lot of it is, you know, poorly documented or documented in Japanese um and kind of challenging to get through. But I love the fact that I can sit and work and watch somebody else do that.
Indie Games and Audience Reach
01:31:10
Speaker
And I get to kind of partially experience that as well.
01:31:14
Speaker
ah Well, Jesse, you have ah anything, anything else? Are we... I think we've, we've covered it all. Julia, this was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a absolute pleasure.
01:31:26
Speaker
I learned i had a lot of time. fun I learned stuff too. No, these are always fun conversations. And I'm going to say every single time when I get invited to come talk on something is like, thank you for inviting me. Genuinely. Thank you for inviting me to talk because.
01:31:41
Speaker
It's hard to get yourself in front of people sometimes. You're like, to for people to like learn about your game. People still to this day, I'll you know comment on my YouTube channel saying, you know I've just found your game now. And I'm delighted to see that because that just means there's more people I can reach. I'm always happy to come talk about whatever I'm working on because I do want to reach those people that would enjoy it. Like the people who like miss text parser games or they love EGA games and, you know, and The idea that someone could come out with something like that nowadays is not a usual thing. And so if I can reach those people and find them, like that's what I'm all about.
01:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, this was an absolute pleasure to to have you you on. And and and I'm sure I could speak for for Jess here as well. Like to the the listeners, we both recommend like ah Crimson Diamond. We both absolutely both love it.
01:32:33
Speaker
so And where can people find you online if they want to watch your streams or or see your portfolio or things like that? Yeah, ah well, first I will mention, yeah, the Crimson Diamond is available on Steam. It's available on GOG. It's available on itch.io.
01:32:50
Speaker
It's also available on Fireflower Games. so So those are all the places you can find it. um You can find me yeah on Twitch on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern. I'm a underscore maple mystery.
01:33:03
Speaker
um I stream, I've been streaming game development for my next game, my little tiny, um the deadly bluff. This is the little cozy and mystery adventure game based on my, a kind of a trip that I took to Nova Scotia. So it's about, it's about rocks again. It's about Nova Scotian rocks. Love it. So yeah. Yeah, it's based on a tour that I took there. Actually, I'd actually booked a tour where i' had a guide and we kind of chipped zeolites out of a cliff. but lights are so do you i would sir are Do you have a background in geology? I guess we're wrapping up. I have to now. This seems like something we should have asked like 45 minutes ago. But now we're asking. so yeah yeah. I do not, but I've always been interested in rocks and in mineralogy and in geology. And the Crimson Diamond was the perfect opportunity for me to get to like really delve into that interest and further develop that interest to the point of, yeah, now that it's become kind of like ah like a hobby for me where I have done a couple, you know booked a couple tours. like There's
01:34:00
Speaker
There's a place in ah in Ontario called the Schickler Occurrence, which is famous for its fluorite, which is like a purple or or or white mineral. And I've got've gotve gotten there and I've i've dug up some fluorite of my own.
01:34:12
Speaker
Yeah, I went to Walson Bluff, which is where the deadly bluff is is is set in Parsbro, Nova Scotia. And it's famous. It's been famous for hundreds of years for crystals called zeolites.
01:34:23
Speaker
which are are crystals that form within these basalt cliffs. Like there are these like bubbles, like ah voids that form within the basalt and then these crystals um precipitate and form. And it's been famous. And that's why I wanted to go there. So I went down there. I had some friends over there that I visited. The Level zero Zero NPCs, two of them do live in Halifax. And then I rented a car. I drove up to Parsboro and I did this rock-hounding little tour. um So yeah, that so that's that's why...
01:34:50
Speaker
But the Crimson Diamond is what it is. It's because I just took everything that I'm interested in and I just stuffed it all in one place and gave myself permission to yeah study about Canadian history, study about mineralogy, study about um all that all the stuff that I kind of didn't really take the time to do just in my own life. It it was a good reason to get into that stuff.
01:35:16
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's incredible. Yeah. All right. So thank you for listening. ah ah You can send us an email at quest quest podcast at gmail.com. Please rate review.
01:35:28
Speaker
ah You can watch myself at PS underscore Garrick on Twitch. And Jess, you are im decaf Jedi. And ah join us next time ah when we discuss Space Quest 4.
01:35:58
Speaker
so julia quick quick question have you played that ega version of space quest 4 the ega version of no i have not so yeah there's it's it's one that has a bespoke ega version so now oh my goodness one more for your list that's fantastic i know that they did that i think did they do that with king's quest 6 someone do that with who did they Oh, yes, a fan did a demake of six into AGI. Yeah. But yeah, there's the official EGA Space Quest 4. Oh, gosh. It's ugly.