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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 2:23 am
by Marco
Gunness wrote:
Marco wrote:Now, if it's any horror game that you're interested in, rather than just Lovecraft, I would give strong recommendations to The Abbey and Hampton Manor. Both of these are "modern", though about 15 years old now.
Hahaha, yeah, "modern" is definitely in the eye of the beholder! I'm sure that some retrogamers will find a C64 game from 1989 very modern :)
Heh. So true. What I meant by "modern" was that they were released after the death of Interactive Fiction as a commercially viable game genre. These were among the first games that came out as part of the "Interactive Fiction Revival Movement" (are we a movement? Sure, why not!). Hampton Manor came out in 1992 and The Abbey in 1993. We've come far as a community from these very early birds.
Transylvania has some nice touches but the all-too-brief text kept distracting me.
Personally, I like the minimalistic descriptions. And the picture of the werewolf that chases you all over the place is for me one of the iconic images in the early days of horror/supernatural gaming. But if you haven't, try the "Comprehend" version. The graphics are slightly better, and the text has been somewhat expanded. Plus, the 2-word parser got a facelift, and the game understands complete sentences. I would recommend the Apple II version, as the PC version looks terrible with its 4-color CGA graphics.
However, Personal Nightmare is certainly worth of a mention. And while we're talking Horrorsoft, even though it's a straight point'n'click game, I have a really soft spot for Elvira: Mistress of the Dark on the Amiga. I think it's quite creepy in places.
I will definitely give these a try. I have not yet gotten around to it.
Uninvited, now there's a classic (and classy) title. I remember locating that woman in the hallway which turned out to be a skeleton. Very effective. It even had some neat puzzles, too.
All the Icom games were wonderful. I think it's a shame they only ever made four of them. Well, five if you count Beyond Shadowgate, which only came out on the TurboGrafx 16 / PC-Engine console. The skeleton woman is another image I consider iconic in the early history of horror gaming.

Interesting stuff about CRL. Another batch of games I've heard good things about, but have not yet gotten around to trying.

To my recommendations, I would add Babel and 4 Seconds. Both of these are on the IF archive, and they are sci-fi horror rather than supernatural. 4 Seconds is a very short game. Babel maybe isn't exactly horror (I still haven't gotten around to finishing it, though), but it is extremely atmospheric, conveying a very unsettling feeling of loneliness and isolation. To me, that's the most important aspect of the genre.

Marco.

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:23 am
by Mr Creosote
The definition of 'classic' and 'modern' given in this forum is quite clear, isn't it? Games written in TADS or Inform in the early 90s (almost 20 years ago) are modern ;)

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 2:54 pm
by Plissken
Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I have played (and enjoyed) a lot of these tytles, like Lurking Horror, Uninvited (one of my favourites, icom was great) Personal Nightmare and the Hound of Shadow. Others, like Moonmist of House on Damned Hill are unknown to me. :)
Has anyone played Voodoo Castle for apple II/C64/PC88? I have problems booting it in winvice, while the PC88 version works fine. :)

If you have in mind other titles, please write them. :D

Oh, and Shadowgate got another sequel after Beyond Shadowgate, Shadowgate64 for the N64. ;)

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 2:51 am
by terri
I will leave the horror stuff to you folks out there who are engaged in this genre. My first experience with gaming was when I bought my first computer (yes, I was late with that, like most other things), and I bought an Infocom package which included many titles. It came with an 1-inch thick hint book. I still have both the disks and the Hint book. The first game I tried was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as I had read the book and watched the TV shows and loved the sense of humour which the Brits manage to pull off better than anyone else (I can recommend some awesome books if anyone is interested in reading). I don't think I have ever been so frustrated with a game before and since. It took me months (at least weeks) to figure it out. While the hints were reasonably explicit, I was a novice. I believe I got more than a few grey hairs over this. Anyway, all the games in this compilation have been solved, and I admire the people who will play them when the solution is readily available. Me, I have no such ambitions as minimizing frustration is what happens when you are past middle age. Lurking Horror was among them, I believe.

I realize that this tells you folks absolutely nothing. You are welcome to read my other posts about current frustrations...

PS I have played some of the games you have mentioned.Some are very good.

Just thought I would put my two cents in. Can't keep a good woman down to not stick her nose into things...

PS 2 - Jacob was probably a prodigious adolescent of 12 (or younger) when he began accessing and playing these games. I am merely a late bloomer and arrival.

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:03 am
by Gunness
Well, thanks for sharing your story, Terri.
terri wrote:Anyway, all the games in this compilation have been solved, and I admire the people who will play them when the solution is readily available.
Well, the selection of available games would be fairly tiny if I only wanted to play games for which a solution didn't exist. I mean, all the best games in the world have already been solved. More or less all of the games in the IF Archive have solutions. People have gone through the entire range of puzzles of every Infocom game out there and written them down. All the same, I wouldn't want to miss out on Trinity, Babel, Suspect etc. etc. It's just a matter of not clicking the solution link :)
terri wrote:PS 2 - Jacob was probably a prodigious adolescent of 12 (or younger) when he began accessing and playing these games. I am merely a late bloomer and arrival.
12, yes. Prodigy, no. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and understood only the tiniest bit of English :)

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:49 pm
by Plissken
terri wrote: (I can recommend some awesome books if anyone is interested in reading).
Please do so. :)

However, my first experiences with text adventures were in elementary school, at 7-8 with the first Space Quest and the third Leisure Suit Larry, which i bought in a newsstand. I got stuck immediately and i completed those games only years after, but i was captivated and enveloped by the total freedom garaunteed by those adventures. I've never left the genre... ;)

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 10:15 am
by Gunness
The upcoming version of the site allows users to add genre tags, such as "horror" to the games in the database.
This thread has led me to believe that there might actually be use for such a feature :)

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 5:33 am
by terri
I'm wondering, Jacob, speaking about your new site, whether it would be possible to create links to hints not posted in your site but available elsewhere. Like for example, Amby's finding hints to Ark of the Lost Covenant, and Alastair finding hints to Elysian Fields. Or whether the permissions needed and copyright issues would preclude something like this being done.

Someone asked for books with a "British sense of humour." The person that comes to mind for me is Connie Willis, though she is American (I thought she was British). Some are science-fiction stuff. The ones I would recommend are the Domesday Book (an equal mixture of sci-fi, humour and historical information about the plague) and To Say Nothing of the Dog.

If more is needed/wanted, we need to find a way to communicate in other ways, since this is not the forum to discuss books, and the pm system is disabled. Jacob, if someone from the forum asks about this, you can give him/her my e-mail address, put please let me know so I don't consider this as spam and delete it (I don't really know how many people use pseudonyms at your site, and I wouldn't be able to recognize a legitimiate message).

Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2010 10:24 am
by Gunness
Yes, links can be added for individual games or all games on the entire site (1300+ at the moment). Sometimes other sites frown upon deep linking (ie. linking directly to a subpage), but copyright isn't an issue.

As for book discussion, please, by all means! There's a section of the forum called off-topic, which is open for all things imaginable - including books.

Re: Paranormal/Occult/Horror Themed Games

Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 8:47 am
by Plissken
I'd like to reccomend a very good and clever, but a bit short, adventure game made using the AGS engine. It's name is downfall and it's a very psychological horror game. The use of the symbols and the imaginery is very good but be warned: the game is pretty gory and graphic, so if you don't like violence and disturbing situations you'll better avoid this.
The writing is very balanced and the game has multiple endings. Reccomended.