Nitpick This!: Lets talk about 5 Days a Stranger

[Spummy]

(To the mods, I have no idea if this belonged here or in the Critics Lounge, which is technically about suggestion hunting, if you feel it would be more appropriately placed there, feel free to move it.)

SO WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?:

Basically, I feel for a community about creating Adventure games, there is not a lot of discussion about adventure games, what elements about them are good or bad, and not just blanket statements like "the story was good" but rather what about the story was good, and also what about it could have done with improving. And this is the kind of thing I personally am really interested in. I don't know if anyone else out there is interested but I hope there's a few, so I thought I'd try an experiment. I would start a thread, nitpicking a game from AGS History, not because I want a place to voice my own opinions but because I want to hear people's opinions. I want people to point out things I had not thought of, or argue against my critiques or praise, or other people's critiques or praise. Any kind of interesting discussion about what is bad or good about these games. If it got some discussion, I would start another one later on for a different game and keep going, and start a series of nitpick threads. And maybe if it was popular enough, others would start their own threads in time. Really, I don't have much to lose (other than looking like some pretentious bastard who writes too much about video games).

So if this interests you, please:

• Make sure you've played the game, and can remember enough about it.

• Read other people's posts, or at least their TL;DRs and decide if you should read the whole post.

• Write your own post, sharing your own praises and critiques, and responding to other posts. And if it's a bit long, provide a TL;DR. Remember, you don't have to comprehensively analyze the game, just pick a few things you want to talk about.

As much as I'd prefer people wanting to talk about the game, if you find this stuff interesting but don't feel like you have anything contribute, feel free to mention that you're interested in reading stuff like this, so I can get an idea of how many people in the community value these kinds of discussions. But enough about that, it's time to nitpick.

5 DAYS A NITPICKER:



So for the first nitpick I decided to go with what is quite possibly a corner-stone adventure game of the community that seemingly everyone has played and should hopefully have an opinion on: 5 Days a Stranger. If it's been a long time since you've  played the game or you haven't played it (where have you been?) you can acquire it here and I strongly recommend playing it yourself before reading the rest of this post, as this could get spoilery.

EDIT: I decided that I should consider finding a Lets Play for those that played the game years ago and don't quite remember everything, but can't be bothered replaying it all. I would prefer videos without commentary, but I'm not likely to find them. So here's part one for an LP by someone called DeceasedCrab, I have no idea if he's annoying or not: 5 Days LP Part 1

NARRATIVE, SMARRATIVE:

One of the things 5 Days appears to be trying as horror fiction is playing with the idea of paranoia in a group. However, in 5 Days I never remember suspecting anyone in the group, possibly because it implies supernatural involvement very early on in the newspapers, on the television, etc. I'm not sure if that's intentional though. Had Trilby spent the whole game insisting everyone else was trustworthy whilst we the players did not trust anyone we'd probably feel quite disconnected from the player character merely through having a very different opinion on the scenario. I still feel like the game missed an opportunity to explore this paranoia idea.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this game to me is how most of the characters appear pretty fine with the whole experience. Only Phil really changes over the course of the game at all.(SPOILER FOR TRILBY'S NOTES:)

Spoiler

This is quite weird considering that Simone apparently goes through a complete mental break down after the events of the game itself.

[close]

For a game trying to play with the idea of group paranoia, there's not an awful lot of paranoia in the group.

OH SWEET JESUS THE PUZZLES:

Most of the difficulty of 5 Days comes from you not knowing where to look for something. Perhaps the worst part about the game is a few scenarios where you find yourself wondering: "Why would I have thought to do that?"

When you're looking for Simone and Jim at the start of the game, you have to talk to Simone before you can find Jim at all. That does not make any sense already but it's made even worse by how you find Jim. Jim is up a tree that you have to interact with to realize he's up there. But he's only up there after you've spoken to Simone. So if you were unfortunate enough to go outside first, and interact with the tree, you would not bother to interact with it again after talking to Simone. The game pulls a similar irritating move later on when you're supposed to examine the pool on the second day when it has not visually changed. Why would I have thought that something about the pool would've changed? I can't see anything different. This kind of thing is a common mistake in adventure game design. You have to think to yourself: "Why would the player ever think to do this?" and very importantly: "Why would the player think to try it again?" And sadly this kind of thing is very easily fixed. You should have just been able to find Jim before Simone; there was no reason to impose that restriction. Something visually should have changed about the pool so that the player would think to look at it.

TL;DR:

When paranoia is a theme, you should try to give people a reason to be paranoid.
When paranoia is a theme, why are the majority of the characters calm?
Unless the player has a reason to think something has changed and to try again, they won't.

Anyway, I skipped over a lot of stuff because I wanted to stay under 500 words. But that's my nitpick. I hope some of you have something to contribute or at least found that interesting.

[Andail]

Nice idea for a thread! I enjoy when people get nit-pickety (even if it was my game they picked apart). It's a great way to improve.

I hope this will catch on.

[Janos Ekdahl]

Well, this certainly seems interesting, I always thought this series was a bit overrated. While 5Days is certainly not the worst of the Chzo Mythos(I JUST WANTED TO GO INTO SPAAAAAAAAAAAA...), I also believe that it just isn't that good a game. I guess I'll have my first attempt at a rant here.
A summary

• Story: starts off rather tediously, but picks up at a steady incline as the events progress. I feel that by day 4 it had become somewhat tense and enjoyable, but completely fell apart at the end.
• Characters: this was another area where I felt that much improvement was needed. Beyond the living room exposition dump, we learn nothing about these characters that might actually make us care about them. There doesn't really seem to be any believable development as the story goes on and many of the actions taken by them are illogical and unrealistic.
• Puzzles: I'm not entirely sure, but these might be the worst part. If it weren't for the small game area of the "mansion," the backtracking might have been insufferable. As pointed out, many of the puzzles relied on either clicking on the one random thing needed to progress and blatant padding in the form of the "salty bear" segments.

Overall, the game was a mediocre, forgettable experience. I've seen much better just from this site alone.

[Spummy]

• Characters: this was another area where I felt that much improvement was needed. Beyond the living room exposition dump, we learn nothing about these characters that might actually make us care about them. There doesn't really seem to be any believable development as the story goes on and many of the actions taken by them are illogical and unrealistic.

I will throw in what is both a praise and a criticism of the game related to this. One of the things I wished there was more of was the characters interacting more than just one-on-one with Trilby. One of the better elements of the living room exposition dump was the character's interjecting with each other. It showed what the characters thought of each other, and it also made them feel a little less like the artificial NPC that only does things on player prompt. This element of the game mostly disappears after that, and they go back to being driven almost only by player-prompt. But those interjections were a nice touch while they were there.

I think if there was more inter-NPC interaction, it would not only make them feel like real people but the change in character interactions would also really help show some paranoia setting in when Phil decides he doesn't trust anyone anymore.

[NickyNyce]

I think it's actually a great idea, along with the LP's too. As someone who has spent tons of hours and over a year straight with his free time making games, the biggest thing a game maker wants to see and hear is feedback. Yes, we all love to hear the nice things about our game, that is part of the reward we get for making them, but to hear the bad and the ugly should also help make ALL the game makers better.

By nitpicking games, eventually a pattern should start to form of the things us game makers should really pay attention to and MAYBE try to avoid. I didn't finish playing 5DAS so I really can't comment about the game, but I do like the idea of this thread.

[Ghost]

I like the idea! And it gives me an excuse to finally go and *play* 5DAS! I'll be back for sure!

[Snarky]

There's a fairly nitpicky discussion/playthrough of 5DAS on the old Adventure Gamers forum.

[Jaffles]

I also agree this is a cool idea. It's like Adventure Game Book Club in a way. As someone who's new to game desgin this sort of thing is always really helpful. I haven't played 5DAS, and I'm not sure that I will have the time to in the next couple of weeks (thanks, exams.) but I just wanted to stop in and support the thread.

Keep on nitpicking!

[bicilotti]

5DAS the first AGS game I've played. I enjoyed it a lot so I am quite happy to see such a 'nitpick' thread on this.

If I recall correctly, this was one of the first AGS games which showed quite an effort in graphics. Even though they seem pretty garish today (check it!), it shows that more than some sweat has been put into them. For sure it contributed raising the bar for subsequent AGS productions.

I will limit myself to a few points. What follows is one big massive spoiler, beware!

Good! Fear and loathing in a mansion
I grew up playing LucasArts games, mostly. Even in more 'serious' ones (like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis) I don't recall much ways you could die (one of them being just a 'bad ending').
In 5DAS there is one specific scene where, well, you can and will die if you don't act appropriately, and most importantly fast.
The first time I played it, I froze and got slaughtered; I guess that's what happens when you're scared in real life, too (so good job on that!).

Stop nitpicking! The cast
I see many of you didn't like the NPCs. Yahtzee has stated (in the 7DAS commentary) that he likes to design his characters by taking a trait and bringing it quite to an extreme. He admits they're not well rounded this way, but at least immediately 'recognizable'.
I kind of agree with him: if you are writing an adventure game, you have little little little space to develop your NPCs. The protagonist must be pivotal in the development of the story (what kind of protagonist would he be otherwise?), and even more so since it is a game (hence the player expects and wants to do something, otherwise s/he'd be watching a DVD and not playing a game).
That's why we have so many 'washed ashore'/'alone in a psychiatric ward' games, because adventure games NPCs are inherently bitchy/lazy/very annoying slobs.
That's the way I feel about it (and alas, something that I think is inherent to adventure gaming), if you know of an AGS game which manages to handle NPCs 'better than this', please do share in this thread!

Baaad! The Trilby
Oh. My. God. The gentlemen thief who never loses his nerves, is always fashionable and with a hat on his head (hipster!)
Players seems to love him (Yahtzee stated this himself in the commentary and on his forum), I was hoping him to die in a painful way.
I can't relate to the dude, seldom he utters a funny line, he seems to be walking with a stick up his ass. Meh.

tl;dr

• finally some fear in an adventure game, yay!
  
• cast is a bit flat and does little, but it's not uncommon in an Adventure games
  
• Trilby is a boring hipster and uses instagram
  
  @Spummy: y u no start a nitpick thread about a recent/ish game (whose author still visits the boards) (and agrees with his game being tore apart and laughed at)?

[Babar]

If I recall correctly, this was one of the first AGS games which showed quite an effort in graphics. Even though they seem pretty garish today (check it!), it shows that more than some sweat has been put into them. For sure it contributed raising the bar for subsequent AGS productions.

What? Whaaaaat? I remember 5DaS to have pretty meh graphics. They were certainly functional and consistent (which is pretty important, I'm not discounting the importance), but no more so than any other two dozen or so full-length games released at that point. There were games with effortful (and better) graphics put into them before 5DaS, that were of comparable length! Permanent Daylight, King's Quest 1 and 2 by Tierra/AGD, bloody hell Apprentice, etc.!

As for 5DaS, it seems to be the game that brought loads and loads of people to AGS, but I don't really remember much about it. It was engaging when I played it. For a nitpick, the verbcoin/inventory thing didn't really work well for me?

[Paratoxin57]

To this day the Chzo games are in my top 10 point and click games, but i'll be the first to admit 5 days can drag a little.  All the memorable moments in the series for me are in the later games which are terrific (yes i even like 6 days a sacrifice)

[Andail]

What? Whaaaaat? I remember 5DaS to have pretty meh graphics. They were certainly functional and consistent (which is pretty important, I'm not discounting the importance), but no more so than any other two dozen or so full-length games released at that point. There were games with effortful (and better) graphics put into them before 5DaS, that were of comparable length! Permanent Daylight, King's Quest 1 and 2 by Tierra/AGD, bloody hell Apprentice, etc.!

I agree. In terms of graphics, 5DaS did not bring anything new or exciting to the table.

[LetterAfterZ]

I agree that it brought a lot of people to AGS - I've been playing on and off with AGS since playing that series. It's only more recently that I've actually revisited my project and rewritten a complete backstory and script to actually see my adventure game out and that was triggered by the Blackwell games on Steam.

5DAS really setup the idea that an amatuer 1 man dev can make a pretty engaging, free game and get a fair bit of exposure to his ideas. This was before indie game devleopment was the giant sprawling beast it is today and I daresay it played a part in inspiring some indie devs to take a plunge.

That being said, we're meant to nitpick here and I must agree - as someone currently working through a very deeply story and character driven game one of the biggest challenges I'm finding is making my characters and world feel real and alive. I think making your NPCs active and engaged outside of direct player interaction can do a lot for both immersion and pacing in a game. 5DAS really didn't have strong believable (or generally likeable) characters, and I didn't really feel the paranoid angle well in this game. I felt the sequel was much better and capturing the tension (I guess space helps with that), and I really found myself hooked there.

I played everything he released, and found probably 7DAS and that space one with redshirts to be the strongest of the collection.

[Goldmund]

I admire mr Croshaw for his wit and taking game criticism to a new level.
It's a man who basically made a career out of his passion, which is something to be envied and attests to his talents. Don't we all dream about it?

That said, somehow his own creative output (games and books) seem to me to be trapped forever in the domain of fan-fiction.
I can't even put my finger on it. It's as if he was always imitating without creating a new value.

Trilby's Notes were brilliant in gameplay, but story-wise... oh man.

[DoorKnobHandle]

That said, somehow his own creative output (games and books) seem to me to be trapped forever in the domain of fan-fiction.
I can't even put my finger on it. It's as if he was always imitating without creating a new value.

Huh? 5DAS, The Art of Theft, The Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment? How were these fan-fiction? Fan-fiction to what? I'm generally interested, they all seemed reasonably original to me.

[bicilotti]

It's a man who basically made a career out of his passion, which is something to be envied and attests to his talents.

Completely OT, but doesn't he make a living out of sassy videos?

[Goldmund]

That said, somehow his own creative output (games and books) seem to me to be trapped forever in the domain of fan-fiction.
I can't even put my finger on it. It's as if he was always imitating without creating a new value.

Huh? 5DAS, The Art of Theft, The Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment? How were these fan-fiction? Fan-fiction to what? I'm generally interested, they all seemed reasonably original to me.

Hm, well, I really need to tread softly here and pick my words, because I'm not really sure why I dislike Yahtzee's games, but the feel of "fanboyism" and "fanfiction" seem to be at the core of that. It's a matter of style I think, of parodying or using past concept in a way that doesn't create a new product, instead remaining
a) a comment on own medium
b) fanfiction as "creation without self-expression"

Please compare any of his games to, say, Second Face, Cart life, TechnoBabylon, any of Ben304's games -- to pick some very differing ones. Very different, but each full of own style, of the creator's personality. They are the worlds upon themselves. Compared with them Yahtzee's games have this feel of a high=school talented boy who keeps imitating what he likes without giving anything from his own personality, dreams, fears.

edit: ever noticed how his games are full of things he lambasts in reviews of other people's games? That's because his products are an imitation, not creation. I think he's a brilliant critic and a mediocre designer.

edit2: I gave it some more thought and I think it's not imitation; it's the lack of personal vision that turns me meh. It might well be that it is a form of learned cynicism, which makes a person afraid of displaying own personal vision with danger of being ridiculed.

[Goldmund]

It's a man who basically made a career out of his passion, which is something to be envied and attests to his talents.

Completely OT, but doesn't he make a living out of sassy videos?

Well, I take it gaming IS his passion, isn't it? Besides, I don't watch them, just read the columns.

[LetterAfterZ]

Sassy videos and two video game concept bars. Although the one in Melbourne has the worst licence and closes at 11pm... and lacks a bit of character...