GTD. Gemini Rue - an analysis

[Andail]

Let me first of all say that I wouldn't subject just any AGS game to this kind of dissection, but Gemini Rue has garneded so much critical acclaim I think it can take it. Plus, what I'm saying is largely positive.

So I finally played Gemini Rue and just completed it. I'm not exactly going out on a limb by saying it's one of the best indie adventure games in recent years. But while playing it, a few things made me react with surprise.

I asked myself ”what makes this such a good game?” and came to the conclusion that the strongest aspects of GR have little to do with gameplay, or even what constitutes a game. GR's strengths are first and foremost its cinematic aspects â€" the worldbuilding, the atmosphere, the writing, the melodramatic plot.

When it comes to the typical lateral puzzles that P&C adventures are famous (infamous?) for, GR only has a handful, and they aren't very strong. It does have one or two (depending on how you count) logical puzzles (like the ventilation system puzzle), which work well.

Stopping the stompers, while very effectful and exciting, doesn't really qualify as a puzzle in my opinion, but opinions may differ here.

The vast majority of puzzles in GR are either
1. Extremely basic bodily manoeuvres, like using the foot verb on various objects before they can be removed/picked up, or even actions that you'd expect the protagonist to handle on his own, like putting the foot on a pipe or in a hole to gain more purchase so he can reach something.
2. Information searching, via databases or the communicator.

I only counted to one or two purely original, lateral puzzles in the traditional P&C tradition, namely
a) the one where you should talk to Baldur to make him stop walking around, so that you can turn on the steam and burn him, and b) when you should put the extension cord through the hole in the roof instead of attempting to throw it up through it.

Those two left me purely satisfied.

Others did not:
1. One puzzle â€" the one about pursuading the pilot to meet you â€" has you navigating a complex dialogue tree with no clues whatsoever â€" it's just trial and error until you choose the correct option.
2. The protagonist needs a device of some sort to mend his lock picks, and for some reason this device lies in a box in a room that you have no knowledge of. The solution is to kick the boards from the opening and enter this mysterious room, even though you no reason to believe there should be anything useful in there.
3. Swapping the gun with a weight on the pedestal is not only unoriginal and a bit illogical (you'd expect them to have the technology to detect whether the gun is properly replaced) but it's also bad puzzle design to require one specific weight among many, with no way to work out the weight of the gun beforehand.

Other aspects of the gameplay left me a bit undecided. I really don't know what to make of the box-moving routine. I only ever used it to move one box a few meters to the side in order to stand on it and reach something, so in terms of actual puzzle design it's almost ludicrous, but then again it's harmless and kind of cute, and I guess should be seen as a nostalgic wink to the old platformer puzzles of the early '90s.

The shooting part has left critics divided, and while I didn't exactly dislike it, I couldn't help but finding it a bit generic and monotonous. It has Another World vibes to it, but it never gets varying or exciting enough.

The information finding mostly works well â€" Azriel uses various computers and databases to find names and places, and the UI's feel mostly authentic, with all the anachronistic retro-futuristic features you can't help but love (you can travel through space but you use huge wall-mounted computer terminals as diaries, instead of, say, a smartphone...).

The only downer here is that basically all the people and organisations I need to contact reside on the same block, and often in the same building, in a world that initially felt really big. The constant reuse of locales reduces the world size considerably, but it's also understandable that handpainted backgrounds need to be employed economically.

But let's return to the good stuff. Dramaturgically, what does GR do that works so well?

First of all, it establishes from the outset that there's a complex background plot, but you only need to focus on a rather straightforward objective. There's no information dump that the player needs to sort out and understand; instead we're served certain sparse keywords that paint the picture for us. Space colonies. A criminal organisation. A missing brother.

But before we need to be very concerned about the backdrop, we just have to rescue a certain Matthius.  An extraction mission. This makes it easy to dive into the game, and keeps you engaged.

After we've accomplished the first mission, and feel warmed up, it's time to open up the game world a bit. You're now less directed. This is when the game really becomes ”gamey” and in my opinion undergoes its weakest phase. Not only am I disappointed to re-appear on the exact same street (when I got away with the spacecraft, I expected to get a brand new area to explore) but I feel slightly confused as to what to do.

Let's leave Azriel there and take a look at the other main character. Here we have a very classic scenario â€" amnesia mixed with escape-the-prison. It's such a staple of the adventure game genre it's not even considered cliché â€" it's like saying shooting at gas barrels is a cliché in shooters; you just accept it as a genre idiosynchrasy, an ingrendient in the recipe.

GR gets away with this because a) it's only one of two game branches, and b) memory and identity are sort of the theme of the entire game, so it's only fitting.

Playing Delta-6 feels genuinely exciting, and I have this uneasy feeling in my stomach when I'm foreshadowed his fate. I want to escape, but I know it won't be easy.

The monitor voice does border on expositional, and especially being instructed how to move the box is just parodical. But that's forgivable.

Being able to switch between the characters doesn't add anything to the gameplay, and I'm not sure why you'd do this except for variation's sake. I didn't notice how anything in Azriels world could work as a clue in Delta-6's or vice versa.

The most engaging part of this stretch of the game is when we make friends in a hostile, cold environment. As a player I'm yearning for allies, but who can I trust? GR does this superbly.

Towards we end, it becomes clear why critics and players love GR so much. What we have here is a magnificent crescendo, a cinematic climax that most adventure game players must be starved of.

GR stacks twists and sentimental moments on each other in a manner that would make a normal movie appear a bit melodramatic, and a novel downright soppy. But this is a game, and it works wonderfully. Friends die, others escape in the nick of time, evil villains deliver existential speeches, it's just a perfect firework of cinematic devices and tropes.  The game ends and I'm left all emotional and worked up.

There's nothing truly profound going on here (”our identity isn't in our memories, it's in our experiences!” ... hm, ok. ”I could erase your memories, but there's one thing I couldn't erase â€" that's your conscience!”...) but it's cool because it's a game and doesn't have to be really philosophical, it's alright if it feels philosophical.

What lessons can we learn from this when designing a game? Here's my summary.
1. World building. The player needs to feel that they're looking into a complete universe, with all the conflicts, intrigues and things that are specific for that world.
2. Present information in short bits and pieces - don't inform the player how stuff works. The phrase ”show, don't tell” is a bit worn, but it's extremely important and GR utilizes it masterfully. Avoid exposition like the plague.
3. The background plot can be extremely complicated, but there has to be a straightforward objective for the player to focus on, at least initially. It's like in the Bourne movies â€" we have all these important-sounding phrases and concepts tossed around, but we don't need to understand them all at once, we just accept that the background plot is rich and complex. For now, all Bourne has to do is escape and survive.
4. Puzzles are secondary, especially traditional, lateral P&C puzzles. Apparently, most players today are fine with using a screwdriver to open a panel or a grate, and to perform other mundane tasks. When the game is mostly cinematic, the function of the puzzle is to slow down the pace and let the player feel like s/he is actually interacting with the game. In GR, the player doesn't really steer the game, s/he just decides at what pace the plot should progress. Knowing how it will end doesn't mean you can prevent it from happening.
5. Puzzles should be easy. Most modern players are fine with spending just a few minutes on each obstacle. Especially indie games can't afford having the player stuck for too long.
6. Make sure there's a rewarding climax. Many adventure games tend to be well done and thought out until it's time to finish them, at which point they stop being polished and rewarding, and we just get an outro-scene and then the credits. GR has a long, intense, exciting final ending that leaves you completely wrung out. It leaves nothing more to wish for.
7. Player influence is secondary. Instead of focusing on multiple paths and endings, make sure the one you've got is polished and full of content. A player is more concerned about actually completing the game than influencing its direction/ending. A good but pre-determined ending is better than a poor but player-chosen ending. Of course, combining the two may be even better, but waaay more difficult.

That was lengthy. Agree or disagree?

[Babar]

I just recently finished it as well (when I got it off one of the recent humble bundles)!

2. The protagonist needs a device of some sort to mend his lock picks, and for some reason this device lies in a box in a room that you have no knowledge of. The solution is to kick the boards from the opening and enter this mysterious room, even though you no reason to believe there should be anything useful in there.

I found that place by searching for it in the city'd database, so I wouldn't say it is random, just a bit conveniently coincidental that it just happens to be in the same line block as everything else you need to reach.
But yeah, I'd agree with you that puzzles aren't really what made Gemini Rue great.

Let's leave Azriel there and take a look at the other main character. Here we have a very classic scenario â€" amnesia mixed with escape-the-prison. It's such a staple of the adventure game genre it's not even considered cliché â€" it's like saying shooting at gas barrels is a cliché in shooters; you just accept it as a genre idiosynchrasy, an ingrendient in the recipe.

GR gets away with this because a) it's only one of two game branches, and b) memory and identity are sort of the theme of the entire game, so it's only fitting.

Playing Delta-6 feels genuinely exciting, and I have this uneasy feeling in my stomach when I'm foreshadowed his fate. I want to escape, but I know it won't be easy.

I kinda felt the opposite. I was bored and uninterested with the Delta-6 branch, and avoided it as much as I could (only switched over when I was stuck and couldn't proceed).

There's nothing truly profound going on here (”our identity isn't in our memories, it's in our experiences!” ... hm, ok. ”I could erase your memories, but there's one thing I couldn't erase â€" that's your conscience!”...) but it's cool because it's a game and doesn't have to be really philosophical, it's alright if it feels philosophical.

I was a bit pulled out of it when I was suddenly explicitly hit over the head with "this is the philosophy!" at that point. Might've worked better to simply hint at the idea in conversation.

I can't disagree with most of your points, but I'm not sure about relegating gameplay interactivity (in the form of puzzles) and player agency and influence to secondary roles. I mean, they certainly work in some games, and Gemini Rue is a great game, but I can't say if that is in spite of, or because of giving those parts less importance. I've often been a critic of how puzzles are used in modern adventure games (and I had to use a walkthrough for a couple of bits in this one), but I always found myself drawn in more into games where the player has an actual visible effect on the world, being able to change it to benefit them or their goal, rather than being lead along a prefixed story by the nose.

[Snarky]

I mean, a lot of this stuff is hardly unique to Gemini Rue, is it? Seems like the vast majority of adventure games are single-path, where the player can't affect the story in any real way apart from the pace (and in some cases the order, slightly) of events â€" and in making it to the end without dying.

One thing you may have missed in a single playthrough is that a number of puzzles in GR have multiple solutions (Babar mentions one), and that you can therefore in fact affect how things play out, though only in minor ways. I also think the other solutions you brute-forced are probably hinted somewhere, though it's been too long since I played for me to remember the details.

Gemini Rue is a good game, and I think you're right that it shows that this is one possible way to make a good adventure game. That doesn't mean it's the only possible way, or that the design decisions made in GR are the right ones for every title. I wouldn't have wanted Heroine's Quest to follow this template, for example.

[Stupot]

Gemini Rue was great and maybe having more puzzles might have spoiled the pacing of the story a bit, but I personally play adventures as much for the puzzles as for the story, so I wouldn't say that puzzles should be secondary as a general rule.

I do agree that 'player influence' is not that important (unless it's one of the selling points of your game, a la The Walking Dead).  I'm less fussed than most about this ever-growing obsession with having to 'affect' the outcome of an adventure game.  For me, as long as there is the illusion that my actions are important to the end result, however linear the journey may be, then I'm happy.  I don't even care that much about multiple endings, or even multiple solutions for puzzles, to be honest. They are just nice little extra touches that are nice if you can afford to add them.

I agree that the playable world felt disappointingly small compared to the massive epic spread that was implied by the map, with all the cities and planets that you never actually end up visiting.  I wonder if maybe Josh initially had much more unrealistically epic plans when he first set out.

I loved Delta 6's world just as much as Azriel's. Both storylines would have made great games in their own right, but if I had to pick a favourite, I'd go for Azriel's.  As for the shooting sequences, I thought they made a nice little change to break up the traditional gameplay.  I liked them, but again they were just a nice touch, rather than a vital ingredient.

I want to play it again now.  It has been a long time

[Dave Gilbert]

Obviously I'm a bit biased and shouldn't really jump in, but I thought I'd correct one small point...

2. The protagonist needs a device of some sort to mend his lock picks, and for some reason this device lies in a box in a room that you have no knowledge of. The solution is to kick the boards from the opening and enter this mysterious room, even though you no reason to believe there should be anything useful in there.
3. Swapping the gun with a weight on the pedestal is not only unoriginal and a bit illogical (you'd expect them to have the technology to detect whether the gun is properly replaced) but it's also bad puzzle design to require one specific weight among many, with no way to work out the weight of the gun beforehand.

To be fair, these ARE hinted at. Albeit, very subtley:

Spoiler

Azriel says he needs a Carbon Ray Stabilizer to mend the lockpicks. If you look up Carbon Ray Stabilizers on the database, it says that one was delivered to the building that you end up finding them in.

And if you LOOK at the gun, he says it weighs roughly four pounds.

[close]

[waheela]

Andail, great analysis. I pretty strongly agree with a lot of your points. It took me a while to get around to playing this game. (I got it on the last Humble Bundle as well.) It was well worth it though! Story, characters and world-building are what drew me into adventure games in the first place, and this one did not disappoint at all. Near the end of the game, I got very smug and satisfied with myself because I thought I had discovered the twist, and then I was completely blown out of the water when I was wrong. I love that a game can still surprise me like that. For this reason (and the many others you iterated) I adored the game. I do agree though that many of the puzzles felt a little uninspired to me as well, although the thing that probably disappointed me the most was the sprite scaling. Even walking a slight bit away from the camera caused the sprites to get blurry. I know this may sound a little nit-picky, but speaking as an artist, it kind of cheapened the game for me a little. Still, an amazing game. It was hard for me to put this one down and stop playing.

[Secret Fawful]

There was only one thing I didn't like in the game. I hated the main villain's actual face and design at the end so much it took me out of the game. It didn't fit his voice and presence at all, and no, that wasn't ironic or meaningful, it was awful.

Everything else was really, really good. The final gunfight is my favorite part, especially the dialogue beforehand. It really felt like it took inspiration- good inspiration- from Bebop.

[Andail]

Oh, my mistake then, about the gun. I'm sure I tried looking at it, but failed. I feel a bit dumb, but I never worked out how to look at inventory items (playing the ios version)

[Dave Gilbert]

Oh, my mistake then, about the gun. I'm sure I tried looking at it, but failed. I feel a bit dumb, but I never worked out how to look at inventory items (playing the ios version)

Oh right! I forgot about that. Janet updated that slightly for the iOS version. If you look at the pedestal, there's a sign that says the pedestal can hold one 4 pound weight. Not very obvious, but it is there.

[MillsJROSS]

Another Humble Bundle purchaser...I played it less than a month ago.

I think what made the game enjoyable for me was the atmosphere. I found the Delta-6 situation to be very engaging. Sure, the puzzles were secondary to the plot, but I found these were good puzzles, they rarely hindered the game. The only exception was the phone tree puzzle with the pilot.

RANT: As a general rule, I don't like Phone Tree conversations. If you get it wrong you have to repeat yourself over and over and over. The dialog no longer feels organic, and you enter a conversation that would never happen to "real" people in the same situation.

I really enjoyed the gun fighting. It might have gotten tired if the game was longer, but overall it injected a sense of danger and excitement.

I don't agree that puzzles need to be easy, or even secondary to the plot. I think the following is how I enjoy puzzles the most.

• The puzzles need to make sense within the context of the game. Some games tend to throw puzzles in the game for the sake of game-play, and it rarely has anything to do with the overall plot. I think most of the time these tend to look like "fetch-me" puzzles.
• The player needs to know what their current goal is. This can start to get frustrating when there is a lot going on. I think GR strengths was that for the most part, you had clear direction and there wasn't a lot of goals happening at one time.
• The puzzles need to have clear hints in the game. The clues need to be in the game world. I found the hint on the pedestal and was happy when I solved it, but it totally could be overlooked. If you brute force solved it, you wouldn't understand what really happened. Perhaps more hints can be revealed the longer the game play. So if you step away from the pedestal several times the character says something to direct your attention to the pedestal. One thing I liked about older text parser games, is that you could look around the room and find all you clues within one description. "The room is blah blah blah, there's a slight glimmer in the corner."

I don't particularly care for multiple endings. I know its supposed to add a richer re-play experience, but I rarely replay an adventure game. I agree, simple one-directional plots are better for me. That doesn't mean I don't like that you can solve puzzles in different ways, but I'd prefer the plot to stay relatively the same.

If I learned one thing from this game, it's that I should hire the voice actor for the Director. Anytime he was speaking the game was interesting.

[Problem]

I loved Gemini Rue. Honestly, it was one the most exciting adventure games I've ever played. The atmosphere was wonderful, and the pacing was spot-on. There was a feeling of urgency and danger throughout the whole game, something that very few adventure games accomplish. That doesn't mean that puzzles have to be secondary, but it was the right decision for this kind of story.

What I didn't like was the lack of character interaction. Especially in the Delta-6 part I wished there were more dialogue options. Information about the other inmates was reduced to the bare minimum needed to progress in the game, and that made these characters feel a little bland.

I liked the shooting sequences, and the time pressure in some scenes. Usually I don't like that, but it worked very well for this game. Often action sequences feel out of place in adventure games and distract from the story, at least that's my impression. But in Gemini Rue these game mechanics serve the story. They probably wouldn't work in a different setting though.

So I don't think we can learn many lessons for adventure games in general here. But one thing we can learn is that the story and setting come first, and everything you do about the gameplay (puzzles, interface, gameplay elements, dying...) has to match these. Gemini Rue succeded in making the right decisions gameplay-wise, but what works for Gemini Rue doesn't have to work for other games.