5 Days a Stranger [new game by Yahtzee]

[Pet Terry]

Wow... that was Yahtzee's best game. He sure has improved and I like his animations. Good job with plot too.

Nice one.

[ratracer]

...and that makes 3 excellent AGS games in a row I played!

Thank God (well, not God, really, but my job that at present allows me to do nothing but playing games...!) that I restarted playing AGS games.

What were the buggy bits? I didn't find any!

[GarageGothic]

I still haven't figured out what this conflict between Yahtzee and the rest of the AGS community is all about. But boy do his games rock.

Aside from the somewhat clichéd plot and the a-bit-too-colorful-for-the-mood graphics (I really think a more monochrome palette a la Odysseus Kent could have added tons to the atmosphere), I loved everything about this game. The structure was terrific - I haven't seen such a buildup of tension in any other amateur adventure, it reminded me of The Shining, rather than more obvious comparisons like House on Haunted Hill.
I adore games with lots of dialogue, especially when there's conflict as here. The suspicion and mistrust was almost like  something out of The Thing. I really wish people would work more with characters. Inter-character conflicts is one of the most powerful tools of storytelling, and adds much more than, say, a flashy animation which would take three times as long to make.

Oh yeah, graphics animations were nice too (especially you-know-who falling on his ass in the bathroom), but what really won me over was the writing and the overall design. Beautiful job. (In fact, it was so good that I've decided to nick a few... er, let myself inspire for my game )

[magintz]

Well done Yahtzee, loved it from start to finish, the plot was one of the best I've seen in a while and had a nostalgic value reminding me of Maniac Mansion and Hugo House of Horrors.


You've done it again.

I am very similar to yahtzee in a way; very arrogant, and think we should just back off a bit and let him get back to taking over the world. His games are great, and reading through some of his site it's quite humourous looking at his take on life / death.

I would quite gladly welcome him back to the forums...

[Stickieee]

Regarding the game itself:

I just completed it after some thrilling hours. There is lot to be learned from a game as good as this. Sure there are mistakes, like badly placed humour, but as a whole this game is one of the best ever.

The characters are real, they react to the world, unlike most characters in amateur-adventures. Each one has a unique personality. In the beginning of the game I saw a lot in common with Agatha Christie's 'A Mousetrap'.

Sometimes everything's so real I forgot I was playing a game.

The plot, though not most original, is told well. The player is not told everything that happens, so that imagination gets activated. That's exactly like it should be in adventure games.

Graphics are innovative at places, sprites being rather high quality. The 16-year old kid looks much younger than the other players. I was impressed.

So, there's a lot to say about this game, but playing it will give you the clearest idea.

[big brother]

I liked the game overall, especially the "dynamic" feeling to the mansion (characters moved to different rooms, etc.) but there were a few story things I think that could be improved.

It would really build tension if you suspect everyone else in the house. If you catch them doing something shady; anything to mislead the player. This could be build up until the player practically starts every time he sees another person in the house. Also, the characters would have to be killed off slower, as not to reduce the pool of suspects.

The whole spirit thing would be a surprise, especially because it controls people (including the player) in the house.

The idol should be more of a central piece to the game. It would tie in really well with that whole Africa bit, and maybe it acts as a home to the malovent spirit of the murderous son. Or something.

Coupled with some creepy atmospheric music (especially for the dream) and sound effects (creaking wood, wind down the chimney, doors opening and closing, etc.)

Also, how does the fire in the fireplace burn for five days?

Just my two cents.

[MrColossal]

don't read if you haven't played


bop bop bop


the biggest complaint i have about the game is that you'd discover something amazing like a room behind a wall with shackles in it and you couldn't tell anyone about it. The only character that got scared died right away and then all the other characters were headstrong or too young to care. As far as I remember no one really got scared and when whatsisname in the leather jacket did start acting suspicious he just sat there in the dining room looking at papers and yelling at you.

i wish the house messed with them more. it seemed to me that the house existed on another plane and i pictured it on a floating island in the sky no one getting in no one getting out cause of the ghost. The ghost brings the car in for some reason that is never explained and it shouldn't have stopped there. Come out of the bathroom and try to go downstairs but the stairs are gone. Doors are added and taken away when someone steps through them, brick walls appear inbetween doors and rooms you've visited many times. This is the same thing I missed from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, the act of being messed with by AM.

The car was great, when it appeared i was confused in a great way, i felt "there is something going on here that is crazy and i'll soon learn." but the car seems to be added mostly to give you the lock picks...

more on being messed with: I kept waiting and waiting but it never happened, I wanted to walk into the dining room and see the picture on the wall changed a little. Like he's facing a different way or he's a little more menacing. I wanted to see small things changed in the house day by day or even second by second. walking into the hall with the staircase gone would have screwed me up pretty good, but walking into another room and noticing something is off but not being able to put my finger on it, even better.

I agree with the big brother, music music music and footsteps DEFINETLY! unknown footsteps moving through a house while you're downstairs, things scraping on the ground, doors closing all the stuff that scared the shit outta you in Silent Hill.

Now these are just the bad things i felt were in the game or things that could have been improved on, consider them as a critique. I loved the game and thought the animation was amazing the dream sequences quite well done and the art was amazing [though some of the lighting was too banded for my tastes] The walk cycles were absolutely amazing, verrry smooth, i was jealous.

all in all a great game and can't wait to see more.

eric

[Timosity]

Also why couldn't you just smash the windows at the front door with something and just escape, that would have been so easy. It looked like a pretty weak front door too, mmmmmmmmm, I guess it's just a game.

[Shattered Sponge]

As with most of the posts in this thread, possible spoilers if you haven't finished the game yet.


One thing that bothered me was the 16-year-old (forget his name) - he seemed like something out of the 1950s, for a while I was convinced he would turn out to be a ghost (when he mentioned Terry Pratchett that kind of threw me); I mean, he talked about being beaten by his teachers, and he was willing to perform a bloody stupid dare for a single pound - what's he gonna spend it on, penny whistles and moon pies?  I did think perhaps the game was set in the 50s, but with all the talk about Reality TV I realised that that could not have been the case. Very short for his age, too - though perhaps that can be excused by the main character's height (6' 4", whatever that is in real measurements) dwarfing him.

I did love a lot of the other stuff, though - like the reference to Thief, the way the music suddenly builds up and make you think something is going to happen, the general design and atmosphere of the game which evokes a kind of Colonel's Bequest crossed with Clock Tower (to which I believe the shower curtain thingy is a reference) feeling, and the fact that the puzzles and dialogue were actually quite good.

I actually prefered it to his earlier games, which I didn't dislike.

[xenogia]

hehe, i remember having yahtzee on my icq years ago, hes a nice guy...thats all i have to say

[Minimi]

This game is one of the best ags adventure game i've ever played. I haven't finished the game yet, but I like it alot! I can pretty much say that I think it's about as good as pleurghburg was. Maybee I just like murdercases The only thing that annoyed me was the GUI. I'm used to the rightclick and immediatley change of mousecursor

[MrColossal]

You're welcome I guess...

[remixor]

I can pretty much say that I think it's about as good as pleurghburg was.

Well, bear in mind Pleurghburg did many more advanced things than 5DAS does, and it's a LOT (lot, lot) longer, which took much more effort.  I'm really enjoying 5DAS, but it's pretty hard to compare it to PDA.

[Barcik]

i wish the house messed with them more. it seemed to me that the house existed on another plane and i pictured it on a floating island in the sky no one getting in no one getting out cause of the ghost. The ghost brings the car in for some reason that is never explained and it shouldn't have stopped there. Come out of the bathroom and try to go downstairs but the stairs are gone. Doors are added and taken away when someone steps through them, brick walls appear inbetween doors and rooms you've visited many times. This is the same thing I missed from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, the act of being messed with by AM.

The car was great, when it appeared i was confused in a great way, i felt "there is something going on here that is crazy and i'll soon learn." but the car seems to be added mostly to give you the lock picks...

more on being messed with: I kept waiting and waiting but it never happened, I wanted to walk into the dining room and see the picture on the wall changed a little. Like he's facing a different way or he's a little more menacing. I wanted to see small things changed in the house day by day or even second by second. walking into the hall with the staircase gone would have screwed me up pretty good, but walking into another room and noticing something is off but not being able to put my finger on it, even better.

And a quote from fullyramblomatic.com:

5 Days A Stranger v1.3 is up. Yeah, I know you already played it. Well, I added sound effects with this one, so the least you ungrateful pricks can do is download it again and listen to all the lovely sounds I painstakingly added. Also, I made two of the paintings do weird and creepy things like change over time or occasionally look a bit different

* Barcik waves to Yahtzee.

[Quintaros]

What a guy, that yahtzee is.

[m0ds]

Good stuff. Reminds me of a "more comic" version of Revenants.

m0ds

[jason]

Awesome game, one of the best AGS games I've played, and to think I almost missed out on this! Luckily, CJ posted it as the GotM.

I was genuinely scared several times. The characters were very well done and all had their own unique personalities. The sound effects were great and added to the spookiness of the game. The puzzles were excellent and logical.

Some nitpicking: I agree with GarageGothic that some of the colors might be too bright. Although spooky, Trilby's car appearing out of nowhere might be too implausible, but some kind of explanation would be nice. The UI wasn't very friendly, so I resorted to using F1-F4 to choose verbs (instead of right clicking).

Although the game was pretty long, I wish it was longer just because it was so enjoyable and captivating. I hope that Yahtzee does decide to make more AGS games.

[Alexis Vale]

Excellect game to Yahtzee. It gave that good feeling of satisfaction when it was over. Very easily on my top five. I enjoyed being creeped out at times. Nice choice of music. Excellent graphics. Nice animations. I loved the dialogs.

Rating: ***** (5/5)

EDIT: Dang. Now how am I going to sleep at night?

[Rhubarb Celestial]

"Hey, Rhubarb Celestial, you have 0 messages, 0 are new."

That's what I get after not logging in for almost a year. Bah humbug.

Anyway, since there's a discussion panel happening on this topic...

I do think this was one of his better games by far. The graphics were a huge step up from his thick-black-outlines-coloured-with-the-fill-command horrors of the RB games, and the sheer diversity of the small animations throughout the whole thing adds a lot more atmosphere and involvement. The characters were each sufficiently different enough to make interacting with them quite interesting (although I was convinced that the kid was a ghost too), and I really liked the dialogue, especially the conversation between Trilby and Simone when he's locked in the shed. And the whole haunted mansion Clock Tower theme is something I always loved (although maybe he went a bit overboard with the 'twin boys one of whom is locked up his whole life' thing). I wasn't too crazy about the badly written-up spells (from someone who studies mythology, legends and superstitions as a hobby, but maybe I'm just being picky) and personally I thought the whole 'masked serial killer' thing was a bit lame too, but to people who aren't constantly barraged with his expressed love for Friday 13th and Nightmare on Elm St films, I guess it might seem acceptable.

The thing that really pisses me off about YZ and his creations is that he always makes the mistake of thinking that the small details don't matter. True, this IS an amateur game, but this is all stuff that could easily been fixed had be been bothered to exert himself just that tiiiiiny little bit extra. For instance, I thought the music, taken directly from some dodgy anime RPG Creator, was absolutely terrible, grating, harsh, and repetitive while not being all that atmospheric. There are a dozen small but irritating plot points that make no sense, like the car appearing in the yard (it was so inane as to be funny, something which I don't think he was aiming for) and the body being under the floor tiles (the guy just staggered upstairs, dug out the floor, and carefully sealed himself in again without a trace before dying, did he?). There are also a few references to various short stories and novel attempts he's written that would be lost on people who don't either know him or read his site avidly (like the whole thing with AJ's government connections which is never really explained or elaborated on). You could usually tell someone when a new development arose, but a lot of the time you had to keep it to yourself. Plus, as someone said, the house didn't seem that difficult to break in or out of.

Overall I did like it, especially the puzzles which were fairly logical and solveable without being too easy (I got stuck several times but still finished it all in one sitting without hints). The dream sequences were great, something I certainly wouldn't have expected from him. In my own summary, it's an attempt to break away from comedy into a more serious and atmospheric genre, and it works ok for me.

He moves to Australia in two days. Hip hip hooray.

[Tarantula]

I simply loved this game. I couldn't stop playing until I reached the end. The best written AGS game I've ever played. Thank you, Yahtzee.