Messages

I decided however to keep the "dialect misspelling" on Sabo, since he really didn't have very much dialog, and that certain trope (R->L) is so well known, I figured no one would stumble on it.

[...]

If Sabo ever were to return to the series though, I can assure you, his accent will remain. It is, simply put, the way he talks.

I think that hits the nail on the head. If that's the way he talks, it's the way he talks. If other characters had been pointing out his accent or goading him to say words with lots of Rs in them just so they could laugh at him, that would have been a different story. If Bwana and Kito can have Jamaican characteristics to their speech (like "mon" for "man", which the reviewer points out) without it being made an issue, then why can't Sabo be made to sound Japanese? These nuances add to the authenticity of the game, in my view.

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I have to respond to that. Firstly, I'm very grateful to Snarky for bringing it up (and explaining why it doesn't work). Secondly, about what you said there: true, characters didn't make fun of Sabo, but The Journey Down's game-makers themselves did. Why else did they put the 'r/l' cliché there in the first place? It was obviously designed to make players chuckle. And no, it's not a good nuance. It's a seriously overused and badly understood cliché. Pure and simple.

It's also so abused that most English-speaking people of Japanese ancestry can't stand it. I mean there's always a jerk speaking "like a Jap" to you, like "Hey, Jilo, courd you pass me that papel?" As if you'd never heard the joke before. When in fact you hear it almost every day, even though you're a native English speaker. We get it all the time. That and 'ching chong' and 'me love you long time'. Seriously, people? couldn't you be more creative? :/ So unless you understand Japanese and English, don't even go there with the 'r/l' cliché. It's just not clever or cool.

Thanks for hearing me out. Great game, btw.

Every time I finish an adventure game that doesn't have a maze/labyrinth in it I crack a beer and toast the designer.

Have you tried the "lava maze" puzzle in a Tex Murphy adventure, 'The Pandora Directive'?

This time, though, it's in a Mayan room of lava running through the maze with some swinging things above your head.

Spoiler

You're supposed to crawl on a level of maze from one side of the room to another side. Make a misstep or get knocked by one of those swinging things, you fall into a lava bank. When you do, you see a rising gravestone while Tex sarcastically informs you that he's died. 

After you completed this maze puzzle, you get to do ANOTHER MAZE! A GARDEN MAZE! WHOO HOO!  I think when I saw the second maze, I almost wept.

[close]

God, I made so many missteps in the lava room that my hatred for mazes (and Tex's sarcastic tone) still burns today.

For me the most memorable puzzle is the one in Secret of the Monkey Island. It took me a long time to figure out what I had to do with a weird-looking monkey and a water pump with a rusted cog.

Spoiler

The monkey + the pump = a 'monkey wrench'. Oooh, I see. I hadn't heard of this term before, which annoyed me even more. 

[close]

Yeah, just one. 

A college friend and I talked about adventure games we loved and eventually decided to create one of our own. We started with him as a programmer, me as a story and puzzle designer, and his art student roommate as a background artist (we bribed him with promised meals and art materials). We spent about a year and half on it before we abandoned it.

The story is a tribute to a favourite mystery writer, Edogawa Rampo (Japan's answer to Edgar Allan Poe, which was how ER obtained his pen name), who's best known for both mystery stories and his 'Kogoro Akechi' stories.

Akechi is a genius but highly eccentric detective that investigates supernatural or weird mysteries. Like Sherlock Holmes, but Akechi is more weird and he's at home in Japan where the supernatural and the paranormal exist.)  Rampo's stories were such an influence on me that I wanted to create an adventure game that set in Rampo's world.

We named the game "A Strange Tale of the Hotel Butterfly". In Japan, a butterfly is usually seen as a messenger of death. The hotel is located at the base of the real-life forest, 'Aokigahara' (a sea of trees), which is nationally nicknamed "The Suicide Forest" because obviously, it's where suicidal people go to take their lives. 

In this story, a wealthy member of the Diet asked our hero to investigate his wayward son's disappearance. The last sighting of him at the Hotel Butterfly. Hence the trip, but our hero thought the son may have killed himself at the forest. Why else was he there?

When our hero arrived, he quickly discovered it wasn't as straightforward as he expected. To begin with, the place was creepy as hell and the staff were skittish and strange. Some guests weren't as who they claimed to be. Our hero suspected the wayward son may be alive and that his life was at stake. In fact, there may be three lives at stake including his own.

I wanted the hero to be Japanese, but my mate argued to make him British to make him "appealing" for the likes of him. We compromised by making him a half (half-British and half-Japanese), the only son of British journalist mother and Japanese diplomat father. We gave him a name, "John Yamada", which unexpectedly provided a running gag.

Yamada is one of most common Japanese family names (like Smith) and John is one of most English given names (like Taro). We had him switching between John Yamada and Taro Smith throughout the story.

The game was 46% completed when we got sidetracked by real life issues and college stuff.  I doubt we'll ever pick it up again because my college friend and I lost touch after he went off to save lives somewhere in Delhi when we graduated a few years ago. 

But it was fun while it lasted, though.