The lovely people at Telltale are doing a Wallace & Gromit game. I find this quite exciting, not only because I’m a fan of the short films, but also because it’s the kind of setting where the convoluted puzzle logic of the adventure game genre actually fits the personalities of the characters. This is exactly how it should be, but very often isn’t, because game designers by and large believe themselves to be constrained by the conventions of the genre they’re working in. It’s why we have all those clean-cut, preppy, Abercrombie-wearing adventure game protagonists, exemplified by April Ryan of The Longest Journey fame, building elaborate contraptions out of inflatable ducks and clamps instead of just talking to people, as they would in the real world. Wallace and Gromit, on the other hand, are eccentric inventor types, so they have a real excuse. When I’m going to be solving puzzles as them, I’m going to actually feel like I’m them, rather than like I’m solving a random obstacle put in there by the game designers so I won’t breeze through the game in two hours.

Okay, so maybe tailoring story to gameplay is the easier way out, as opposed to coming up with new forms of gameplay to fit the story one wants to tell. It makes sense, though, because there are marketing executives and business plans to deal with in this case. Let’s just hope the finished product turns out as well as I hope it does.

Made this with Wordle.

First things first: my friend Lee and I have started a new blog for Stage!, the game we’re codeveloping. A few things have changed since the last time I talked about it here, namely, it’s now an interactive comic book rather than an adventure game proper, and it’s going to be made in Flash. [1] So far, only Lee has been posting, but it’s interesting reading regardless, and I’ll be following suit once I think of interesting things to add on my part. Have a looksie.

Second, I’ve posted a mini-review/critique of The Graveyard over on the Adventure Gamers staff blog. It’s an artsy interactive piece that I mentioned in passing in one scene of DREAMING, [2] and although I personally wasn’t too crazy about the execution, don’t let that stop you from taking a peek anyway.

Finally, I’m heading over to the other side of the world tomorrow — specifically, to Israel, followed by a small selection of European countries. Don’t mess up the place while I’m gone, okay?