If you haven't played Weather Factory's Book of Hours yet, and you love cosmic horror with tons of backstory, then, um, I guess you should play it soon?
Very late comment on this, but I started playing Pentiment a couple of days ago when I should have been prepping classes for our return from Spring Break. Obsidian is probably my favorite game studio, and I had recently read an interview with Josh Sawyer where he said that his favorite book was The Name of the Rose. I thought, oh, fascinating, I should read that again, and that reminded me that Pentiment was a game I had in my Steam library and hadn't played yet, so I installed it and started playing. This morning, I was trying to find an image from the Aeneid MS shown in the game so that my AP Latin students could chuckle over it (and more importantly, we could discuss Sister Illuminata's response vs. Piero's to the narrative), and I stumbled on this post.
I'm not that far into it yet, but the use of distinctive scripts, and the ways characters go back and correct errors, etc., is really interesting. It seems clear that as Andreas's perceptions of other characters shift, their scripts shift to match his attitudes, so I'm interested to see how those attitudes affect the narrative, and if anything changes on a second play-through, if I have the time to do one. I guess there's always Youtube let's plays!
I was planning on playing Blue Prince eventually, but I will have to move it up my queue! I think you're right that a lot of bibliophiles don't know what they're missing if they aren't playing video games now. Some games are truly hyper-literate. I've been wanting to play Strange Horticulture and a seemingly similar game, Botany Manor, for some time now; they both seem to belong to this sort of literate/scholastic genre of games for book nerds. I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with a friend who's a gainfully employed Classicist, and he thought that games were just distractions and really couldn't be art. This was in 2005 or so, and I know that at the time he'd played Silent Hill 2, among some other pretty good games! I wonder if he's changed his mind since then.
LOVE Botany Manor - also a deeply literary game, and IMO the perfect size to play in a day or weekend and all-around a delight. There's even a subplot about a female scientist trying to get publishing recognition! Cannot recommend enough. Strange Horticulture is also a lot of fun, as is the follow-up Strange Antiquities, although less bookish and more strictly a horror/puzzle game.
On the one hand, this sounds a lot like Myst. On the other hand, I approached Myst thinking I was a decent video game player and ended up wandering for hours not figuring out anything. When I saw some of the — was it brothers’? — videos on YouTube, I was shocked, I could not get ANYWHERE. So the description of this game is deeply intimidating.
My one suggestion for finding clues you’re missing comes from when I was playing an MMO called “The Secret World” that had the basic premise of “what if all the conspiracy theories and secret societies and Lovecraftian horrors were real?” Anyway, during one of the quest lines, I found the next clue on the ceiling of the room we were fruitlessly searching. So don’t forget to look up!
If you haven't played Weather Factory's Book of Hours yet, and you love cosmic horror with tons of backstory, then, um, I guess you should play it soon?
Another amazing game! Love the item descriptions. Especially the cat.
Very late comment on this, but I started playing Pentiment a couple of days ago when I should have been prepping classes for our return from Spring Break. Obsidian is probably my favorite game studio, and I had recently read an interview with Josh Sawyer where he said that his favorite book was The Name of the Rose. I thought, oh, fascinating, I should read that again, and that reminded me that Pentiment was a game I had in my Steam library and hadn't played yet, so I installed it and started playing. This morning, I was trying to find an image from the Aeneid MS shown in the game so that my AP Latin students could chuckle over it (and more importantly, we could discuss Sister Illuminata's response vs. Piero's to the narrative), and I stumbled on this post.
I'm not that far into it yet, but the use of distinctive scripts, and the ways characters go back and correct errors, etc., is really interesting. It seems clear that as Andreas's perceptions of other characters shift, their scripts shift to match his attitudes, so I'm interested to see how those attitudes affect the narrative, and if anything changes on a second play-through, if I have the time to do one. I guess there's always Youtube let's plays!
I was planning on playing Blue Prince eventually, but I will have to move it up my queue! I think you're right that a lot of bibliophiles don't know what they're missing if they aren't playing video games now. Some games are truly hyper-literate. I've been wanting to play Strange Horticulture and a seemingly similar game, Botany Manor, for some time now; they both seem to belong to this sort of literate/scholastic genre of games for book nerds. I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with a friend who's a gainfully employed Classicist, and he thought that games were just distractions and really couldn't be art. This was in 2005 or so, and I know that at the time he'd played Silent Hill 2, among some other pretty good games! I wonder if he's changed his mind since then.
LOVE Botany Manor - also a deeply literary game, and IMO the perfect size to play in a day or weekend and all-around a delight. There's even a subplot about a female scientist trying to get publishing recognition! Cannot recommend enough. Strange Horticulture is also a lot of fun, as is the follow-up Strange Antiquities, although less bookish and more strictly a horror/puzzle game.
On the one hand, this sounds a lot like Myst. On the other hand, I approached Myst thinking I was a decent video game player and ended up wandering for hours not figuring out anything. When I saw some of the — was it brothers’? — videos on YouTube, I was shocked, I could not get ANYWHERE. So the description of this game is deeply intimidating.
OTOH, I’m thinking Pentiment sounds fabulous.
My one suggestion for finding clues you’re missing comes from when I was playing an MMO called “The Secret World” that had the basic premise of “what if all the conspiracy theories and secret societies and Lovecraftian horrors were real?” Anyway, during one of the quest lines, I found the next clue on the ceiling of the room we were fruitlessly searching. So don’t forget to look up!