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Makeovers For The Mystery House

Posted by Zonk on from the something-eye-for-the-sierra-guy dept.

nickmontfort writes "In Mystery House Taken Over, a group of us reverse-engineered and reimplemented Mystery House, the 1980 Sierra game. With some others, we've created eight "occupied" houses (remakes and mods of the original) and provided a downloadable kit (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) and a web-accessible system to let people easily create their own versions."

14 comments

  1. remake by prankfurter · · Score: 1

    Now if they will just remake the hugo games i will be set!

    --
    -Dan
    1. Re:remake by ersgameboy · · Score: 1

      That'd rock. especially if they made them for Palm OS. I need some new adventure games for my Clie, and ScummVM runs too slow and takes up too much space.

    2. Re:remake by Meagermanx · · Score: 1

      They... Did remake Hugo 1. Dunno 'bout 2-3 tho'...

  2. Sucky by Meagermanx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just played it, and I must say, it was pretty stinking bad. Like, you have to find a candle and matches really quickly, or it gets dark, and you can't do anything (as far as I can tell), and if you go in one room, you trip on a rug and light the house on fire... Every time. It is interesting if you are into old adventure games, but otherwise it is really pretty bad. Also, the graphics are hilarious. There's a wall going through a refrigerator in the kitchen.

    1. Re:Sucky by oskillator · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I recall liking Sierra games in my youth. Hell, after reading Steven Levy's Hackers, they were heroes of mine. It was only later on, when I discovered Infocom and LucasArts games, that I found out just how poorly-designed Sierra's games are. The puzzles often seem designed to sell the 900-number hint line -- not just hard, but unfair.

      I won't attribute to malice, because that type of bad game design was ubiquitous in 1980s (save for a few developers as progressive as the aforementioned Infocom). But as the rest of the world moved on, Sierra refused to improve. It's sad that they were always the most successful adventure game developer, because arguably, it was their persistently unintuitive and ridiculous puzzle design that killed adventure games.

    2. Re:Sucky by Meagermanx · · Score: 1

      I agree. I love a good, funny, smart adventure game, and it is interesting to revisit the classics, but at the same time there is no excuse for bad game design. Not that I'm saying it was a bad game, but it could have been done better.

    3. Re:Sucky by Alpha_Traveller · · Score: 1

      I completely agree with you. I got soured on Sierra games back in the days of Kings Quest I and II, etc.

      Just out of curiosity, I wonder how much responsibility Roberta Williams had in terms of Sierra's game design choices. Did she early on decide to do this? Did she get shouted down in a board meeting or something in the days of Sierra On-Line?

      Hmmm. Makes one think.

      --
      "Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
  3. Mystery by ggambett · · Score: 1

    Hey! Leave our house alone! ;)

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    My website
    1. Re:Mystery by xintegerx · · Score: 1

      Great plug, Gabriel!

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      Cover your eyes and click this link!
  4. Guess they didn't actually try the Linux script by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The inflin executable included in their toolkit is actually too old to use -- it doesn't understand the commands in the build scripts. Installing a newer version of inform and symlinking it to inflin made it work, though (version 6.21.4 in my case).

    1. Re:Guess they didn't actually try the Linux script by nickmontfort · · Score: 1

      We did try the Linux script, and compiled a version of the Inform compiler that would work, but I ended up putting one of the precompiled binaries that didn't work into the kit by mistake. I've just updated it to fix this.

      Glad you got it working on your system already -- have fun.

  5. Welcome to 1980! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Be thankful they didn't decide to redo (Sierra) On-Line's Wizard and the Princess. You'll spend hours (or with today's short attention spans, 4 minutes, give or take 2) searching for a friggin' rock.

  6. play the mods by oskillator · · Score: 1

    If you're only going to try one of these versions -- and if you try the original, that's almost certain to end up being the case -- go with one of the mods. The original is just plain bad, and not just by today's standards. It is a landmark game, but an awful one. The modded games, on the other hand, are written by respected modern adventure game authors. I recommend Adam Cadre's work as especially good.