[HN Gopher] Grim Fandango Puzzle Document (1996) [pdf]
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Grim Fandango Puzzle Document (1996) [pdf]
Author : krykp
Score : 179 points
Date : 2025-02-16 19:13 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gameshelf.jmac.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (gameshelf.jmac.org)
| killion wrote:
| I loved the first and last page...
|
| [first] "This report, by its very length, defends itself against
| the risk of being read." -Winston Churchill
|
| [last] "To protect this document, please restrict your fallen
| tears of joy to this box. Thank you!"
| krykp wrote:
| It is honestly one of my favorite documents. With the thought
| put behind it, it is of no surprise the game was such a well
| crafted masterpiece.
|
| Most software work tends to move away from this kind of ... I
| don't want to say documentation, we have better documentation
| tools than ever, more-so a level of writing in general that is
| more 'human', be it written documents at length or well
| commented code.
|
| Another one is `The Sims`
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43064273
|
| I recall a Warcraft III one I once saw, that went into
| technical details on the tooling/scripting packaged with the
| game. That was another great document too, but I don't have it
| :)
| protocolture wrote:
| I got to ogle a game design doc for a Sonic the Hedgehog game
| that was never produced. And yeah its very similar, except it
| had way more visual layout. Absolutely everything sonic could
| do was amazingly visualised and described.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| I feel a game like FF7 which came out in this era didn't have
| a document like this. OR if it did, it was put together AFTER
| the game was finished.
| jmacdotorg wrote:
| For a bit more historical context, see the 2008 blog post that
| originally accompanied this PDF:
| http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2008/11/grim-fandango-puzzle-desig...
| soneca wrote:
| > _"We didn't have the last puzzle designed when I wrote that
| document, so I wrote two nonsense paragraphs and then
| overlapped them in the file so it would look like the final
| puzzle description was in there, but obscured by a print
| formatting error. That way I could turn the document in by the
| deadline."_
| roenxi wrote:
| It is interesting to look back on the genre given that, as far as
| I know, it either died sometime in the 90s or grew into something
| unrecognisable.
|
| I suspect there is a hint in the name of the document. I can't
| tell how these "puzzles" are meant to be puzzles and to this day
| I never figured out how people were meant to solve them in the
| context of the game. The Discworld series as I recall were
| terrible for this, but these puzzle structure diagrams just don't
| make sense to me. What is the player being challenged to do? Grim
| Fandango is trying to tell a story but it won't reveal what the
| story is until after the player has already figured it out
| through telepathy and brute force clicking.
|
| For all these games were landmarks it was an era where it wasn't
| obvious what a computer game could or should do to be interesting
| and entertaining. Something like _Return of the Obra Dinn_
| captures the intent of these games (storytelling through close
| inspection) much more cleanly.
| wishinghand wrote:
| Perhaps I'm biased because I played the game when I was 14 and
| had much more free time to dedicate to it, but it's my
| impression that Grim Fandango was known for having few of the
| rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-it type of puzzles.
|
| As for your question about "what is the player being challenged
| to do?" I had to sit and think for a bit. I think the most
| straightforward answer is to just think abstractly and make
| connections in the context of a humorous noir story. You
| certainly aren't being challenged to solve a mystery, but I'm
| not sure it really matters. I'm not sure if you mean it like
| Chess challenges you to vanquish your opponent and The Witness
| demands color/pattern/maze analysis.
| roenxi wrote:
| > I think the most straightforward answer is to just think
| abstractly and make connections in the context of a humorous
| noir story.
|
| I can't easily reconcile that with the linked puzzle
| document. If I pick on something at random (page 16, Puzzle
| #12: Get Starter [0]). I don't see any particular advantage
| to abstract thinking or even superficially understanding the
| scene. It looks like the player is expected to brute-force
| solutions. The situation overall is pretty entertaining and
| we learn a little bit about the world; but the actual puzzle
| - even with the design docs - doesn't give any hints about
| how players are meant to come up with that solution
| thoughtfully. The design doc doesn't seem to think that
| clues, hints or the like are important. If the symbology of
| using spiderwebs as sling-shots with bones is a standard
| trope then I suppose maybe I'm just out of it - but I don't
| think it is. That isn't how spiderwebs work. It seems
| logically suspect even in the game's own context - if the
| scythe can't cut the web, why can't we use it to slingshot?
| Or if not getting the scythe stuck is critical, why do we
| need the scythe at all? Manny can just grip the bone.
|
| It isn't bad as such; these puzzles can be solved and I
| enjoyed a bunch of these games with walkthroughs in hand. But
| it is easy to see why the market for point & clicks
| evaporated - the gameplay loop is weak and the puzzle aspect
| is also weak.
|
| [0] And we can see what that became in the game here -
| https://youtu.be/jIoSL-uSwfs?t=4223
| coldpie wrote:
| > It is interesting to look back on the genre given that, as
| far as I know, it either died sometime in the 90s or grew into
| something unrecognisable.
|
| They're still out there! Scroll down this recent thread for
| many, many, many examples:
| https://bsky.app/profile/grundislavgames.bsky.social/post/3l...
| dunham wrote:
| This game was one of my favorites. And many years ago I was
| pleased to learn that the lobby in the game was inspired by my
| Dentist's office (450 Sutter St in San Francisco).
|
| https://www.doublefine.com/news/450-sutter
| makmanalp wrote:
| God I loved that lobby and the art deco + mexican combination
| art style. I found a high res version of that mural as a
| wallpaper at some point but am coming up short for the link
| right now.
| diegs wrote:
| That's wild. My dentist was in that building for quite a while
| as well.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Probably the same one?
| vibhurishi wrote:
| What a blast from the past ! Thanks for sharing this.
| mwidell wrote:
| Perhaps my favorite game of all time. I liked all of the
| Lucasarts adventure games, but this one was special to me.
| Completed it 3 times since it came out. I think it is something
| about the characters, the story, the world and the ambience in
| it.
|
| I wonder how this document was used? Did they write all of it
| before implementing the game? Or was it written in parallel to
| making the game, as a reference?
| bmogilefsky wrote:
| It was all written at once, during the pre-production phase. We
| had daily meetings to brainstorm settings, characters, goals,
| puzzles, etc. The next day Peter Chan would come in with
| sketches or storyboards. Meanwhile I tinkered on making the
| engine work. Once the doc was done (and some
| locations/puzzles/characters were cut out to reduce the
| production cost estimate) and the engine was able to display
| one character walking around one temporary room, we went into
| production, where the team size ramped up and we churned
| through the document building locations, modeling, texturing,
| and animating characters, etc. This doc became foundational for
| anyone joining the team to learn what the game was supposed to
| be like.
| mikhailbolton wrote:
| There was a GDC presentation by the iMUSE team (Michael Land,
| Peter McConnel and Clint Bajakian) in like 2000 or 2001 that
| I wish I could relive and share. They showed some of the
| iMUSE interface and how they would mock up the interactive
| soundtrack.
|
| They started with cornering Tim and getting him to describe
| each area/room, including the soundscape, and then they would
| temp in music and sound effects and then went and got a lot
| of SF street musicians to record a lot of the music.
|
| I remember them showing a build of the game that had Tim
| describing each scene instead of the final audio.
|
| It was amazing to see behind the curtain.
| mwidell wrote:
| Wow, didn't expect an answer straight from the horses mouth
| :) Thanks for making one of the best games of all time!
| simonswords82 wrote:
| I'd just like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart
| for making my childhood and engagement with computers all
| that more magical. I went on the make a career and a
| livelihood from them and games like yours shaped me.
|
| You guys must have impacted thousands upon thousands of lives
| with your hard work and creativity.
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| As a funny aside, I had applied to lucas arts around 1996 and
| never heard back from them. I ended up getting a job at
| industrial light and magic (as they were both companies under
| lucas digital) thinking I could then transfer over to lucas
| arts.
|
| I have a near identical form letter job offer from lucas
| digital as Tim Shafer posted re his application:
| https://www.doublefine.com/news/twenty-years-only-a-few-
| tear...
|
| But we would visit for the company store, and I would be nosy
| and go talk to people. This was during production of grim
| fandango and there was a tangible ramp up of stress in that
| building as the release approached. I remember one of the
| testers sitting there staring at the manny character on his
| screen and bemoaning, "I used to love playing games".
|
| The end result was truly a standout though.
| mzs wrote:
| Thanks for all the fun and I only pirated one game you were
| involved with!
| iisan7 wrote:
| and the music! I remember saving snippets of the music that
| were posted online well before the soundtrack was available
| (and taping some of the background music). Great stuff,
| capitalizing on the San Francisco music scene. Great wikipedia
| page on it now
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Grim_Fandango)
| mikhailbolton wrote:
| First time a video game moved me emotionally. Lola getting
| sprouted. It blew my mind.
| test1235 wrote:
| makes me think of Final Fantasy 7, which came out around the
| same time
| derriz wrote:
| A fantastic game in terms of atmosphere, artwork, characters and
| story but I found the puzzles to be too difficult and/or
| illogical and gave up pretty early into the plot.
|
| Overall I remember being somewhat disappointed because of my
| struggle to make progress. Maybe my expectations had been too
| high - I was a recent convert to point n' click at the time and
| of course LucasArts being masters of the genre, meant my
| anticipation had reached fever pitch.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| Can relate, I was too blockheaded to get most of the clues.
| Played it on a Pentium 150, 32 MB RAM and there was a lot of
| idle time waiting for the rooms and places to load, which added
| some more frustration.
|
| But at some point I followed instructions to complete the game
| along to the end. It's probably fair to say that following the
| journey of the game is one of the fondest memories of my life.
|
| I highly recommend the remastered version from 2015 on Steam. I
| bought it and did another playthrough. It brought back so many
| emotions, and getting insight from the developers let me really
| connect with them.
| ksynwa wrote:
| Same. I played until the part where we get to a forest and
| watched playthrough after that. Watching the playthrough
| confirmed that I made the right decision.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| The puzzle design in Grim Fandango really isn't anything to
| write home about, and if that's the only reason you play
| adventure games, you're going to be disappointed. But the
| characters, writing, art, and sheer style are all so good that
| it makes up for it in my opinion.
|
| Grim Fandango is probably even better now, since you can easily
| look up solutions to some of the more frustrating puzzles. The
| remastered version is also very good, changing just enough to
| make it play well on modern systems, without fundamentally
| altering the experience.
| pingohits wrote:
| Totally agree. I must've restarted at least three times because
| the design/atmosphere was enticing, but I couldn't engage with
| the puzzles
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| And the voice acting was amazing. Especially for a game.
|
| I think I have rose colored glasses as I remember the game
| being difficult in the sense of lots of walking around trying
| to find the solution to the last couple of puzzles. Having
| played the remaster, it was clear how clunky the controls were.
| But wow, I still love that game.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah. It's best played these days with a walkthrough on hand to
| look up any puzzle that isn't immediately obvious. The vast
| majority of the puzzles aren't worth the effort. Great art,
| story, voice acting, and music, though.
| blamazon wrote:
| I love the game and I'm nostalgic for when games were extremely
| difficult but for many the best way to experience Grim Fandango
| without such frustration might be by watching a commentary-free
| playthrough on youtube. I don't feel viewing the work is
| meaningfully diminished by not being the button clicker. Once
| one is familiar with the work there is a great developer
| commentary that is available on youtube also.
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| This It shone, pale as bone As I stood
| there alone And I thought to myself how the moon,
| That night, cast its light On my heart's true delight,
| And the reef where her body was strewn.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Off sick from work - quite by coincidence I decided to start
| playing the remastered version after hearing many good things and
| people saying it was the best thing they've ever played etc etc.
|
| I must say, it has not really grabbed me.
|
| It sadly suffers from the common problem of these sort of games
| where you have to combine seemingly random items to make any
| progress. There are so far very few actual "puzzles" that you can
| solve, but instead mainly you just need to brute force the
| combinations of items to find that One Weird Combination that
| does something - most recent example: use a piece of coral on a
| rope so you can then climb the rope... wtf?! This is made even
| worse by the _sheer tedium_ of having to walk backwards and
| forwards across the screens and trying everything on everything.
| Please game designers if you are forcing me to walk around
| aimlessly please at least make it quick to move around!
| michelb wrote:
| The music in this game..wow..I still listen to the soundtrack
| many times a year.
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(page generated 2025-02-19 23:01 UTC)