Monday, December 02, 2013

A Taffer's Bedtime Story

My favorite computer games are the old Looking Glass Studios creations Thief Gold and Thief 2.  I have mentioned them five times.


Those games created a particular genre of fantasy steampunk that I adore for its storytelling flavor.  I borrowed from it when creating the sample setting for Narrative Adventures Made Easy.  (If you have time, dare its tvtropes page.)

I have not played the game in many years, since switching to Ubuntu.  Getting it to work with wine would be fun, but I do not have enough free time to do so, let along play the game much.

So I was pleased to recently discover some excellently narrated videos of the game play, courtesy of Travis Whitsitt.

Even better is that Smiley loves them as bedtime stories.  Because Travis plays using the fan-created "supreme ghost" rules there is sneaking but no combat, which gives the movie just the right amount of tension for Smiley.  Watching also reinforcing a social lesson Smiley needs to learn that losing a game is not a big deal: just try again and enjoy that you can play more.

I also found "speed run" videos for both games.

Smiley does not enjoy those because the lack of narration makes him confused about what is happening.  Much of the enjoy from Travis's play is his learning about the game's pretend world.  Yesterday he told me, "Next time we play Narrative Adventures we should put in Hammer Haunts."  That started a discussion about what made games enjoyable and monsters fun to overcome.

1 comment:

HockeyNerd said...

I'm so glad you enjoyed the playthrough. I try hard to focus on games that have solid narratives because, like Smiley, it's what I appreciate the most. Thank you so much for watching!