I heard about The Last Door on the QT3 forum, so I checked it out. It's an old-fashioned point-and-click adventure game that's super-pixelated but manages to be scary. I've played the first chapter so far and like it a lot. If you liked Yahtzee's Trilby adventures, I think you'd like this, too. (Edit: you do have to register an account to play it for free online.)
It's episodic, and so far they've made a four-episode Season 1 and the first episode of Season 2. Future development depends on donations.
An enhanced collector's edition of Season 1 is available on Steam, GOG, and other stores. In fact, it's currently half-off on GOG; I think I'll go for it.
The Last Door, a free Lovecraftian retro-adventure
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Hipolito
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The Last Door, a free Lovecraftian retro-adventure
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Books read, games played.
Avatar: my Shepard from Mass Effect 1.
Books read, games played.
Avatar: my Shepard from Mass Effect 1.
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Hipolito
- Posts: 2196
- Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:00 pm
- Location: Chicago, Illinois
Re: The Last Door, a free Lovecraftian retro-adventure
I've finished playing the Last Door series. It tells a good tale, though not always coherently or with a strong pace.
Let's first address the graphics. There's retro, and then there's this. Compare the top screenshot from the Last Door with the bottom screenshot from King's Quest IV, a 1988 game:
I think you could argue that KQ4 is actually less blocky that the Last Door. It seems the Last Door designers went out of their way to pixelate their game. While the results may sometimes enhance the suspense, they also make it difficult to identify what you're looking at or who's who in a room of people.
By the way, can you identify the famous historical figures in the paintings in the top screenshot? They are:
Fortunately, the audio is not retro. The symphonic score and the sharp sound effects work together to build the dread and punctuate the scares. Play this game in a dark, quiet room.
Now, let's talk about the story. There are two Seasons, each with four Episodes. Episode 1-1 has the feel of a simple haunted house story and doesn't prepare you for how complicated things are going to get. And boy, things get complicated, leaving behind a wealth of fan theories in forums and wikis.
Being a bit dense, I struggled with the complexity. For example, toward the end of Episode 1-2, you have a highly allegorical dream. When you wake up, the music is exciting and pulse-pounding because you're supposed to be like "A-ha! Because of that dream, I know what I must do!" And you should be making a beeline toward that objective. But because I didn't understand the allegory, I never had that a-ha moment. I wandered around for 20 minutes while that pulse-pounding music played, wondering what the game expected of me. It was the most anticlimactic climax ever. It's a good thing I'm not a streamer, otherwise I'd be the latest Internet laughingstock.
A lot of the confusion is because the characters in the story do not understand everything that's going on. They struggle to grasp what they haven't seen before, coming up with theories which can be wrong. That is a neat concept, but while playing the game, I didn't realize these theories could be wrong. I was accepting everything at face value, which only made me more confused.
What I found helpful were the chapter summaries. They corrected a lot of misunderstandings I had about the story. A summary plays at the beginning of a chapter, and it summarizes the previous chapter. But it doesn't play at all if you immediately begin the next chapter after finishing one. To get the summary, you have to go back to the main menu and select the next episode manually.
My favorite episodes were 1-3 and 2-2. These had interesting puzzles that, as you solved them, gradually revealed stories that were intense and strong enough to stand apart from the rest of the series. (The puzzles in 2-2 had the added coolness of being riddle-based.) The other chapters were more mundane and hovered in quality between good and OK. The final chapter, 2-4, was pretty bad. It was mostly just wandering around and triggering flashback cutscenes.
Although the series ended in a satisfying way, getting there was a mixed bag for me. I was confounded by the reveals told in flashback and the "rules" that justified what happened, some of which I've only understood after reading fan wikis. Still, I enjoyed the truly scary and sad moments, and I think most fans of the macabre will want to experience this blocky horror picture show.
Let's first address the graphics. There's retro, and then there's this. Compare the top screenshot from the Last Door with the bottom screenshot from King's Quest IV, a 1988 game:
I think you could argue that KQ4 is actually less blocky that the Last Door. It seems the Last Door designers went out of their way to pixelate their game. While the results may sometimes enhance the suspense, they also make it difficult to identify what you're looking at or who's who in a room of people.
By the way, can you identify the famous historical figures in the paintings in the top screenshot? They are:
Spoiler:
Now, let's talk about the story. There are two Seasons, each with four Episodes. Episode 1-1 has the feel of a simple haunted house story and doesn't prepare you for how complicated things are going to get. And boy, things get complicated, leaving behind a wealth of fan theories in forums and wikis.
Being a bit dense, I struggled with the complexity. For example, toward the end of Episode 1-2, you have a highly allegorical dream. When you wake up, the music is exciting and pulse-pounding because you're supposed to be like "A-ha! Because of that dream, I know what I must do!" And you should be making a beeline toward that objective. But because I didn't understand the allegory, I never had that a-ha moment. I wandered around for 20 minutes while that pulse-pounding music played, wondering what the game expected of me. It was the most anticlimactic climax ever. It's a good thing I'm not a streamer, otherwise I'd be the latest Internet laughingstock.
A lot of the confusion is because the characters in the story do not understand everything that's going on. They struggle to grasp what they haven't seen before, coming up with theories which can be wrong. That is a neat concept, but while playing the game, I didn't realize these theories could be wrong. I was accepting everything at face value, which only made me more confused.
What I found helpful were the chapter summaries. They corrected a lot of misunderstandings I had about the story. A summary plays at the beginning of a chapter, and it summarizes the previous chapter. But it doesn't play at all if you immediately begin the next chapter after finishing one. To get the summary, you have to go back to the main menu and select the next episode manually.
My favorite episodes were 1-3 and 2-2. These had interesting puzzles that, as you solved them, gradually revealed stories that were intense and strong enough to stand apart from the rest of the series. (The puzzles in 2-2 had the added coolness of being riddle-based.) The other chapters were more mundane and hovered in quality between good and OK. The final chapter, 2-4, was pretty bad. It was mostly just wandering around and triggering flashback cutscenes.
Although the series ended in a satisfying way, getting there was a mixed bag for me. I was confounded by the reveals told in flashback and the "rules" that justified what happened, some of which I've only understood after reading fan wikis. Still, I enjoyed the truly scary and sad moments, and I think most fans of the macabre will want to experience this blocky horror picture show.