TIM SCHAFER RELEASES ORIGINAL GRIM FANDANGO DESIGN DOCS.
Though ‘classic LucasArts adventures’ is generally more synonymous with games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Sam’n’Max, Double Fine (Psychonauts) founder Tim Schafer’s final — and, arguably, finest — game for the venerable publisher was Grim Fandango, his gritty muertos-noir gumshoe adventure that’s just past its 10 year anniversary this Halloween.
To celebrate, he’s uploaded all 72 pages of original documentation on the game as a pint sized PDF (direct link seems to be missing, but
). As he explains/apologizes upon reflection:
People said the puzzles in Grim were super hard, and I’ve always maintained that this was due to a deep character flaw or mental illness on the part of the player. But now, reading this again, I’ve realized that holy smokes–Some of them puzzles were nuts. Obscure. Mean, even.
[…]
Look how much stuff we had to cut just to get that game done in three years. The Pizza Demon! Giraffe Lady! Bernard, and my beloved Dillopede. And the five-puzzle action climax with Hector LeMans! If only we had one or two more years! Well, reading about them ten years later is just as good, right?
But, spoiler alert, the entire document is, by definition, one big spoiler. However, explains Schafer of the solution to the final act of the game:
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. As if anybody was going to read it all the way to the end anyway. Ha ha. Obfuscation triumphs again! I delight in Evil!
Just One More Grim Thing (Double Fine Action News)
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