I found Grim Fandango in a pile of discounted games as a tween in the 2000s. There was a cool skeleton in a suit on the front cover, so I bought it based on that.
Even though I didn't understand most references and sarcasm, few games have grabbed my attention as Grim Fandango did. The art work, the music, the writing. The whole game oozes of style that I've never seen replicated.
Even some 20+ years later I can almost recite most of Act I from heart. If you haven't played this game and like adventure games, this is one of the best.
I have never played through Grim Fandangoo in full, but in my peer group memes from this game permeated so thoroughly that when I see a pigeon I will too often end up shouting at it, "Run you pigeons! It's Robert Frost".
I first played it in my 40s when the remaster came out, and it's one of the best games I've played. It holds up incredibly well, particularly with the modernized controls.
So if anyone is wondering if this is just nostalgia, or if the game actually holds up, it's the latter. Just play it.
I played the demo and it's been at the top of my "to play" list for decades. For one reason or another, I just never have yet. Majora's Mask is also at the top.
There are a few bad puzzles (especially one regarding infernal critters) that one can use a guide for, but mostly it was a blast to finish it back in the day. Such a unique story by itself and then in a rare comedy / noir style on top! It's kind of crazy how they even came up with it.
I still remember the feeling of the ending, and the end credits music when the violin kicked in as it played the Manny & Meche theme! The music is at least as good as this game.
It's well worth playing despite the many years passed since its release. I first played it in 2020 (despite knowing of it since its initial release), and had an absolute blast of a time.
The puzzles are so bad. Like how in the world is somebody supposed to think of that stuff. It’s total nonsense lmao. Still love the game, but a walkthrough guide is mandatory. Might even start a new game this weekend
I remember playing it back in the day and I was severely unimpressed. Compared to Full Throttle it just felt clunky and the 3d art wasn't nearly as good as the amazing pixel art. I ended up never finishing it.
It released with unbearable keyboard controls instead of the familiar point-and-click. If I remember right a remaster eventually came out that allowed mouse control.
I agree that I hated the 3d though. This was a bad patch for games when everyone wanted to go 3d for the sake of it, even though it looked and played worse.
Yeah the keyboard controls were awful, apparently it was because they wanted the game to have a console port using a gamepad.
Thing is I bet the people who played it are right too, I just never managed to bring myself to play more than a few hours of the game before getting frustrated. Bad controls + 90s point-and-click-puzzle-design + early 3d graphics is not a good recipe.
Full Throttle was criticized for its dumbed-down point-and-click (basic only 3 actions + using items, instead of the usual verbs), but that was the sweetspot for my early-teens mind. Can never get enough funny responses of using the lick action.
It is funny to think that even back then people just didn't put up with bad controls. Like Elder Scrolls Redguard, amazing game for the time but the lousiest controls ever. Megaman Legends also comes to mind.
They would put up with crazy puzzles, huge grinds, weird RPG numbers systems (AD&D in BG1/2 for example), but if you want to do action A on thing B that can not, under any circumstance feel bad to do.
We take for granted now how much especially the defaults for Halo 1 rebuilt gamepad controls to a useful, reusable standard. It's really fun going back to Halo 1 and its tutorial of how its controls work and its menu full of optional entire layouts to sort of see the exact moment when game controls stopped being lousy and almost random from game to game. You can contrast with Halo Reach where most of the optional layouts are just gone and more people use the defaults and then say Halo Infinite where all the optional layouts are gone because the common ones moved into the platforms (and accessibility settings) and in some cases the gamepads themselves.
It remains an interesting reflection point in the history of 3D games. It's also why the Grim Fandango remaster turned out so well, now that controls have settled into their modern forms.
I also remember the criticism of Full Throttle, but it always rang hollow to me: a game is not just the puzzles, and also some people complained about the action sequences, but for me they were welcome (even if too easy). Everything about the game is golden: the setting about bikers (how cool is that?), the 2D pixel animation, the amazing voice acting and the opening by the Gone Jackals. I fell in love with the game back then, and I still like it on replays.
The game is amazing, but it is really annoying when you get stuck on a weird timing-based wall-kick game, or robot-bunny minefield, or destruction-derby minigame with unclear instructions.
Somehow I remember those parts more than the fun parts, maybe because I didn't have access to a guide back then.
SCUMM games always had a "win" key for action sequences, and I remember it would sometimes be mentioned in the manual. (Remember when games came with those? I was one of the sorts of nerds that read them.) Off the top of my head I think it was Alt+G. My first many playthroughs I always used the win button for all the action sequences in Full Throttle. It made the game a lot better back on my original PC I played the game on where it would stutter in the action games and make them hard to win. I still sometimes think the game is better without the action sequences, even if I can normally win them now.
(As I recall even GrimE had a similar or the same combo key. A lot of the complaints about Monkey Combat in EMI I didn't have because after a couple attempts I recall just pushing the win button and moving on.)
Loved this as a teen, although I actually don't think I ever got past year 3.
It's interesting to see how the "non-linearity" is still very linear, it's just that you have three different goals at once.
I just finished re-playing Day of the Tentacle with my kid, and what's amazing about that is the intersecting non-linearity. The three different characters each have multiple of their own goals, but they're forever needing to trade things back and forth, so often the path of one will be blocked until the other one has gotten the thing they need.
The map for the goals for DOT must be like spaghetti.
Nice, Tim Schafer is someone whose writing I really admire, if you haven't checked it out yet Double Fine (the studio he leads) documented the entire (7 year!) development cycle of Psychonauts 2 in a 32 episode documentary series, and it in my opinion one of the best documentaries ever made. It covers a lot of cool stuff, like Covid, them getting acquired by Microsoft, big project leadership struggles. It's long as hell but it is really worth your time if you have an interest in creative work in large teams.
They are currently doing a company wide gamejam/game idea incubation thing, after surviving Microsoft undoing the acquisition and the same Documentary crew is doing a doc about that (they did a kickstarter campaign to fund it)
The small square box at the very end of the document, with accompanying text, is just delightful:
> To protect this document, please restrict your fallen tears of joy to this box. Thank you! → [__]
All over the document, you can see Tim Schafer "wasted his time" by adding personality (jokes, graphics, asides) to what is basically an internal document.
I think in 2026 a document lovingly crafted like this would be deemed a great waste of time, lack of efficiency and an affront to shareholder value.
If you look at the 2nd to last page of the PDF you can see Tim Schafer's deception where he hadn't actually designed the ending puzzle by the time the document was due.
> 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.
The two layers seem to say, superimposed on each other:
Manny doubles back to the car, reaches into Olivia's pile of flowers and finds his gun, the one he'd left there. Something really does go down like in Heat, and he's dead. All right then… I don't hate it. No matter. Ouch!
Manny doubles back to the car, reaches into Olivia's pile of flowers and finds his gun, the… Maybe the really cool thing that happens is you see his shadow traveling through time, and that's how you know he's coming back. And although I'm pretty cool with it… Great ending, ta da.
I have started playing Grim Fandango with my kids (7 and 9) after we played through Day of the Tentacle together. Playing old adventure games on the TV and letting people take turns playing is a great family activity!
They aren't native English speakers and the story in Grim Fandango is considerably harder to follow compared to DoTT, so they lost interest a bit after we completed year 1. But as soon as their English skills improve, we'll get back to it, it's one of my favorite adventure games!
My 8 year old, improved his English skills a lot from playing Spy Fox. It's a series of funny point and click adventure games from Ron Gilbert's (of Monkey Island fame) company after leaving Lucasfilm.
Are the remasters not translated? I remember playing Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and all the other LucasArts games when I was a child, and they were dubbed in French.
EDIT: I checked, and I was mistaken: DOTT was never dubbed in French, but Grim Fandango (and its remaster) is.
This is one of those masterpieces that I'm surprised hasn't been scooped up by Netflix and turned into a movie.
Its not that I don't like it as a game, but it's just so chock full of character.
The premise alone is so compelling; in the Land of the Dead, even dead men chase money. Even with the literal afterlife a train ticket away, you have conmen and good guys living (or dying?) like there's no end of the line.
Love it. One of those rare pieces of art that continues to live in my head rent-free.
On the other hand, I still think Disney should make a Monkey Island TV show or movie. They could use Sea of Thieves-style water effects in the Volume for useful shenanigans.
I never understood why people like Grim Fandango so much. I know many people who absolutely love it (and some more here on the replies) but I never did.
I've finished it with a walkthrough so I've seen the entire game. Between an art style that didn't age well and didn't grab me even then, obscure puzzles and a theme that doesn't interest me so much, I think it is one of LucasArts worst adventure games. But that's me. Let's call it "polarizing".
> Between an art style that didn't age well and didn't grab me even then, obscure puzzles and a theme that doesn't interest me so much...
Everything's subjective, but I think most people would say that the art style was great then and is still great, and the theme is pretty unique and compelling. That's why people like it so much.
The puzzles and interface really are awful though, and I say that as someone with a reasonable tolerance for adventure game logic. It's far-and-away the worst-playing classic LucasArts adventure, and even though I'm sure there's plenty of adventure games with worse puzzle design, I'm struggling to think of one with a wider gap in quality between the game design and everything else. Everything's frequently so disjointed and it's such a slog to get around, it's not even one of those "use a walkthrough when you get stuck" games; it's a "just follow a walkthrough constantly" game, or maybe even a "just watch a longplay" game.
- Nothing like it in style and execution.
- Superb and unique universe. It's brilliant. Fight me. ;)
- Charming, engaging storytelling full of wit and humor. Charm and humor are particularly hard to pull off, it seems, given how few games I can think of that have them. (Bard's Tale and... uh...)
- If you like the adventure games of the era, then this one is right up your alley. The puzzles are much more frustration-friendly than modern games, so they're not for the coddled gamers of today who, frankly, would just use an answer sheet when they got stuck. OTOH forcing yourself to stick with it and get that "Ohhhhhh the *diamond* makes the boat sink around us! *that's* how we climb out!" -- which is a real example from a *different* LucasArts game -- is very satisfying.
I've been playing most of Lucas Arts games with my 10 y/o daughter. Grim Fandango is the one she has liked the best. It is not perfect, has lots of bugs (crashed on several occasions) and weird things, but the atmosphere is so cool.
Ahha, this document came to my attention last night from this video [0] that bubbled in my YouTube recs - I don't know if it's the same for OP or just a coincidence, but I highly recommend it too:
Always fascinating to peek behind the curtain at how these classics were built. Grim Fandango had some truly brilliant, and occasionally maddening, puzzles.
Grim Fandango was one of the first games I bought out of my own pocket. And as was the norm back then, this used up all my games budget for months, so I had to stick to this game, for better or worse, for a long time.
I remember it took me a very long time to even find the Tube Room, it's easy to miss unless you do the 3D equivalent of pixelhunting to find the place where you need to take a turn. And boy, was I stuck in Rubacava!
I also remember that it was slightly difficult to buy the game - I was at least 13 at the time, the game had an age rating of 12, but (gasp!) there were skeletons on the cover, and the tag line mentioned corruption and crime. So the lady in the shop actually called her boss before eventually selling the game to me.
"Tim Schafer at Double Fine has posted the puzzle design spec for his classic adventure game, Grim Fandango. It is that game's tenth anniversary; it was released on the Day of the Dead, 1998."
Looks like Tom Schafer style; I find him whimsical and funny in all of his communication. I don't think it's a stretch that this aspect extends to nom-public communications.
My guess is it is kinda like a first draft that some higher ups approve and budgets and then dialogue and game development and puzzle testing can begin.
Not so much a first draft I think, as the puzzles and story seem fully-formed.
The doc itself is a good high level spec, useful as a walkthrough and for testing, but the detail in each puzzle description isn’t deep enough for someone to implement it.
I think this is indeed a doc pitched at higher-ups, where they want to know that the detail has been worked through, as the game exits the design phase and moves to full production.
I’d love to see a detailed process of how one of those puzzles was designed though.
Same here, I bought it when it came out in one of those nice carton boxes. It was rather buggy and hard to play without a walkthrough. The characters, the music, the story, the dialog, it's all so memorable and easily makes up for those bugs and hard puzzles. I played the remaster when it came out on PS4 as well, still great, but perhaps that's just the nostalgia.
Agreed. I actually didn't find it buggy when I bought it in 1998. I loved the box art.
I recently went through it from start to finish as an adult and found it an incredible slog to get through. The puzzles, to me, made zero sense, which sucks the fun out of the game because the only possible way to solve them is to just try everything with everything or to look up the solution.
The latest Monkey Island. Now THAT's how you make a point-and-click adventure game!
That is the difference between Gilbert's game design versus Schafer's. I much prefer Gilbert.
>"This report by its very length defends itself against the risk of being read" Winston H. Churchill
And this comment will prove it, by referencing only the very first part of the document, being the comment most likely to garner upvotes and replies, as opposed to deeper nuanced comments.
I found Grim Fandango in a pile of discounted games as a tween in the 2000s. There was a cool skeleton in a suit on the front cover, so I bought it based on that.
Even though I didn't understand most references and sarcasm, few games have grabbed my attention as Grim Fandango did. The art work, the music, the writing. The whole game oozes of style that I've never seen replicated.
Even some 20+ years later I can almost recite most of Act I from heart. If you haven't played this game and like adventure games, this is one of the best.
Thank you for linking OP, this made my morning.
I have never played through Grim Fandangoo in full, but in my peer group memes from this game permeated so thoroughly that when I see a pigeon I will too often end up shouting at it, "Run you pigeons! It's Robert Frost".
Late to the party here: If you liked Grim Fandango you will probably get a kick out of Sam and Max Hit the Road: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_%26_Max_Hit_the_Road
Sam & Max is amazing. I think about it often. I should replay it.
I first played it in my 40s when the remaster came out, and it's one of the best games I've played. It holds up incredibly well, particularly with the modernized controls.
So if anyone is wondering if this is just nostalgia, or if the game actually holds up, it's the latter. Just play it.
When I initially saw the game characters, I thought "this is janky". But by the end of the game, their personalities had won over my heart.
Tim Schafer is really good at this. Psychonauts has a large cast of deformed-looking characters, but you'll love them all by the end.
Absolutely this. The game is a prime example of how characters can drive engagement.
I played the demo and it's been at the top of my "to play" list for decades. For one reason or another, I just never have yet. Majora's Mask is also at the top.
There are a few bad puzzles (especially one regarding infernal critters) that one can use a guide for, but mostly it was a blast to finish it back in the day. Such a unique story by itself and then in a rare comedy / noir style on top! It's kind of crazy how they even came up with it.
I still remember the feeling of the ending, and the end credits music when the violin kicked in as it played the Manny & Meche theme! The music is at least as good as this game.
Soundtrack is dope as well
Well worth playing the remastered version. It makes the control a bit more bearable but otherwise feels like the original.
Do it, it's a beautiful work of art.
It's well worth playing despite the many years passed since its release. I first played it in 2020 (despite knowing of it since its initial release), and had an absolute blast of a time.
Majora’s Mask is fantastic
Not to be a downer about a masterpiece game but…the demo ends right before the game starts proffering anti-logic puzzles.
The puzzles are so bad. Like how in the world is somebody supposed to think of that stuff. It’s total nonsense lmao. Still love the game, but a walkthrough guide is mandatory. Might even start a new game this weekend
Agreed. Grim Fandango is a game that's all about the setting and characters. For that alone it's a masterpiece. But the puzzles... ehh..
I remember playing it back in the day and I was severely unimpressed. Compared to Full Throttle it just felt clunky and the 3d art wasn't nearly as good as the amazing pixel art. I ended up never finishing it.
It released with unbearable keyboard controls instead of the familiar point-and-click. If I remember right a remaster eventually came out that allowed mouse control.
I agree that I hated the 3d though. This was a bad patch for games when everyone wanted to go 3d for the sake of it, even though it looked and played worse.
Yeah the keyboard controls were awful, apparently it was because they wanted the game to have a console port using a gamepad.
Thing is I bet the people who played it are right too, I just never managed to bring myself to play more than a few hours of the game before getting frustrated. Bad controls + 90s point-and-click-puzzle-design + early 3d graphics is not a good recipe.
Full Throttle was criticized for its dumbed-down point-and-click (basic only 3 actions + using items, instead of the usual verbs), but that was the sweetspot for my early-teens mind. Can never get enough funny responses of using the lick action.
LucasArts then made the same mistake with Escape From Monkey Island, because they were targetting the PlayStation 2
It is funny to think that even back then people just didn't put up with bad controls. Like Elder Scrolls Redguard, amazing game for the time but the lousiest controls ever. Megaman Legends also comes to mind.
They would put up with crazy puzzles, huge grinds, weird RPG numbers systems (AD&D in BG1/2 for example), but if you want to do action A on thing B that can not, under any circumstance feel bad to do.
We take for granted now how much especially the defaults for Halo 1 rebuilt gamepad controls to a useful, reusable standard. It's really fun going back to Halo 1 and its tutorial of how its controls work and its menu full of optional entire layouts to sort of see the exact moment when game controls stopped being lousy and almost random from game to game. You can contrast with Halo Reach where most of the optional layouts are just gone and more people use the defaults and then say Halo Infinite where all the optional layouts are gone because the common ones moved into the platforms (and accessibility settings) and in some cases the gamepads themselves.
It remains an interesting reflection point in the history of 3D games. It's also why the Grim Fandango remaster turned out so well, now that controls have settled into their modern forms.
I also remember the criticism of Full Throttle, but it always rang hollow to me: a game is not just the puzzles, and also some people complained about the action sequences, but for me they were welcome (even if too easy). Everything about the game is golden: the setting about bikers (how cool is that?), the 2D pixel animation, the amazing voice acting and the opening by the Gone Jackals. I fell in love with the game back then, and I still like it on replays.
The game is amazing, but it is really annoying when you get stuck on a weird timing-based wall-kick game, or robot-bunny minefield, or destruction-derby minigame with unclear instructions.
Somehow I remember those parts more than the fun parts, maybe because I didn't have access to a guide back then.
SCUMM games always had a "win" key for action sequences, and I remember it would sometimes be mentioned in the manual. (Remember when games came with those? I was one of the sorts of nerds that read them.) Off the top of my head I think it was Alt+G. My first many playthroughs I always used the win button for all the action sequences in Full Throttle. It made the game a lot better back on my original PC I played the game on where it would stutter in the action games and make them hard to win. I still sometimes think the game is better without the action sequences, even if I can normally win them now.
(As I recall even GrimE had a similar or the same combo key. A lot of the complaints about Monkey Combat in EMI I didn't have because after a couple attempts I recall just pushing the win button and moving on.)
Heh, I know what you mean. I enjoyed the action minigames and figuring out what to do, but some people found them frustrating.
Mostly, what I remember is the outstanding voice acting, and the most memorable intro ever.
Yeah, whenever I think of Maureen I think of two things: asphalt, and trouble...
You're missing out; give the Remastered/Extended/whatever edition a try
Same for most LucasArt games, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Islands, and the others
Unique game. Also to think that they pulled out that beautiful 3D toon feel before toon shaders were made.
Same, it's one of those things that stays with you for life.
For similar feels, check out Disco Elysium
Planescape Torment
and almost anything by Amanita Design
Loved this as a teen, although I actually don't think I ever got past year 3.
It's interesting to see how the "non-linearity" is still very linear, it's just that you have three different goals at once.
I just finished re-playing Day of the Tentacle with my kid, and what's amazing about that is the intersecting non-linearity. The three different characters each have multiple of their own goals, but they're forever needing to trade things back and forth, so often the path of one will be blocked until the other one has gotten the thing they need.
The map for the goals for DOT must be like spaghetti.
Nice, Tim Schafer is someone whose writing I really admire, if you haven't checked it out yet Double Fine (the studio he leads) documented the entire (7 year!) development cycle of Psychonauts 2 in a 32 episode documentary series, and it in my opinion one of the best documentaries ever made. It covers a lot of cool stuff, like Covid, them getting acquired by Microsoft, big project leadership struggles. It's long as hell but it is really worth your time if you have an interest in creative work in large teams.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIhLvue17Sd70y34zh2erWWpM...
They are currently doing a company wide gamejam/game idea incubation thing, after surviving Microsoft undoing the acquisition and the same Documentary crew is doing a doc about that (they did a kickstarter campaign to fund it)
The small square box at the very end of the document, with accompanying text, is just delightful:
> To protect this document, please restrict your fallen tears of joy to this box. Thank you! → [__]
All over the document, you can see Tim Schafer "wasted his time" by adding personality (jokes, graphics, asides) to what is basically an internal document.
I think in 2026 a document lovingly crafted like this would be deemed a great waste of time, lack of efficiency and an affront to shareholder value.
Fortunately George Lucas only directed them to "Not lose money".
If you look at the 2nd to last page of the PDF you can see Tim Schafer's deception where he hadn't actually designed the ending puzzle by the time the document was due.
> 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.
The two layers seem to say, superimposed on each other:
Manny doubles back to the car, reaches into Olivia's pile of flowers and finds his gun, the one he'd left there. Something really does go down like in Heat, and he's dead. All right then… I don't hate it. No matter. Ouch!
Manny doubles back to the car, reaches into Olivia's pile of flowers and finds his gun, the… Maybe the really cool thing that happens is you see his shadow traveling through time, and that's how you know he's coming back. And although I'm pretty cool with it… Great ending, ta da.
that is incredible
I have started playing Grim Fandango with my kids (7 and 9) after we played through Day of the Tentacle together. Playing old adventure games on the TV and letting people take turns playing is a great family activity!
They aren't native English speakers and the story in Grim Fandango is considerably harder to follow compared to DoTT, so they lost interest a bit after we completed year 1. But as soon as their English skills improve, we'll get back to it, it's one of my favorite adventure games!
I also just finished playing DOT with my ten-year-old, and was just today thinking about the next best game!
I had decided this morning that I'll try Monkey Island before Grim Fandango, because of the added complexity of Grim, as you say.
My 8 year old, improved his English skills a lot from playing Spy Fox. It's a series of funny point and click adventure games from Ron Gilbert's (of Monkey Island fame) company after leaving Lucasfilm.
Are the remasters not translated? I remember playing Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and all the other LucasArts games when I was a child, and they were dubbed in French.
EDIT: I checked, and I was mistaken: DOTT was never dubbed in French, but Grim Fandango (and its remaster) is.
Some are, but I'm Danish and I think they translated any of the games to that :)
I wonder how easy it would be to translate it today with LLMs and have a translated version running on ScummVM
Isn't ScummVM 2D only?
Nope, they integrated their sister project, ResidualVM, that does 3d
Maybe a better URL could be: http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2008/11/grim-fandango-puzzle-desig...
This is one of those masterpieces that I'm surprised hasn't been scooped up by Netflix and turned into a movie.
Its not that I don't like it as a game, but it's just so chock full of character.
The premise alone is so compelling; in the Land of the Dead, even dead men chase money. Even with the literal afterlife a train ticket away, you have conmen and good guys living (or dying?) like there's no end of the line.
Love it. One of those rare pieces of art that continues to live in my head rent-free.
Given Disney owns the IP now, they probably don't need to make a Grim Fandango movie because they made Coco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_(2017_film)
On the other hand, I still think Disney should make a Monkey Island TV show or movie. They could use Sea of Thieves-style water effects in the Volume for useful shenanigans.
One of my all time favorites and one I introduced my Son to as a child. He loved it enough to complete it and get a tattoo as an adult.
I never understood why people like Grim Fandango so much. I know many people who absolutely love it (and some more here on the replies) but I never did.
I've finished it with a walkthrough so I've seen the entire game. Between an art style that didn't age well and didn't grab me even then, obscure puzzles and a theme that doesn't interest me so much, I think it is one of LucasArts worst adventure games. But that's me. Let's call it "polarizing".
> Between an art style that didn't age well and didn't grab me even then, obscure puzzles and a theme that doesn't interest me so much...
Everything's subjective, but I think most people would say that the art style was great then and is still great, and the theme is pretty unique and compelling. That's why people like it so much.
The puzzles and interface really are awful though, and I say that as someone with a reasonable tolerance for adventure game logic. It's far-and-away the worst-playing classic LucasArts adventure, and even though I'm sure there's plenty of adventure games with worse puzzle design, I'm struggling to think of one with a wider gap in quality between the game design and everything else. Everything's frequently so disjointed and it's such a slog to get around, it's not even one of those "use a walkthrough when you get stuck" games; it's a "just follow a walkthrough constantly" game, or maybe even a "just watch a longplay" game.
I like some adventure games. But old man murray's take still holds up:
https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
There's a reason puzzle solutions (like walkthroughs) are called spoilers. It's because they spoil the game.
I'll bite.
It's the theme and characters. Remember this game predates Coco by a lot!
If the Day of the Dead setting does nothing for you, then you'll dislike the game. But if it intrigues you, you'll likely love it.
The puzzles are arbitrary, it's not really what the game is about.
I've been playing most of Lucas Arts games with my 10 y/o daughter. Grim Fandango is the one she has liked the best. It is not perfect, has lots of bugs (crashed on several occasions) and weird things, but the atmosphere is so cool.
Monkey Island comes second of course.
I would sometimes just let the game idle at the casino level and just listen to the mellow jazz. That game was a piece of art.
Phenomenal game and a fun fact: Grim Fandango was AFAICT the first high-profile game built on Lua and became the catalyst for industry adoption
Ahha, this document came to my attention last night from this video [0] that bubbled in my YouTube recs - I don't know if it's the same for OP or just a coincidence, but I highly recommend it too:
GDC Talk: "One Page Designs", by Stone Librande
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_wLks1kAg
Not a coincidence. Submitting references and sources is a bit of a HN cheat code.
I came here to post just this.
That GDC talk just showed up on my YouTube frontpage this morning and I watched it. And now I check HN and here we are.
Seems like ultimately they aren't actually able to track us as well as they claim.
Always fascinating to peek behind the curtain at how these classics were built. Grim Fandango had some truly brilliant, and occasionally maddening, puzzles.
I hope a similar document surfaces about Monkey Island (or even MI2).
Grim Fandango is interesting because they are responsible for Lua’s popularity as a gaming scripting language:
https://www.lua.org/doc/hopl.pdf
don't remember where I found this, but here is the viewing list for the movies that inspired the game. It has Tim put his viewing notes in it
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YsollH04QK9si9uEm3VXZWT0snH...
Grim Fandango was one of the first games I bought out of my own pocket. And as was the norm back then, this used up all my games budget for months, so I had to stick to this game, for better or worse, for a long time. I remember it took me a very long time to even find the Tube Room, it's easy to miss unless you do the 3D equivalent of pixelhunting to find the place where you need to take a turn. And boy, was I stuck in Rubacava!
I also remember that it was slightly difficult to buy the game - I was at least 13 at the time, the game had an age rating of 12, but (gasp!) there were skeletons on the cover, and the tag line mentioned corruption and crime. So the lady in the shop actually called her boss before eventually selling the game to me.
Year 2 of GF might be my favourite memory of any video game, ever.
I'm glad I used a walkthrough when playing the game, because even after beating it I still have no idea how the hell the Chain puzzle worked.
Obligatory link to The Digital Antiquarian's treatment of the game:
https://www.filfre.net/2024/11/grim-fandango/
Nostalgia activated. I now have to play Grim Fandango! Loved that game!
This game is iconic!
Yes. Literally one of the best.
Is this a walkthrough or a game design document?
As a walkthrough, it is nice. But as the foundation for the game designers, it would be a fun because it is so lighthearted.
Design document, from the page that links this pdf (http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2008/11/grim-fandango-puzzle-desig...):
"Tim Schafer at Double Fine has posted the puzzle design spec for his classic adventure game, Grim Fandango. It is that game's tenth anniversary; it was released on the Day of the Dead, 1998."
Looks like Tom Schafer style; I find him whimsical and funny in all of his communication. I don't think it's a stretch that this aspect extends to nom-public communications.
It's a game design document.
My guess is it is kinda like a first draft that some higher ups approve and budgets and then dialogue and game development and puzzle testing can begin.
Not so much a first draft I think, as the puzzles and story seem fully-formed.
The doc itself is a good high level spec, useful as a walkthrough and for testing, but the detail in each puzzle description isn’t deep enough for someone to implement it.
I think this is indeed a doc pitched at higher-ups, where they want to know that the detail has been worked through, as the game exits the design phase and moves to full production.
I’d love to see a detailed process of how one of those puzzles was designed though.
Looks like a GDD but just for the puzzles, a PDD
I wonder who made the drawings they are really pretty. I love this game, thanks for the post!
Peter Chan was the concept artist for this game (as well as several other LucasArts and Double Fine ones)
My favorite game of all time. This is awesome
"Intimidating? Me? But I'm your friend. My name is Manny Calvera. I'm your new travel agent.".
I don't want a new travel agent, I just want to go home
Absoltely crazy amount of detailed work
Interesting so much
I wonder how does this fits in the general Game development pipeline
Is it Story -> Characters -> Puzzles?
Theme -> Characters -> Story -> Puzzles?
Or everything everywhere all at once?
Are the character descriptions in this doc leading the Story or derived from it?
How much of the story is built around Gameplay and its limitations? (I think I remember GF requiring 2 CDs?)
Brilliant game, so much soul and character... I wish we could get another game in the same universe.
I have a love/hate relationship with Grim Fandango.
I love the world, the characters, the music, and the art style. It was so inspiring for me as a child.
I literally hate the puzzles and the gameplay.
Same here, I bought it when it came out in one of those nice carton boxes. It was rather buggy and hard to play without a walkthrough. The characters, the music, the story, the dialog, it's all so memorable and easily makes up for those bugs and hard puzzles. I played the remaster when it came out on PS4 as well, still great, but perhaps that's just the nostalgia.
Agreed. I actually didn't find it buggy when I bought it in 1998. I loved the box art.
I recently went through it from start to finish as an adult and found it an incredible slog to get through. The puzzles, to me, made zero sense, which sucks the fun out of the game because the only possible way to solve them is to just try everything with everything or to look up the solution.
The latest Monkey Island. Now THAT's how you make a point-and-click adventure game!
That is the difference between Gilbert's game design versus Schafer's. I much prefer Gilbert.
>"This report by its very length defends itself against the risk of being read" Winston H. Churchill
And this comment will prove it, by referencing only the very first part of the document, being the comment most likely to garner upvotes and replies, as opposed to deeper nuanced comments.