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DeathSpank
The stranger parts of the blogosphere is ablaze with anticipation for Ron Gilbert’s new game project: DeathSpank: Episode One: Orphans of Justice. You should be too. Why? Let me present the evidence…
- Ron Gilbert is the man behind Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island were utterly brilliant in every way. Thus, we can deduce that anything Ron Gilbert touches will be instantly turned into solid gold. Unless it’s fluids, in which case it might be turned into liquid gold. And, of course, as we know from the story of Midas, this means that Mr. Gilbert must be amazingly tough to survive despite all his food and drink turning into gold.
- If you read Gilbert’s announcement you’ll notice that he describes DeathSpank as “the perfect melding of a Monkey Island style adventure game with the wicked RPG game play of Diablo.” Sweet mother of fuck; this is going to better than the day I won the Nobel prize and saved the Olsen twins from a collapsing building!
- I have nothing else, but all good things come in three.
Seriously, I think this could be an amazing game. The combination of witty humour, old-style adventure gameplay, and Diablo RPG-ishness sounds better than anything I could possibly imagine. It all sounds so obvious when you look at it in hindsight: what can one do to make the addictive gameplay of Diablo even better? Add humour and adventure puzzles!
The only concern I have is whether or not this will be a successful venture, commercially. I’d love to see DeathSpank become a great success; then we might see more adventure-Diablo clones…but I feel pretty sceptical that the General Public(TM) will want a game like that in this day and age where gamers tend to move to either of the extremes: hardcore and casual games. I hope my fears are unfounded though, and that a game that mixes the best of both worlds will be well received.