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Booby Trap - E3 2004 archived preview

The last two days, we have told you about two remarkable adventure games (Dreamfall and Fahrenheit) that are set to revolutionize the genre with a new attention to realism, new technology breakthroughs, exciting and innovative new interfaces, and a remarkable cinematic quality.

Our #3 game of E3 2004, Jane Jensen’s Booby Trap, is about as far at the other end of the spectrum as you could get, and she was very gracious to sit down with our team at E3 and discuss this game and many other topics.

Booby Trap is Jensen’s newest project after her highly anticipated Gray Matter (formerly known as Project Jane-J) was put on hold by DreamCatcher. It is important to note that the project was not permanently cancelled, and Jensen seemed determined that the game would be completed in some form in the future—whether or not in a DreamCatcher internal studio remains to be seen.

For now, however, all of Jensen’s focus is on this game, which is a follow-up of sorts to the wildly successful (and highly addictive) Inspector Parker, a casual puzzle game released by Jensen’s development studio Oberon Media in 2003. Oberon, which consists of Jensen as well as three business partners, is both a developer and distributor of casual games, which are sold to the end-user by gaming portals such as Just Adventure+ and RealArcade. The casual game market is booming right now—and the reason may be surprising.

A recent study showed that 80% of casual game players are women over the age of 35. This is in sharp contrast to the general gaming market, which is predominantly male with an average age substantially under 30. Market research has showed, in fact, that the casual gaming public and the general gaming public are two distinctly different groups. Here is where Jensen is seeking to change the way we think about distribution of adventure games: her feeling is that adventure games in their purist form (which is how she still desires to make them) can’t survive on the shelves of software stores next to the glut of X-Box games appealing to hyperactive males--but this is the only way adventures have been distributed so far. Enter Oberon Media and Booby Trap.

Portals like Real Arcade, Popcap Games, Yahoo Games, etc., are adding casual games nearly on a daily basis. These games are all intented to be easy to jump into, and equally easy to jump out of. Need to kill fifteen minutes? Just a few games of Super Collapse II, or Zuma Deluxe...or Inspector Parker, and then you quit when you want, with no harm done. The problem is, those games are the only option on those portals right now, and they are absolutely myriad and often indistinguishable from one another. There's no hook, no reason to compel the gamer to return to that specific game--especially when you have to actually pay for the game when the sixty-minute trial period expires! I can tell you that personally, I've got 30+ expired trial versions in my RealArcade software and have yet to love one game enough to pay for it beyond that.

Gamers are getting tired of this, too; Jensen cited a recent study that shows the one thing casual gamers wish they had more of in their games was story. The number two choice was interesting settings and good characters. Here is where the brilliance of Booby Trap comes in, for it's actually two entire games in one. For the casual gamers, it's another puzzle game, albeit a much more intricate one. Taking a cue from Minesweeper, it involves you taking your character across a tiled floor and disarming various creative traps around the room. Some traps are tied in with other traps, so there is some complexity involved, especially in the larger and more difficult rooms. There's also a great deal of randomness involved so you'll never play the same room twice. Visually, the puzzle game is very minimalist, although the death animations are quite enjoyable, which is what you'd expect from an ex-Sierra designer.

Ah, but we're not casualgamers.com, are we? You all want to hear about the adventure mode of the game. And I promise you'll be amazed at how intricate it is. The story takes place in the same setting as the puzzle mode--a 50-room mansion circa 1930's--and focuses on the story of a missing jewel in true Hound of the Baskervilles mystery story fashion. The immediate comparison for Sierra fans would be Laura Bow, especially Colonel's Bequest with its fairly tight space and wealth of multi-faceted characters.

We did not get to see any of the adventure mode in playable form, as it is still in the early design phase. But Jensen said she estimates twenty hours of playing time for the average adventure gamer from the game, and promises that in adventure mode there will be none of the "puzzle" elements (i.e. no randomization of room layout, etc.), but it will play exactly like a traditional adventure--though with no voice acting, in order to make download size manageable. This was especially fine with me, as I'm still trying to forget that Tim Curry ever provided the voice of Gabriel Knight. Obviously, you know with Jane Jensen that there will be no skimping on story and dialogue elements; you can almost guarantee that above all, the dialogue will be superbly written.

The great thing about a game like Booby Trap is the incredibly low cost. Oberon's first game Inspector Parker (developed by Jensen) was made for a budget well under $100,000, all of which was recouped within the first quarter of release. If Booby Trap is similarly successful, we can of course expect not just a sequel from Oberon, but likely more casual games with a greater story focus. What an awesome thought, that I could fire up RealArcade and have my pick of compelling stories and characters rather than just Super Doughnut Blaster 5 and all its clones.

So the frustrations of those who want a hook from their casual games will hopefully be allayed with Jane Jensen's Booby Trap. One of my colleagues, tongue firmly in cheek, described the game as a "trojan horse" to bring stories into the computers of those looking for puzzles--and that may be the exact effect, because if the surveys Jensen cited were correct, the casual puzzle market is starved for exactly that and just don't know where to look; they sure aren't going to shop at GameStop. We may have a brand new market for adventure gamers opened up, and the genre of "casual adventure" could have far-reaching effects on the casual gaming market. It remains to be seen what the actual market effects of the game will be, but we can at least be reasonably certain that with Jane Jensen at the helm, the characters will be interesting and the story will be exceptionally told. Those who are dying for technological innovation will go nuts for Fahrenheit and Dreamfall, but nostalgia junkies and those looking to be a part of an important new experiment will definitely want to invest in Booby Trap--in all its hearkening to the past, it may very well be the future of the genre.

Booby Trap, a Flash-based game, will be distributed by Oberon Media through various portals exclusively online, and is scheduled for a September 2004 release.

 

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