AG with the real authors aboard

[Verylittlefishes]

Hi, AdventureCodex! Today I want to talk about that beautiful period (mid-to-late 90s) when adventure gaming was so prestigious that not so-called "game writers" but the real authors who wrote amazing books were involved in production. It didn't last long, so I'm interested in collecting all games of this kind here, pls assist.

What I can remember at the moment:

Roger Zelazny and Chronomaster (1995)

Pretty impressive for its time, now out-of-sale adventure game created by the glorified author of The Chronicles of Amber, Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Jack of Shadows and A Night in the Lonesome October (all these books are amazing, though I never liked Amber series).

Chronomaster narrates the story of Rene Korda (voiced by Ron Perlman), a retired and formerly renowned designer of "pocket universes" — self-contained worlds developed according to the tastes of the person who finances their construction. Korda is hired by a representative of the "Terran Regional government" to restore two pocket universes from a state of "temporal stasis" and to find out who is responsible for the situation.

William Burroughs and The Dark Eye (1995)

In this case the influence of WSB, author of Naked Lunch and Red Night trilogy was more than his participation per se: Burroughs provided not only the voice for the character of Edwin, but also voiceovers for two slide-show sequences illustrating the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" and the poem "Annabel Lee".

Most of the game is exploration of Edgar Poe's nightmarish short fiction, but anyway typical WSB creepiness seeps out.

Harlan Ellison and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)

Ellison was heavily involved in this sequel/alternate experience of his famous short story (which is also is one of the most dark and disturbing sci-fi pieces I've ever read). The game takes place in a dystopian world where a mastermind artificial intelligence named “AM” has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, whom he has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years by constructing metaphorical adventures based on each character's fatal flaws. The player interacts with the game by making decisions through ethical dilemmas that deal with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia, and genocide.

Inspired by the new medium of videogames, Ellison wrote the 130-page script treatment himself alongside David Sears, who decided to divide each character's story with their own narrative. The original short story is just 13 pages long.

Douglas Adams and Starship Titanic (1998)

Funny and innovative FPV adventure game with a text parser.

Written and designed by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams, Starship Titanic began development in 1996 and took two years to develop. In order to achieve Adams's goal of being able to converse with characters in the game, his company developed a language processor to interpret player's input and give an appropriate response and recorded over 16 hours of character dialogue. Oscar Chichoni and Isabel Molina, artists on the film Restoration (1995), served as the game's production designers and designed the ship's Art Deco visuals. The game's voice cast includes Monty Python members Terry Jones and John Cleese.

The game takes place on the eponymous starship, which the player is tasked with repairing by locating the missing parts of its control system. The gameplay involves solving puzzles and speaking with the bots inside the ship. The game features a text parser similar to those of text adventure games with which the player can talk with characters.

...

Do you remember anything else?

 

[Nano]

Do text adventures count? From Infocom, there's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984):

And Bureaucracy (1987), both by Douglas Adams.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Obvious things I forgot:

Clive Barker's Undying & Jericho (2001/2007)

Not so obvious (they say it's pretty bad which is not surprise, considering how bad almost everything Gaiman touches outside his book graphic novel book medium):

Neil Gaiman and Wayward Manor (2014)

 

[MRY]

Orson Scott Card worked on several Lucas Art titles (Loom, Monkey Island, The Dig).

Michael Crichton did Amazon and Timeline.

I'm sure there are others, these just pop to mind.

 

[Grauken]

Michael A. Stackpole was involved with a couple of games, but more as a designer than writer from what I've read, among them stuff like Wasteland and Neuromancer (1988)

George Alec Effinger was the writer for Circuit's Edge (1990), which is set between the 1st and 2nd book of his Marîd Audran series

Raymond E. Feist has a credit for working on Betrayal at Krondor, though I'm not sure whether he really worked on it or just got to share the credit for the writing with Neal Hallford due to his name so that they could put it on the game package as marketing

Zilpha Keatley Snyder did the story for Below the Root (1984), a game sequel to her book trilogy

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Benoit Sokal (Amerzone, Syberia), though he is more graphic novel author.

 

[Grauken]

Gentry Lee who worked on the game adaption of the Rama series simply called Rama (1996). The first book was written by Arthur C. Clarke but Lee had co-credit on the three sequels (the third sequel was basically all written by him).

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I hear that Terry Pratchett had a hand in making Discworld 2 and Noir, but I have no real idea if that's true or just a rumor.

 

[bylam]

I remember reading an interview with Mr Pratchett about the games - https://www.lspace.org/about-terry/interviews/gamespot.html

Now, Larry Niven was involved with the Ringworld games in some capacity as well.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Burroughs provided not only the voice for the character of Edwin, but also voiceovers for two slide-show sequences illustrating the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" and the poem "Annabel Lee".

Alright I'm sold, getting it right now. Chronomaster any good btw?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Burroughs provided not only the voice for the character of Edwin, but also voiceovers for two slide-show sequences illustrating the short story "The Masque of the Red Death" and the poem "Annabel Lee".

Alright I'm sold, getting it right now. Chronomaster any good btw?

I didn't get far yet, but it looks cool.

 

[Venser]

Terry Dowling wrote Schizm: Mysterious Journey, Schizm II: Chameleon and Sentinel: Descendants in Time. Haven't played any of them but I'm tempted since I liked some of his stories.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Terry Dowling wrote Schizm: Mysterious Journey, Schizm II: Chameleon and Sentinel: Descendants in Time. Haven't played any of them but I'm tempted since I liked some of his stories.

Looks beautiful. Probably gameplay is Myst-like.