As some of you may know, after leaving LucasArts Ron Gilbert founded a company called Humongous Entertainment, and shortly afterwards he hired poached Dave Grossman away from LA as well. Humongous focused on games that were functionally classic Point and Click Adventure games (with the earliest ones apparently bearing a... somewhat litigiously provocative similarity to their LA SCUMM contemporaries), but geared towards children between the ages of 3 and 12 depending on the franchise. Their franchises were Putt-Putt, Freddie Fish, Spy Fox, and Pajama Sam.
I never played any of these games when they came out. I was a few years too old for them demographically, and it was the mid-90s where all the cool kids were chasing FMV and 3D acceleration, so these games weren't even on my radar till my adult life.
The first one I played was Pajama Sam 1 (1996). I played it around 8(?) years ago with my nephew who was basically the exact target audience (I think he was 5 when we played it). We both had fun, but it didn't make much of an impression on me, and we didn't play any further HE games, instead using it as a springboard into the more established canon I was familiar with (King's Quests, Monkey Islands, etc.).
Flashforward to now and, due to my memory of it as a fine "baby's first adventure game", I've been playing Pajama Sam 1 (and then 2 and then 3...) with my son who is just shy of 3 years old, and I have to say these games are... pretty great! We've both been having a great time. It's really been a treat watching him realize that he has some agency over the character and it's not just a cartoon. My enthusiasm for the games is undoubtedly in part due to constantly being exposed to awful, awful children's media -the vast majority of which is insufferable brainworm garbage- but these games legitimately feel like Gilbert/Grossman games (albeit ones made for children). There are some really good jokes in here (as well as great VA in service to them).
Perhaps most impressive to me is the design of these games though. To be clear, they're very much designed for young children and therefore extremely easy, but they have a surprising amount of versatility. Each entry is fundamentally about finding the 3 or 4 MacGuffins that Sam needs to face his fears/fix his mistakes, but in each game there are two possible seeds for each MacGuffin (and the seeds are specific to the MacGuffin, so they can be mixed and matched). So for example some runs Sam will need to get his mask by helping a carrot freedom-fighter (who fights against the corrupt course system) free his fellow radicals, but in other runs he'll need to discover alchemical secrets in order to create a potion of invisibility so he can sneak in and steal his mask from some sentient furniture. Each seed plays completely differently, so there's almost no overlap between runs with totally different seeds. It's a pretty neat trick that I wish had been copied by more adult oriented adventures of the time.
I also appreciate the allowance of sequence-breaking (using that term loosely since it's a game for 5 year olds). The first case of this I noticed was in the first game. There is a character named Otto that is an anthropomorphic wooden boat who refuses to give Sam a ride across a stream because "his cousin's best-friend's dentist knew a guy made of wood who got in water and sank" (see? very Gilbert/Grossman). The solution to the puzzle is to find a piece of wood and throw it into the water in front of Otto so that he can see that wood does, in fact, float, but! Sam can actually find this piece of wood before meeting Otto, and even better upon walking onto Otto's screen he can just throw the wood in the water without talking to Otto or even learning about his situation. Doing so still solves the puzzle, but also leads to a totally different dialogue between the two, and I'm hard-pressed to think of many other adventure games that reacted to or allowed for that sort of thing.
So. Anyone else have thoughts on Humongous Entertainment's games? Or recommendations for similar games that toddler friendly and not total crap? The Internet Consensus as far as I see is that Freddie Fish is kind of crap, Putt-Putt is ok, and Pajama Sam and Spy Fox are great (but like I said, I've only played the Pajama Sams). I know MRY has kids and I think Aeschylus might too? But suggestions are welcome from all.
Also anyone know what ended up happening to the company? Gilbert and Grossman both left abruptly, the company got sold and almost immediately shuttered, and Gilbert's co-founder was sentenced to 30 months for fraud, all in a pretty short period of time. There's not a lot of info out there about it from what all I've seen, but what little there is definitely suggests an interesting story.
I never played any of these games when they came out. I was a few years too old for them demographically, and it was the mid-90s where all the cool kids were chasing FMV and 3D acceleration, so these games weren't even on my radar till my adult life.
The first one I played was Pajama Sam 1 (1996). I played it around 8(?) years ago with my nephew who was basically the exact target audience (I think he was 5 when we played it). We both had fun, but it didn't make much of an impression on me, and we didn't play any further HE games, instead using it as a springboard into the more established canon I was familiar with (King's Quests, Monkey Islands, etc.).
Flashforward to now and, due to my memory of it as a fine "baby's first adventure game", I've been playing Pajama Sam 1 (and then 2 and then 3...) with my son who is just shy of 3 years old, and I have to say these games are... pretty great! We've both been having a great time. It's really been a treat watching him realize that he has some agency over the character and it's not just a cartoon. My enthusiasm for the games is undoubtedly in part due to constantly being exposed to awful, awful children's media -the vast majority of which is insufferable brainworm garbage- but these games legitimately feel like Gilbert/Grossman games (albeit ones made for children). There are some really good jokes in here (as well as great VA in service to them).
Perhaps most impressive to me is the design of these games though. To be clear, they're very much designed for young children and therefore extremely easy, but they have a surprising amount of versatility. Each entry is fundamentally about finding the 3 or 4 MacGuffins that Sam needs to face his fears/fix his mistakes, but in each game there are two possible seeds for each MacGuffin (and the seeds are specific to the MacGuffin, so they can be mixed and matched). So for example some runs Sam will need to get his mask by helping a carrot freedom-fighter (who fights against the corrupt course system) free his fellow radicals, but in other runs he'll need to discover alchemical secrets in order to create a potion of invisibility so he can sneak in and steal his mask from some sentient furniture. Each seed plays completely differently, so there's almost no overlap between runs with totally different seeds. It's a pretty neat trick that I wish had been copied by more adult oriented adventures of the time.
I also appreciate the allowance of sequence-breaking (using that term loosely since it's a game for 5 year olds). The first case of this I noticed was in the first game. There is a character named Otto that is an anthropomorphic wooden boat who refuses to give Sam a ride across a stream because "his cousin's best-friend's dentist knew a guy made of wood who got in water and sank" (see? very Gilbert/Grossman). The solution to the puzzle is to find a piece of wood and throw it into the water in front of Otto so that he can see that wood does, in fact, float, but! Sam can actually find this piece of wood before meeting Otto, and even better upon walking onto Otto's screen he can just throw the wood in the water without talking to Otto or even learning about his situation. Doing so still solves the puzzle, but also leads to a totally different dialogue between the two, and I'm hard-pressed to think of many other adventure games that reacted to or allowed for that sort of thing.
So. Anyone else have thoughts on Humongous Entertainment's games? Or recommendations for similar games that toddler friendly and not total crap? The Internet Consensus as far as I see is that Freddie Fish is kind of crap, Putt-Putt is ok, and Pajama Sam and Spy Fox are great (but like I said, I've only played the Pajama Sams). I know MRY has kids and I think Aeschylus might too? But suggestions are welcome from all.
Also anyone know what ended up happening to the company? Gilbert and Grossman both left abruptly, the company got sold and almost immediately shuttered, and Gilbert's co-founder was sentenced to 30 months for fraud, all in a pretty short period of time. There's not a lot of info out there about it from what all I've seen, but what little there is definitely suggests an interesting story.
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