Around about 3,000 years ago, the people of Israel were a nation under siege. Oppressed by the Philistines in the West, threatened by the Ammonites in the East, Israel had no king and no hope for the future. They were governed by an ageing prophet by the name of Samuel, but it was plain to all that he wouldn't live much longer and his sons, the obvious successors, were corrupt and incompetent. The prospects of this fledgling nation seemed bleak.

Such is the setting of Ebenezer, an Old Testament adventure game I've been developing for the last few years, based around the events of 1 Samuel 8-12. To many, the Old Testament seems utterly incomprehensible; it comes across as far removed from our 21st Century existence and beyond irrelevant. Yet when you dig a little deeper, the hopes and fears of these ancient peoples were not really so very different from our own. What's more, the Old Testament is first and foremost a book about God - a God unlike the gods of the surrounding nations in every way, a God who remains the same yesterday, today and forever and who desires all of us to know him better. As we read the pages of the Old Testament and see this God engaging with his people, discovering who he is and what he cares about, we do not walk away unchanged. There's something electric and vibrant about the Old Testament that means uncovering its riches should never be boring or uninspiring. This is a book to be treasured.

Six Convictions

As explained in The Old Testament Adventure Games Creed, there are six core convictions that lie behind the Ebenezer project:

1. Education isn't the problem - humanity's problem isn't first and foremost that they don't know how to please God, it's that they don't want to please God.
2. Morality is useless - since we have an inbuilt bias against God, simply commanding us to be nice isn't going to achieve anything.
3. People need brand new hearts - we need a complete rebirth with a new nature that loves God instead of hating him.
4. New birth comes through the word of God - God promises to perform radical heart surgery on those who seek it with his living and active sword, the Bible, made possible by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
5. There's nothing boring about the Bible - a man dying of thirst in a desert wouldn't consider a cup of water "too boring": it's the very thing that meets his deepest need.
6. Christian video games should teach the Bible - given all this, nothing could be more worthwhile or exciting that sharing the good news of Jesus Christ as presented in the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments.

So how does it work?

The game focusses on one of the anonymous minor characters from the narrative: Saul's manservant. He is present during all of the key turning points in the story and so the player witnesses and engages with the unfolding drama through him. In addition, the story arc that has been written for this character parallels the main teaching point of the passage so that he serves the purpose of a "worked example"; as he himself learns more about God through his experiences he begins to see how they make a difference in his life, and in turn he demonstrates for us the relevance of the passage for today.

Image via Wikipedia

The game is what you would call a Point & Click adventure game: a form of interactive story where the player has to figure out how to move the story on by engaging with the characters and solving puzzles. Take, for example, The Secret of Monkey Island, arguably one of the greatest adventure games of all time. The main character, Guybrush Threepwood, is seeking to become a pirate and to do so he must pass "The Three Trials": he must find some buried treasure, steal something valuable and defeat the Sword Master. To complete the trials, Guybrush must collect various items and figure out how to cheat, steal and bribe his way to success, just like a true pirate. In the process the dreaded Ghost Pirate LeChuck kidnaps Guybrush's new-found love leading to all manner of swash-buckling fun and adventure as he endeavours to get a crew together and sail off to rescue her. The whole thing is pulled off with aplomb and a tremendous sense of humour - it's no wonder that the game holds a place in the heart of many (and it's yours today for only £6.99!)

Whilst the Point & Click adventure genre had its heyday in the early 1990s, it has seen a resurgence in the last year or two with the release of many new games in the same format, as well as the re-release of many classic games for new platforms such as the iPhone and iPad. These touchscreen devices are perfectly suited to the genre, introducing some real gems from the past to a whole new generation of players. Ebenezer is currently being developed for the iPhone using the Unity game engine.

Get Involved

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I'm also always interested in hearing from people who have the necessary skills to help me make the game. If you have talents in the areas of concept artwork, 3D modelling (Blender) or animation then drop me an email.

"We all serve one master. One king. And his name is... gaming. FOREVER MAY HE REIGN!" Kevin Butler (the character from Sony Computer Entertainment's recent marketing campaign) during this year's E3 conference

Sound familiar?

A note of explanation: For the last five years I've been working on an Old Testament Adventure game, named Ebenezer: a point & click adventure game in the style of Monkey Island. This post is an attempt to explain some of the convictions and thinking that lies behind the project.

1. Education isn't the problem

You don't have to look very hard to notice that we live in a desperately broken world. You also don't have to look very hard to discover that we're the cause of it: despite our tremendous potential for good, human beings time and time again demonstrate a remarkable capacity for evil, constantly inflicting hurt on our environment, our fellow man and even those closest to us. It's not because we don't know how we should behave, either: even when we want to do what's right, so often we find ourselves unable to live up even to our own standards, let alone God's. Education isn't the problem. The human heart is marred by sin, the product of a creature in rebellion against its Creator. It's not just that we commit 'sins', rather it's that we are sinful, and so our sin is our world's greatest problem. Simply telling people how they should behave and expecting them to change will accomplish nothing.

2. Morality is useless

By implication, if education isn't the problem then morality is useless. 'Morality' tells you how you're supposed to behave and berates you when you fail, beating you with a stick and expecting you to try harder next time. It provides no power to change, and frankly it's just plain boring.

3. People need brand new hearts

When he met a bunch of people who thought they were 'good' and moral, people obsessed with living righteous lives, Jesus told them that they were like people who spent ages washing the outside of their mugs and never noticed that inside they were full of sewage and filth. Cleaning up our outward actions is pointless and hypocritical when inwardly our hearts are like poo pumps constantly gushing forth a stench-ridden stream of foul and unclean thoughts. If you disagree that you're like this, try going just one week without thinking a single unkind thought about someone, without a single lustful look, without the faintest hint of envy or pride. Try going just one day, even!

The problem isn't external to us - forcing women to cover their figures with a burqa or removing all of the violence and immorality from our video games won't stop those thoughts welling up inside us. The problem lies within: our hearts are desperately wicked, and people need brand new hearts if they're ever going to change.

4. New birth comes through the word of God

The wonderful hope held out by Jesus in the gospel is that he promises to give new hearts to all those who trust in him - it's as though we were born a second time as whole new people, starting again from scratch. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!", says Paul. How does the Holy Spirit work to bring about that new birth? Again and again in the Bible comes the same answer: new birth comes through the word of God. Of all the ways he could do it, God has chosen to work first and foremost through the Bible, faithfully taught, explained and applied. As people recognise the Bible as the word of God and respond to its message, putting their faith in Jesus for salvation, God works a miracle as great as the miracle of creation to remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, beating to his drum and not their own.

5. There's nothing boring about the Bible

If the word of God brings about new birth for sinful people, then there's nothing boring about that! Anybody who has ever found themselves dozing off in a boring sermon or Sunday school class only has their boring teacher to blame - it's an impressive feat to take something as electric as the word of God and turn it into something dull!

The message of the Bible deserves to be presented in a way that does justice to how incredibly exciting it is - this is the hope of eternal life for sinful human beings! It's the solution to our broken and decaying world! It doesn't need anything added to it to make it interesting and engaging and relevant, it simply needs to be explained clearly and faithfully. What could be more relevant than something that meets our deepest needs?

6. Christian video games should teach the Bible

A Christian understanding of the world governed by these principles has led me to pour countless hours over the last five years into making an Old Testament adventure game that first and foremost seeks to teach the Bible. Education isn't the problem, so the world doesn't need more games that teach us how to live. Morality is useless, so the world doesn't need more games encouraging us to pull our socks up. People need brand new hearts, so the world won't be helped by games without the violence and immorality. New birth comes through the word of God, so Christian video games should teach the Bible. And there's nothing boring about the Bible, so Christian video games shouldn't be boring either - they should be the most exciting games on the market, since they have the potential to change your life! As I've written previously, I'm convinced that point & click adventure games can do this extremely well, so that's what I've been concentrating on.

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Perhaps, then, a computer game is "Christian" if it's based on Christian content - perhaps a Bible trivia quiz or a memory verse game that gives you points for demonstrating your superior knowledge of the scriptures. The trouble with this is that it bears little resemblance to Christianity - no-one ever got saved by knowing their Bibles well, and there's no spiritual browny points for being able to recite the book of Jude from memory (although you might earn yourself a high five from me!) After all, the scribes and the Pharisees in Jesus' day knew their Old Testaments better than anyone, and all it did was make them puffed up with self-conceit and hardened their hearts against realising their desperate need for the forgiveness Jesus was offering. As James tells us, if Christianity were a competition to see who knew the most right answers, we'd all be left for dust by the demons.

Maybe, then, a Christian computer game is an evangelistic tool - a game that helps educate people about Christian things and challenges them to think about their lives and about matters of eternity. The Bible trivia quizes and their ilk tend to work on the premise that you already know the answers (either that or it's going to be a really depressing experience!), so they're not much good in this respect. I could imagine that many of the so-called "Christian" games out there see themselves in this light, and I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to assess whether they succeed or fail on this front. One of the big challenges in pulling this off is that people don't typically play games to be educated, they play games to relax and blow stuff up. There's a bit of work to be done to really make this approach succeed.

For my money, I'm not sure the label "Christian computer games" is very helpful at all, and I've done my best to avoid using it all together. The underlying conviction behind my Old Testament adventure game is that God works in his world through his word, the Bible. The Bible is the sword of the Spirit, it's sufficient for every good work, and the spiritual milk by which we grow up into mature adulthood. As God says in Isaiah 55:10-11:

As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

And so, trusting that it's the teaching of God's word that changes people, my point & click adventure game, Ebenezer, is designed to explore the events of a short section of the Old Testament and tease out their significance, both in history and for today (in this case, I'm covering 1 Samuel 8-12, although if it's a success I hope to make lots more about other passages!) It's also designed to be a lot of fun in the process, and not to take itself too seriously (I take a lot of inspiration from Monkey Island on this front, as well as on many others!)

Do use the Facebook thingy below to paste your thoughts on the question, and don't forget to sign up for my mailing list to get all the latest news on my project!

Show Notes

Scheduling

• The next goal for the project is to get some users to test it
• We discuss ways of avoiding the danger that the project drags on in the absence of hard deadlines
• Andy talks about some practical things that have helped him, such as storyboarding each section as a separate exercise from coding it up
• We're still looking for Blender artists to help model the environments
• It's a challenge to make long-term goals that are big enough to challenge you yet still attainable

Going for Glory

• When does the desire to make the best possible game for God become more about personal glory?
• In 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 Paul talks about deliberately not being impressive so that it was obvious that it was the word of God doing the work
• Does this mean its okay that so many Christian games are poorly polished and unengaging for non-believers?
• Ultimately, even if you made the most amazing game ever, people would still hate it because of its association with Christianity, so if you do it for the glory you will be disappointed

Thinking of Random Uses for Items

• Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" discusses the difference between "convergent" and "divergent" questions in intelligent tests
• An example of a divergent question would be to come up with as many different uses for an item as possible, the quirkier the better
• As practice for our puzzle-writing, we discuss some uses for a lemonade bottle or "War and Peace"
• It's surprisingly hard to acquire items in a Christian game if you rule out theft, making item-based puzzles rarer than usual

The show is about 55 minutes long.

Show Notes

Environment Concept Art

• Andy recently sent out some of my new concept artwork to the mailing list (sign up now!)
• We discuss the challenge of turning concept art into 3D content, particularly given the cartoony style we're seeking
• The cancelled LucasArts project "Sam & Max: Freelance Police" had amazing (2D) concept art but ugly (3D) screenshots, and that's frustrating
• Andy is on the look out for 3D Blender artists to model the environments - get in touch if that's you!
• We discuss various 2D/3D hybrid approaches, such as limiting the camera angles or using 3D models but rendering them as 2D images
• A good example of one approach is the Monkey Island Uber Edition tech demo (here and here)
• The original motivation for going 3D was from "Simon the Sorceror 3D": despite being unbelievably ugly it demonstrated the superior potential for drama from a 3D game

Character Design

• Work is now underway to design the characters
• Though 1 Samuel 8-12 makes excellent game material, it features all Israel gathering, which means a large number of characters
• Part of the process involved writing a description of each character
• It revealed how shallow and ill-defined most of those characters are at the moment. They exist to serve a function within the story but as yet have no clear personality.
• Great quote from Ron Gilbert on adventure game design: "World, character, and story. In that order. Create a compelling place people want to visit, populate it with compelling characters, and then tell a good story." (read it here)
• When developing Psychonauts, Tim Schafer apparently wrote Facebook profile pages for each of his characters to help him give them personalities (podcast here)

Anachronism

• The game used to be much longer than it is now, since a lot has been cut out
• The original story had a lot of anachronism in it, like the complicated nation-wide communication system: Quail Mail, and related internet cafes
• Andy's approach to anachronism is similar to Terry Pratchett's Discworld books: reimplementing modern concepts with the technology available to them
• As part of all that, there is a coffee shop in the game, despite the many centuries between when the game is set and when coffee first started being drunk.
• However, so much has now been cut out that coffee has become the only anachronism left.
• Should we remove the coffee or add in more anachronisms elsewhere?

Marketing

• How do you describe a Point & Click adventure game to people who have never played one? How do you explain the concept of a "puzzle"?
• We discuss what the target audience is and what kind of devices they'll have: do we need to worry about the game working on the early versions of the iPhone / iPod Touch, given that it will probably be another 18 months or so before release?
• Given we're targetting a niche market, we don't want to make it any smaller than necessary by requiring cutting edge hardware.
• Using the Unity engine to target the iPhone has also become a potentially risky venture due to Apple's recent Terms of Service changes. We discuss the pros and cons.

A reminder that you should sign up for the mailing list for all of the latest news

I'm just posting these small thumbnails for now, I may decide to post some bigger versions at a later stage. The best stuff will definitely be reserved for those who have signed up for my Old Testament Adventures mailing list.

These images are just concepts, the next stage is to find some talented Blender artists willing to help turn these into 3D models so that they can be incorporated into the actual game. If you'd be interested in lending a hand, do contact me.

"I had found that, for me, playing as god was not an attraction. Being removed was chilling and, of course, distancing."

How should the Christian think about 'playing God' in a video game? Instinctively, I want to dismiss it as a bad thing; after all, the very essence of sin is to play God: to shake our fists at our creator and say "I'd rather run my life my way". We want to call the shots. We want to decide which way our life will go. The great power struggle between man and God is what led to Adam & Eve being ejected from Eden, and continues to haunt the human race til this day. No wonder it is so unfulfilling to play God, when that is the root of our greatest problem.

And yet I think I would be wrong to reject the idea so quickly. The author of the article points out that one of the side-effects of so many games that allow you to play God is to let you "discover, through video games, the various types of God I might be". In attempting to play God myself, I get to see how hard it is. I get to see all of the ways in which I fail to be God satisfactorily. In many ways it provides a mirror onto my own soul - give a man ultimate power and authority, and see how he behaves towards those in his care. Surely there is great potential in such an experience to show people the depths of their hearts, and point them towards the one true God who rules with justice and mercy. "We do not engage directly; we do not drop down to say hi." - and yet He did, stepping in to his world in the form of Jesus Christ to sort out the problem of human sin brought about by our god complex.

The large pasty has over twice the calories, over twice the saturated fats and over twice the salt content of the Big Mac. Even once you add in a large fries, the pasty comes off worse.

No surprises then that it's surprisingly difficult to get access to the nutritional information for the West Cornwall Pasty Co. I had to email them to find this out.

Show Notes

Concept artwork

• Andy is struggling with the question of how to set a budget and exactly what to spend it on
• we discuss how to tap into the vastly under-served Christian market whilst battling the perception of "Christian naffness"
• Dave asks if we can use the low budget as a strength rather than a weakness, by choosing a deliberately simple art style like South Park, or Time Gentlemen Please by Zombie Cow Studios.

Women in Bible games

• our Bible passage is one of many that doesn't explicitly feature any women, meaning that any female characters are going to have to be ones that we create. We discuss some potential candidates
• Monkey Island seems to have a disproportionately large number of female fans compared to other games/genres, so it seems to be an issue worth spending time on
• all the actors we're mates with are actresses, so it's decidedly inconvenient that the cast of the game is balanced the other way
• but that's okay, because Dave Hall (the narrator for my video "The OTHER Secret of Monkey Island") apparently sounds just like the actor Bill Nighy from Pirates of the Caribbean

Making God's involvement clear

• the vital role of the narrator in Biblical narrative
• how to get the Bible into the game itself without ramming it down the player's throat
• Dave has no idea how great coffee is because he has no sense of smell
• we discuss means of making God's involvement in the events clear without sending the wrong message about how he works in real life

What is the game teaching?

• how do you avoid merely teaching a moral lesson about "treating God a certain way"?
• how do you keep the focus on God: what do we learn about him through this passage?
• what difference does Jesus make to the application? How do we avoid directly applying the OT to us as NT believers without considering the implications of Christ's coming
• How do we draw out the ways the narrative points us forwards to Jesus?
• Are there examples in non-interactive media that does this well?

Well, if you haven't heard the news already, LucasArts are releasing a special edition remastered version of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. Originally released in 1991, it is regarded by many fans as the greatest of the Monkey Island games, and perhaps even one of the best video games ever made. But what was so special about this classic game? I've done a lot of thinking about this question as I've worked on my own Point & Click adventure game, and here are my thoughts.

Building on a Strong Foundation

In many ways, LeChuck's Revenge is the big-budget elder brother of the original Secret of Monkey Island (see my analysis of that here). Whether it's the artwork, the music, the scope of the story, the intrigue - LeChuck's Revenge takes everything that's great about the original and pushes it to another level, made possible by the extra resources and the advance of computer technology. Where SoMI was charming in its simplicity, MI2 is a true epic, reaching the dizzy heights of storytelling that show a development team on top of their game.

A Feast for the Senses

Initially I had intended to comment separately on the different aspects of the game: its stunningly beautiful background images, its intricately woven musical score, its razor-sharp script. But the truth is that you can't separate one from another - they all work together perfectly to create one of the most atmospheric experiences of my childhood. It's a feast for the senses, and it rocks!

Much of this was enabled by the technological advances going on. The increased resolution and colour depth, combined with the advent of scanners, meant that Peter Chan and Steve Purcell were able to hand-draw and colour their backgrounds before scanning them in, making them look absolutely gorgeous. Michael Land and Peter McConnell were able to use spare processor cycles to develop their cutting-edge iMUSE technology to power the music: it is this that makes the seamless musical transitions possible, synchronising the score with the action as it takes place.

As an example of how it all works together, take one of the scariest moments from the game: when you first enter the swamp on Scabb Island to visit the Voodoo Lady. Standing on the river bank, you just get the eerie chords of a hammond organ. As you step inside a make-shift boat fashioned from an old coffin, a simple drum beat is added in. Then as you sail your way deeper into the swamp, you begin to hear the haunting bass line. And so it continues to build as you enter the Voodoo Lady's house - combined with the background art it works to create what is perhaps one of the most atmospheric experiences gamers had ever known at the time.

Mystery and Intrigue

I believe it was one of the Monkey Island developers who said that people love questions more than they enjoy hearing the answers. LeChuck's Revenge pushed this philosophy to the extreme - it is full of mystery and intrigue that still has people discussing it today. It is full of clues as to a deeper truth regarding Guybrush's identity and family history, yet it never provides a clear answer. Done badly, this would just be frustrating, but Monkey Island somehow manages to pull it off in a way that leaves you clamouring for more.

The key to this is the sense of depth to the game. There is more to these characters and the world they inhabit than simply meets the eye - you get the distinct impression that these are real people with a real history. Somehow they exist beyond the brief window into their lives that we're given during the events of the game itself. I guess that this is why people find the conspiracy theory that suggests the whole game takes place in Guybrush's imagination so deeply unsatisfying.

The Special Edition

So what does all this mean for the new Special Edition, due out this summer? Fans all over the net seem to be rejoicing that the art style of the original backgrounds appear to have been kept, whilst being updated to be nice and shiny and high-res. There is some concern that updating the music to feature a full orchestral score will allow the magic of iMuse to continue to function - but personally I'm cautiously optimistic on this front. I long to hear some of those classic tunes in all their digital glory! And perhaps the addition of developer commentaries from the likes of Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer will finally offer some closure to that greatest of all mysteries: what IS the Secret of Monkey Island?

Roll on the summer!

There are many great philosophical questions that come part and parcel with Christianity, chief among them being the problem of pain (how can an infinitely good God allow needless suffering?), and the problem of video games (how can an infinitely good God allow crappy Christian video games, which cause needless suffering?)

Very much in sync with my own thinking on the subject, he goes on to outline some of the common approaches taken so far, and where they fail (in a highly entertaining manner, I might add!) The only downside of it being so old is I'm yet to find the follow-up article explaining his solution!

For a while now I've wanted to develop a version of my Old Testament adventure game for the iPhone / iPod Touch using the Unity game engine. But it requires so much initial upfront investment that I've been endlessly putting off the decision, particularly since I had no idea exactly what an iPhone was really capable of - would it be able to handle a bunch of animated 3D characters without grinding to a halt? Well, in the end I took the plunge, and here are my findings!

The True Cost of Unity iPhone

Firstly, though, let's just sum up exactly what an upfront investment we're really talking about here. It turned out to be rather more expensive than I'd anticipated!

• Unity iPhone Basic License: $399 - this cost is pretty transparent, no surprises here.
• Mac Mini: $599 - in case it wasn't clear, Unity iPhone requires a Mac development environment, since you need to be able to run Xcode from the Apple SDK. If you've already got one you can obviously discount this cost. The cheapest piece of Apple kit is probably the Mac Mini starting at $599, I personally got a discount on a 13" Macbook coming out at about $800.
• iPod Touch: $199 - I'd hoped I could do all my development in the Unity development environment and then borrow my housemate's iPhone to do some occasional performance testing, but it turns out that a physical iPhone/iPod touch is essential for your ongoing development: all interaction takes place using an actual device which then sends signals back to your dev environment. For performance reasons you may be best off buying a second-hand 1st generation iTouch from eBay or something - mine set me back about $100.
• Apple iPhone Developer Program: $99 per year - again, because of the way you need a physical device for development purposes, you can't leave signing up for the Apple dev program until the end. You have to pay the annual fee before you can even get started using Unity in earnest.

The Software Itself

The first big surprise for me when firing up Unity iPhone was the extent to which it is an entirely separate product from the normal Unity. This may be a versioning thing - I've only ever seen the latest version of Unity - and the iPhone version may just be a version or two behind, perhaps. For now, at least, many of the interface elements are quite different if you're used to the standard Unity. For example, the widgets for rotating game objects work differently - not necessarily worse, just differently. The whole thing just looks a lot blockier and more old-fashioned, for some reason.

Secondly, as I've already hinted at in the costs section, the workflow isn't entirely what I'd expected. There's a great little summary of this on GameDev, but here's a brief outline:

1. Rather than running an iPhone emulator on your Mac, you actually run a Unity emulator on your iPhone!
2. All the code is then executed on your Mac during development, and Unity just streams low-quality images to your physical device. Touches / tilt readings are then fed from the device back to Unity. This means that (apart from GUI interaction) mouse clicks on your Mac are ignored - you really need a physical device if you're to test any kind of interaction with the user.
3. When you're happy with your code, Unity builds an Xcode project which can then be compiled like any other iPhone app and downloaded to your device for testing. This can be done in a single click from within Unity, but takes a few minutes to happen.

(Update: Unity 1.6 was released today that actually fixes all of that - you can now use .NET 2.1 functionality and System.dll)

Unity iPhone also has no support for programming in Boo, for reasons that I'm not sure of.

Hardware Capabilities

For me, at least, the million dollar question was regarding the hardware capabilities of the iPod Touch/iPhone - especially the first generation ones. The iPhone 3GS is a seriously powerful computer, but if you make your game so that it only runs on the latest hardware then you're ruling out a large proportion of your potential audience. I deliberately bought myself a first generation iPod Touch off eBay - apparently the first generation iPhone has very similar specs in terms of CPU speed.

I have to say, my expectations were not very high when I finally got to the point of being able to test. Since I'm developing an adventure game, I need to be able to have a good number of animated characters on screen at the same time, and I'd feared that the iTouch just wouldn't cope, particularly by the time you'd added in a few particle effects and background scenery.

But I was totally wrong - these devices are remarkably capable, and the guys from Unity have clearly done a great job of optimising their software to squeeze out every last drop of speed.

For testing purposes I used a character model with 738 vertices and 692 faces. The armature featured about 30 bones, and here you can see the frame rates I was getting as I added more and more of these characters on screen, all running the same animation but out of sync (just in case Unity tries to do any clever optimisations for characters at the same frame of the same animation):

Even with 15 characters, running just above 8 FPS, it didn't look so jerky as to be unplayable - at least not for an adventure game like mine. Exactly what framerate you need probably depends on how important fast responses are to your game.

The scene below with 5 characters, a relatively simple environment mesh and a particle simulation ran quite happily at about 22 FPS.

Conclusion

All told I'm immensely positive about what Unity iPhone is capable of, and have high hopes for what I'm going to be able to achieve with it. The engine is a real joy to work with, and the capabilities of the hardware far exceed what I'd expected from it. The Unity community is incredible, and help is always available when you need it.

If you're thinking about taking the plunge, I hope you've found this article helpful. Feel free to Twitter me if you want to ask any further questions, or check out the UnityAnswers website.

There are three main problems with this theory:

• There is strong counter evidence - which some dismiss as just being attempts to throw us off the scent - such as the fact that Elaine seems to continue to exist in some sense "outside" of Guybrush's fantasy. She suggests that LeChuck has put some kind of spell on Guybrush.
• It ignores many other clues about Guybrush's family history. At best, it can only be a partial explanation of the facts.
• Ultimately, many people find it deeply unsatisfying - it seems to take the essence out of this world that they have derived so much enjoyment from.

In response to the feedback that I received from my last video - The TRUE Secret of Monkey Island - I have put together a sequel which attempts to do justice to ALL the facts. Behold: The OTHER Secret of Monkey Island (direct YouTube link here).

One of the key writers on Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island games was Tim Schafer, who alongside Dave Grossman wrote a substantial portion of the dialogue for the games. Whilst it's not generally believed that he knows the full details of Ron's master plan, he must have been given a certain amount of information in order to be able to do his job. It provides a fascinating perspective on the world of Monkey Island to examine one of Schafer's own games: Psychonauts.

In Psychonauts, the player meets various disturbed individuals. The hero, Raz, is able to "enter" their subconscious minds, and each level of the game is then a physical manifestation of the various neuroses and traumas of those characters. Take, for example, the asylum warden haunted by his poor performance at war strategy games despite his descent from the line of Napoleon. His mind then takes the form of one giant strategy game that must be won in order to free him from the tyranny of his failure.

Although it's generally accepted that Psychonauts was inspired by a scrapped scene from Schafer's Full Throttle game, it's not impossible that there could also have been some cross pollination from Ron's games. At the very least, it provides a fascinating lens through which to view the world of Monkey Island.

Could it in fact be a representation of Guybrush's mental baggage? Might he be haunted by some past trauma that took place whist visiting a themepark?

LeChuck then truly does represent his mean older brother, Chuckie, with his "evil eyes" at the end of the second game indicating some kind of temporary triumph of this inner demon over Guybrush's sanity.

Could the Voodoo Lady's guiding presence represent some kind of psychiatrist helping Guybrush search out the suppressed secrets of his past and destroy his mental cobwebs?

Guybrush's Traumatic Past

In a notorious interview on IRC, Ron Gilbert made the following comment about Guybrush's relationship to LeChuck:

<Ron-G> In one sense, yes they are brothers, in another way, they are not. If you get what I mean.

Superficially, the evidence within the game backs up LeChuck's claim: how else would Guybrush be able to use his own father's bone to make the Voodoo doll that defeats LeChuck? Except that we only know he calls this man "Dad" - we have no proof that he is a blood relation of Guybrush. It's interesting that Guybrush always chooses his Dad's bone - is it possible that had he chosen his Mom's bone, the doll would not have worked?

I believe so: Guybrush and LeChuck are step brothers. When you purchase the (otherwise useless) feather pen from the antique shop on Booty Island, Guybrush exclaims that it is "just like the feather pen from Mom and Dad's wedding". In other words: his parents married within his lifetime. We know that LeChuck is "Dad"'s son, meaning that Guybrush's mother must have married LeChuck's father.

What's more, when hanging above the acid pit in his dungeon, LeChuck claims that Guybrush was an orphan, meaning he must have been adopted by his Mom at some point before she (re-?)married.

In my view, frequently overlooked is the fact that Guybrush's parents now appear to be dead. They turn into skeletons during his dream, and it's their skeletons that you find in the Lost and Found at the end. Guybrush lives with the belief that they abandoned him, a claim that they strenuously deny. I'm now far into the realm of speculation, but given their warnings at the end about the presence of "murderers and white slavers" at themeparks, could it be possible that they were in fact MURDERED? Their sudden disappearance might appear to Guybrush as though they had abandoned him. It is, after all, curious that they should be found in a "Lost Parents" area - more naturally they are for "Lost Children".

Such a traumatic event taking place whilst visiting a themepark would inevitably leave it's mark on a young boy growing up. Who could blame Guybrush for having to do battle with the demons of his past in the arena of the Big Whoop amusement park?

But Who Is Elaine?

I'll be honest that for me the big unresolved question is the identity of Elaine. Also in the IRC interview, Ron Gilbert says this about her:

<Ron-G> Elain never really liked GB and thought of him as more of a little brother.

Could she be some relation of Guybrush? Before you throw your arms up in the air in disgust at this idea, given her romantic involvement to Guybrush, just remember that Ron Gilbert was heavily influenced by the Star Wars movies - and who could forget that unfortunate kiss between Luke and Leia?

Guybrush does make a passing reference to having a sister in Wally's house - although he could just be blagging in order to cover up his having owned a dolls' house (he also says he has a lot of hairy cousins when you read a particular library book!)

In truth, we shall probably never know. But perhaps all this brings us one step closer to finally answering that great mystery: what IS the Secret of Monkey Island?

If you found this interesting, please watch my other video: Monkey Island meets the Old Testament.