Yup, you read that right. We went down to the BAFTA Building on Monday to see the launch of Revolution Software’s “Beneath a Steel Sky : ReMastered” for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Obviously, given our background of games testing and interaction design, as well as our love of all things touch, it wasn’t too long before this event came under our noses and we weren’t going to let it go easily.
Our man at the BAFTA's
For those of you unfamiliar with BASS, it was one of the first point and click adventure games that inspired countless others, during a time when the UK programmers were at the forefront of the games industry. Often copied, but never bettered, BASS set the bar ridiculously high on it’s launch in 1994 and it’s a testement to it that it’s widely regarded as one of the most played adventure games ever (it’s legal status turning into freeware means it can be legally downloaded and installed onto modern computers via the SCUMMVM emulator. More details here).
BASS is a cinematic/comic book style game that takes place in a very dystopian future. Blade Runner overtones aside, the story does have a very wry sense of humour that wouldn’t be out of place with most modern graphic novels if they were to approach the genre with modern day cynicism. You play Robert Foster, a man who lives in the outer echelons of the city, dragged back against your will to the city where you try to discover why you were taken there in the first place.
This remastered version has updates to the graphics, voices and animations, taking a little inspiration from the Watchmen animated comics that are available on iTunes. It’s available on the iTunes App Store as we speak and plays brilliantly. The touchscreen is a good arena for the point and click adventure genre as there are relations between the mouse and the direct manipulation that takes place on the screen. Little nuances that the iPhone offers, however, have been made full use of and very efficiently.
Lets look at the interface.
BASS does have an extremely simple menu interface. Buttons may look like they are a little close together. Revolution’s CEO, Charles Cecil was at hand to answer our questions regarding that; “We’ve worked with Apple directly and they’ve been great with helping us. They have some kind of algorithm that works out which area you want to press even if you’re not near it.” So, large fingered users, breathe out.
Choosing to start a new game, you’ll be treated to the new opening cinematic, which is lovingly done in Watchmen animated HD style. It’s a joy to see. The voice acting as been resampled nicely so it’s clear from the get-go. The MIDI music is still, well, MIDI music, but advancements mean that its more like a Vangelis soundtrack, rather than a novelty birthday card.
One thing that may disappoint users is that the artwork hasn’t really been updated in game like the recently released Monkey Island game for the iPhone. However, doing that style to the lovingly hand drawn backgrounds would make it look like some bizarre flash-game you play in a browser in between bites of a sandwich, so this is probably better.
Looking at the in game interface, you’re treated to a ratchet, a question mark and a tool box in the corners. Gone is the traditional style mouse pointer as well. This doesn’t matter though, as the game is extremely good at working out where you want to press. Using Fitts’ Law as well as humanly possible, each corner brings up separate menus. The Ratchet brings up the settings for the game:
One snag that this may cause to adventure gamers is that the ratchet like this has often been associated with the inventory system, while settings tend to be a generic wrench crossed with a screwdriver. However, given the fact that only three icons exist in the interface, this is, on the whole, quite forgivable.
The help section is part of the question mark section:
This not only is an area for contextual game help, but also permanently visible interface/inventory items. These options are always visible and allow the user to call for help at any given time. This is a great user mechanic and is well executed, not to mention fluid.
Looking into the gameplay, it’s safe to say that Revolution did their homework when testing, and this was reflected in Charles Cecil’s comments at the BAFTA event. Speaking exclusively with TT, the Revolution MD praised the idea of user testing immensely. “The tactility of the touch screen really suits adventures. The iPhone, in particular, allows you to ‘feel’ the screen so directly – I really do feel that the touchscreen interface works better, even, than the traditional mouse-driven point and click.” Cecil also praised the advancements in usability testing in gaming saying “Any publisher who ignores their users… well all fool them really!… Usability really is a core issue to us.”. For us, it’s refreshing to hear the smaller games companies take the practice seriously.
Outside simply tapping the screen to walk around the screen, you’ll notice a few other interactions available. Simply pressing down on the screen brings up all the hotspots on the screen that one can interactive. This may be seem counter intuitive to the whole aspect of the adventure genre, but lets face it, if pixel hunting on a computer was seen as the bane of adventure games generally, imagine pixel hunting on an iPhone.
Once your hotspot is selected you can either look at items or interact with them via handily animated icons. They’re easily selectable and this feature is certainly welcome for the casual gamer market, who probably just want to advance through the game as quickly as possible before they reach Tottenham Court Road station and start working.
In fact, in writing this, I’m aware that I may come across as a gushing fanboy and the furthest thing removed from an actual usability practitioner, so I’ll go into what I considered to be the least intuitive part of the interface – the inventory system. While your inventory is displayed in a very clear manner, interacting with it can sometimes be hard. The fact that there is actually a section dedicated to inventory in the help section, it’s clear that Revolution is aware of this and tried to tackle it as clearly as possible, for which I can given nothing but praise. However, given the iPhone is VERY multitouch, it feels that this area could have been explored more.
As it currently stands, the user taps the inventory box and sees the objects available. The user then holds an item and is free to drag that to hotspots to interact with them. This works well with a few spread out hotspots, but in areas where there are many hotspots bunched together, it’s a real trial and error scenario just to get something done. This can be frustrating as the labelling could be missed, thus making a user think they have already clicked on something that in fact got lost under their fingers, or under the icon itself. What could have worked well here would be pressing the icon of the inventory item, then that item appearing in the corner with “Use X with…” bit of text allowing the user to freely roam the screen safely knowing that the icon won’t disappear unless the cancel function is called. I can see what Revolution has done here, by not only replicating the mouse experience but implementing a nice direct manipulation of objects via the scheme, but this area is the only trouble I had with the game.
Nevertheless, this is a very very minor point with the overall game, and I think that Revolution should be quite happy with the five star feedback they’re getting. Proof that a game that’s 15 years old can learn some pretty cool new tricks.
