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 What the hell are you doing? Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, is among the most famous plays of all time. A Western tragedy written around the year 1600 and set in Denmark, it is an excellent play that has inspired writers, artists, and filmmakers for hundreds of years. Many film adaptations of Hamlet have been produced from the start of the 20th century hence, some winning major awards and starring major celebrity actors such as Lawrence Olivier and Mel Gibson. Full texts of the script of Hamlet are also available online here and elsewhere. Ryan North is a webcomic writer best known for working on Dinosaur Comics since 2003. Dinosaur Comics manages to be even more minimalist in its art style than xkcd's stick figure stylings -- the gimmick of Dinosaur Comics is that every comic is the same set of panels depicting dinosaurs, with only the dialogue and captions changing each update. Ryan North has also written short webcomics for the Namco ShiftyLook project, including a survival horror interpretation of Dig Dug and a bizarre-but-sorta-faithful retelling of Galaga. Both those comics had the Chris Hastings/Anthony Clark duo behind Dr. McNinja doing the artwork and some co-writing. I'd link the comics, but the ShiftyLook website and all its contents evaporated and I haven't yet found an archive of those two comics in particular. Ryan North has also done writing for the Adventure Time comic book series, which apparently exists. Ryan North's To Be or Not To Be is a Choose Your Own Adventure book adaptation of Hamlet funded by a successful Kickstarter back in 2012. The book raised $580,000 on Kickstarter and met all of its stretch goals, including the addition of storylines for Ophelia and Hamlet Sr., and was published in September of 2013. More recently the game was adapted into an electronic form using Tin Man Games's Gamebook Adventures Engine and saw a Steam release for Windows, Mac, and Linux as well as mobile releases through Google Play and the iOS App Store. I will be running the iOS app for this Let's Play unless it comes up that the Steam release has additional content. The gamebook has pleasantly surprised me by being decently interesting and funny, even if the humor is often hit-or-miss with a hint of monkey cheese. The creators appear to have put a decent amount of effort into the electronic release too, with illustrations contributed by pretty much every noteworthy webcomic artist; the illustrator credits include Kate Beaton, Chris Hastings, Randall Munroe, Mike Krahulik, and numerous others. Notably, Tim Buckley is absent from that list. I haven't done most of the gamebook's endings, and don't know how deep it goes except that judging by the list of locked illustrations and achievements I've only just scratched the surface. How is this LP going to work? I'll transcribe text and provide screenshots, particularly of decision screens as well as illustrations, achievements, and other unique content that appears. Game text will be in normal format; my commentary will be in underlined italics. When a decision screen comes up, everybody will get to vote on it. I'll try and update once every day or two. When we hit an ending, I'll give everybody a few days to vote on where we pick up. The game appears to have fast skipping of previously-viewed scenes and a somewhat decent checkpoint system, which will facilitate this. I might divert to other somewhat-hidden easter egg content between runs. The credits point to AudioBlocks as the source for sound effects and music, and I have tracked down some of the audio there. It's all stock audio, but I'll try to provide links. Are you going to do the awesome super secret ending where-- I'm putting in a standing rule for this LP: You can spoil Hamlet all you want; it's public domain and probably everybody here has studied it at some point in high school or college. Talk about Hamlet, talk about Hamlet movies, Hamlet scenes, the ending of Hamlet, whatever. However, if you've played this game, don't spoil original game content, even in spoiler tags. Don't drop hints and references about things we haven't yet seen, don't post about how excited you are about this upcoming part that'll shock everybody and blow everybody away. As we exhaust more and more of the different story paths and endings, I'll consider relaxing the no-spoiler rule to facilitate getting to obscure game content, and will edit this post if and when the rule is pulled. That being said, this game was crowdfunded by webcomic fans, and thus I can't guarantee that all of the jokes will be funny or even non-cringe-inducing. Criticism and mockery is encouraged. Given that this is babby's first LP I'm more than open to suggestions on how to improve the presentation as well. Music quote:This is what we're looking at for most of the game. Button labels are self-explanatory; rewind and fast-forward are particularly useful for backtracking and re-running sequences. Tapping the screen makes more blocks of text appear, advancing the narrative. quote:Like so. When transcribing these text blocks I'm merging most of them, and giving my best guess about when to start new lines or paragraphs. A lot of blocks of texts are chunks of long sentences broken up with ellipsis; I usually cut out the ellipsis or replace them with commas. quote:To Be or Not To Be is both the earliest recorded example of the "books as game" genre as well as the first instance ever in the then-newish English language that was kicking around of an adventure being chosen by YOU, the reader. Both the other two are gimmick answers and will be looked into as intermission segments. We can see the first occurrence of one of the aforementioned Yorick skulls here, and we're going to go with that. quote:
Put your votes in bold. Hamlet's age as described here is accurate to the play, interestingly enough. Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 03:53
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 00:33 |
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I have this game on my Steam wishlist so it's time to see if it's any good. Let's start of with Hamlet for now.
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Mar 24, 2015 04:12
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I'm pretty sure someone here has Ophelia as their avatar.
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Mar 24, 2015 04:34
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Hamlet Sr. The man, the myth the legend.
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Mar 24, 2015 04:34
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Rock out with my Sr. out.
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Mar 24, 2015 05:36
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I want to see how this goes off the rails. Hamlet Sr. Also, this is like .94 cents on Steam right now.
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Mar 24, 2015 06:09
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I pick Hamlet Sr. after rolling a d6.
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Mar 24, 2015 06:35
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I was gonna make a joke about Hamlet Sr. being the "Mac-daddy" but then I remembered this is not Macbeth but my vote's for him anyway.
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Mar 24, 2015 07:05
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Dadlet.
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Mar 24, 2015 07:40
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nine-gear crow posted:Dadlet. Hamdad
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Mar 24, 2015 09:15
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Hamlet Sr. It's sort of hard to go wrong with an unstoppable machine of death assuming we keep our ears covered.
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Mar 24, 2015 09:16
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Night10194 posted:It's sort of hard to go wrong with an unstoppable machine of death assuming we keep our ears covered. King Hamlet's To-Do List:
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Mar 24, 2015 10:04
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haha this guy called dinosaur comics poo poo
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Mar 24, 2015 11:09
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Overnight the voting has turned almost unanimously in the favor of Hamlet Dad so we're going to go with that. Let's go and see where choosing his story starts us.quote:
Except that we're already dead. Big illustrations like this appear at various points, usually when you die and/or the game ends somehow. The unlock screen also appears, complete with falling confetti, whether or not you've already seen that artwork. This is the last time I'll show it. Newly-viewed artwork is added to the game's gallery, with an infocard about the artist; I'm setting each image to have a hyperlink to the respective infocard.  We also get our first achievement, reminding us that choosing to play as Hamlet's dad got us killed immediately. However... quote:It takes more than death to knock Hamlet Dad out of the story. Put your votes in bold. No Yorick skull this time to guide us. Turns out some of the audio in this game is harder to find than expected, even if it's all pretty dull. Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Also, this is like .94 cents on Steam right now. Not seeing it at that price. You have a link? Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 13:55
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This looks pretty neat, but your OP looks like a savage bout of tryhard-coolguy gripped you in the process of writing it.
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Mar 24, 2015 14:49
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Do not become a ghost. Ghosts are known jerkwads and nerds. We don't want to be either of those, do we?
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Mar 24, 2015 15:13
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Just came in, saw this. If we become a ghost, then the Ghostbusters will come and we'll have to fight a gorilla. No gorillas in ancient Denmark, I'm afraid. Do not become a ghost.
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Mar 24, 2015 15:34
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Small Frozen Thing posted:This looks pretty neat, but your OP looks like a savage bout of tryhard-coolguy gripped you in the process of writing it. You're right; it needs a rewrite. Will get it softened up this evening when I'm not at work. My expectations for this game are fairly low but I was leaning way too hard on the "THIS GAME AND EVERYBODY ASSOCIATED WITH IT IS ABSOLUTE poo poo" angle.
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Mar 24, 2015 16:00
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Man, gently caress ghosts, let's not join the legion of the dead.
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Mar 24, 2015 16:27
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Be the ghost dad.
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Mar 24, 2015 17:54
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Ghooost dad 
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Mar 24, 2015 19:28
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Pittsburgh Lambic posted:Not seeing it at that price. You have a link? Ha ha ha holy poo poo they dropped the sale. gently caress Ryan North. I was going to buy it and saw your LP so thanks for saving me .94 cents. Now $11.99
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Mar 24, 2015 19:30
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Ghosts are so done. Everybody is on Frankenwolves now. Do not become a ghost.
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Mar 24, 2015 19:36
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Become a ghost and don't remove the link to loss.jpg in the OP
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Mar 24, 2015 20:36
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Ghost Dad Get revenge from beyond the grave!
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Mar 24, 2015 23:16
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No ghost.
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Mar 25, 2015 00:40
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No glorifying Cosby, we will not be ghost dad.
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Mar 25, 2015 01:17
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Cleaned up the OP a bit. Voting closes at 10 PM CST.
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Mar 25, 2015 02:35
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Be ghost dad.
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Mar 25, 2015 02:50
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Mar 25, 2015 03:45
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Looks like we're in need of a tiebreaker vote. Next vote decides our path.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:03
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No ghost. I figure this is good for a second game-over already.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:08
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Seyser Koze posted:No ghost. You figure correctly! quote:Something about that style of art, construction of panels, and voluminousness of text seems very familiar.  And yes, this really is a game over this time, so we get taken right to the HAML-O-METER to see how we did. quote:It's got spotlights knocking around the scene and lights that flick up and down the meter for a bit before settling at the very bottom. It's hard to catch the meter lights in a screenshot, since they blink constantly, but we got the worst rank. To elaborate on that: quote:We literally died in one decision and ceased to exist forever in the next decision. quote:We have checkpoints at the character select and at Dead Hamlet Dad's first decision. This gives us three options to choose from for our next playthrough.
Votes go in bold. Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 04:27
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Yes ghost.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:31
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Re-Ghost Dad.
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Mar 25, 2015 04:32
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Back to the Ghost Mines
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Mar 25, 2015 04:37
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Time is like a river. A river made of Ghost Dads
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Mar 25, 2015 04:40
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Let us be spooky dad.
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Mar 25, 2015 05:00
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Sweet spectrality.
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Mar 25, 2015 05:36
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 00:33 |
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Become Bruce Willis
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Mar 25, 2015 06:01
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