Sam and Max Episode 2 suggestion from a QA guy, and a couple of bugs

[Sega]

POSSIBLE SPOILERS. DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU'VE BEATEN SAM AND MAX EPISODES 1 AND 2





I just beat Episode 2 of Sam and Max. It probably doesn't mean anything to you, but I'm a videogame QA Lead. I think there's a problem with your visual design. A major puzzle in the game has you try to get a tomato product. One thing that was pretty frustrating for me, is that when I thought it had to be an ingredient to be baked inside, I went to Bosco's to pick it up. He has shelves stocked full of cans of Tomato paste/soup! It's got a big tomato on the cover, and it's in two locations in his store. Why would you put this in the background, when a major puzzle piece is a tomato ingredient? It was pretty frustrating that I couldn't click on those things, nor talk to Bosco about it. It may not be as big as these crashes people are getting, but it's a very easy fix. It always drove me nuts in old adventure games when I saw something that would solve my puzzle in the background, but the game wouldn't let me click on it. It's stuff like that that could help turn people off of adventure games again (along with arbitrary puzzle designs). It's annoying.

There's also a problem at the very last scene of Episode 1. When you talk to Max, he jumps into his normal standing animations, despite the fact that he shouldn't be able to move like that. Also, Brady, when being worshiped, will jump into different standing animations when you talk to Max.

[Emily]

A major puzzle in the game has you try to get a tomato product. One thing that was pretty frustrating for me, is that when I thought it had to be an ingredient to be baked inside, I went to Bosco's to pick it up. He has shelves stocked full of cans of Tomato paste/soup! It's got a big tomato on the cover, and it's in two locations in his store. Why would you put this in the background, when a major puzzle piece is a tomato ingredient?

Heh, good catch. I'm usually all over inconsistencies like that, but I didn't notice it.

Sometimes you just can't account for every possibility, even when you want to (especially on an episodic schedule). It's tough because a lot of us are perfectionists, but we do our best to minimize this sort of thing.

[Sega]

Well, you guys did a great job clearing out inconsistencies and designing logical puzzles, because those are two successes I noticed in particular. I wouldn't have even brought this kind of problem up to another company for another game. I just love adventure games, and for the first time, I feel there's a game out there that can turn new people on to them. This new Sam and Max series is exceptionally solid. The love put into this game is obvious.

So yeah, sorry if it sounded like I was being nitpicky. It's just that when playing Sam and Max, knowing that new gamers could build a love for adventure games through this, the old adventure game problems become a bigger issue to me. I feel that the future of this genre rests on your shoulders. Keep up the good work. Can't wait for Episode 3's release today :).

[Emily]

Part of why this happened is that we have several different textures for the stuff in Bosco's store, that the artists are trying to swap out to make the store look a little different each time. When doing it for ep2, they probably weren't aware of the tomato puzzle, and because these changes often happen near the end of production, people playing the game didn't catch it.

We did think it might be funny to make the tomato cans into a hotspot for another episode, and have Sam say "100% tomato-free tomato soup", or something ilke that. :D