Grim Fandango
Encyclopedia
Grim Fandango is a personal computer game
in the graphic adventure genre released by LucasArts
in 1998 and primarily written by Tim Schafer
. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics
overlaid on pre-rendered
, static backgrounds. As with other LucasArts adventure games
, the player must converse with other characters and examine, collect, and use objects correctly to solve puzzles in order to progress.
Grim Fandangos world combines elements of the Aztec belief of afterlife with style aspects of film noir
, including The Maltese Falcon
, On the Waterfront
and Casablanca
, to create the Land of the Dead, through which recently departed souls, represented in the game as calaca
-like figures, must travel before they reach their final destination, the Ninth Underworld. The story follows travel agent Manuel "Manny" Calavera as he attempts to save Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, a newly arrived but virtuous soul, during her long journey.
The game received positive reviews, praising its artistic design and overall game direction in particular. Grim Fandango was selected for several gaming awards at the time of release, and is often listed in publishers' lists of top games of all time. However, the game was considered a commercial failure and factored into LucasArts' termination of their adventure game development, contributing to the decline of the adventure game genre.
, in which the player controls Manuel "Manny" Calavera ('calavera
' being Spanish
for 'skull') as he follows Mercedes "Meche" Colomar in the Underworld. The game uses the GrimE
engine, pre-rendering static backgrounds from 3D models, while the main objects and characters are animated in 3D
. The player controls Manny's movements and actions with a keyboard
, a joystick
, or a gamepad
. Manny must collect objects that can be used with either other collectible objects, parts of the scenery, or with other people in the Land of the Dead in order to solve puzzle
s and progress in the game. Unlike the earlier 2D LucasArts games, the player is informed of objects or persons of interest not by text floating on the screen when the player passes a cursor over them, but instead by the fact that Manny will turn his head towards that object or person as he walks by. Manny can engage in dialogue with other characters through conversation tree
s to gain hints of what needs to be done to solve the puzzles or to progress the plot. As in most LucasArts adventure games, the player can never die
or otherwise get into a no-win situation (that prevents completion of the game).
.
The souls in the Land of the Dead appear as skeletal calaca figures. Alongside them are demons that have been summoned to help with the more mundane tasks of day-to-day life, such as vehicle maintenance. The souls themselves can suffer death-within-death by being "sprouted," the result of being shot with "sproutella"-filled darts that cause flowers to grow out through the bones. Many of the characters are Mexican
and occasional Spanish
words are interspersed into the English
dialog, resulting in Spanglish
. Many of the characters smoke, following a film noir tradition; the manual asks players to consider that every smoker in the game is dead.
The game is divided into four acts, each taking place on November 2 on four consecutive years. Manuel "Manny" Calavera is a travel agent at the Department of Death in the city of El Marrow, forced into his job to work off a debt "to the powers that be". Manny is frustrated with being assigned clients that must take the four-year journey and is threatened to be fired by his boss, Don Copal, if he doesn't come up with better clients. Manny steals a client, Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, from his co-worker Domino Hurley. The Department computers assign Meche to the four-year journey even though Manny believes she should have a guaranteed spot on the "Number Nine" luxury express train due to her pureness of heart in her life. After setting Meche on her way, Manny investigates further and finds that Domino and Don have been rigging the system to deny many clients Double N tickets, hoarding them for the boss of the criminal underworld, Hector LeMans. LeMans then sells the tickets at an exorbitant price to those that can afford it. Manny recognizes that he cannot stop Hector at present and instead, with the help of his driver and speed demon Glottis, he tries to find Meche on her journey in the nearby Petrified Forest. During the trip Manny encounters Salvador "Sal" Limones, the leader of the small underground organization Lost Souls Alliance (LSA), who is aware of Hector's plans and recruits Manny to help. Manny arrives at the small port city of Rubacava and finds that he has beaten Meche there, and waits for her to show up.
A year passes, and the city of Rubacava has grown, Manny now running his own nightclub near the edge of the Forest. Manny learns from Olivia Ofrenda that Don has been "sprouted" for letting the scandal be known and that Meche was recently seen with Domino leaving the port. Manny gives chase and a year later tracks them to a coral mining plant on the Edge of the World. Domino has been holding Meche there as a trap to lure Manny. All of Domino's clients who had their tickets stolen are also being held there and used as slave labor, both to make a profit with the coral mining and as a way to keep Hector's scandal quiet. Domino tries to convince Manny to take over his position in the plant seeing as he has no alternative and can spend the rest of eternity with Meche but he refuses. After rescuing Meche, Manny defeats Domino by causing him to fall into a rock crusher. Manny, along with Meche, Glottis and all the souls being held at the plant then escape from the Edge of the World.
The three travel for another year until they reach the terminus for the Number Nine train before the Ninth Underworld. Unfortunately, the Gate Keeper to the Ninth Underworld won't let the souls progress without their tickets, mistakenly believing they have sold them. Meanwhile, Glottis has fallen deathly ill. Manny learns from demons stationed at the terminus that the only way to revive Glottis is to travel at high speeds to restore Glottis' purpose for being summoned. Manny and the others devise a makeshift fuel source to create a "rocket" train cart, quickly taking Manny and Meche back to Rubacava and saving Glottis' life. The three return to El Marrow, now found to be fully in Hector's control and renamed as Nuevo Marrow. Manny regroups with Sal and his expanded LSA and with the help of Olivia, who volunteered to join the gang earlier in Rubacava, he is able to learn about Hector's current activities. Further investigation reveals that Hector not only has been hoarding the Number Nine tickets, but has created counterfeit versions that he has sold to others. Manny tries to confront Hector but is lured into another trap by Olivia, who has also captured Sal, and is taken to Hector's greenhouse to be sprouted. Manny is able to defeat Hector after Sal sacrifices himself to prevent Olivia from interfering. Manny and Meche are able to find the real Double N tickets, including the one that Meche should have received. Manny makes sure the rest of the tickets are given to their rightful owners; in turn, he is granted his own for his good deeds. Together, Manny and Meche board the Number Nine for their happy journey to the Ninth Underworld.
, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle
and creator of Full Throttle and the more recent Psychonauts
and Brütal Legend
. Schafer had begun work on the game soon after completing Full Throttle in mid-. Grim Fandango was an attempt by LucasArts to rejuvenate the graphic adventure genre, in decline by 1998. It was the first LucasArts adventure since Labyrinth not to use the SCUMM
engine, instead using the Sith
engine, pioneered by Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, as the basis of the new GrimE
engine. The GrimE engine was built using the scripting language Lua. This design decision was due to LucasArts programmer Bret Mogilefsky's interest in the language, and is considered one of the first uses of Lua in gaming applications. The game's success led to the language's use in many other games and applications, including Escape from Monkey Island
and Baldur's Gate
.
Grim Fandango mixed static pre-rendered
background images with 3D characters and objects. Part of this decision was based on how the calaca
figures would appear in three dimensions. There were more than 90 sets and 50 characters in the game to be created and rendered; Manny's character alone comprised 250 polygon
s. The development team found that by utilizing three-dimensional models to pre-render the backgrounds, they could alter the camera shot to achieve more effective or dramatic angles for certain scenes simply by re-rendering the background, instead of having to have an artist redraw the background for a traditional 2D adventure game. The team adapted the engine to allow Manny's head to move separately from his body to make the player aware of important objects nearby. The 3D engine also aided in the choreography between the spoken dialog and body and arm movements of the characters. Additionally, full-motion video cutscene
s were incorporated to advance the plot, using the same in-game style for the characters and backgrounds to make them nearly indistinguishable from the actual game.
The game combines several Aztec
beliefs of the afterlife and underworld with 1930s Art Deco
design motifs and a dark plot reminiscent of the film noir
genre. The Aztec motifs of the game were influenced by Schafer's decade-long fascination with folklore
and talks with forklorist Alan Dundes
, with Schafer recognizing that the four-year journey of the soul in the afterlife would set the stage for an adventure game. Schafer stated that once he had set on the Afterlife setting: "Then I thought, what role would a person want to play in a Day of the Dead scenario? You'd want to be the grim reaper himself. That's how Manny got his job. Then I imagined him picking up people in the land of the living and bringing them to the land of the dead, like he's really just a glorified limo or taxi driver. So the idea came of Manny having this really mundane job that looks glamorous because he has the robe and the scythe, but really, he's just punching the clock." The division of the game into four years was a way of breaking the game's overall puzzle into four discrete sections. Each year was divided into several non-linear branches of puzzles that all had to be solved before the player could progress to the next year.
Several film noir movies were inspiration for much of the game's plot and characters. Tim Schafer stated that the true inspiration was drawn from films like Double Indemnity, in which a weak and undistinguished insurance salesman finds himself entangled in a murder plot. The design and early plot are fashioned after films such as Chinatown and Glengarry Glen Ross
. Several scenes in Grim Fandango are directly inspired by the genre's films such as The Maltese Falcon
, The Third Man
, Key Largo
, and most notably Casablanca: two characters in the game's second act are directly modeled after the roles played by Peter Lorre
and Claude Rains
in the film. The main villain, Hector LeMans, was designed to resemble Sydney Greenstreet
's character of Signor Ferrari from Casablanca. His voice was also modeled after Greenstreet, complete with his trademark chuckle.
Visually, the game drew inspiration from various sources: the skeletal character designs were based largely on the calaca figures used in Mexican Day of the Dead festivities, while the architecture ranged from Art Deco skyscrapers to an Aztec temple. The team turned to LucasArts artist Peter Chan to create the calaca figures. The art of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
was used as inspiration for the designs of the hot rod
s and the demon characters like Glottis.
The game featured a large cast for voice acting in the game's dialog and cutscenes, employing many Latino
actors to help with the Spanish slang. Voice actors included Tony Plana
as Manny, Maria Canals as Meche, Alan Blumenfeld
as Glottis, and Jim Ward
as Hector. The game's music, a mix of an orchestral score, South American folk music, jazz, swing and big band sounds, was composed at LucasArts by Peter McConnell
and inspired by the likes of Duke Ellington
and Benny Goodman
as well as film composers Max Steiner
and Adolph Deutsch
. The score featured live musicians that McConnell knew or made contact with in San Francisco
's Mission District, including a mariachi
band. The soundtrack was released as a CD
in 1998.
Originally, the game was to be shipped in the first half of but was delayed; as a result, the game was released on October 30, 1998, the Friday before November 2, the actual date of the Day of the Dead celebration. Even with the delay, the team had to drop several of the puzzles and characters from the game, including a climactic five-step puzzle against Hector LeMans at the conclusion of the game; Schafer later noted that they would have needed one to two more years to implement their original designs. Tim Schafer left LucasArts shortly after Grim Fandangos release, and created his own company, Double Fine Productions
, in along with many of those involved in the development of Grim Fandango. The company has found similar critical success with their first title, Psychonauts. Schafer has stated that while there is strong interest from fans and that he "would love to go back and spend time with the characters from any game[ hes] worked on", a sequel to Grim Fandango or his other previous games is unlikely as "I always want to make something new."
rating the visual design as "consistently great". PC Zone
emphasized the production as a whole calling the direction, costumes, characters, music, and atmosphere expertly done. They also commented the game would make a "superb film". The San Francisco Chronicle
stated "Grim Fandango feels like a wild dance through a cartoonish film-noir adventure. Its wacky characters, seductive puzzle-filled plot and a nearly invisible interface allow players to lose themselves in the game just as cinemagoers might get lost in a movie." The Houston Chronicle
, in naming Grim Fandango the best game of along with Half-Life, complimented the graphics calling them "jaw-dropping" and commented that the game "is full of both dark and light humor." IGN
summed its review up by saying the game was the "best adventure game" it had ever seen.
The game also received criticisms from the media. Several reviewers noted that there were difficulties experienced with the interface, requiring a certain learning curve
to get used to, and selected camera angles for some puzzles were poorly chosen. The use of elevators in the game was particularly noted as troublesome. The review from Adventure Gamers expressed dislike of the soundtrack, and, at times, "found it too heavy and not well suited to the game's theme". A Computer and Video Games
review also noted that the game had continuous and long data loading from the CD-ROM
that interrupted the game and "spoils the fluidity of some sequences and causes niggling delays".
selected the game as the 1998 "Adventure Game of the Year". The game won IGN
's "Best Adventure Game of the Year" in 1998, while GameSpot awarded it their "Best of E3 1998", "PC Adventure Game of the Year", "PC Game of the Year", "Best PC Graphics for Artistic Design", and "Best PC Music awards". GameSpot named Grim Fandango its Game of the Year for 1998, and in the following year included the game in their "Ten Best PC Game Soundtracks" and was selected as the 10th "Best PC Ending" by their readership. In 1999, Grim Fandango won "Computer Adventure Game of the Year" for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It was also nominated for "Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics", "Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development" and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound and Music" that same year.
Grim Fandango has been included in several publishers' "Top Games" lists well after its release. GameSpot inducted the game into their "Greatest Games of All Time" in citing, "Ask just about anyone who has played Grim Fandango, and he or she will agree that it's one of the greatest games of all time." GameSpy
also added the game to their Hall of Fame in , further describing it as the seventh "Most Underrated Game of All Time" as of 2003. AdventureGamers listed Grim Fandango as the seventh "Top Adventure Game of All Time" in 2004. In , IGN
included the game in the "Top 25 PC Games" (as 15th) and "Top 100 Games of All Time" (at 36th), citing that "LucasArts' second-to-last stab at the classic adventure genre may very well be the most original and brilliant one ever made." Grim Fandango remained as the 20th in the Top 25 PC Games in IGN's 2009 list.
). Total cumulative worldwide sales are estimated between 100,000 and 500,000 units. The game is commonly considered a commercial failure, even though LucasArts has stated that "Grim Fandango met domestic expectations and exceeded them worldwide". While LucasArts proceeded to produce Escape from Monkey Island
in , they canceled development of sequels to Sam & Max Hit the Road
and Full Throttle stating that "After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC." Subsequently, the studio dismissed many of the people involved with their adventure games, some of whom went on to set up Telltale Games
, creating an episodic
series of Sam & Max games
. In , LucasArts stated they do not plan on returning to adventure games until the "next decade".
These events, along with other changes in the video game market towards action-based games, are seen as primary causes in the decline of the adventure game genre. Grim Fandangos underperformance was seen as a sign that the genre was commercially "dead" to rival Sierra
, as well. Despite this, Grim Fandango has been the centerpiece of a large fan community for the game that has continued to be active more than 10 years after the game's release. Such fan communities include the Grim Fandango Network and the Department of Death, both of which include fan art and fiction in addition to other original content.
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
in the graphic adventure genre released by LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
in 1998 and primarily written by Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...
. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
overlaid on pre-rendered
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...
, static backgrounds. As with other LucasArts adventure games
LucasArts adventure games
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humour, with a few exceptions...
, the player must converse with other characters and examine, collect, and use objects correctly to solve puzzles in order to progress.
Grim Fandangos world combines elements of the Aztec belief of afterlife with style aspects of film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
, including The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...
, On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront is a 1954 American drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard...
and Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
, to create the Land of the Dead, through which recently departed souls, represented in the game as calaca
Calaca
A calaca is a figure of a skull or skeleton commonly used for decoration during the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, although they are made all year round. Tracing their origins from Aztec imagery, calacas are frequently shown with marigold flowers and foliage...
-like figures, must travel before they reach their final destination, the Ninth Underworld. The story follows travel agent Manuel "Manny" Calavera as he attempts to save Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, a newly arrived but virtuous soul, during her long journey.
The game received positive reviews, praising its artistic design and overall game direction in particular. Grim Fandango was selected for several gaming awards at the time of release, and is often listed in publishers' lists of top games of all time. However, the game was considered a commercial failure and factored into LucasArts' termination of their adventure game development, contributing to the decline of the adventure game genre.
Gameplay
Grim Fandango is an adventure gameAdventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
, in which the player controls Manuel "Manny" Calavera ('calavera
Calavera
The word calavera, Spanish for "skull", can refer to a number of cultural phenomena associated with the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead and the Roman Catholic holiday All Souls Day....
' being Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
for 'skull') as he follows Mercedes "Meche" Colomar in the Underworld. The game uses the GrimE
GrimE
GrimE is an adventure game engine, created by Bret Mogilefsky at LucasArts using the free software scripting language Lua. It was first used for Grim Fandango. Partly based on the Sith engine, GrimE was the successor to SCUMM, preserving some of that engine's features...
engine, pre-rendering static backgrounds from 3D models, while the main objects and characters are animated in 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
. The player controls Manny's movements and actions with a keyboard
Keyboard (computing)
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
, a joystick
Joystick
A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or...
, or a gamepad
Gamepad
A gamepad , is a type of game controller held in two hands, where the digits are used to provide input. Gamepads generally feature a set of action buttons handled with the right thumb and a direction controller handled with the left...
. Manny must collect objects that can be used with either other collectible objects, parts of the scenery, or with other people in the Land of the Dead in order to solve puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
s and progress in the game. Unlike the earlier 2D LucasArts games, the player is informed of objects or persons of interest not by text floating on the screen when the player passes a cursor over them, but instead by the fact that Manny will turn his head towards that object or person as he walks by. Manny can engage in dialogue with other characters through conversation tree
Conversation tree
A dialog tree or conversation tree is a gameplay mechanic that is used throughout many adventure games and role-playing video games. When interacting with a non-player character, the player is given a choice of what to say and makes subsequent choices until the conversation ends...
s to gain hints of what needs to be done to solve the puzzles or to progress the plot. As in most LucasArts adventure games, the player can never die
Game over
Game Over is a message in video games which signals that the game has ended, often due to a negative outcome - although the phrase sometimes follows the end credits after successful completion of a game...
or otherwise get into a no-win situation (that prevents completion of the game).
Setting
Grim Fandango takes place in the Land of the Dead, where recently departed souls make their way to the Ninth Underworld. For sinners, this is a four-year journey made on foot, and many do not complete it, being eaten, "sprouted," or ending up taking jobs at way-points along the route. However, more virtuous souls receive assistance, the most virtuous getting passage on the "Number Nine" train ("Double N") that cuts the journey down to four minutes. The travel agents of the Department of Death act as the Grim Reaper to escort the souls from the mortal world to the Land of the Dead, and then determine which mode of transport the soul has merited. Each year, on November 2, there is a large festival celebration of the Day of the DeadDay of the Dead
Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in many cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it attains the quality...
.
The souls in the Land of the Dead appear as skeletal calaca figures. Alongside them are demons that have been summoned to help with the more mundane tasks of day-to-day life, such as vehicle maintenance. The souls themselves can suffer death-within-death by being "sprouted," the result of being shot with "sproutella"-filled darts that cause flowers to grow out through the bones. Many of the characters are Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
and occasional Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
words are interspersed into the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
dialog, resulting in Spanglish
Spanglish
.Spanglish refers to the blend of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. The Hispanic population of the United States and the British population in Argentina use varieties of...
. Many of the characters smoke, following a film noir tradition; the manual asks players to consider that every smoker in the game is dead.
Plot
The three travel for another year until they reach the terminus for the Number Nine train before the Ninth Underworld. Unfortunately, the Gate Keeper to the Ninth Underworld won't let the souls progress without their tickets, mistakenly believing they have sold them. Meanwhile, Glottis has fallen deathly ill. Manny learns from demons stationed at the terminus that the only way to revive Glottis is to travel at high speeds to restore Glottis' purpose for being summoned. Manny and the others devise a makeshift fuel source to create a "rocket" train cart, quickly taking Manny and Meche back to Rubacava and saving Glottis' life. The three return to El Marrow, now found to be fully in Hector's control and renamed as Nuevo Marrow. Manny regroups with Sal and his expanded LSA and with the help of Olivia, who volunteered to join the gang earlier in Rubacava, he is able to learn about Hector's current activities. Further investigation reveals that Hector not only has been hoarding the Number Nine tickets, but has created counterfeit versions that he has sold to others. Manny tries to confront Hector but is lured into another trap by Olivia, who has also captured Sal, and is taken to Hector's greenhouse to be sprouted. Manny is able to defeat Hector after Sal sacrifices himself to prevent Olivia from interfering. Manny and Meche are able to find the real Double N tickets, including the one that Meche should have received. Manny makes sure the rest of the tickets are given to their rightful owners; in turn, he is granted his own for his good deeds. Together, Manny and Meche board the Number Nine for their happy journey to the Ninth Underworld.
Development
Grim Fandango was designed by Tim SchaferTim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...
, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion...
and creator of Full Throttle and the more recent Psychonauts
Psychonauts
Psychonauts is a platform video game created by Tim Schafer, developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco. The game was released on April 19, 2005, for the Xbox, April 26 for Microsoft Windows and June 21 for PlayStation 2. It was released on Steam on Oct 11, 2006, as an "Xbox...
and Brütal Legend
Brütal Legend
Brütal Legend is an action-adventure/real-time strategy game created by Double Fine Productions and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was released during October 2009 in North America and Europe...
. Schafer had begun work on the game soon after completing Full Throttle in mid-. Grim Fandango was an attempt by LucasArts to rejuvenate the graphic adventure genre, in decline by 1998. It was the first LucasArts adventure since Labyrinth not to use the SCUMM
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion....
engine, instead using the Sith
Sith (engine)
The Sith engine is a game engine developed by LucasArts.The game Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is based on this engine, and its expansion, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, is based on a slightly updated version....
engine, pioneered by Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, as the basis of the new GrimE
GrimE
GrimE is an adventure game engine, created by Bret Mogilefsky at LucasArts using the free software scripting language Lua. It was first used for Grim Fandango. Partly based on the Sith engine, GrimE was the successor to SCUMM, preserving some of that engine's features...
engine. The GrimE engine was built using the scripting language Lua. This design decision was due to LucasArts programmer Bret Mogilefsky's interest in the language, and is considered one of the first uses of Lua in gaming applications. The game's success led to the language's use in many other games and applications, including Escape from Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island is a computer adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series....
and Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate is a computer role-playing game developed by BioWare and released in 1998 by Interplay Entertainment. The game takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a high fantasy campaign setting, using modified Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition rules...
.
Grim Fandango mixed static pre-rendered
Pre-rendered
Pre-rendering is the process in which video footage is not rendered in real-time by the hardware that is outputing or playing back the video. Instead, the video is a recording of a footage that was previously rendered on a different equipment...
background images with 3D characters and objects. Part of this decision was based on how the calaca
Calaca
A calaca is a figure of a skull or skeleton commonly used for decoration during the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, although they are made all year round. Tracing their origins from Aztec imagery, calacas are frequently shown with marigold flowers and foliage...
figures would appear in three dimensions. There were more than 90 sets and 50 characters in the game to be created and rendered; Manny's character alone comprised 250 polygon
Polygon (computer graphics)
Polygons are used in computer graphics to compose images that are three-dimensional in appearance. Usually triangular, polygons arise when an object's surface is modeled, vertices are selected, and the object is rendered in a wire frame model. This is quicker to display than a shaded model; thus...
s. The development team found that by utilizing three-dimensional models to pre-render the backgrounds, they could alter the camera shot to achieve more effective or dramatic angles for certain scenes simply by re-rendering the background, instead of having to have an artist redraw the background for a traditional 2D adventure game. The team adapted the engine to allow Manny's head to move separately from his body to make the player aware of important objects nearby. The 3D engine also aided in the choreography between the spoken dialog and body and arm movements of the characters. Additionally, full-motion video cutscene
Cutscene
A cutscene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no or only limited control, breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, strengthen the main character's development, introduces enemy characters, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue, and clues...
s were incorporated to advance the plot, using the same in-game style for the characters and backgrounds to make them nearly indistinguishable from the actual game.
The game combines several Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
beliefs of the afterlife and underworld with 1930s Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
design motifs and a dark plot reminiscent of the film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
genre. The Aztec motifs of the game were influenced by Schafer's decade-long fascination with folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and talks with forklorist Alan Dundes
Alan Dundes
Alan Dundes, was a folklorist at the University of California, Berkeley. His work was said to have been central to establishing the study of folklore as an academic discipline. He wrote 12 books, both academic and popular, and edited or co-wrote two dozen more...
, with Schafer recognizing that the four-year journey of the soul in the afterlife would set the stage for an adventure game. Schafer stated that once he had set on the Afterlife setting: "Then I thought, what role would a person want to play in a Day of the Dead scenario? You'd want to be the grim reaper himself. That's how Manny got his job. Then I imagined him picking up people in the land of the living and bringing them to the land of the dead, like he's really just a glorified limo or taxi driver. So the idea came of Manny having this really mundane job that looks glamorous because he has the robe and the scythe, but really, he's just punching the clock." The division of the game into four years was a way of breaking the game's overall puzzle into four discrete sections. Each year was divided into several non-linear branches of puzzles that all had to be solved before the player could progress to the next year.
Glengarry Glen Ross (film)
Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 American drama film, adapted by David Mamet from his acclaimed 1984 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play of the same name...
. Several scenes in Grim Fandango are directly inspired by the genre's films such as The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask. The story has been adapted several times for the cinema...
, The Third Man
The Third Man
The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir, directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Many critics rank it as a masterpiece, particularly remembered for its atmospheric cinematography, performances, and unique musical score...
, Key Largo
Key Largo (film)
Key Largo is a 1948 film noir directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor...
, and most notably Casablanca: two characters in the game's second act are directly modeled after the roles played by Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
and Claude Rains
Claude Rains
Claude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
in the film. The main villain, Hector LeMans, was designed to resemble Sydney Greenstreet
Sydney Greenstreet
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor. He is best known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca .-Biography:...
's character of Signor Ferrari from Casablanca. His voice was also modeled after Greenstreet, complete with his trademark chuckle.
Visually, the game drew inspiration from various sources: the skeletal character designs were based largely on the calaca figures used in Mexican Day of the Dead festivities, while the architecture ranged from Art Deco skyscrapers to an Aztec temple. The team turned to LucasArts artist Peter Chan to create the calaca figures. The art of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
Ed Roth
"Big Daddy" Ed Roth was an artist, cartoonist, custom car painter, and pinstriper who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other extreme characters. As a custom car builder, Roth was a key figure in Southern California's Kustom Kulture and hot-rod movement of the late 50's and 1960's...
was used as inspiration for the designs of the hot rod
Hot rod
Hot rods are typically American cars with large engines modified for linear speed. The origin of the term "hot rod" is unclear. One explanation is that the term is a contraction of "hot roadster," meaning a roadster that was modified for speed. Another possible origin includes modifications to or...
s and the demon characters like Glottis.
The game featured a large cast for voice acting in the game's dialog and cutscenes, employing many Latino
Latino
The demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American descent."* "A Latin American."* "A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often one living in the United States."...
actors to help with the Spanish slang. Voice actors included Tony Plana
Tony Plana
Tony Plana is a Cuban-American actor and director. He is well known for playing Betty Suarez's father, Ignacio Suarez, on the ABC show Ugly Betty.-Personal life:...
as Manny, Maria Canals as Meche, Alan Blumenfeld
Alan Blumenfeld
Alan Blumenfeld is a veteran American character actor best known for his role in NBC's TV series Heroes as Maury Parkman, the telepath father of Matt Parkman played by Greg Grunberg...
as Glottis, and Jim Ward
Jim Ward (voice actor)
James Kevin "Jim" Ward is a voice actor who has contributed to a large number of video games and movies. He co-hosts The Stephanie Miller Show, a nationally-syndicated liberal radio talk show which features a number of his impersonations of political figures and other celebrities and newsmakers...
as Hector. The game's music, a mix of an orchestral score, South American folk music, jazz, swing and big band sounds, was composed at LucasArts by Peter McConnell
Peter McConnell
Peter N. McConnell , also known as Peter Mc, is an American video game music composer who worked for LucasArts for nearly ten years. He studied music as an undergraduate at Harvard University in 80s under Timothy Vincent Clarke, Curt Cacioppo and Ivan Tcherepnin...
and inspired by the likes of Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
and Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
as well as film composers Max Steiner
Max Steiner
Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
and Adolph Deutsch
Adolph Deutsch
Adolph Deutsch was a composer, conductor and arranger. He won Oscars for his background music for Oklahoma! , and for conducting the music for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Annie Get Your Gun...
. The score featured live musicians that McConnell knew or made contact with in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
's Mission District, including a mariachi
Mariachi
Mariachi is a genre of music that originated in the State of Jalisco, in Mexico. It is an integration of stringed instruments highly influenced by the cultural impacts of the historical development of Western Mexico. Throughout the history of mariachi, musicians have experimented with brass, wind,...
band. The soundtrack was released as a CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
in 1998.
Originally, the game was to be shipped in the first half of but was delayed; as a result, the game was released on October 30, 1998, the Friday before November 2, the actual date of the Day of the Dead celebration. Even with the delay, the team had to drop several of the puzzles and characters from the game, including a climactic five-step puzzle against Hector LeMans at the conclusion of the game; Schafer later noted that they would have needed one to two more years to implement their original designs. Tim Schafer left LucasArts shortly after Grim Fandangos release, and created his own company, Double Fine Productions
Double Fine Productions
Double Fine Productions is an American video game developer founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer after his departure from LucasArts. He started Double Fine with Programmers David Dixon and Jonathan Menzies in what was once a clog shop in San Francisco...
, in along with many of those involved in the development of Grim Fandango. The company has found similar critical success with their first title, Psychonauts. Schafer has stated that while there is strong interest from fans and that he "would love to go back and spend time with the characters from any game
Reception
Grim Fandango received almost uniformly positive reviews. Critics lauded the art direction in particular, with GameSpotGameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
rating the visual design as "consistently great". PC Zone
PC Zone
PC Zone was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom. Earlier PC magazines such as PC Leisure, PC Format and PC Plus had covered games but only as part of a wider remit. PC Zone was founded in 1993.The magazine was published...
emphasized the production as a whole calling the direction, costumes, characters, music, and atmosphere expertly done. They also commented the game would make a "superb film". The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
stated "Grim Fandango feels like a wild dance through a cartoonish film-noir adventure. Its wacky characters, seductive puzzle-filled plot and a nearly invisible interface allow players to lose themselves in the game just as cinemagoers might get lost in a movie." The Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
, in naming Grim Fandango the best game of along with Half-Life, complimented the graphics calling them "jaw-dropping" and commented that the game "is full of both dark and light humor." IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
summed its review up by saying the game was the "best adventure game" it had ever seen.
The game also received criticisms from the media. Several reviewers noted that there were difficulties experienced with the interface, requiring a certain learning curve
Learning curve
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the changing rate of learning for a given activity or tool. Typically, the increase in retention of information is sharpest after the initial attempts, and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each...
to get used to, and selected camera angles for some puzzles were poorly chosen. The use of elevators in the game was particularly noted as troublesome. The review from Adventure Gamers expressed dislike of the soundtrack, and, at times, "found it too heavy and not well suited to the game's theme". A Computer and Video Games
Computer and video games
A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but following popularization of the term "video game", it now implies any type of...
review also noted that the game had continuous and long data loading from the CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
that interrupted the game and "spoils the fluidity of some sequences and causes niggling delays".
Awards
Grim Fandango won several awards after its release in 1998. PC GamerPC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
selected the game as the 1998 "Adventure Game of the Year". The game won IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
's "Best Adventure Game of the Year" in 1998, while GameSpot awarded it their "Best of E3 1998", "PC Adventure Game of the Year", "PC Game of the Year", "Best PC Graphics for Artistic Design", and "Best PC Music awards". GameSpot named Grim Fandango its Game of the Year for 1998, and in the following year included the game in their "Ten Best PC Game Soundtracks" and was selected as the 10th "Best PC Ending" by their readership. In 1999, Grim Fandango won "Computer Adventure Game of the Year" for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences , founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes computer and video game entertainment with the annual D.I.C.E. Summit event, where its Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony has been held annually since 1998...
Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It was also nominated for "Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics", "Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development" and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound and Music" that same year.
Grim Fandango has been included in several publishers' "Top Games" lists well after its release. GameSpot inducted the game into their "Greatest Games of All Time" in citing, "Ask just about anyone who has played Grim Fandango, and he or she will agree that it's one of the greatest games of all time." GameSpy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
also added the game to their Hall of Fame in , further describing it as the seventh "Most Underrated Game of All Time" as of 2003. AdventureGamers listed Grim Fandango as the seventh "Top Adventure Game of All Time" in 2004. In , IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
included the game in the "Top 25 PC Games" (as 15th) and "Top 100 Games of All Time" (at 36th), citing that "LucasArts' second-to-last stab at the classic adventure genre may very well be the most original and brilliant one ever made." Grim Fandango remained as the 20th in the Top 25 PC Games in IGN's 2009 list.
Sales and aftermath
Grim Fandango sales were poor despite the positive reception given to the game. Initial estimates suggested that the game sold well during the holiday season. However, the game only sold about 95,000 copies up through 2003 in North America, excluding online sales, based on data provided by PC Data (now owned by NPD GroupNPD Group
The NPD Group, Inc. is a leading North American market research company. The NPD Group consistently ranks among the top 25 market research companies in the independent Honomichl Top 50 report, which the media and the research industry acknowledge as a credible source of information on the market...
). Total cumulative worldwide sales are estimated between 100,000 and 500,000 units. The game is commonly considered a commercial failure, even though LucasArts has stated that "Grim Fandango met domestic expectations and exceeded them worldwide". While LucasArts proceeded to produce Escape from Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island is a computer adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series....
in , they canceled development of sequels to Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road is a graphic adventure computer game released by LucasArts during the company's adventure games era. The game was originally released for DOS in 1993 and for Mac OS in 1995. A 2002 re-release included compatibility with Windows and Amiga...
and Full Throttle stating that "After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC." Subsequently, the studio dismissed many of the people involved with their adventure games, some of whom went on to set up Telltale Games
Telltale Games
Telltale Games is a leading independent digital first publisher and game developer founded in June 2004 as Telltale, Incorporated. Based in San Rafael, California, the studio includes designers formerly employed by LucasArts...
, creating an episodic
Episodic games
An episodic video game is a video game of a shorter length that is commercially released as an installment to a continuous and larger series. Episodic games differ from conventional video games in that they often contain less content but are developed on a more frequent basis.Such a series may or...
series of Sam & Max games
Sam & Max Save the World
Sam & Max Save the World is a graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games. The game was originally released as Sam & Max: Season One before being renamed in early 2009. Save the World was developed in episodic fashion, comprising six episodes that were released for Microsoft Windows...
. In , LucasArts stated they do not plan on returning to adventure games until the "next decade".
These events, along with other changes in the video game market towards action-based games, are seen as primary causes in the decline of the adventure game genre. Grim Fandangos underperformance was seen as a sign that the genre was commercially "dead" to rival Sierra
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
, as well. Despite this, Grim Fandango has been the centerpiece of a large fan community for the game that has continued to be active more than 10 years after the game's release. Such fan communities include the Grim Fandango Network and the Department of Death, both of which include fan art and fiction in addition to other original content.