linehollis | Line Hollis

Game Change: Minigames and Narrative Arcs

March 13, 2013 / 2 comments

Often, experimental games differ from longer games by exploring a single idea in depth. Many well known art games, from Every Day the Same Dream to QWOP, use a limited set of verbs and give the player just enough time to feel their way around them. A subgenre of experimental games takes the opposite approach:…

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A large cartoon explosion that reads "KABOOM"

Line On Sierra: Space Quest I

March 2, 2013 / 3 comments

King’s Quest may have been the flagship franchise of the Sierra adventure games, but as a kid it wasn’t my favorite series. That honor went to Space Quest.Probably because gruesome death jokes and Star Wars references were my primary forms of communication in my pre-puberty years. And for some time after. If you’ve been following this fine…

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Graham and the woman getting married. Fanciful characters attend.

Line On Sierra: King’s Quest II

February 12, 2013 / 7 comments

Welcome back to Line On Sierra! Last time, I stumbled around King’s Quest I [part 1, part 2]. If you want to follow along, both games are available in the King’s Quest 1+2+3 pack from Good Old Games. OH HEY THERE. YEAH, I’VE BEEN WORKING OUT SINCE THE LAST GAME. I’M TRYING TO ATTRACT A…

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Line On Sierra: King’s Quest I, Part 2

January 24, 2013 / 3 comments

In Part 1 of my adventures in King’s Quest I, I dicked around, made a map, then gave up and started reading a walkthrough. In Part 2 I finished the game with liberal application of said walkthrough, and started thinking more seriously about what this game’s deal is. When I last left Daventry, I was…

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A tree with very blocky nuts in it. Text reads "HAMBURGER TREE!"

Line On Sierra: King’s Quest I, Part 1

January 19, 2013 / 2 comments

Between 1983 and 1998, Sierra On-Line released an absurd number of adventure games. Recently, GOG.com had a package deal on a major subset of them: the four classic series that shared the “Quest” brand. These games alone constitute a seriously prolific output over the course of fifteen years. Mind you, the focus of this project…

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Dear Miss Bonelihearts: Morrigan and the Scrubs

November 18, 2012 / 0 comments

Oh damn, looks like I got some more search traffic since the last time I did this! The time has come once again to answer the pressing queries of people who mash stuff into Google to get to my site. I do this for the people. what becomes of your charecter after he travels through…

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A section of the world map from The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

Travel of Various Kinds

November 16, 2012 / 0 comments

I have a thing up at Nightmare Mode! It’s called How our perception of space in games changes depending on our maps. It’s an expansion of one of the pieces of the “Steps and Leaps” series that I’d been planning before I was very flatteringly invited to join up with the NM relaunch, along with a…

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A sampling from my site stats showing a variety of Google queries about why Limbo was such a disappointment.

Dear Miss Bonelihearts

August 24, 2012 / 0 comments

People come to my site via Google for all kinds of reasons, be it wanting to see Fenris naked, intense fury at having played through Limbo, or wanting to see Isabela naked. Every once in a while, though, someone lands at my joint with a search string that suggests deeper questions in need of an answer. In…

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Your First Steps

August 17, 2012 / 1 comment

When did you take your first steps in a game? Do you remember? My first steps were in Freddy’s Rescue Roundup, a plinky little Lode Runner clone that shipped with my parents’ first home computer. It was the first videogame I remember playing. You walked to pick up little chickens, because you’re a chicken thief I guess, and…

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Morrigan stands in a castle room, fire-lit. There is a doorway behind her

Capricious Nature

August 12, 2012 / 3 comments

The Futile Rebellions of Fereldan Do you accept the role given to you, or do you try to escape it? Even when you try, can you escape the way your role shaped you? The question is salient for a videogame character stumbling into a typical save-the-world story. It’s also a question that lies at the…

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