Colonel's Bequest Development

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Game Design Document

• Colonel's Bequest Design Document   PDF File [8.83 MB]

Jacqueline Austin wrote:

A family member was beta testing games at Sierra. He put me in touch with Roberta. I send her some proposals and miraculously, she wrote back.

I wanted to explore games in which puzzles were fully integrated with characters and stories and which felt much more open. I felt games of the time were too static. Roberta and Ken said they were looking for something in the vein of Mystery House, but which would expand their narrative capability.

At the time I was watching a lot of silent movies. And I was concerned about the lack of women in gaming. We agreed on a mystery game featuring a woman protagonist, set in the silent movie era, using silent movie conventions.

Misty Acres combined several plantations we visited in New Orleans, with landscape details Roberta wished to implement.

I asked for many innovations. Rich animations. Animated puzzles. Full sound with special effects. My original design would have been about 50 disks long. It was too complex. Visually, I wanted a mood piece with full capability–a palette of creepy night colors and shadows. Technically, I wanted to animate several characters simultaneously, not just Laura Bow. I wanted things to jump out at her–a fright fest.

The ideas of time and eavesdropping came from my questions: 1) how to give the feeling of things moving all around, of continuous challenge, with very limited motion capability? 2) how to keep the story structured but have it lead to various outcomes which encouraged repeat game play?

Roberta and Ken cut the game down to size and simplified the characters, dialogue and interactions. My game was more like a novel. Today we could build a much more thorough game.

 

Jacqueline Austin wrote:

I researched in New Orleans. It was a lot of fun! The historical society, plantation tour people and local old folks were amazing and helpful, and full of good stories and suggestions for local color, some of which made it into the game.

I did design and pre pro in my office in New York. Roberta visited and we spoke a lot. Once team implementation began, I joined the team every few weeks at Sierra.

Technology was changing so fast at the time. I asked for a lot of innovations and the team delivered some real, well, game changers. Which just goes to show that sometimes knowing less–NOT knowing that something is impossible–can be awesome for creativity and progress.

 

Jacqueline Austin wrote:

It wasn’t an easy job. I traveled many times to Oakhurst, California, to help invent things such as a palette of night colors which could translate into VGA, CGA, and EGA. (I had to temporarily to switch from my beloved Macs to a Dell PC.) A design document had to be written in Sierra’s proprietary language.

Some of this process was a lot of fun… other parts of it were tedious and painful.

Game Transcript

• Colonel's Bequest Game Transcript   PDF File [389 KB]

Developer Notes

Douglas Herring wrote:

Statues and benches should not be seen flying there. I am a huge fan of DC's "Enemy Ace" and of Manfred Von Richthofen. The red Fokker DR1 was an easter egg I designed... The sound of course are twin spandau's firing...

 

Douglas Herring wrote:

Note the satyr/Pan statue there too. I am a Greek Mythology fan as well. My love of Dinosaurs shows up in the game too

Related Links

• Laura Bow Series