Ben Croshaw
Encyclopedia
Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw (born 24 May 1983, Rugby
, Warwickshire
, England
) is an English comedic writer, video game journalist and author of adventure game
s created using Adventure Game Studio
software. He writes articles for Australia's Hyper
magazine, a major games publication. He uses his website "Fully Ramblomatic" as an outlet for his own work, including weekly dark humour articles, essays, fiction, and webcomics. He is currently making a series of video-reviews named Zero Punctuation
for The Escapist
, as well as the weekly column Extra Punctuation. In the February 2008 issue of PC Gamer
(US), Croshaw took over Gary Whitta
's "Backspace" column as a contributing editor. He recently completed work on a novel entitled Mogworld, which was published in August 2010. He is also one of the four founders of The Mana Bar
; an Australian cocktail bar and video gaming lounge originally in Brisbane
, Australia
, and recently having opened a second venue in Melbourne
, Australia
, intends to continue to spread around Australia and overseas.
Croshaw became known in the Adventure Game Studio
(AGS) community for the Rob Blanc trilogy. He then created The Trials of Odysseus Kent, which was mentioned by PC Plus
magazine as "AGS Showcase" in the November 2003 issue and the Chzo Mythos
series. He also helped found the collaborative Reality-on-the-Norm series by creating the first game, Lunchtime of the Damned. The series has gone on to have over 50 episodes since. Some of his recent works have experimented with the AGS engine to produce games in other genres than the point-and-click
adventure game
s that AGS was designed for, such as Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, and the 1213 series. He has also made an adventure demo called E for the commercial venture Aberrant Entertainment, for whom he works. He also created a total conversion for Duke Nukem 3D
Atomic Edition called Age of Evil.
Croshaw writes his own games and their graphics and animation
using Adobe Photoshop
and Microsoft Paint, though he does not compose his own music.
during Croshaw's high school years inspired by his schoolmate Michael Dodson's Red Dwarf
games, with the first being released on 1 January 1998. They star his signature character, from which his Internet alias is derived. In Friday: Death to Arthur Yahtzee, a group of mutants who Arthur once defeated are back and out to get him. In Saturday: Arthur's Odyssey Yahtzee has to face forces trying to mess with time, a quest that leads into Yesterday: The D-Gate where Arthur faces the villain Cathode
(and helped by Anode
). He reveals himself to be the one responsible for all of Arthur's troubles in the previous games, and is now determined to gain the power to control travel between dimensions. The game ends with Arthur destroying the entire Multiverse in his quest to stop him. These games showcase the first examples of the humour and writing style that Croshaw became known for in his AGS years. The games were created before Croshaw had his own site and thus were hosted on the site of a friend, once that site went down they were sent to Croshaw's Fully Ramblomatic. A text adventure game, Arthur Yahtzee: The Curse of Hell's Cheesecake, was also created but is not considered part of the actual trilogy.
A series of adventure games that follow the adventures of the fictional character Rob Blanc, an unassuming English
chip shop worker who is abducted by the High Ones, the secret rulers of reality. He is told that he is to become the "Defender of the Universe", to provide a counterbalance to all the evil that is being done in the galaxy. In Rob Blanc I: Better Days of the Defender of the Universe, he is sent onto an alien spaceship
to find out what happened to the crew, and prove himself as a worthy defender of the universe. The second game, Rob Blanc II: Planet of the Pasteurised Pestilence, features Rob returning to Earth
while the High Ones construct his ship. While there, he notices a green-haired teenage male following him, and inside an elevator both of them find that they have been sent into outer space. Landing on an alien world, they find that the natives believe them to be the ones prophesied to cure a great plague which is enveloping the planet, and are thus forced to live up to the legend. The third and final game Rob Blanc III: The Temporal Terrorists begins on Rob's space ship where he and Paul, now his sidekick, are finally ready to start really defending the universe. Their first mission soon comes: somebody is removing all of the time from the universe, and Rob and Paul must find and assemble the parts of the Reaman Time Drive (RTD) to find out who is responsible for it. All of the games follow the same point-and-click interface typical of the AGS engine they were built on, with most of the puzzles involving the finding of objects. The series' humour is similar to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf
.
, but mixes adventure elements with turn-based space combat
, resource trading and space exploration
gameplay mechanisms reminiscent of space simulator titles like Star Control
and Wing Commander: Privateer
. The game is both a parody of and tribute to science fiction games and films. For instance, a major plot point is the deployment of Redshirts
(an obvious homage to Star Trek
's disposable red-shirted crew members), who are used as cannon fodder
when the situation planet-side is deemed too dangerous for the ship's crew. The easily replaceable Redshirts invariably die, often in gruesome and darkly comic ways. Although not a part of the series proper, the game is set in the Rob Blanc science fiction universe, after the disappearance of the "Defender of the Universe" and the chaos that followed.
series. In 5 Days a Stranger, the player controls the shady cat burglar Trilby, who stumbles across a demonic force that manifests itself as a masked killer in the tradition of Jason Voorhees
or Michael Myers
, while finding himself one of a group of strangers thrown together in an abandoned mansion and being picked off one by one. 7 Days a Skeptic emulates the claustrophobic horror of Alien
following a spaceship crew that finds a mysterious artifact floating in space, four hundred years after the events of 5 Days a Stranger. Trilby's Notes, set in a hotel which exists in both the real world and a horrific alternate dimension in the style of Silent Hill
, goes back to flesh out the origin of the cursed Africa
n idol from the other games. 6 Days a Sacrifice is the final episode of the John DeFoe tetralogy
. It links all its three previous episodes and completes the story of Chzo and John DeFoe.
While the first two games use the point-and-click interface typical of adventure games, Trilby's Notes requires the player to move with the keyboard and type commands with a text parser, similar to the early Sierra On-Line King's Quest
series.
Up until Trilby's Notes, Croshaw relied upon RPG Maker's included MIDI files for musical accompaniment. Some argued that these fantasy-inspired songs did not mesh well with the horror aspect of the games. In response, Croshaw enlisted outside help for the music in Trilby's Notes. That game's soundtrack, composed by Mark 'm0ds' Lovegrove, was received warmly by players.
In November 2007, Croshaw released Trilby: The Art of Theft, a stealth platform game
based on his 1213 codebase. Although Trilby is the game's protagonist, it is not directly linked to the Chzo Mythos storyline.
of horror science-fiction games. The episodes tell the story of the suffering and eventual escape of an amnesia
c victim of experimentation, codenamed 1213, from his cell, freed by his unseen tormentor. On escaping, 1213 sees that the facility's other guinea pigs, all similarly named to himself, have also escaped and have been turned into zombies, slaughtering the employees.
1213 is notable for reproducing the traditional platformer experience using an engine originally designed to be used in the production of point-and-click adventure games. Simply animated, many elements of the game reflect the original Prince of Persia
gameplay mechanics, though it incorporates aspects of gunplay found in Another World
and Flashback: The Quest for Identity
.
to his site, but as of July 2009 they were given out for free on his site, as he said he no longer relied on the donations as a means of support.
pilot
co-starring Croshaw with Matt Burgess and Guy "Yug" Blomberg from the website Australian Gamer
. The pilot was released on YouTube
on 15 December 2008. A website has been set up to promote the series. The show features gaming news, comedy sketches, reviews of MMORPG
s and three special reports, one of which involved Croshaw in a discussion of the adventure game genre. On 3 October 2009, an updated pilot was uploaded to YouTube and the Game Damage website, showing new sketches and appearances at Supanova 2009
.
. The series started after Croshaw produced two reviews for Fable: The Lost Chapters
and The Darkness
demo and uploaded them on YouTube
, after which The Escapist contacted him and offered him a contract. Reviews are released every Wednesday, with Tuesday previews on G4
's X-Play
. Yahtzee is best known in this series for his generally scathing reviews of mainstream games, as well as often extremely colourful comparisons and rapid-fire speech. Portal, Psychonauts
, and Silent Hill 2
are some of the few games that have actually received favorable reviews and first/third person shooters are usually compared to Half-life
series as model examples of the genre. Saints Row 2
, Batman: Arkham Asylum
, and Just Cause 2
were named as his Games of the Year of 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively. The Valve
game Portal is the only game he has ever reviewed in a completely positive manner and is rated as one of his top 5 favourite games of all time, the other four being Silent Hill 2
, Spider-Man 2
, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
and Fantasy World Dizzy
, all glimpsed in one of his videos, albeit blurred. In his Soul Calibur 4 review, he left a message at the end saying that the "Top 5 List" should not be taken seriously. Also, in a later video he makes a scathing revision to Fantasy World Dizzy, in reference to the poor quality of the game by today's standards.
Ben Croshaw frequently uses an image of a man with no expression in his reviews to represent stupidity or boredom, which he got from a collection by Thomas Ruff
.
website claims it was released on 8 September.
Croshaw's website hosts two unpublished novels: Articulate Jim: A Search for Something, a pirate
-themed in part work; and Fog Juice, his 2005 "National Novel Writing Month
" entry.
anthology
Machine of Death was published, containing a short story by Croshaw.
In addition, he has also written two unpublished tie-in short stories for Chzo Mythos
.
developer Brian Hook to write the script for Duke Nukem Forever
. This was a response to a fan's question, following Croshaw's official review of the game, regarding a fact brought up in a June 23 episode of the TWiT Video Game Show. In the episode, Duke Nukem Forever developer Jay Brushwood claimed that Hook pushed for Croshaw's involvement in the project and that his piece stood out as being the funniest among the samples sent in by other writers. However, lead designer George Broussard
rejected Croshaw's script for being, according to Brushwood, "too out there", was not true to the Duke Nukem
character and, as Croshaw added in his column, didn't match the game's "tone".
According to the Extra Punctuation article, his short audition script wrote Duke Nukem as an ironic character; seeing that it was the only way to successfully present the overly-macho character to the current market. Croshaw added that he never talked about the offer up to that point due to possible "unspoken" non-disclosure action and because he didn't think the whole story was worth mentioning to the public.
Rugby, Warwickshire
Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, England, located on the River Avon. The town has a population of 61,988 making it the second largest town in the county...
, Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) is an English comedic writer, video game journalist and author of adventure game
Adventure 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,...
s created using Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio is a free software development tool that is primarily used to create graphical adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an Integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language to process...
software. He writes articles for Australia's Hyper
Hyper (magazine)
Hyper is a multi-platform Australian video game magazine. Australia's longest running gaming magazine, it has been in publication since 1993, and was released the same month as the better known UK magazine Edge...
magazine, a major games publication. He uses his website "Fully Ramblomatic" as an outlet for his own work, including weekly dark humour articles, essays, fiction, and webcomics. He is currently making a series of video-reviews named Zero Punctuation
Zero Punctuation
Zero Punctuation is an ongoing video game review series created by comedy writer and video game journalist Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw and published by the online magazine The Escapist.-Background:...
for The Escapist
The Escapist (magazine)
The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
, as well as the weekly column Extra Punctuation. In the February 2008 issue of PC Gamer
PC 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...
(US), Croshaw took over Gary Whitta
Gary Whitta
Gary Whitta is an English screenwriter, author, game designer, and video games journalist. He is known as the former editor-in-chief of both the UK and US editions of PC Gamer magazine and contributor to gaming magazine, ACE....
's "Backspace" column as a contributing editor. He recently completed work on a novel entitled Mogworld, which was published in August 2010. He is also one of the four founders of The Mana Bar
Mana Bar
Mana Bar is the first Australian cocktail bar and video gaming lounge located in Brisbane, Australia within its biggest night-life and entertainment district, Fortitude Valley. The bar held its opening event on 20 March 2010. The bar allows visitors to play current generation gaming consoles free...
; an Australian cocktail bar and video gaming lounge originally in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and recently having opened a second venue in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, intends to continue to spread around Australia and overseas.
Games
Originally Croshaw created a series of adventure games with MS Paint starring his signature character Arthur Yahtzee.Croshaw became known in the Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio is a free software development tool that is primarily used to create graphical adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an Integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language to process...
(AGS) community for the Rob Blanc trilogy. He then created The Trials of Odysseus Kent, which was mentioned by PC Plus
PC Plus
PC Plus is a Computer magazine published monthly since 1986 in the UK by Future Publishing. The magazine is aimed at intermediate to advanced PC users, computer professionals and enthusiasts. The magazine is specifically for users of PCs and related technologies, so features articles are...
magazine as "AGS Showcase" in the November 2003 issue and the Chzo Mythos
Chzo Mythos
The Chzo Mythos is the collective title given to a series of four amateur adventure games created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw using the Adventure Game Studio development tool. The games are, in order of release and intended play-order, 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a...
series. He also helped found the collaborative Reality-on-the-Norm series by creating the first game, Lunchtime of the Damned. The series has gone on to have over 50 episodes since. Some of his recent works have experimented with the AGS engine to produce games in other genres than the point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
adventure game
Adventure 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,...
s that AGS was designed for, such as Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, and the 1213 series. He has also made an adventure demo called E for the commercial venture Aberrant Entertainment, for whom he works. He also created a total conversion for Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC . It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee...
Atomic Edition called Age of Evil.
Croshaw writes his own games and their graphics and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
using Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
and Microsoft Paint, though he does not compose his own music.
Arthur Yahtzee Trilogy
A series of adventure games written in Visual Basic 3Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
during Croshaw's high school years inspired by his schoolmate Michael Dodson's Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
games, with the first being released on 1 January 1998. They star his signature character, from which his Internet alias is derived. In Friday: Death to Arthur Yahtzee, a group of mutants who Arthur once defeated are back and out to get him. In Saturday: Arthur's Odyssey Yahtzee has to face forces trying to mess with time, a quest that leads into Yesterday: The D-Gate where Arthur faces the villain Cathode
Cathode
A cathode is an electrode through which electric current flows out of a polarized electrical device. Mnemonic: CCD .Cathode polarity is not always negative...
(and helped by Anode
Anode
An anode is an electrode through which electric current flows into a polarized electrical device. Mnemonic: ACID ....
). He reveals himself to be the one responsible for all of Arthur's troubles in the previous games, and is now determined to gain the power to control travel between dimensions. The game ends with Arthur destroying the entire Multiverse in his quest to stop him. These games showcase the first examples of the humour and writing style that Croshaw became known for in his AGS years. The games were created before Croshaw had his own site and thus were hosted on the site of a friend, once that site went down they were sent to Croshaw's Fully Ramblomatic. A text adventure game, Arthur Yahtzee: The Curse of Hell's Cheesecake, was also created but is not considered part of the actual trilogy.
Rob Blanc Trilogy
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
chip shop worker who is abducted by the High Ones, the secret rulers of reality. He is told that he is to become the "Defender of the Universe", to provide a counterbalance to all the evil that is being done in the galaxy. In Rob Blanc I: Better Days of the Defender of the Universe, he is sent onto an alien spaceship
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
to find out what happened to the crew, and prove himself as a worthy defender of the universe. The second game, Rob Blanc II: Planet of the Pasteurised Pestilence, features Rob returning to Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
while the High Ones construct his ship. While there, he notices a green-haired teenage male following him, and inside an elevator both of them find that they have been sent into outer space. Landing on an alien world, they find that the natives believe them to be the ones prophesied to cure a great plague which is enveloping the planet, and are thus forced to live up to the legend. The third and final game Rob Blanc III: The Temporal Terrorists begins on Rob's space ship where he and Paul, now his sidekick, are finally ready to start really defending the universe. Their first mission soon comes: somebody is removing all of the time from the universe, and Rob and Paul must find and assemble the parts of the Reaman Time Drive (RTD) to find out who is responsible for it. All of the games follow the same point-and-click interface typical of the AGS engine they were built on, with most of the puzzles involving the finding of objects. The series' humour is similar to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
.
Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment
Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment features cynical science fiction humour similar to Sierra On-Line's Space QuestSpace Quest
Space Quest is a series of six comedic science fiction computer games that follow the adventures of a hapless janitor named Roger Wilco, as he campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice and really clean floors"....
, but mixes adventure elements with turn-based space combat
Space Combat
Space Combat is a game produced by Laminar Research to provide a simulation of space combat with accurate physics, unlike most other games of the same genre...
, resource trading and space exploration
Space exploration
Space exploration is the use of space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft....
gameplay mechanisms reminiscent of space simulator titles like Star Control
Star Control
Star Control is a science fiction computer game that was developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade in the early 1990s. Star Control still enjoys a cult following...
and Wing Commander: Privateer
Wing Commander: Privateer
Wing Commander: Privateer is an adventure space flight simulation computer game released by Origin Systems in 1993. Privateer and its storyline is part of the Wing Commander series...
. The game is both a parody of and tribute to science fiction games and films. For instance, a major plot point is the deployment of Redshirts
Redshirt (character)
A "redshirt" is a stock character in fiction who dies soon after being introduced. The term originates with fans of Star Trek , from the red shirts worn by Starfleet security officers who frequently die during episodes.-Star Trek:...
(an obvious homage to Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...
's disposable red-shirted crew members), who are used as cannon fodder
Cannon fodder
Cannon fodder is an informal, derogatory term for military personnel who are regarded or treated as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where soldiers are forced to deliberately fight against hopeless odds in an effort to achieve a strategic goal...
when the situation planet-side is deemed too dangerous for the ship's crew. The easily replaceable Redshirts invariably die, often in gruesome and darkly comic ways. Although not a part of the series proper, the game is set in the Rob Blanc science fiction universe, after the disappearance of the "Defender of the Universe" and the chaos that followed.
Chzo Mythos
5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice are the four parts of a horrorHorror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
series. In 5 Days a Stranger, the player controls the shady cat burglar Trilby, who stumbles across a demonic force that manifests itself as a masked killer in the tradition of Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th , as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S...
or Michael Myers
Michael Myers (Halloween)
Michael Myers is a fictional character from the Halloween series of slasher films. He first appears in John Carpenter's Halloween as a young boy who murders his older sister, then fifteen years later returns home to murder more teenagers...
, while finding himself one of a group of strangers thrown together in an abandoned mansion and being picked off one by one. 7 Days a Skeptic emulates the claustrophobic horror of Alien
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
following a spaceship crew that finds a mysterious artifact floating in space, four hundred years after the events of 5 Days a Stranger. Trilby's Notes, set in a hotel which exists in both the real world and a horrific alternate dimension in the style of Silent Hill
Silent Hill
is a survival horror video game series consisting of seven installments published by Konami and its subsidiary Konami Digital Entertainment. The first four games in the series, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4, have been developed by an internal factor, Team Silent...
, goes back to flesh out the origin of the cursed Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n idol from the other games. 6 Days a Sacrifice is the final episode of the John DeFoe tetralogy
Tetralogy
A tetralogy is a compound work that is made up of four distinct works, just as a trilogy is made up of three works....
. It links all its three previous episodes and completes the story of Chzo and John DeFoe.
While the first two games use the point-and-click interface typical of adventure games, Trilby's Notes requires the player to move with the keyboard and type commands with a text parser, similar to the early Sierra On-Line King's Quest
King's Quest series
King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...
series.
Up until Trilby's Notes, Croshaw relied upon RPG Maker's included MIDI files for musical accompaniment. Some argued that these fantasy-inspired songs did not mesh well with the horror aspect of the games. In response, Croshaw enlisted outside help for the music in Trilby's Notes. That game's soundtrack, composed by Mark 'm0ds' Lovegrove, was received warmly by players.
In November 2007, Croshaw released Trilby: The Art of Theft, a stealth platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
based on his 1213 codebase. Although Trilby is the game's protagonist, it is not directly linked to the Chzo Mythos storyline.
1213 series
1213 is a trilogyTrilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
of horror science-fiction games. The episodes tell the story of the suffering and eventual escape of an amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
c victim of experimentation, codenamed 1213, from his cell, freed by his unseen tormentor. On escaping, 1213 sees that the facility's other guinea pigs, all similarly named to himself, have also escaped and have been turned into zombies, slaughtering the employees.
1213 is notable for reproducing the traditional platformer experience using an engine originally designed to be used in the production of point-and-click adventure games. Simply animated, many elements of the game reflect the original Prince of Persia
Prince of Persia
Prince of Persia is a platform game, originally developed by Jordan Mechner and released in 1989 for the Apple II, that represented a great leap forward in the quality of animation seen in video games....
gameplay mechanics, though it incorporates aspects of gunplay found in Another World
Another World (video game)
Another World, also known as Out of This World in North America and Outer World in Japan, is a 1991 cinematic platformer designed and developed by Eric Chahi...
and Flashback: The Quest for Identity
Flashback: The Quest for Identity
Flashback, released as Flashback: The Quest for Identity in the US, is a cinematic platformer developed by Delphine Software of France, a now defunct company, and published by U.S...
.
Special editions
The Chzo Mythos and 1213 games were both later released as special editions. These can contain author's commentaries, extended endings or even extended notes giving backstory. Croshaw allowed people to get these each time they donated over five U.S. dollarsUnited States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
to his site, but as of July 2009 they were given out for free on his site, as he said he no longer relied on the donations as a means of support.
Game Damage
Game Damage is a game-themed television seriesTelevision program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
co-starring Croshaw with Matt Burgess and Guy "Yug" Blomberg from the website Australian Gamer
Australian Gamer
Australian Gamer is a video gaming website that focuses on the gaming scene in Australia. It was created in 2005 by gaming friends Matt Burgess and Guy "Yug" Blomberg in order to give Australia a voice within the gaming world after the release of Dance Dance Revolution was cancelled in Australia;...
. The pilot was released on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
on 15 December 2008. A website has been set up to promote the series. The show features gaming news, comedy sketches, reviews of MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
s and three special reports, one of which involved Croshaw in a discussion of the adventure game genre. On 3 October 2009, an updated pilot was uploaded to YouTube and the Game Damage website, showing new sketches and appearances at Supanova 2009
Supanova Pop Culture Expo
Supanova Pop Culture Expo is a fan convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy film and TV, comic books, anime, gaming and collectables. It is held annually in the Australian cities of Brisbane, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne....
.
Zero Punctuation
Zero Punctuation is a weekly video-review column by Croshaw produced for The EscapistThe Escapist (magazine)
The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
. The series started after Croshaw produced two reviews for Fable: The Lost Chapters
Fable (video game)
Fable is an action role-playing video game in the Fable series. It was developed for Xbox, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms, by Big Blue Box, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, and was published by Microsoft. The game shipped for Xbox on October 14, 2003...
and The Darkness
The Darkness (video game)
The Darkness is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Starbreeze Studios and published by 2K Games for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It was released on June 25, 2007 in North America and on June 20, 2007 in Europe. The video game is based on the comic book of the same title...
demo and uploaded them on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, after which The Escapist contacted him and offered him a contract. Reviews are released every Wednesday, with Tuesday previews on G4
G4 (TV channel)
G4, also known as G4 TV, is an American cable- and satellite-television channel originally geared primarily toward young adult viewers, originally based on the world of video games...
's X-Play
X-Play
X-Play is a TV program about video games, known for its reviews and comedy skits...
. Yahtzee is best known in this series for his generally scathing reviews of mainstream games, as well as often extremely colourful comparisons and rapid-fire speech. Portal, 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 Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 is a survival horror video game published by Konami for the PlayStation 2 and developed by Team Silent, a production group within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo...
are some of the few games that have actually received favorable reviews and first/third person shooters are usually compared to Half-life
Half-Life (series)
The Half-Life series of video games share a science fiction alternate history. Nearly all of the games are first-person shooters on the GoldSource or Source engines, and most are linear, narrative, single-player titles....
series as model examples of the genre. Saints Row 2
Saints Row 2
Saints Row 2 is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Volition, Inc. and published by THQ for the Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 systems. It is the second title in the Saints Row series, after the release of Saints Row in 2006. It is succeeded by Saints Row: The...
, Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a 2009 action-adventure stealth video game based on DC Comics' Batman developed for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It was developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Eidos Interactive in conjunction with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment...
, and Just Cause 2
Just Cause 2
Just Cause 2 is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Avalanche Studios, published by Eidos Interactive, and distributed by Square Enix. It is the sequel to the 2006 video game Just Cause....
were named as his Games of the Year of 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively. The Valve
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
game Portal is the only game he has ever reviewed in a completely positive manner and is rated as one of his top 5 favourite games of all time, the other four being Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 is a survival horror video game published by Konami for the PlayStation 2 and developed by Team Silent, a production group within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo...
, Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man 2 (video game)
Spider-Man 2 is the name of several computer and video games based on the Spider-Man universe and particularly the Spider-Man 2 film. It is a follow up to the game Spider-Man: The Movie and was followed by Spider-Man 3 to promote the release of the third film in 2007...
, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a third-person action-adventure computer and video game published by Ubisoft. It was released on November 21, 2003 and is a reboot of the landmark video game series Prince of Persia, created by Jordan Mechner in 1989.The Sands of Time, developed internally at...
and Fantasy World Dizzy
Fantasy World Dizzy
Fantasy World Dizzy is an arcade adventure video game released in October 1989 by Codemasters and designed by the Oliver twins.The game is considered the third in the Dizzy series and was developed under the name Dizzy III...
, all glimpsed in one of his videos, albeit blurred. In his Soul Calibur 4 review, he left a message at the end saying that the "Top 5 List" should not be taken seriously. Also, in a later video he makes a scathing revision to Fantasy World Dizzy, in reference to the poor quality of the game by today's standards.
Ben Croshaw frequently uses an image of a man with no expression in his reviews to represent stupidity or boredom, which he got from a collection by Thomas Ruff
Thomas Ruff
Thomas Ruff is an internationally renowned German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf.-Life:...
.
Mogworld
On 23 October 2009, The Escapist announced Croshaw's first novel, Mogworld, "the story of Jim, who, sixty years after dying in a magic-school mishap, is wrenched back to life by a renegade necromancer". Croshaw stated that the novel would be released on 19 August 2010 while the Mogworld profile on the Dark Horse BooksDark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
website claims it was released on 8 September.
Croshaw's website hosts two unpublished novels: Articulate Jim: A Search for Something, a pirate
Pirates in popular culture
In American and British popular culture, the modern pirate stereotype owes its tradition mostly to depictions of Captain Hook and his crew in theatrical and film versions of Peter Pan, Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in the film Treasure Island, and various adaptations of Sinbad the...
-themed in part work; and Fog Juice, his 2005 "National Novel Writing Month
National Novel Writing Month
National Novel Writing Month is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30...
" entry.
Second novel
On December 26, 2010, Croshaw revealed that he was working on a second novel through a news post on his website. No other information was provided.Machine of Death
On October 26, 2010, the independently published short storyShort story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
Machine of Death was published, containing a short story by Croshaw.
In addition, he has also written two unpublished tie-in short stories for Chzo Mythos
Chzo Mythos
The Chzo Mythos is the collective title given to a series of four amateur adventure games created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw using the Adventure Game Studio development tool. The games are, in order of release and intended play-order, 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a...
.
Video Games
On July 5, 2011, Croshaw admitted on his Extra Punctuation column that at one point during its long development, he was given an offer by 3D Realms3D Realms
3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...
developer Brian Hook to write the script for Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever is a 2011 first-person shooter video game for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 developed by 3D Realms and Triptych Games and finished by Gearbox Software and Piranha Games...
. This was a response to a fan's question, following Croshaw's official review of the game, regarding a fact brought up in a June 23 episode of the TWiT Video Game Show. In the episode, Duke Nukem Forever developer Jay Brushwood claimed that Hook pushed for Croshaw's involvement in the project and that his piece stood out as being the funniest among the samples sent in by other writers. However, lead designer George Broussard
George Broussard
George Broussard is a game producer and designer known in the PC game community as one of the creators of the Duke Nukem series ....
rejected Croshaw's script for being, according to Brushwood, "too out there", was not true to the Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem (character)
Duke Nukem is a fictional character and action hero who has been the protagonist in over a dozen video games.The character first appeared in the 1991 video game Duke Nukem developed by Apogee Software...
character and, as Croshaw added in his column, didn't match the game's "tone".
According to the Extra Punctuation article, his short audition script wrote Duke Nukem as an ironic character; seeing that it was the only way to successfully present the overly-macho character to the current market. Croshaw added that he never talked about the offer up to that point due to possible "unspoken" non-disclosure action and because he didn't think the whole story was worth mentioning to the public.
Comics
Yahtzee has written several web comics series, such as "Yahtzee Takes on the World", "The Adventures of Angular Mike" and "Chris and Trilby". "Yahtzee Takes on the World" was written for a little over two full years and is the most prominent of his web comics, which he still has posted on his website, www.fullyramblomatic.com. Yahtzee went on to disown these comics along with some of his early games in 2008, claiming that "they came out of a dark time in his life from which he has determinedly moved on without a backward glance."Individual projects
Since April 13th, 2011, Yahtzee has been introducing podcasts on his website, www.fullyramblomatic.com, which have typically appeared on a monthly basis. The focus of these podcasts is to create unscripted banter between himself and a co-speaker regarding various subjects for the entertainment of listeners. The format of these podcasts has recently been one of show and tell, in which Yahtzee and his co-speaker, essentially Gabriel Morton, would bring three objects each which are representative of the topics they are going to introduce during the podcast.External links
- Fully Ramblomatic Ben Croshaw's official website
- Zero Punctuation on The EscapistThe Escapist (magazine)The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
- AGS Games Award winners