PDA

View Full Version : MS Paint Adventures


Death Ray Commander
09-Mar-09, 20:33
MS Paint Adventures (http://mspaintadventures.com/) is a website that features three web "comics" that feature simple, Paint-like graphics (although Problem Sleuth gets quite complex, artwise and otherwise) that read and pace similar to text-based Adventure games.

To date, it features three main features:

=Jail Break (http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=1), which I believe was entirely created by visitor input for every page. It follows the escape of a nameless hero from his bizarre jail. Pumpkins abound.
=Bard Quest (http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=2) is a lot more open, but it's on extended vacation. It follows a bard on his quest to rid the kingdom of The Dragon. Many paths abound, each one leading to a dead end or incomplete story. Homosexual running gags abound.
=Problem Sleuth (http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=4), a spanning 22 chapter adventure of three hard-boiled detectives - the titular Problem Sleuth, the hard-lining Ace Dick, and the disconcerting Pickle Inspector - on their quest to take down the Mobster King and, finally, escape their office.


Problem Sleuth is the current main feature of the site, easily trouncing its other two siblings in terms of content, story, art, and coherency.

It begins as a rather simplistic adventure game-like quest, with simple gags, but puzzle elements here or there make for complex and entangled story devices rather quickly.

With the advent of new characters, and three "playable" characters to choose from, and variants therein, the story can quickly bounce back and forth between a vast range of simultaneously-occurring happenings, yet remains completely coherent and only lets minor things slip memory long enough to reel it back in.

For convenience, two conveniently-placed Recaps make the more confusing parts a lot clearer.


I personally am quite fond of this website. I'm a new reader to it, started merely a month or two ago, but I've been bit by the love-bug, hard. By the time I started reading, it was already between Chapters 16 to 18. A week of skipping homework and family obligations later and they made a believer out of me.

Alastor
09-Mar-09, 20:36
I can't make him pick up the key on the table!

And I am not leaving until I call at least one girl.

Death Ray Commander
09-Mar-09, 20:59
I can't make him pick up the key on the table!
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/advimgs/ps/ps010.gif

Alastor, you'll have more girls than you'll know what to do with.

Alastor
09-Mar-09, 22:43
Oh, I see. This is not a Choose your Own Adventure. They already did that part. Your role is to just click through the options they did choose and read the story.

I thought it was a game with choices and options. It's not. It's a book with a linear story that was made together with the readers.

I was getting frustrated because I couldn't tell it what to do... Dur.

Very cool. I'm a dumbass sometimes. I'm better now.

Death Ray Commander
10-Mar-09, 06:42
I really could have made that clearer, but yes.

While, superficially, they take the guise of adventure games, they function more like web comics. However, instead of simple "First Comic, Back, Forward, Today's" buttons, you progress the story via "choosing" the "commands" on the bottom, be they explicit commands or simply "Next".

For Problem Sleuth and Jail Break, you have only one option to choose from. A lot of it is viewer-generated, and there's even a feature on the site that showcases non-canonical alternate commands.

Sometimes, though, the "game" will give you more than one "command". Those side deviations rarely last long, and they don't drop you off too far down the highway.

Bard's Quest is all about the choices though, and allows you to continue the story from a variety of options at your disposal. However, that is probably why the author seems to have given up on that one.