The Complete Bone Adventures
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: June 25, 1996
Levels: 10
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: Bone!
Not to be mistaken for Adam Tyner's Bone!.
The Complete Bone Adventures is, more than anything, an achievement in storytelling. It may be the biggest storytelling achievement of all Game-Maker games. Where other games may dabble with in-engine cutscenes, here Alan Caudel masters the form and sets a new bar for all other authors to match.
As with Adam Tyner's Bone!, The Complete Bone Adventures is a highly varied adventure game based on Jeff Smith's cult classic Bone comic (itself a tribute to the work of Walt Kelly and Carl Barks). Each of the three main levels is completely different from the last, with different goals, mechanics, backgrounds, sprites, even perspective.
The levels themselves are fine; they're much like Alan Caudel's other material at the time (e.g., FireAxe). They look great and are easy enough to work around. They have a decent sense of flow, a decent sense of place. There's the occasional specific nice touch. Mostly they're functional. Either they serve as a playable piece of storyline (as in the first level, where the player controls three characters all running from an oncoming swarm of locusts) or they serve to illustrate a period of meandering and uncertainty between story beats, with a bit of travelogue on the side.
What's more interesting is the structure into which the levels slot. There is an overall flow and logic to The Complete Bone Adventures, that is propelled in large part by extensive and creatively built non-playable sequences. The most astounding of these in-engine cutscenes serves to bridge levels 1 and 2; as our initial trio scampers away from the locusts, Fone Bone becomes separated from the group and stumbles over a precipice. He then falls down an incredible height, losing his map along the way, and lands with a craterous thud in the dirt. He picks himself up and marches away, muttering to himself, about his chances of survival, until he reaches a Ninja Gaiden-esque lookout point over a lush pine forest, clouds flitting across the distant horizon. This brings us to our level set in that forest.
The technique involved in the multiple shots and scenes involved, and the action within them, pushes Game-Maker's functionality far past its obvious limit (albeit not quite as far as Adventure), and it does so seamlessly. You can even hit the spacebar to skip any given scene. More than that, though, the technique is met with a level of artistry and consistency of tone unusual to this toolset.
Had The Complete Bone Adventures been, well, completed, it would have little competition as the most masterful use of Game-Maker and almost certainly be the showcase work for the engine. There are other games that do specific things more well -- games with amazing level design or really fascinating engine hackery -- but none of them hold together and push a consistent narrative in the way that Caudel manages here.
The best works of any medium, on any platform, tend to transcend that platform and that medium, to the point where they are not easily pinpointed as a type. So it is here; The Complete Bone Adventures is a member of that exclusive club of games that barely feel like a Game-Maker game. In setting its own terms for narrative content and progression, this game avoids visibly banging into the limitations that constrain the vision of most games in this engine. Incomplete it may be, but The Complete Bone Adventures should be a touchstone of any study for advanced use of Game-Maker.
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Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
Level 1:
Escape the locusts. Move your party with the arrow keys, preferably on the numerical keypad. Leap with the 9/PgUp key.
Level 2:
Find your way through the forest, avoiding all pitfalls. Move with the arrow keys, and punch in four directions with the I/J/K/M keys.
Credits[edit]
Game designed by Alan Caudel.
Background[edit]
There was a 3rd Level which was never completed. It was a snow level, and if I remember correctly it had a maze in the snow kind of inspired by the Penguin Pete style.
In the comics, the Rat Creatures (the bad guys) were huge compared to the main character. I tried in Level 2 to get around that by keeping them hiding in the bushes, and then a 2 block monster animation made it look like they would jump out, but it never actually moved. I wanted the monsters to move freely around the map, so I had to come up with something.
In the snow level I drew them kinda buried up to their neck in snow, so you only saw their head peeking up. This allowed me to make them as single monster blocks which could roam freely around the snow level. It was kind of a cheat, but it worked well enough.
Looking back, I kind of wish I had made one level with a full sized multi-block monster which moved in a set direction that you just had to run away from. But it would probably have to have been indestructible so the blocks wouldn't come apart. I think it could have worked.— Alan Caudel, email exchange
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History[edit]
On October 20, 2010, Caudel posted a comment to a YouTube video of Peach the Lobster, under the name dummyduckrulz; following up the conversation, on June 29, 2011 he provided a link to a collection of games recently uncovered by Adam Tyner. This initial archive included:
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- The Complete Bone Adventures (120 kB)
- Bone (older version) (89 kB)
- Level 1 map (35 kB)
- Level 2 map (96 kB)
