The Uninvited: MacVenture Series

A classic adventure game that I first played on the NES by accident. I had rented Bionic Commando, all excited and such. Got home and it was Logan's Alley. So, I went back to the video game rental store and informed them I received the wrong game. ♥♥♥♥ happens, I'm told. They swap things out and away I go. Did I check before leaving? No. No I did not. Got home and it was Uninvited. It was too late to go back, so I spent a fair amount of time playing it. Was neat.

👍

Got me in the Halloween mood early. It's short and it has a timer (which I hate in games like this) but it is super fun, it has great sound, and the graphics are pretty. The puzzles are fun too. I recommend if you like adventure games.

Uninvited is the second game in ICOM’s MacVenture series, and is a substantial improvement over the first, inasmuch as this installment has considerably more rooms to explore, objects to utilize, and enemies to ward off. POSITIVES While the unusual and ahead-of-its-time user interface of the MacVenture games remains unchanged through all four games in the series, each game (that isn’t a sequel) adopts a different setting. In this case, Uninvited adopts a classic horror setting, complete with a haunted mansion, a skeleton key, various monsters, and even some spell casting. Unlike its predecessor, Uninvited requires considerably less (gun) violence to solve problems. Instead of shooting everything in sight, enemies are dealt with using specialized inventory items that can be found hidden in various hard-to-find or hard-to-open locations. There’s even a fair amount of treasures that are left behind by enemies, similar to D&D-style RPG games (even though this isn’t that type of game). NEGATIVES With this game, I feel as though the game designers leaned a little too heavily on an otherwise questionably-efficient method of navigation to the point where the limited realism created by the area pictures is further devalued. One of the more unusual interface components in the MacVenture game series is an exits diagram that depicts all of the potentially-available area exits as clickable boxes. In the previous game (Déjà Vu), this feature was an interesting and useful substitute for clicking on the exit objects in the main viewing window; however, in this game, use of the exits diagram becomes a necessity because half or more of the available exits aren’t even shown in the (too-small) viewing window because there’s no way to rotate the viewing perspective by turning. As a comparison, imagine you were playing a Myst-style CD-ROM game from the 1990s but you could NEVER turn to face the direction you needed to go. If that were to happen, you’d be left with an unsettling feeling that would cause you to distrust the images you see because they don’t provide you with all of the information you need to navigate. That’s how I felt about this game, simply because I was spending less time looking at the scenery and more time staring at the exits diagram. RECOMMENDATIONS Despite that criticism, I enjoyed exploring the Uninvited gameworld more than the Déjà Vu gameworld. Although it can be hard to figure out which objects will ward off a particular enemy (without a walkthrough), once you know what the objects are and where to get them, playing through this game is virtually risk-free. Well, except for the lighting storms in the IIgs version. If you’re playing the IIgs version, I highly recommend you always save the game before going outside. Unexpectedly dying is always a shocking experience, especially when its a shocking experience.

Very good I liked a lot

The Uninvited: MacVenture Series é um dos jogos da série MacVenture, que originou a mecânica de point-and-click quando foram lançados pela ICOM Simulations para o Mac nos anos 80. Talvez o segundo jogo mais conhecido da série atrás de Shadowgate, The Uninvited é uma aventura de terror - que provavelmente era assustadora na época, mas hoje em dia é uma experiência bem boba e com uma vibe "spooky" pra jogar no Halloween, cheio de fantasmas, esqueletos, zumbis, monstros e pentagramas. Esse não é um jogo perfeito ou que envelheceu particularmente bem, mas é um jogo que eu achei bem interessante. A interface dele possui vários dos elementos que seriam comuns em point-and-clicks mais pra frente, como o menu de verbos e o inventário, porém com algumas adições realmente únicas: quando você abre uma caixa, por exemplo, o jogo abre uma nova janela mostrando o conteúdo desta caixa, e você pode arrastar itens para seu inventário, para o cenário ou até mesmo outros itens para dentro desta caixa, virando meio que uma gameplay de Windows Explorer. Outro ponto que achei interessante foi que esse jogo tem um limite de tempo, sendo que você é possuído pelos espíritos da casa se demorar muito e toma um game over, então é uma experiência baseada na tentativa e erro até conseguir fazer uma run "perfeita", uma vez que você sabe tudo que tem que fazer ele é um jogo bem curto. Dito isso, os puzzles do jogo conseguem ser um tanto absurdos - eu geralmente não apoio a ideia de pesquisar guias, mas não consigo ver ninguém zerando este aqui sozinho. Cheguem até onde conseguirem sozinhos, e depois não tenham medo de pesquisar dicas ou um guia mesmo, pois o jogo possui alguns quebra-cabeças realmente absurdos. Eu estou recomendando The Uninvited para pessoas que apreciam a história dos jogos, gostam de jogos antigos, de experiências interessantes e que não se importam muito com as falhas ou com o fato de ele ter envelhecido mal - não é uma experiência para muitos hoje em dia mas, para o pequeno público que eu assumo que ele agrada, ele consegue ser uma experiência bem divertida.

An absolute relic in every sense of the word. Comes from that time in point-and-click adventures where the puzzles were overly specific and almost required walkthroughs to properly finish. Should be viewed as almost a museum piece though of what games used to be. There some historical merit in it, but it's fun-factor has long since wore out its welcome