[HN Gopher] Lucasart's Afterlife
___________________________________________________________________
Lucasart's Afterlife
Author : Bondi_Blue
Score : 98 points
Date : 2026-09-15 22:30 UTC (1 days ago)
HTML web link (togameforlife.wordpress.com)
TEXT w3m dump (togameforlife.wordpress.com)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Lucasfilm, at one time had a gaming subsidiary called Lucasarts
|
| I am given to understand that this was always the setup; the
| gaming subsidiary was always called LucasArts.
|
| But the games suggest something different. Early games are
| branded "Lucasfilm". The first Monkey Island game to have
| LucasArts branding is the third in the series.
| burai wrote:
| The brand used before "Lucasarts" was "Lucasfilm games"
| darkwater wrote:
| I have memories of MI2 already showing the LucasArts logo?
|
| (/me goes to check YT videos)
|
| Yes I'm right, see https://youtu.be/6lTz2nkPNXA?t=32
| chronogamous wrote:
| As far as I remember, they were called LucasArts, except their
| first title (Labyrinth, 1986) was published and distributed by
| Activision. Everything else, from Maniac Mansion (1987) to
| Escape from Monkey Island (2000), was published by LucasArts.
|
| /edit I stand corrected... I just checked the intro on the c64
| version of Maniac Mansion, and it does indeed state Lucasfilm
| Games, not LucasArts.
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8ot8bJS3Q)
| gxd wrote:
| Haven't thought about this game in ages. I remember seeing it in
| ads but never played it.
|
| It's odd that it became so obscure considering it was released by
| a major, even if then declining, game company.
| otikik wrote:
| You can change some words in this article and conclude that Hell
| is just suburbia.
| rsynnott wrote:
| See "The Good Place".
| layoric wrote:
| I love this game. The whole design, the voice acting, humour and
| frustratingly hard game play as you get further into the game. If
| you like other Lucasarts games, highly recommend just playing
| through the tutorial at the very least.
| TomGarden wrote:
| This is so nostalgic!
|
| Side note, Lucasarts' games rewired my kid brain to expect humor
| and (good) voice acting in games. It's really guided (and
| limited) what games I'm able to enjoy
| Liuser wrote:
| Amen. Sam and Max Hit the Road has a special place in my
| childhood. So much encouragement of exploration and humor.
| gustavorg wrote:
| Because of my poor English, I thought this post was about life at
| LucasArts after the sale. I was disappointed. I never had time to
| play LucasArts games: Leisure Suit Larry, Passionate Patti in
| Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals and similar games took up all
| my time.
| auto wrote:
| I've got good enough English as a native speaker and I thought
| the same thing, don't worry. That said, still an interesting
| article about a game I managed to never hear of before, despite
| being immersed in exactly those sorts of games at the time.
| glandium wrote:
| Leisure Suit Larry was Sierra, not LucasArts.
| jawilson2 wrote:
| I think they meant they were NOT playing LucasArts games
| because they were playing other games.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| It's not your English proficiency. I didn't know this game
| existed, so before clicking, I expected it was about LucasArt's
| legacy on the games industry, or what former people there are
| doing now.
| davidsojevic wrote:
| I bought a copy of Afterlife from one of the Scholastic
| catalogues when I was in primary school after already having had
| a blast with Sim City 2000.
|
| I absolutely loved the graphics and the theme and everything, but
| as it turns out, I had absolutely no idea how to play it and
| never got far enough into it to really appreciate its gameplay.
|
| I should probably give it another go as an adult who has a bit
| more patience for reading through instructions than I did as a
| kid.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I played it summer of 2005, the same year I binged Douglas
| Adams' complete non-HHG works (including 'Last Chance to See'
| on CD-ROM and the interactive fiction game, 'Bureaucracy').
|
| Afterlife is wonderfully fun and satisfying to experience to
| completion for the first time, and what it might lack in
| replayability it more than makes up for with humor and design.
| designium wrote:
| I still play once a year. But now I can reach full omnibulges
| and love domes in less than an hour. But I remember spending
| months to survive until I discovered the cheat code (btw if
| you use too much, it triggers something that I can't
| remember, it can mess up the game as a punishment).
|
| The I figured out to let the planet evolve and grow it's
| population because then, your afterlife has high demand thus
| more money, that detail solves the hardest part of the game!
|
| The other insight which came much much later, the better
| capacity per area is given by the top 2x2 and 4x4 multi
| color. 3x3 top buildings are badass looking but they offer
| smaller max capacity for souls, we are aiming in reaching 1
| billion souls using the least amount of area so you always
| have free space to build as demand explode.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'd recommend this. As kids my brother and I could never
| complete a game on the BBC Micro called Imogen[0]. It was
| amazing for the time in that your character could transform
| into three modes (wizard / cat / monkey) and on one screen a
| fourth mode, and the transformation looked smooth even back
| then. However - we never completed it. As an adult I found it
| again and while I completed it fairly easily, it was a nice
| memory.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_(video_game)
| designium wrote:
| 1. Find a map with the maximum amount of buildable space 2.
| Start the game with the maximum speed to above 5000 years 3.
| Build Hell first and only 4. Pause, build the portal already
| thinking in upgraded form. 5. Build long straight roads,
| columns spaced 4 from each other, avoid crossing 6. Check the
| sins demand 7. Usually, the green is the most demanded 8. Don't
| touch anything about the planet 9. This is key: using green as
| example, build 2x2 spaced so the neighbor is diagonal, never
| adjacent. 10. Build your first wave of buildings, and
| essentials (dystopias, the trams, etc. I assume you know those
| things) 11. Open the portal, make a lot of money 12. Upgrade
| the portal, make more money 13. Max capacity reached, starting
| to lose souls and money, you adjust the building's efficiency
| to white for every building manually until you are rich 14.
| Buildings start to reach its top version and capacity, lock
| them 15. Activate the bats , y to their guano are excellent to
| upgrade the buildings. Also keep other disasters away during a
| grace period 16. Then keep growing, adjusting buildings
| efficiency, more portals, more buildings 17. You only need half
| the Hell, to achieve hell's Omnibulges 18. Then star heaven 19.
| Follow heaven best practices and you reach to Love Domes very
| easily and rich af 20. I would only train later in the game.
| Build the best training school, make it only accept top 10%,
| left side, watch and leave 20% no lower because it can cause
| excess oof demons or angels, unless you want to see the a
| special ending 21. Endings can be quite fun to achieve (then
| you want to mess up with the planet)
| totetsu wrote:
| It's funny when you boot up these old games you played long
| ago, how small the view port is, and how I didn't seem to
| notice that at the time.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| What I like about sim city 2K is that it is like an arcade sim
| game. It is super easy to get up and running without too much
| prior knowledge. You can build a successful city without
| reading through the manual.
|
| I also like that there's no ending. Maybe this makes it "easy",
| but it promotes setting specific goals for yourself and
| exploration rather than going through certain expected motions
| to meet a preset goal. But there are the scenarios for people
| who like a preset challenge.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I played SimCity 2K without reading the manual as a kid.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Tangential: After 3 Weeks Claude finished Maniac Mansion and Zak
| McKracken in my little RL harness.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| The music from this game is still in my regular rotation.
| N_Lens wrote:
| I miss the old lucasarts era of games, it was a magical time!
| SamBam wrote:
| Indiana Jones, Monkey Island, Sam & Max, The Grim Fandango.
| Such a big part of my childhood and teen years.
| Razengan wrote:
| I still remember the intro of this game lol
| hliyan wrote:
| Does anyone remember a Windows game called Yoda Stories? I had
| such fond memories of it that I tried to find the game or an
| emulator version multiple times. No luck. It was an elegant game
| from a more civilized time where resolution, shading, texture and
| frame rate did not define how good a game was.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJT4sdifLXM
| lvbyte wrote:
| The game came with LucasArts Archives Vol. IV: Star Wars
| Collection II. It's in the Internet Archive:
| https://archive.org/details/thelucasartsarchivesvolivstarwar...
| trashb wrote:
| It is supported by the DREAMM emulator. And the image is on
| archive.org, have fun!
| dcist wrote:
| I remember it fondly. My family had a lower-end 486 and it
| couldn't run a lot of games but it ran Yoda Stories great!
| Loved that game as a kid. LucasArts really was a gem (loved
| Grim Fandango, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Full Throttle, etc.).
| twodave wrote:
| I loved Jedi Knight. There still isn't anything quite like
| logging into the Zone and having light saber battles where
| the saber model is replaced with a full size star destroyer
| :)
| jhbadger wrote:
| There was also Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures which used the
| same engine. Both were rather harshly reviewed at the time for
| being "pointless" - presumably the reviewers didn't like the
| random generation - while "rogue" (and Nethack, etc) existed,
| the idea of a "roguelike" hadn't quite gelled as a concept in
| pop culture yet.
| Cpoll wrote:
| I don't think it was just the random generation; Desktop
| Adventures didn't quite have the depth of a rogue game.
| jhbadger wrote:
| True. But they were still kind of addictive (at least to
| me)
| Keyframe wrote:
| https://www.retro-exo.com/index2.html - check in one of eXoWin
| releases.
| brummm wrote:
| I recently played a browser version of it. Such good childhood
| memories!
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This one slapped!
|
| Note: I had very good luck with DosBox on a pile of games from
| that era and older lately. (Edutainment mainly). I didn't try
| this one though. Now I want to...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Fun game, but very hard, and teaches you the danger of debt quite
| early in life.
|
| But the 2 advisers were so funny!
| zehaeva wrote:
| I loved playing this game as a kid! I am really saddened that
| it's never had a follow up or even a second look. The humor
| really stuck out to me.
|
| I am surprised to hear that people felt this game was hard! Maybe
| it was because I was younger when I played it but I thought it
| was a lot of fun.
|
| I do recall trying to get a "legit" copy of this game several
| times over the years and it's availability has been either
| nonexistant or barely there.
| booty wrote:
| Wow, this is wild. I'd never even heard of this game.
|
| Based on the linked article, this seems exactly like the kind of
| game that would have had an AMAZING sequel.
|
| You know the type of game I mean. The first game breaks all types
| of new ground with a bunch of innovative ideas and is fun, but
| also has a lot of jank and rough edges because they were trying
| so many new things at once. And then the _sequel_ is where it all
| really comes together. The ideas that didn 't work are fixed or
| discarded, everything else gets polish, and a few new ideas are
| introduced.
|
| Too bad it never got one...
| danvayn wrote:
| These are my favorite kinds of blogs. Irrelevant knowledge formed
| from notes; even if I'm interested in game development or retro
| games it has little use for me to peruse, but it's fun to play
| the observer and read into people's human digest or solutions to
| abstract issues. I wish there were more blogs like this. Thanks
| for sharing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-09-17 21:02 UTC)