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The original Zak on the left and a Gamemaker verison on the right. Notice any family resemblence?
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was released in 1988 by Lucasfilm games. Zak resembles the wacky 1954 sci-fi movie "This Island Earth", complete with big headed aliens, spaceships beaming in biplanes, and big screen communications. Zak and Maniac Mansion were two of my favorite games (and still are). Obviously quite influenced, I set out to create my own adventure game with similar themes.
The story was to deal with Zak's cousin Zeke, who somehow gets taken prisoner by a crazy old farmer. Remember Farmers Daughter? I played that game a lot too, so it must have influenced the story line. "Zeke McKracken and the Zany House" was to be my magnum opus of Gamemaker, but sadly it was never finished.
Due to Gamemakers limit of two high-resolution backgrounds, this game would have to be rather shortened compared to regular Lucasfilm games. I decided on two rooms to the "Zany House" - a main floor and an attic (see hanging rope in picture above). What it lacked in explorable areas I was going to make up for in puzzles - lots of them, crammed into two rooms.
Keeping with the style of Lucasfilm games, I made a little introduction...
Zeke is tied up in a chair. The farmer paces around like a madman.
Notice the sentences are kinda short? It's because I only had
room for 20 characters with Gamemakers expanded font.
Even though he says he'll be back in an hour, I was going to give
the player as much time as needed to solve the game.
That should be enough reason to escape!
You tell 'em Zeke!
See farmer Joe walking past the window in the background! This
neat effect is possible because Gamemaker allows for
transparent colors.
Now Zeke is up out of his chair. My walking algorithm sucked.
It never did work out really.
But you could click on any of the 15 verbs, and the code was set
up for these to become active.
This game was never completed. I can't be sure what happened exactly - something about high school, drinking and getting more interested in girls, going to University, the c64 becoming obsolete, etc etc etc... Tragic really.
Download Zeke McKracken(unfinished)