The Ballad Of Al Emmo & the Himalaya Studios Gang
Josh Moxie Sprague, 2005-09-27

Spend a little over an hour with the designers at Himalaya studios and you may find yourself compelled to pitch in on their project or even start making a game of your own. This is definitely the feeling this author found as he listened to Britney Brimhall, Chris Warren, and Stijn van Empel's artless enthusiasm for their current project, Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine.

Britney, the CEO of Himalaya, conceived Al Emmo's story while studying abroad in Germany. To combat homesickness, she began to write a narrative that took place in her native Arizona and involved a local legend about a fabled lost gold mine. The game takes place in the Old West which can cause classic adventure gamers to make hasty comparisons to Freddy Pharkas. However, Britney confesses that she hadn't played Sierra's Western before writing hers.

While she was unfamiliar with one Sierra title, this may be the only one. Britney, Chris and Stijn are walking homages to all things Sierra and adventure games of days gone by. They previously collaborated on successful remakes of King's Quest I and King's Quest II and are currently developing a remake of Quest for Glory II as a side-project. They even made a pilgrimage to California to visit Lori and Cory Cole and show the original designers their tribute.

As old-school developers pass on a once bright, but now low-burning torch to Himalaya, a story outside the game begins to develop. Adventure games were once at the top of the totem pole in the PC gaming world, but in a relatively short time have become a somewhat niche genre. However, the youngest of the kids who grew up on Space Quests and Monkey Islands are now reaching the perfect age to create an Indie title. Without children and mortgages, it's possible for a small staff to hole up in a single apartment and pour all available time into the game like the legends of past PC game-makers. This is what Himalaya is doing and it's something inspiring when modern games like Unreal II had multi-million dollar budgets and 300 names on the credits.

Going back to Al Emmo, the title is ambitious for an independent team. The backgrounds and character portraits are of the 2D, hand-painted variety. The approach is illustrative and cartoony and the overall style has a unique feel. The characters are done in 3D, allowing for nice movement and animation.

Narration and dialogue in the game are fully-voiced by thoroughly decent voice actors and the team has also spent significant time lip-syncing all of it. With the all-to-common shoddiness of voice-acting in well-budgeted games, it's refreshing to find a team that pours a great deal of its resources into such an important aspect of the game. In an adventure game, what one hears is as important as what one sees and Al Emmo's aural side contributes well to the overall comic experience.

Speaking of comic experiences, Al Emmo is a comedy. The story begins with the hero/lovable loser heading out west to pick up a mail-order bride of sorts. Staying true to the genre, the story includes wacky characters, social satire, pop-culture references, double-entendres, and harebrained schemes. What this author saw in preview not only made him smile, but actually laugh out loud more than once.

After spending time with the team at Himalaya and perusing Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine, one realizes that these guys "get it." Their passion for the adventure genre is sincere and they know and respect the history. This more than anything makes Al Emmo a title to keep on the "To Play" list. The title is very near completion and the team has announced an in-house beta phase starting within a few weeks. So get your trigger finger ready. You'll need it soon:-)