Introduction
Your Brain is Awesome: Let's Play Gray MatterHorror adventure game subtitled LP. Disregard the thread title, I'm a complete idiot.
When DTP Entertainment released Gray Matter in late 2010, following seven years of troubled development, it was instantly met with universal acclaim, pouring new life into the dying adventure genre. Well, not really, no matter how much I wish it was true. In fact, I have no idea how successful it was and frankly, I don't care – it will remain one of my favorite games of the past few years.
Gray Matter was designed and written by Jane Jensen, best known for authoring the praised Gabriel Knight trilogy. She spent the past decade mostly working on small-time casual games and taking care of her family's ranch. She also wrote Dante's Equation, a mystical novel which ended up being nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. When she got a chance to work on another high-profile project, she accepted it. And her involvement certainly shows – while most contemporary adventure games outright suck due to an insulting lack of originality, Gray Matter was clearly crafted with love and care. In the interviews Jensen gave about GM, she could hardly contain her passion about the game and its potential sequels.
It does have flaws, though, some of which are quite significant. And I'll try to discuss those as they surface over the course of the LP. However, it is an overall enjoyable experience, a horror adventure game which actually – for once - contains some creepy / scary moments without relying on jump scares or gratuitous body horror. Plus, it manages to build pretty good characters and a very strong atmosphere – which is all that more impressive considering the quite limited resources that were available for GM's development.
Intended as a more subtle and nuanced take on the supernatural than the Gabriel Knight series, Gray Matter succeeds at being more relevant to our modern world without losing distinctiveness and personality. We take control of Sam Everett, an aspiring illusionist from the US. She has been trying to get her career as a magician started, but she hasn't had too much luck so far. In fact, she is in a pretty dire position, stranded in the middle of nowhere (i. e. the wasteland that is English countryside) with her bike broken beyond repair and a measly five quid in her pocket. No wonder she decides to make a choice she may soon come to regret. Sit back, dear reader, and let the tale of mystique and science, of the secrets hiding within our brains, unravel...
-Recommended reading: Twas the night before - a short story that sheds some light on our protagonist's past. Interesting, but not mandatory for understanding the game.
| Intro movie | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode I: Welcome to Oxford | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode II: Treasure Hunt | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode III: Mysterious doctor Styles | YouTube | |
| Episode IV: Slightly Unfocused | YouTube | |
| Episode V: Venerable Repository of Knowledge | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode VI: Lambs of Dr. Styles | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode VII: Something is different | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode VIII: Blue Tiles | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode IX: The Pool Mystery | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode X: Dodgson's Egg | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XI: Dodgson's Egg | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XII: Excalibur | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XIII | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XIV | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XV | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XVI | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XVII | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XVIII | YouTube | blip.tv |
| Episode XIX | YouTube | blip.tv |