Introduction

So, what's all this then?

This is Safecracker, a game I'd describe as being "two parts puzzle game, one part point-and-click adventure". It was developed by Daydream Software and released in 1997.

Daydream Software? Who's that?

Daydream Software is a Swedish developer which was founded in 1994. Their first release was Safecracker, and they only released a few more games before being liquidated and turning into Resolution Interactive, who haven't released anything new, to my knowledge. Their other games are as follows: Traitor's Gate (a game similar to Safecracker, except you're stealing the crown jewels from the Tower of London); Ski-Doo: X-Team Racing (apparently a basic racing game, can't find much on this one) and Clusterball (you fly around in a spaceship, collecting balls and flying them into your goal, trying to outscore the opponents). They were planning a "reverse survival horror game" called Campfire: Become Your Nightmare which would have put you into the shoes of a serial killer on a camp ground, but the game was cancelled. Overall, their resume isn't exactly stellar, and I'd wager nobody reading this had heard of them before.

Then tell us more about this game, now.

To expand on what I said earlier, here's a basic description of the game: You find yourself in a Quicktime "room" in which you can look around in any way you wish, as long as you don't move - you have a full 3D view of every "room" available to you. In this "room" you look around, interacting with objects and moving to other "rooms" - that's the "point and click adventure" part. The main point, however, is to find safes and solve their puzzles - that's where the "puzzle game" part comes from, obviously. The over-arching goal is to find the combination to the Crabb master safes that are strewn about in the mansion, locked in the minor safes. The story is also given in a small comic strip in the manual, which is kind of neat:

So what makes this game worth showing off?

While this game isn't exactly going to set the world on fire, I feel like it got a bad rap back when it was released (although I can only find so much information about that nowadays), and it really deserves better. The developers worked hard to create interesting puzzles and went the extra mile in making the Crabb estates feel alive - there's a bunch of little things that make the world seem a lot more realistic than just being a multitude of rooms you trudge through, solving puzzles as you go along, but we'll get to that in the actual LP.

Also, I'd like to point out a review on IGN. I'll be referring to this review occasionally, because it's a decent example of just how this game was... "misunderstood", for lack of a better term.

What kind of LP is this going to be?

This will be a hybrid LP - most of the LP will be in screenshot form, because while the way you get around the mansion is really neat to play with, it's not that interesting to watch. I'll put in videos for larger animations and puzzle solutions.

What's the goal for this LP?

Originally, I had planned to "100%" the game (not even sure if that's possible in the literal sense, since the percentage counter the game gives you has two digits only), which meant solving all the puzzles. But since this game is so short, I think I should go a bit further, so I'm going to try and show off everything noteworthy. This should be easy to check for me, because the game's files are not stored in any sort of archive and even meticulously sorted, making for an easy room-by-room checklist I can tick off.

But enough waffling, let's get on to the actual game:

The Let's Play Archive

Safecracker

by TheMcD

Introduction

Table of Contents