Cover art by Ellory.
Our monthly feature on historically panned games for @PIZZAPRANKS‘ Indiepocalypse returns, with an article on the prehistoric Trespasser: The Lost World – Jurassic Park. We take the opportunity to explore its troubled development, technically-challenged release, and what ultimately proved to be a lasting positive impact on the games industry at large. It’s a personal favorite game of mine – warts and all – and one which we’ll surely find the time to revisit for this site in the future! But for now, y’all have an early opportunity to see some of my takes on the much-maligned first-person adventure, and to discover which modern-day games and developers owe it a debt of gratitude:
That’s the main lesson I reckon I like to take away from Trespasser‘s legacy: It’s the proof that a commercially failed, overly-ambitious game can still make an impact on the larger industry, and inspire developers in the years to follow. As I use this Bad Game Corner to highlight novel ideas in notorious releases, this is ultimately the premise which I’m trying to impart and get across myself. Whether your personal takeaways are to do what these games attempted to do “but better,” or to center your high concept software around their most singularly obtuse and ill-advised ideas on offer, you’ll be equally as valid. The beauty of games can often be in their iterative nature, and the ability of future developers to learn from history — to full-heartedly embrace concepts that debut as half-baked, and spin gold of them with the benefits of experience and time. Or, some may just choose to embrace chaos instead, and take roundly rejected ideas to their logical extremes, in order to see who laughs and who actually puts the time into fully understanding their eccentricity. Trespasser is clearly a game which has been able to inspire those within both schools of thought, and should be recognized as such for its continued contributions to the games industry — unintentional as some may well have been.
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