1. This is an adaptation of a novel in game form. It is not a game based on a book. It is the entire book redone as a game. Yes, there is a difference.
2. It does this by taking the narrative from the original novel pretty much straight-up and augmenting it only w/ some simple game mechanics. For example, when a room would simply be described in a book, you are asked to click around on various objects in the room and receive the description in return for your trouble in doing so. Your interaction w/ the world is really quite minimal and the whole experience is entirely scripted.
3. If you look through user reviews on games like this, there will frequently be admonishments that it's not really a game. I am not sure quite where the line between being a game and not being a game is but I do feel like this holds up pretty well as a way of telling stories whatever it is.
4. The story here is... I dunno... pretty good. It's based on a novel by the same title which was good enough to be reworked by Hitchcock among others so they probably know better than I do. I thought the setup was a bit thin but it works well enough as an excuse to put together suspenseful scenes.
5. Like basically everything in The 39 Steps, the initial impetus to action for the main character comes at random. Our man is called Hannay and he's a Canadian living in London after amassing some wealth mining diamonds in Rhodesia. He is growing ever more bored of living the high life but, luckily for him, this seems about to change upon meeting a spy who just happens to live in the same apartment complex.
6. It is not lucky for the spy who is promptly murdered after leaving Hannay w/ the details of an insidious conspiracy to murder the Greek premier when he visits London.
7. Actually, it is only lucky for Hannay if you consider being on the lam from both the law--who think he murdered the spy--and the people who actually murdered the spy preferable to being bored by eating in London's best restaurants every night.
8. Hannay flees from London to Scotland from where his family is native. He runs into a series of improbable situations, both helpful and potentially deadly where he is forced to rely on wits and quit thinking to push toward his ultimate goal of surviving and busting the conspiracy to assassinate the Greek premiere. The episodic nature of these encounters provides a constant pulse of tension and release that keeps The 39 Steps consistently tense and captivating throughout.
9. While the story here is pretty pulp, the presentation keeps it from seeming entirely stupid. A hand drawn art style and mostly well-acted voice work (there is one guy who does bit part accents that are a bit much) set a believable stage for each scene to be acted out. The coincidences are a bit much--Hannay even seems to acknowledge as much in his own narration--but this is less about being strictly believable than it is about creating a mood.
10. Along w/ the art and music, some the unique details that make this presentation of The 39 Steps the most engaging have nothing to do w/ the game-like elements. People, for example, are typically shown as ghost-like figures leaving the player to fill in the details w/ what fits their mind best for the story.
11. There are a few times though where having some interaction is essential. The simple act of having people click on things to get a description works well in a visual medium. In a novel, the author can subtly point out the most important details, but just displaying the scene as you might in a movie, the viewer could miss essential elements you want them to see. You also have the option of just altogether skipping looking through everything, which is something someone in Hannay's situation might reasonably do.
12. The conclusion to this whole business is rather satisfying and not sewn up in quite the way you might expect.
13. I am hesitant to use the word experimental to describe this. I feel like when people call art experimental, what they really mean is that it is art that is trying to be weird. The 39 Steps is not weird at all. It is an actual experiment in narrative that incorporates elements of movies, games and novels and it comes off as a perfectly natural way to tell a story.
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