Grim Fandango

aka: Deeds of the Dead
Moby ID: 201
Conversion (official) Included in

Description official descriptions

Not much is known about the life of Manuel "Manny" Calavera. It is, however, known what happened to him after he died. The Land of the Dead is where all people are reincarnated after death, turning into skeletal figures. The Land of the Dead is also very similar to the world of the living: people work, have careers, fall in love, and can even die again, turning into flowers. And they all await their final destiny - a trip to the underworld. Depending on their deeds in life, they might get a good journey or be destined to walk there without any means.

Manny works in a travel agency that takes care of such trips. But recently, something has been going wrong. Manny is unable to get good clients, and he suspects that there is a scheme to falsify the dossiers of dead people, offering the best trips to scoundrels for bribes. Manny's grand adventure begins as he steps into the world of corruption and intrigues.

Grim Fandango is a puzzle-solving adventure game that describes several years of Manny Calavera's afterlife. Influenced by Mexican mythology, film noir and Art Deco, the game combines 3D characters with pre-rendered backgrounds. The traditional mouse interaction was abandoned in favor of keyboard control for movements and actions. Manny is navigated with arrow keys, and tilts his head whenever something attracts his interest; the object or character in question can then be examined or interacted with.

As usually in LucasArts' adventure games, conversations offer plenty of different responses that can be chosen by the player. Despite the lack of the option to combine items with each other within the inventory, the game still contains many challenging puzzles that require manipulating inventory items and the environment.

Spellings

  • 冥界狂想曲 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 神通鬼大 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

188 People (187 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

Project Leader
Lead Artist
Lead Programmer
Conceptual Artist
Music Composed and Produced By
Assistant Designers
Production Manager
Production Coordinator
Programmers
Character Animation
Background Artists
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 92% (based on 55 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.2 out of 5 (based on 412 ratings with 23 reviews)

Hola, Viva La Revolucion!!!

The Good
Good graphics - 10 year later still the graphics are good and smooth for an adventure game, in which the graphics are not the primary important thing for the genre. Great story and great story telling, unique characters, clever puzzles, good reflection of the Mexican culture. Voice acting is great, especially Manny's. Music is delicious and harmonic with the atmosphere of the game (do something good for yourself, also buy the soundtrack album with the game) There are lots of things to say about this game because overall this is a wonderful piece of art.

The Bad
Is that a joke? How can I find something to dislike about this game? Well ok let me try; I think the keyboard based control system sucks a little bit.

The Bottom Line
Grim Fandango is a Lucas Arts classic, featuring all the classical Lucas Arts elements. I think this is the greatest adventure game of all times. A must-play.

Windows · by kulke (1) · 2008

Extraordinary game!

The Good
The game is superb. A true example of what may be accomplished in the domain of, dare I say it, art. Stunning graphics, smooth animations, breathtaking sound-track, witty dialogue, it has it all. Now, I shall make points about how MAT is oh so wrong:

1.) "Graphic was about to be funny to us players, huh? They did it on purpose, and they actually thought we could like that ... Imagine every character's head like a rectangle with a certain depth, and face made like with a few coal lines. "

If you actually READ the manual, you would know that they were meant to look like "Calaveras", dolls used during the Day of the Dead festival to symbolize deceased relatives. And though the vertices were clearly defined, it looked right. And be glad they could get such detailed expressions with those "coal lines".

2.)

"...just for the records, your driver was like two times bigger than the car he's driving. It could seem funny, but very soon it becomes stupidly annoying..."

Again, you miss the point. Thats one of the reasons why we like Glottis. He's big. Its not necessarily funny, nor was it intended to be. Its ironic. He's a Demon who's only purpose is to drive, and he has to hack apart a car to fit in it. Hence, irony. And, his personality wouldn't really work if he were smaller. In fact, I can think of only two gags in which his size is the main factor: when he pops out of his work shed in the beggining, and {SPOILER} at the end when he hugs and nearly suffocates (uh, I guess thats not an issue) Manny.

3.)

"...the game would be much more funnier or interesting if the skeletons (and that includes all the characters) looks more vicious, like the one from Diablo or some AD&D games..."

They aren't supposed to be "vicious". Again, see No. 1 for some specifics about the art. The characters are made to be charismatic. The idea is to identify with them, explore their personality and watch as they develop and grow. You need to feel Manny's frustration, Glottis vehicle obsession, Meche's abandonment, Hector's ruthlesness, etc. These aren't static characters.

4.)

"...Way to go Lucas! You drove your best customers crazy and mad..."

I don't agree with that.



The Bad
The one flaw is the two puzzles that require complete precision. However, once you learn the trick, it becomes immensley easy. Every rose has it's thorns.

The Bottom Line
This is not a request. This is an order. Get the game. Now. Run, don't walk. If you alreay have the game, buy another copy and display it on your mantle.

The game is marvelous.

*Though the review has been quoted and edited (using ...) nothing has been ommitted or added in the used sections. The author will probably hate me now, but I figure I could use some more enemys.

Windows · by Fakey McFake (3) · 2003

If video games really are art, this is the greatest game ever made.

The Good
Grim Fandango features a production value higher than almost any game ever made. The story, voice acting, and art are so consistently brilliant that it gives on pause to consider that a game like this could never be made in the current gaming industry. This was a rare gem, a masterpiece of creativity that came at just the right time.

The story is amazingly well done. Tim Burton couldn't have delivered it better with his stop-motion, as the epic saga of Manny Calavera is delivered with nuance and humor. I have played this game numerous times through, and every time I get a little emotional at the end. It's just that well done, and the characters are so alive, even if they're dead.

The art is excellently done, with a variety of styles convincingly executed, albeit all within the overall motif of the game. While the characters themselves are low-res, this is not the result of any lack of vision, but of the technology available, and likely, the monetary support of Lucasarts.

Grim also features the best voice acting I've yet seen in a game. The use of real actors (Manny is voiced by the guy who played El Guapo's sidekick in "The Three Amigos") adds so much to the experience.

The gameplay itself is typical adventure fare, well executed. The puzzles are intelligent, but not overwrought or bizarre. Mostly, they serve to pace the wonderful storyline.

Also, the music was fantastic, featuring a variety of genres and instruments, all composed for the game and featured at precisely the right moment.

The Bad
The control scheme leaves something to be desired, and the puzzles aren't always intuitive. Sometimes you have to bang your head against the wall to come up with a solution to a few of them.

There were some technical glitches that were fixed with a later patch.



The Bottom Line
Grim Fandango is ultimately a story. It is a game which anyone could enjoy, or at least anyone who appreciates storytelling and human drama. It is a story of redemption, and it is beautifully delivered in the format of a video game.

Windows · by kyuzo (18) · 2006

[ View all 23 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Grim Fandango appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cut dialogue

Originally, Manny could find out the entire conspiracy in a conversation with Domino in Year Three. The audio files shipped with the game, but the dialogue tree was cut.

Gags

  • In the hallway of the DOD there is a picture of a boat. If you look at in Manny says "Not that I have a choice, but I wonder if I would be happier working on a ship. Then again I'm so competitive I wouldn't be able to rest until I was Captain." At the end of year two on the ship he is just the cleaner, and then a year later he is the captain.
  • The main character in this game is a skeleton, take a look at the side of the box and you'll see a different LucasArts logo. The usual golden figure who raises his arms (towards the sun?) is replaced by a skeleton.

References

  • The game's hero is Manny Calavera. Calaveras are actually those skeleton-dolls, which the majority of the characters in this game are.
  • One of the characters is called Olivia Ofrenda. "Ofrenda" is a Mexican celebration of the dead.
  • As in many others LucasArts games, you can find Max, from Sam & Max. Go to the tattoo parlor (in Rubacava, you must walk all the way to the right). Take a look to the poster and you will find him in the tattoo designs.
  • In year 2, there is a part of the game where you see a Blimp/Zeppelin hovering in the air above the Cat Tracks... As you cross the bridge under it, a short melody plays which is part of the opening theme to Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe... and older World War 2 flightsim from Lucasarts (or Lucasfilm Games as it was known back then)
  • Including the references mentioned below, the game's characters have many similarities to actual Day of the Dead objects. There is, for example, Don Copal - Copal is a festive resin from tropical trees often burned in special bowls on graves during the Day of the Dead in Mexico.
  • You soon end up working for an underground organisation called the L.S.A., or the Lost Souls Alliance. As stated in the manual Grim Fandango is steeped in references to Aztec and Mayan culture and art (as well as Mexican folklore and film noir of the 1930's, 40's and 50's). LSA (for short) is the psychoactive ingredient of 'Ololiuqui' - the Aztec name for the seeds of certain plants that have been used and held sacred by the Aztecs for many years. This may or may not be intentional but trivia nonetheless!
  • The game contains a reference to Frank Herbert's sci-fi cult novel Dune. At the end of the 4th year, when Salvador bites down on a fake tooth, releasing a cloud of poison that kills both him and his victim, he alludes to an almost identical event in Dune.

Budget & Sales

The budget was a whopping 3 million dollars but the sales didn't live up to that investment. As of 2004, Grim Fandango is the only game that didn't make LucasArts a profit.

Saving screen

As you progress through the game, more of the design over the save screen will show.

Title

The game was originally going to be named Deeds of the Dead but the management at LucasArts didn't want a reference to death in the title.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) – Best Adventure Game of the Year (together with Sanitarium)
    • January 2001 (Issue #199) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • March 2001 (Issue #200) - #7 Best Game Of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #87 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #41 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best Adventure in 1999
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 11/2005 - #2 Game Which Absolutely Needs A Sequel
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1999 – Best Adventure in 1998

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Emepol, James Isaac. PCGamer77, Roedie, Scott Monster, [SDfish, [Tom Murphy](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,66915/), [WildKard](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,16566/), [Unicorn Lynx](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,6226/) and [Zack Green](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,9727/)](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,45163/)

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  • MobyGames ID: 201
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Ryan Lucas.

Additional contributors: Swordmaster, Xa4, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Zack Green, Shoddyan, James Isaac, Zeppin, CaesarZX, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Thomas Helsing, Patrick Bregger, Ingsoc, FatherJack.

Game added August 10, 1999. Last modified March 27, 2024.