Grim Fandango
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)
The Good
Grim Fandango is an excellent game, the graphics are so good, and the plot is simply fantastic.
If you are an adventure lover, here you will find everything that you ever wanted:graphics? Even the backgrounds seem to be planned until the further details. Story? You will find an excellent plot here, while you help Manny to find the truth in the Land Of Dead. Puzzles? Yes, like in almost every good adventure, there are a lot of things that will make you guess and think to solve them.
The Bad
At first you will find yourself a little frustrated trying to move Manny, but once you get used to it, it will be very easy.
And you cannot play it under Windows 2000, unless you download a patch for this SO from the people of Microsoft.
The Bottom Line
Once again, the people from LucasArts surprise us with a game that makes a big step in Adventure games.
Windows · by Emepol (212) · 2011
Unlike any adventure game to date: Guaranteed
The Good
Tim Schafer. Day of the Tentacle was great, and Grim Fandango is his best work thus far. Fandango's humor is unmatched. I played through it twice to make sure I heard all of the possible dialogue choices.
Fandango's real strength comes from being able to be consistently funny, while still maintaining a sense of gravity, allowing serious situations to seem truly serious, and evil characters are as nasty as they need be. The dark, gritty presentation of the game is superb. Manny Calavera, the Grim Reaper for the Dept. of Death Is a smooth Bogart-esque character who gets the job done, and in one part of the game you own a nightclub, very similar to a certain gin-joint owned by certain Mr. Rick, complete with gambling tables, a French military man, and a wheezy little Peter Lorre. Watch Casablanca, then play Year 2 of this game and it will seem even funnier.
The Bad
There isn't a sequel...not that there really could be one...I guess my real gripe is that Schafer hasn't done anything since Grim Fandango.
The Bottom Line
A mysterious adventure set in the Land of the Dead that's as good as any Bogart movie, and even better than a few of them.
Windows · by MA17 (252) · 2000
A nice long adventure game...too bad it's 3D
The Good
The game has a very original and interesting plot...
The voice acting is really great...the game is also very funny in a dark, sarcastic kinda way...
The Bad
3D Killed the adventure game star.......that's all I have to say about 3D animations in adventure games...besides, the interface is not comfortable because you don't really know what objects you can interact with, although Manny is looking at the objects when he's passing by them... you don't really know what he's looking at...
( the problem with this interface was solved in Monkey Island 4, there LucasArts wrote at the bottom of each screen the objects and people you can interact with )
The Bottom Line
A funny and cool adventure game, if you don't mind the 3D graphics, you'll have a blast !!!
Windows · by Daniel Albu (248) · 2003
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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Related Sites +
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3DGamers
Location for downloading the Grim Fandango Demo and Patch -
Department of Death
A huge Grim Fandango fan site, with screenshots, movies, fan fiction and much more! -
Gamespot's Grim Fandango Game Guide
a good walkthru for the game -
Grim Fandango - FAQs & Guides
Many different walkthroughs and guides on GameFaqs.com -
Grim Fandango Network
A fan site. -
Hints for Grim Fandango
Stuck? These hints will help you solve the game. -
ResidualVM
A cross-platform, open-source interpreter capable of making Grim Fandango run on a number of modern operating systems. -
The D.O.D. Travellers' Guide
A site with a drawn out map of the "Land of the Dead", with information about all of the locations.
Identifiers +
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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.