La abadía del crimen (The Abbey of Crime) is a computer video game programmed in 1987 by Paco Menéndez and Juan Delcán. The game was originally conceived as a version of Umberto Eco's book The Name of the Rose. However, the developers received no reply from Eco in order to secure the rights for the name, so the game was released as La abadía del crimen. This game is a videoadventure with 3D isometric graphics, where a Franciscan friar, William of Occam, and his young novice Adso have to discover the perpetrator of a series of murders in a medieval Italian abbey.
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there's a 2004 win32 remake with built in english translation if you dont want to play the extensum remake https://la-abadia-del-crimen-the-abbey-of-crime.en.uptodown.com/windows
kind of a nightmare to get through but um im not sure what it did to my brain. its kind of living inside of me at the moment. maybe stockholm syndrome. rly terse in how it expects you to make sense of the evidence it presents to you as heavily abstracted into videogame form and also not interpreted for you by the characters. the terseness of dialogue is funny too, especially in contrast with the florid prose bookends taken straight from the original book, The Name of the Rose. i haven't read it yet but it would appear "adapt a classic novel/movie but make all the plot events Gameplay Sequences" as a general tendency has been with videogames from the beginning... la abadia never quite succeeds at conveying the full thematic or aesthetic content that i assume is in the original despite trying to sell you on it with the aforementioned prose bookends and with detailed simulation of the monks' movements (which makes their more insectoid or single-minded tendencies stand out all the more): whats left feels weirder, emptier, more mechanical... terser. more or less requires you to know the plot of Name of the Rose to progress, especially for a late game clue you're given all of five minutes to interpret, which i guess is not much of a step up from using the map that the devs published in a game magazine to get through the labyrinth. idk hard to describe. i will need to sit on it.
the abbey while not QUITE as mysterious as i expected is a new favorite videogame location for me. the monks' routines and even in a way the screen-to-screen shifts in perspective bring it to life. also, between this and yume nikki i reckon theres a deep symbolic charge to games having exactly one infuriating maze section
anyway this is a fun game, use a guide, its basically the intended experience https://www.habisoft.com/pcwwiki/doku.php?id=en:nuevos:abadia
kind of a nightmare to get through but um im not sure what it did to my brain. its kind of living inside of me at the moment. maybe stockholm syndrome. rly terse in how it expects you to make sense of the evidence it presents to you as heavily abstracted into videogame form and also not interpreted for you by the characters. the terseness of dialogue is funny too, especially in contrast with the florid prose bookends taken straight from the original book, The Name of the Rose. i haven't read it yet but it would appear "adapt a classic novel/movie but make all the plot events Gameplay Sequences" as a general tendency has been with videogames from the beginning... la abadia never quite succeeds at conveying the full thematic or aesthetic content that i assume is in the original despite trying to sell you on it with the aforementioned prose bookends and with detailed simulation of the monks' movements (which makes their more insectoid or single-minded tendencies stand out all the more): whats left feels weirder, emptier, more mechanical... terser. more or less requires you to know the plot of Name of the Rose to progress, especially for a late game clue you're given all of five minutes to interpret, which i guess is not much of a step up from using the map that the devs published in a game magazine to get through the labyrinth. idk hard to describe. i will need to sit on it.
the abbey while not QUITE as mysterious as i expected is a new favorite videogame location for me. the monks' routines and even in a way the screen-to-screen shifts in perspective bring it to life. also, between this and yume nikki i reckon theres a deep symbolic charge to games having exactly one infuriating maze section
anyway this is a fun game, use a guide, its basically the intended experience https://www.habisoft.com/pcwwiki/doku.php?id=en:nuevos:abadia
an amazing accomplishment for its time, though almost unbearable without save states or a guide. however, with those tools, the game becomes about learning the abbey, its residents, and its secrets, and you can immerse yourself in this grand work of 8-bit architecture.
(if this sounds cool to you but you're not down for 1980s home computer game nonsense, check out the remake on steam)
(if this sounds cool to you but you're not down for 1980s home computer game nonsense, check out the remake on steam)