Chris Bateman
Introduction
This is a shortlist of games where game designer, philosopher and author Chris Bateman was involved in. He worked on more than 40 published games in total. Quite a lot of them were pretty throwaway like Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue, Bad Boys: Miami Takedown, Bratz games... but there were also some hidden gems among them. He took part in development of games like Ghost Master where you scare people with ghosts in a Sims type of environment or Discworld Noir which is both an example and a parody of the noir genre. He was also involved in a great little Slovakian Euro-RPG, called Kult: Heretic Kingdoms (Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition in America) where you pretty much start off as the bad guy and try to kill off religion. Ten years later he's also taking part in development of the sequel called Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms which you can now find on Steam!
He also wrote some great post mortems which made the games themselves more interesting. In true game industry fashion, he barely made money off them. At their time these games were commercial failures and he doesn't see a penny from some of the later re-releases on Steam or GOG.
Recently Chris Bateman got awared a PhD in aesthetics of play of games and videogames at University of Bolton and is the first person to do so.
Discworld Noir (1999)
Description: A point & click adventure game that takes place in the Discworld universe with approval and involvement from Terry Pratchett. It features a new character who is a private investigator. The game is an example and parody of the noir genre. Chris Bateman was responsible for the narrative design.
You can watch a post mortem about Discworld Noir here.
Discworld Noir isn't available on GOG or Steam and on top of that it's near impossible to run it on a modern pc. Some of the guides for getting this game to work basically tell you to install the game on a virtual machine of Windows XP.
Ghost Master (2003)
Description: An anti-Sims game where you haunt Sims with your ghosts. All the good bits in the game were designed by Chris Bateman. Negative bits are the puzzle missions, which are hard especially towards the end. This game is at its best when just scaring people.
You can read the post mortem about Ghost Master here.
Ghost Master can be bought on Steam here.
Kult Heretic: Kingdoms (2005)
Description: An action RPG that's limited in scope but well executed. The narrative design is done by Chris Bateman. You are an inquisitor who wants to eliminate religion. The game breaks away from standard fantasy tropes (no orcs or elves).
The post mortem for Kult: Heretic Kingdoms can be found here.
Kult: Heretic Kingdoms can be found on GOG here.
Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms (~2015)
Description: Sequel to Kult: Heretic Kingdoms that is currently in Steam early access. Chris Bateman is the narrative lead and script writer in this game.
Developer diary with Chris Bateman can be found here.
Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms can be found on Steam here.
Credits
The image from Chris Bateman was taken from his twitter account @SpiralChris.
The image for Ghost Master was taken from an excellent visual walkthrough for the game at http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/.
The Shadows Heretic Kingdoms logo was taken from the official website at http://www.shadows-game.com/.
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