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Any Maniac Mansion Clones?

Siobhan

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I'm a huge noob when it comes to adventure games, so this might be a very ignorant question:

For the longest time I only knew the 90s classics like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Gabriel Knight, Discworld, etc, and they always struck me as dull non-games. Only recently have I found some games in the genre that I like, e.g. Shadowgate. But the best entry imho is Maniac Mansion because it has

- flexible party,
- non-linear exploration,
- some navigation puzzles,
- multiple solutions for some puzzles,
- dynamic world on a timer,
- very little dialog and story,
- amazing atmosphere,
- some actual failure states.

In many respects it feels more like a dungeon crawler without combat than a point-and-click adventure. Other games like Myst, early King's Quest and the ICOM games check some of those boxes, but not all of them. So, is Maniac Mansion one of a kind or are there any clones? If not, why didn't the success of Maniac Mansion spawn the usual copycats?

For the record, I looked at the supposed spiritual successor Thimbleweed Park, but that seems to just be your standard point'n'click adventure.
 

Unkillable Cat

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If not, why didn't the success of Maniac Mansion spawn the usual copycats?

Because the exact same things you cite as making Maniac Mansion great did not fall well with the target demographic back then. I've spent a couple of minutes thinking here and I can't remember any adventure game that had you control 3 characters in real-time, let alone all the other stuff MM pulled off.

It isn't until I venture outside of the realm of adventure games that I come up with a game that ticks off most of those boxes: Hired Guns.
 

Siobhan

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Yeah, Hired Guns is neat, but a very different kind of game. Now I'm kind of eager to dig up some old Maniac Mansion reviews to see what people back then liked and disliked about it.
 

V_K

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Try Goetia, it has most of the things you mentioned:

- flexible party,
No, but you can pick optional (and usually hidden) power-ups for your character that will open some alternative solutions.

- non-linear exploration,
The game's completely open-world past the first 30 minutes.

- some navigation puzzles,
There's a very fun mechanic where your char is a ghost, so she can pass through walls easily, but when you need to move an item somewhere you have to find a barrier-less route.

- multiple solutions for some puzzles,
Yes, for a lot of them.

- dynamic world on a timer,
Nope.

- very little dialog and story,
Very little dialog and plot advancement, but lots of backstory - journals, logs etc. Kinda like Myst in that regard. The backstory's very original and well-written though.

- amazing atmosphere,
One of the games strongest points, really.

- some actual failure states.
Sorta, there are two possible endings depending on whether you'vs solved some non-critical puzzles.
 

V_K

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I guess Resonance qualifies to some extent (though its character switching is more limited/less open-ended than MM), but you've probably played that already.
Brok the Investigator has two characters to switch between - but they're both mandatory. But both of them have different options for puzzle solutions and some plot choices, so the game itself is very free-form. And pretty awesome.
 

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