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Chzo Mythos

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Chzo Mythos
Developer(s)Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
Designer(s)Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
EngineAdventure Game Studio (AGS)
Platform(s)Windows
Release2003 (5 Days), 2004 (7 Days), June 26, 2006 (Notes), January 25, 2007 (6 Days)
Genre(s)Adventure
Mode(s)Single player

The Chzo Mythos is the collective title given to a series of four amateur adventure games created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw using the Adventure Game Studio development tool. The games are, in order of release, 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice. (In chronological order of the games' events: 5 Days, Trilby's Notes, 6 Days, 7 Days).

The series is also sometimes called the DeFoe series, after one of the main characters; the Trilby series, after one of the main characters; or the X Days a Sauerkraut series after the naming scheme of three of the four games. The author commentary for 6 Days a Sacrifice confirms Chzo Mythos as Yahtzee's intended title, despite referring to it several times on the official sites as the "John Defoe Quadrilogy".

In 5 Days a Stranger, the player controls the shady cat burglar Trilby, who stumbles across a demonic force that manifests itself as a masked killer in the tradition of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, while finding himself one of a group of strangers thrown together in an abandoned mansion and being picked off one by one. 7 Days a Skeptic emulates the claustrophobic horror of Alien, following a spaceship crew that finds artifacts from the first game floating in space, four hundred years after the events of 5 Days a Stranger. Trilby's Notes, set in a hotel which exists in both the real world and a horrific alternate dimension in the style of Silent Hill, goes back to flesh out the origin of the cursed African idol from the other games. While the first two games use the point and click interface typical of recent adventure games, Trilby's Notes requires the player to move with the keyboard and type commands with a text parser, similarly to early Sierra On-Line games like King's Quest I-IV. 6 Days a Sacrifice completes the set, sitting in the timeline exactly halfway between 5 Days and 7 Days. Yahtzee's later game, Trilby: The Art of Theft, features the character's exploits before the series, but is not connected to it thematically, story-wise or gameplay-wise.

The games have featured on various PC magazine cover disks, and were mentioned as an "excellent series" and given a brief review in an article on Adventure Game Studio in the February 2006 edition of PC Gamer. 5 Days a Stranger is mentioned as a good example of a game created with Adventure Game Studio in the book Gaming Hacks published by O'Reilly Media[1]

The author has also made available special editions of all his games. The $5 (US) deluxe editions have DVD-style author's commentary, Easter eggs, outtakes and other extras.

5 Days a Stranger

5 Days a Stranger chronicles the story of a gentleman thief known as Trilby and four others fighting an unknown terror in DeFoe Manor. The story progresses over 5 days, with more story being revealed each day. Dream sequences typically space out the transitions between the events of different days, it has an intuitive version of the AGS interface that ties in with the unique feel of the game. The game has been translated into German, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish[2].

The game was created in 2003 with the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine and won awards for best game created with the AGS engine in 2003, best gameplay, best dialog scripting, best puzzles, and best scripting[3]. The game has also had many good reviews on adventure game sites[4][5][6][7].

The Special Edition includes author commentary and an easter egg scene, accessible from the menu, which shows Simone Taylor interviewing Croshaw, represented by a dog. It also includes scans of some pieces of pencil concept art and midi files of the music used in-game.

A Source engine adaptation of 5 Days a Stranger has been announced by a group of fans and confirmed by Croshaw himself. Croshaw has said that he is closely involved with it: supervising design, okaying changes and possibly writing new dialog and puzzles.[8] Despite the use of an FPS engine, 5Days3D is intended to be an adventure game.

Story

A cat burglar named Trilby goes to a large mansion called DeFoe Manor, in hopes of an easy score of expensive loot, as the owners had died shortly beforehand. However, Trilby finds himself inexplicably sealed inside the house, along with four other people, who had come to the manor for various reasons of their own.

Soon, they begin to be murdered, one by one. Eventually, Trilby discovers who the killer is. The very first owner of the mansion, Sir Roderick DeFoe, and his son had been murdered one night, and the killer, DeFoe's deformed, regularly abused other son, whom Trilby speculates to be retarded and gives the name "John" out of convenience, later dies of wounds inflicted by Sir Roderick. The ghost of John still haunts the mansion within an African tribal idol, possessing anyone who touches the idol and murdering anyone he comes into contact with, wearing the same blacksmith's apron and welding mask he did when he killed his father and brother.

Trilby and the other two survivors perform a magic ritual to rid the house of the John's ghost; they are able to force John's spirit into his remains and kill him. During the ritual, the house catches fire; Trilby and the other two escape before the house burns down. Trilby allows the other survivors to believe he died in the fire so as to avoid the inevitable police interest and assumes that John DeFoe is finally at rest.

7 Days a Skeptic

7 Days a Skeptic takes place nearly four hundred years after the last installment, by which time mankind has begun to further explore the universe. The game chronicles the story of a veteran psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Somerset, and five others on board the spaceship Mephistopheles as they face the same mysterious entity that haunted the protagonists of the first game. By this time the events of the original game have become an urban myth and no-one knows what really happened back at DeFoe Manor[9]. 7 Days a Skeptic draws several parallels with its predecessor, using elements such as dream sequences between each day as well as using similar plot revelations.

The game was created in 2004 with the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine. 7 Days has received numerous awards[10] and good reviews[11][12][13][14][15] as a whole.

The Special Edition includes author commentary, a 'blooper reel' consisting of several scenes where the characters make mistakes as if they were actors forgetting their lines, and a menu option to view the easter egg scene that normally occurs when the standard edition is played on Croshaw's birthday. A new feature not present in the normal version is that you are warned via an on-screen message if your pursuer is going to appear in a room during the chase sequences. This SE also includes the music as midi files.

Story

The game takes place about four hundred years after 5 Days a Stranger on board the spaceship Mephistopheles. The crew has found an unidentified object floating in space. When they get it on board, they discover that it is a metal box with the inscription “Here Lies John Defoe, Finally At Rest. Do Not Disturb His Sleep.”

Also inscribed on the plaque is the image of a trilby hat. The crew agree to leave the coffin alone. Later that night, the ship loses power. When the power is restored, the crew discover that the captain has been killed, and that the box has been opened but appears to be empty. They send a distress signal, but it will take five days for help to arrive. In the meantime, other strange occurrences happen. One crew member goes missing, and is later found dead in a maintenance hatch. The deceased captain rises from the dead and kills the second-in-command. Finally, the ship's engineer is sucked into space as he tries to board an escape pod that wasn't there.

Prior to his death, the engineer reveals that he had opened the box that first night, and had seen nothing but an idol and John DeFoe's leather apron, machete and welding mask, plus a letter from Trilby, the protogonist of 5 Days a Stranger and Trilby's notes, created to warn the ones who opened it to release the contents back into space. After the coffin was opened, DeFoe took control of the ship's doctor in order to murder the crew and "construct" a new body for himself out of the pieces. With the engineer's death, the only ones left "alive" are John DeFoe, finally in control of a new body, and Jonathan Somerset, the ship's psychiatrist. Jonathan is able to incapacitate John’s body and ultimately kill him by destroying the idol. Afterwards, it is revealed that the player character had killed and had been using the identity of the real Jonathan Somerset, a 68 year-old retired psychiatrist, to fulfill his dream of being in space; the authorities, having no other explanation for the deaths, arrest "Jonathan" for the murder of Jonathan Somerset and the rest of the crew. A hand is later shown emerging from DeFoe's container.

Trilby's Notes

Trilby's Notes is the third game released, but second in order of game chronology. It stands as a true sequel to the events of 5 Days a Stranger, and a prequel to the events of 7 Days a Skeptic.

The story follows the gentleman thief Trilby to an isolated Welsh hotel, seeking the idol which wreaked supernatural havoc in the first game. Believing that there is more to the story of Defoe Manor than he had previously thought, Trilby wishes to destroy the idol once and for all, but is suddenly caught up in a series of strange and gruesome events at the hotel that cause him to start shifting randomly between two parallel worlds.

Trilby's Notes also provides a link from 7 Days a Skeptic as most of the featured characters share last names with those on the spaceship, suggesting a shared bloodline.

Trilby's Notes was nominated for 9 AGS Awards and won 4 (Best Game, Best Story, Best Animation and Best Non-player character).[16]

Trilby's Notes is superficially similar to Croshaw's previous efforts, but instead of the previous games' point-and-click interfaces it instead relies on a text parser and keyboard directional control, in the style of early Sierra Entertainment games such as Police Quest and Quest for Glory.

Like the two previous entries in the series, Trilby's Notes is available for free download from Croshaw's website, while an extended special edition has been made available for a small fee.[17]. The extras include the usual author commentary and an extended version of the ending scenes. The SE also comes with the soundtrack in midi and mp3 formats, and a Word file containing the complete text of two of the Books of Chzo, fictional holy (or unholy) works within the series.

Croshaw has stated that the game was intended as both a form of continued high-level experimentation with the AGS engine and a complete product within itself. Trilby's Notes is the most graphically violent of the four games, an effect achieved with an extremely modest pixel-palette. Croshaw said of his main character's rather basic graphical representation: "[He] is not shaded at all because he was drawn after the GFW period when I realized that most people didn't give a toss and just wanted a fun game." [18]

Story

The game takes place a few years after 5 Days a Stranger. Trilby, although confident John DeFoe is at rest, has become paranoid nonetheless and is eventually apprehended by the police, who offer him a job as a paranormal investigator. An author is encouraged to fictionalize Trilby, to make people forget he was ever real. Trilby later hears that Simone Taylor, a fellow survivor from the DeFoe Manor incident has fallen into depression and alcoholism, prompting a visit, but he instead discovers her murdered corpse. Deciding her death is related to the DeFoe incident, Trilby decides to do research on John to find a way to stop him once and for all.

He is assigned to investigate the Clanbronwyn Hotel along with another agent, Agent Lenkmann, where he begins to inexplicably shift between this world and a nightmarish “dark world,” where a demon known variously as Cabadath, the Tall Man, the Arrogant Man, and the Prince keeps trying to kill him.

Over time, Trilby learns about the nature of the “dark world.” It is an alternate dimension called the World of Magick, ruled by a pain elemental named Chzo. A cult called the Order of the Blessed Agonies worships Chzo as a god, and seeks to bring him to this world. Cabadath is the "Prince," Chzo's highest servant, and is eventually revealed to be a 1st century B.C.E. Druid who attempted to summon Chzo to defeat the Roman forces that were invading the area.

To bring Chzo into this world (the "World of Technology"), the Order must destroy all three aspects of John DeFoe (referred to the Order as the "Child"), his mind, body and soul; Trilby had already destroyed his body in 5 Days a Stranger and his soul is contained within the African idol from DeFoe Manor. Trilby is able to see the history behind the idol through flashbacks; the wood used for it came from Cabadath's soul tree, which was first felled by a Norseman, and centuries later used to build "The Unicorn Inn" and all its furnishings. The wood used to build the Unicorn was later used as material for keys for a harpsichord. Jack Frehorn, a man obsessed with the occult later purchased this harpsichord and out of fear of Cabadath formed the Order of Blessed Agonies; a masochistic cult devoted to fulfill the prophecies of Chzo. The harpsichord was then destroyed and made into a crate for the O'Malley Shipping Company. An African man eventually creates an Idol out of wood from this crate, only to be killed by Cabadath. Sir DeFoe then found the idol on one of his trips to Africa.

Trilby eventually finds the stump of Cabadath's soul tree near the hotel and identifies it as the center of the world-shifts; Lenkmann arrives and reveals himself as a member of the Order. He then proceeds to stab Trilby to subdue him and attempts to use him as a sacrifice to Cabadath to allow him to manifest in the World of Technology, but Trilby wills himself to death before the demon can be summoned; Cabadath mortally wounds the agent in anger, and drags his soul into the Ethereal Realm.

Shortly after, Trilby is revived through mysterious means, and takes the idol to find a way to never let the Order attain it without destroying it. In the post-credits epilogue, Cabadath and Lenkmann, now Chzo's faceless "Puppet", present the knife with Trilby's blood to the Order of Blessed Agonies, thus continuing the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Chzo.

6 Days a Sacrifice

6 Days a Sacrifice is the fourth and final game in order of release, and 3rd in order of the game series's timeline, placed 196 years after 5 Days and Notes and 196 years before 7 Days. You play Theo DaCabe, a council surveyor who is trying to run a health and safety assessment on the headquarters of a fictional fad religion called Optimology (a not-too-subtle dig at Scientology) and gets embroiled in the machinations of the overarching series plot.

The Special Edition includes author commentary, an "expanded, slightly less ambiguous ending", the soundtrack in midi format, and character profiles on most of the characters in the series, in the guise of dossiers from the Ministry of Occultism.

The game also has a series of accompanying interactive fiction games, called the Countdown Trilogy, which were used as teaser trailers for the release of the point-and-click graphical adventure itself. They used the Z-machine language for implementation and need an interpreter such as WinFrotz to run. These games were developed using the Inform7 development system. Each of the three text adventures is named after and represents one of the three Blessed Agonies, an important plot element in the second half of the main series.

6 Days a Sacrifice won Best Story and Best Non-player Character (Trilby) in the 2007 AGS Awards, having received a total of 7 nominations. This brings the total number of AGS Awards for the series to 13 and nominations to 36, although The Art of Theft, not strictly part of the series, received a further 2 awards.[19]

Story

The game takes place 196 years after 5 Days a Stranger and 196 years before 7 Days a Skeptic. Theo DeCabe, a building inspector, is sent to inspect the headquarters of Optimology. Once inside, the Optimologists shove him down an elevator shaft to imprison him. He is rescued by two escaped prisoners of the Optimologists, Samantha and Janine. They soon discover that the Optimologists are actually members of the Order of the Blessed Agonies, who still seek to bring Chzo into this world. The building was built around the ruins of DeFoe Manor, which still houses John DeFoe’s mind.

With the help of a mysterious figure known only as the Caretaker, they are able to repeatedly escape capture by the Order. The three eventually open the "Hub" (the chamber that contains the DeFoe Manor), but while exploring John DeFoe's mind Samantha dies from a mysterious slit throat when she went to check the hub. Theo discovers that Samantha previously worked for the Order to help restrain John DeFoe's mind by perpetually cloning Trilby; DeFoe had become so fearful of Trilby that his mere presence was enough to keep the house stable. Later on, Theo, Janine, and a Trilby clone go into the Hub. Trilby is killed which prompts the entrance of John DeFoe. Afterwards, they escape to the sleeping quarters where a distressed Janine makes love to Theo to receive comfort. She is possessed by DeFoe the next day, prompting her murder by Cabadath. The caretaker explains her death saying that when Theo loved her he "tainted" her due to his dark fate. Theo then explores the Hub with many Trilby escorts who are repeatedly killed by Cabadath. He dons the apron, welding mask, and machete of John Defoe and enters a portal in the manor's kitchen. Theo explores strange visions (including the spaceship Mephistopheles, presumably explaining the hand at the end of 7 Days a Skeptic) and eventually finds his way to the DeFoe basement, where he finds a bomb powerful enough to destroy the entire manor and the Optimology building. Although the bomb is discovered to be disarmed, a fire breaks out, reaching and detonating the bomb, killing Theo, destroying DeFoe's mind, and allowing Chzo to bridge the Worlds of Technology and Magick.

However, Chzo only takes Theo and the last surviving Trilby clone. He tranforms Theo into the "New Prince," who proceeds to kill Cabadath and replace him as Chzo's foremost servant. The Trilby clone, as is said before, was taken by Chzo, and is found by the Caretaker (Somerset), before he knew he was the Caretaker. See below for more details.

The Caretaker is revealed in a cutaway segment to be Malcolm Somerset, the protagonist of 7 Days a Skeptic, who murdered and impersonated his father Jonathan, and who has been blamed for the murders of all the people killed by DeFoe's spirit aboard the Mephistopheles. Somerset has been committed into an asylum for the criminally insane; he is given by the Caretaker a magical knife/key belonging to the Order's founder to open a fleshy door in his cell, allowing him to descend an increasingly bloodied staircase, along with flashbacks to the Mephistopheles where he sees the crew members deaths through John DeFoe's eyes (this is considered a metaphor for Somerset's suicide). By killing himself with the knife delivered to him, called Frehorn's Blade, it caused him to transcend as a being of pure will able to travel across time and both Worlds. He enters Chzo's body to find a deteriorating clone of Trilby who grants his remaining life-force to the real Trilby (the actual cause of his revival in Trilby's Notes); Somerset then prompts a Trilby clone to set fire to the DeFoe Manor in Theo's time. Somerset discloses in a monologue how he is now Destiny's servant, and only makes sure the timeline plays out as he foresees. He prepares to once again prompt himself to kill his father, thus setting forth the events that occurred in 7 Days A Skeptic.

References

  1. ^ O Reilly's Gaming Hacks index: 5 Days a Stranger cited 15 December 2006
  2. ^ 5 Days a stranger site cited 15 December 2006
  3. ^ AGS Games page for 5 Days a Stranger, showing that it won 5 AGS Awards cited 15 December 2006
  4. ^ adventurelantern.com review of 5DAS cited 15 December 2006
  5. ^ adventuregamers.com review of 5DAS cited 15 December 2006
  6. ^ popmatters.com review of 5DAS cited 15 December 2006
  7. ^ Game Hippo 5DAS review cited 15 December 2006
  8. ^ fullyramblomatic.com: 25/1/07: Icey Sacrificey Nicey cited 23. November 2007
  9. ^ fullyramblomatic.com: 7 Days a Skeptic (cited 13 December 2006)
  10. ^ AGS Games page, showing the 2 AGS Awards the game won (cited 13 December 2006)
  11. ^ 7DAS Review at adventuregamers.com (cited 13 December 2006)
  12. ^ acid-play.com 7DAS review (cited 13 December 2006)
  13. ^ A-for-adventure 7DAS review (cited 13 December 2006)
  14. ^ 7DAS Adventure Lantern review (cited 13 December 2006)
  15. ^ Osiris Games Freeforall 7DAS review (cited 13 December 2006)
  16. ^ AGS Awards for 2006 winners (cited 13 February 2007)
  17. ^ fullyramblomatic.com: 5/7/06: Special School cited 23. November 2007
  18. ^ fullyramblomatic.com 3/7/06: The Two-Faced Thief cited on 23. November 2007
  19. ^ AGS Awards 2007 cited 26 February 2008
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