Retrospective: Discworld

By Will Porter Published 26 June, 2009

Did you get the number of that donkey cart?

In 1995, a curious alignment of some of the best things in the world occurred. Sat in a circle, hooded staff members of developers Perfect 10 must have chanted various nerd-pleasing names in an ominous fashion: "Monty Python", "LucasArts", "Blackadder", "the Doctor Who that owned the antique car" and (finally and most loudly) "Terry Pratchett". If they had a bit more foresight they'd have added "the gay uncle out of Gavin and Stacey" to one of the verses too.

The game that was called forth in a ball of blinding light was Discworld: a beautiful cartoon vision of Pratchett's fantasy creation in the style of the Lucas classics. starring Eric Idle, Tony Robinson, Jon Pertwee and Rob Brydon.

Pratchett acolytes, myself among their number, were bowled over. Favoured characters from the early-to-mid Pratchett canon were suddenly given flesh and bone (well, animated pixels), and what's more, a lot of them sounded like Baldrick. To some, the digital appearance of Cut My Own Throat Dibbler and Gaspode the Wonder Dog was a moment of social significance on the scale of the second coming of Christ. To others, to non-believers, not so much.

In fact, sit opposite a nay-sayer in the pub these days and start extolling the virtues of this oft-overlooked mid-nineties classic and they'll start giving you funny looks. They might even contradict you by saying that Discworld was, in fact, shit. And so, fuelled by a renewed love of the charms of item-combination and point and clickery - itself fuelled by Zombie Cow's recent three-pound classic Time Gentlemen, Please - for the past few days I've been re-treading the muddy streets of Ankh Morpork in an effort to discover whether I've been lying to myself all these years.

'Retrospective: Discworld' Screenshot 1

This man is trapped in an unending laughing-dance. It is his own personal hell.

The game places you as Pratchett stalwart Rincewind, the crap wizard whose cowardly misadventures formed the majority of the early Discworld novels, and pictures his feeble attempts to deal with a dragon that has begun snorting fire onto the local drunks. Apologies to those who aren't Great A'Tuin-literate, but it's essentially the plot of Guards Guards! only with less Watch activity, and a few hooks into other books like Moving Pictures. Every major early Pratchett character gets a nod - Nanny Ogg, The Patrician, Windle Poons, Ridcully the Archchancellor, Death with his ominous capitalisations and booming voice… for the average fanboy, the game remains a pleasure to play simply to watch the conveyor-belt delivery of rose-tinted cameos.

Discworld also remains a beautiful game. The art style, something arguably lost in the sequels, hasn't been diminished one iota by the intervening years. It's essentially a cartoony and more rounded variant of what would be found on Pratchett book covers - and the reward you feel simply by watching new and elegant, if stuttering, animations of Rincewind whenever you solve a puzzle is tangible.

'Retrospective: Discworld' Screenshot 2

Death, perennial star of Pratchett books, favours capitalisation wherever he roams.

Tangible also, however, because Discworld is one of the most frustrating games I have ever (re)played in my life. You often hear about people blanking out certain periods of their lives that they can't psychologically deal with, and as I play through Discworld it's like opening a door somewhere inside my head and finding a fifteen-year-old version of myself weeping in a cellar clutching a walkthrough that's been etched in his own blood.

Discworld commits every point-and-click crime you'd care to mention - tiny (almost invisible) hot spots, events triggered through dialogue you might not ask and the most obtuse puzzles yet created. To catch a butterfly, I have to put a frog in past-Rincewind's mouth so that it isn't scared away by the snoring? That doesn't work. That doesn't work. THAT DOESN'T WORK. And said butterfly, when placed in the past next to a lamp-post will cause a miniature thunderstorm next to a mad monk in the future? Causing him to take off his robe so you can steal it? That doesn't work, Rincewind! THAT DOESN'T WORK.

I've heard that phrase "that doesn't work" so many times in the last few days that if I'd woken up this morning having drawn it over my body in toothpaste during convulsive night terrors, I genuinely wouldn't have been surprised. Those pre-GameFAQs years were dark indeed. How can a game so warm and inviting, filled with all of my favourite fictional people, want to hurt me so badly?

Why, at the start of act two, have new puzzle-centric objects appeared in places I've visited before without the game telling me? What hints are offered to suggest that I need to put a tied-up octopus in a toilet, then mix a prune in with a Fishmonger's caviar supply so I can steal his belt buckle from beneath a toilet door? Discworld runs on pure dream logic; it's like a pixellated hallucination. If there's anyone that completed it entirely under their own steam then they must have a connection to a higher astral plane than yours or mine. To complete the game without a walkthrough is to see the face of God. An insane and cruel God.

For me then, over the years, the rose-tinted spectacles have won out to some degree. But that's not to say that the game is an entirely bad one. The voice acting remains superb (has Eric Idle ever done anything that hasn't been 100 per cent super-great after all?), and small details like the way the Luggage (a treasure chest with hundreds of tiny legs) follows you around as a mobile inventory meld Discworld lore with the demands of point-and-click adventures beautifully.

'Retrospective: Discworld' Screenshot 3

It's even better than those tv movies that Sky knocked out a while ago. Incredibly.

The time-travel L-space twist, meanwhile - which has you going a week into the past and affecting the future with your obtuse puzzling - may be a Day of the Tentacle rip-off, but is still done with story-telling flair and panache. What's more, as an exciting and vibrant fantasy world, Discworld remains hard to beat, and the game's two sequels would go on to capitalise on that to, in my opinion, an even greater extent.

Above all this though, loom those three giant words, almost blotting out the sun. That. Doesn't. Work. I've been lying to myself for all these years, and to many of my closest friends and family. All this time I thought it was me that did not work, but in reality it was this badly-designed point-and-click adventure. Perhaps now I can attempt some form of closure. Perhaps now I can try to be happy again.

Picture of Will.

About Will Porter

Will ‘Velvet Owl’ Porter is a roaming freelance writer who occasionally appears at EG’s back door asking for scraps. You can find out how cold/hungry he is by following @Batsphinx on Twitter.

Read more articles from Will by visiting the Will Porter archive page.

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Comments (47) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • berelain #1 3 years ago

    Exactly my thoughts on the game at the time! I havent dared try to replay it, mainly because of the terrible frustrations inherent in the game design, but I still remember much of the dialogue and scenarios quite vividly- which to me is proof that the game worked on some level. It perfectly captured the Discworld look and feel, was genuinely hilarious, had some of the best voice acting in a game ever, but let itself down with the inane logic required to solve some of the puzzles.

    But remember, its not little trinkets and paperwork that really count in life. I've got... got... well, I've got a really pointy hat. That's a start.

  • Tabasco #2 3 years ago

    Heh! Nicely written!

    I never bothered to play this when it was first out. Kept hearing that it was a lovely game that made you want to stab you own eyes out with a spoon. So pretty close to the article :o)

  • Goffee #3 3 years ago

    hmm, tempted - i love mental torture (in fact add it to my That's What I call Guantanamo Bay gaming-compilation)

  • paul_haine #4 3 years ago

    I remember the octopus toilet puzzle - didn't you also have to add custard into the toilet for it to work? It just made no sense. I can understand the prunes - makes the guy go to the toilet - and I can understand the octopus - attacks the guy in the toilet - but the string and the custard? Absurd.

    The second Discworld game was much better, and also had this as an opening.

  • Omroth #5 3 years ago

    Enjoyed the article. The fraps numbers on the screenshots are a bit bad though!

  • Yossarian #6 3 years ago

    I did this one without a walkthough back in the day, but I think it took about six months.

    And I had forgotten 'That Doesn't Work' until just now. Thanks for that.

  • MORZTAN #7 3 years ago

    Wanted to replay the game until I read the "That Doesn't work"-part. It WAS horrible. A friend and I completed the 16 floppydisk version with no speach, but only with a walkthrough. Having read tons and tons of Prachett-books since then, I have discovered that a lot of the puzzles can be found in one form or the other in his books.

    / On a sidenote, have anyone noticed how much Rowling ripps-off Pratchett? So many blatant comparisons.

  • Spekingur #8 3 years ago

    This article just brings to light that we need a new Discworld game.

  • bivith #9 3 years ago

    "(has Eric Idle ever done anything that hasn't been 100 per cent super-great after all?)"

    So Haunt Me

  • Pro_Gamer #10 3 years ago

    In other news, watchinig paint dry is fun.

  • Sharzam #11 3 years ago

    Very simlier to how i remember it, althourgh i dont know alot about terry prattchet work my uncle loved it all and he tried to show me this game i thought that the puzzles were so off the rails that how could logic solve the game.

  • AOFanboi #12 3 years ago

    For completeness' sake, the first book (at least) was also turned into a text adventure back in the day. I seem to recall from reading Adventure Gamer that the second book was also planned but text advetures died.

    http://ww w.worldofspectrum.org/infoseeki...

  • _LarZen_ #13 3 years ago

    Bought Discworld 2 for PS1 a while ago...havent dared to play it yet. Oh the memmory's :)

  • paul_haine #14 3 years ago

    Can we have a retrospective on Discworld II and Discworld Noir as well please? I never got beyond the first third of Discworld Noir as I was forced to upgrade to Windows 2000 back in the day and it wouldn't run on that OS :(

  • alsotop #15 3 years ago

    I absolutely loved Discworld 2. I think at the time, the original Discworld for me was just way too complicated to get a grip on.

  • lennon #16 3 years ago

    Lol remember it well. Got frustrated and bought a mag with a guide in it. Then spent the next six months amazing my little sister who was also playing it, by immediately solving the bizzare puzzle she had been stuck on for weeks. She didn't speak to me for ages when she found the mag in my room :)

  • Mint #17 3 years ago

    Coincidentally picked this (and the sequel) up cheap a couple of weeks ago and, yep, pretty much everything you say.

  • roz123 #18 3 years ago

    Does anyone remember Discworld Noir?

  • TheSnotGoblin #19 3 years ago

    Discworld: Noir was all kinds of awesome. The clues scratched in your notepad as inventory items was a great idea ("Mundy was upside-down";) and the nods to just about every Bogart movie under the sun leave me grinning ear to ear every time I play it.

  • botherer #20 3 years ago

    Discworld Noir was a properly decent adventure game, and unlike the first two, funny.

  • UKGN_Zoidberg #21 3 years ago

    Never read a Discworld novel before I played this, but gave it a go as I'm a massive Monkey Island fan. Loved it to bits - although my glasses may be rose-tinted. I also completed it without a guide!

  • kevwinter #22 3 years ago

    I always preferred the look of the second game. It felt like I was playing an interactive cartoon.

  • schachmatt #23 3 years ago

    Discworld made me read Pratchet. I mean that as a good thing!
    Subsequently I played the sequel, which in my recollection fared a bit better puzzlewise.
    But the real deal was the already mentioned Discworld Noir, one of the finest and most atmospheric comedic point-and-clickies out there together with MI1 and Grim Fandango.

    It should also be mentioned that the Discworlds were some of the few adventures ported to Playstation (cursor controlled by controller-ports).

  • HSH25 #24 3 years ago

    I'm still not sure quite what some of you ever really saw in these games. I'm a big fan of both Pratchett and LucasArts point and click adventures and so playing this should be one of my favourite memories of the time...but the fact of the matter is that it just doesn't stand up to Monkey Island on any level at all.

    Not to say that at the time I thought it was bad, I liked it a lot its just not the game some people remember it as and it never was.

  • Batsphinx #25 3 years ago

    Could I just point out that when I was writing this Discworld retro thingummie the reference to the super awesomeness of Eric Idle was meant to be dripping with a modicum of heavy irony and/or sarcasm? He's certainly no Palin. Or, indeed, Jones, Cleese or Chapman. Better than Carol Cleveland though.

  • IgorHardy #26 3 years ago

    This article doesn't work for me. I mean, it's OK, I just don't agree at all with Discworld's game design critique.

    Well, I agree that the octopus in the toilet was pretty difficult to figure out and the butterfly puzzles were insane, but this game is HUGE, people - it was bound to have a couple of completely crazy ones in it. You can't judge a game by its 0,01% and most of the puzzles in Discworld are truly superb. And yes, they can be solved without ever looking into a walkthrough. I've beaten the game as a kid who barely understood English. It has introduced me to Pratchett and became one of my favorite adventure games.

    In fact, the adventure game I just released a demo for - Frantic Franko - is heavily inspired by the first Discworld game. Try and criticize the puzzles in that one... Ha! You can't - they're perfect :)

  • paul_haine #27 3 years ago

    "I've beaten the game as a kid who barely understood English."

    Well it doesn't take language skills to be able to "try every item on every thing" until the puzzle is solved.

  • IgorHardy #28 3 years ago

    Well, I'd never have the patience to play like that. In an adventure game as huge as Discworld it's practically impossible.
    Edited by 1 at 28/06/09 @ 19:00

  • kentmonkey #29 3 years ago

    Someone needs to work out how to link in their own article methinks.

  • butler` #30 3 years ago

    i hope that's a legal copy of fraps!

  • Matt_Edwards #31 3 years ago

    Having played all three, I'd say Discworld 2 remains the best. It's the only one I'd ever bother to play again. I'm not enough of a masochist to even attempt Disworld 1 again, and I felt Noir was mediocre at best...

    Back when I didn't have gamefaqs and the internet, I remember it took me ages to figure out the backwards conversation puzzle with Mrs. Cake in Discworld 2...

  • Doctor_What #32 3 years ago

    I wrote to the makers of this game complaining about all the bugs in the original release (it was fairly easy to entirely break the game) and they sent me a limited edition T-shirt. A few years ago I sold that T-shirt for nearly £50. Score!

    I agree entirely with the article - some of the puzzles were way too obscure and could only really be solved through random combining of objects until something happened. 'That doesn't work' is still a household joke in my family to this day! It was a brilliant interpretation of the Discworld, but the design of the game was way too obscure for anyone but the most stubborn of players.

  • Nightbite #33 3 years ago

    Nice article, great game - having been a massive Pratchett fan AND a massive point and click / Monkey Island fan, this was the perfect game for me. It's great playing games like Overlord these days as the thread of humour is often similar, for obvious reasons.

  • XdarXideX #34 3 years ago

    I finished Discworld 1 and 2 without help. Strangely though I don't remember it being that difficult. Perhaps I too blanked the frustrations out. I used to love point and clicks and adventure games. I remember playing the 1st Space Quest!

    I have a disc of lucasarts classics and another with alone in the dark on it! The original and only scary one! What I really want the old sierra collections and Ecstatica. Though that wasn't really a point and click.
    Edited by 1 at 29/06/09 @ 09:16

  • Krusty #35 3 years ago

    Remember giving up on the 1st one, but the 2nd and Noir were genius.

    Was a huge Pratchett fan before the games, and still am, buying every book on the day of release!
    Hope someone makes another game.

    Nac Mac Feegle MMO anyone? :p Bigjobs!!
    Edited by 1 at 29/06/09 @ 10:55

  • Lemming81 #36 3 years ago

    Nah, I love the crazy logic, and I love the Discworld setting. More than everything though, I love Eric Idle's voicework. Every time I read a Rincewind novel after that, that's exactly what he sounds like to me. I just wish he'd played him the Sky production A Colour of Magic. It would have been perfect.

  • azazel_fallenangel #37 3 years ago

    Nice article. I'm a massive Prattchet fan, and have attemted to play this via Dosbox, as it was a bit before my time. Unfortunately, dosbox hurts my brain, can spend all day messing with settings, and stil get no voices. Didn't think it was worth playing without the apparerntly excellent acting, so have given up for now. Can anybody help?

  • MikeN #38 3 years ago

    I remember seeing a tv documentary in which Pratchett himself admitted how hard the game was. At a book signing a kid asks him for help with a particular puzzle and Pratchett has to give him a ridiculously convoluted solution.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #39 3 years ago

    I wrote to the makers of this game complaining about all the bugs in the original release (it was fairly easy to entirely break the game) and they sent me a limited edition T-shirt. A few years ago I sold that T-shirt for nearly £50. Score!

    Ooh! I did that, and got the t-shirt too. A couple of years later, I got Terry to sign it. I must look it out for ebaying purposes.

  • crickson #40 3 years ago

    I do remember playing and completing this on release for the PS1. And replaying it a couple of years ago. And giving up in frustration very quickly. Although a psn release might make me revisit it if I found a good guide.

    I remember that "I love my wife sir, but oh you octopus" became a bit of a catchphrase at school...

    I'd love a new discworld game - a massive open-world GTA-style game based on the plot to Night Watch would be awesome. I really hope some enterprising developer gets on with it while TP can still make a contribution.

  • Paperghost #41 3 years ago

    "Did you get the number of that donkey cart?"

    that's the line i most remember!

    i completed the first two without help, but the first one took a long time. thankfully i avoided doing things in such an order that i broke the game, but some of those puzzles....ack.

  • shellyc #42 3 years ago

    possibly my favorite game ever i now run it through scummVM and still go back to it on rainy days. the maddening nature of the 'THAT doesnt WORK' made it all the more fun!

    '10 minutes in a room with a complete git' was my favorite line, and i still quote it;)
    Edited by 2 at 29/06/09 @ 14:01

  • HermitArcader #43 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • Hypocee #44 3 years ago

    I completed it either under my own steam, or with one assist. I don't remember whether I had to look up Use Butterfly on Lamp, but I don't think so. 1. Use Butterfly on Lamp makes no sense because butterflies aren't know for flying towards lights. 2. Use ****** on Tip of flagpole, fuck you! I got totally stuck on the dragon's breath despite knowing exactly what I had to do (for two independent reasons!) and where to do it. I must have tried Use ****** on Flagpole a hundred times and visited every location in the city for hours if not days. There is no excuse for having Flagpole not work. 3. I think I had some kind of difficulty with the donkey's tail. Other than those three things, everything pretty much made sense to me. Of course you need the custard, it's aphrodisiac custard. Of course you need to tie the octopus up, if you try to shove it down the privy you get an animated battle with Rincewind. Of course you use a frog, what else do you have that could fix a butterfly in place? And having locations change when you did stuff was one of the major things I liked about Discworld over Lucasarts pieces - it inspired a feeling of exploration and 'aliveness' for me.

    'has Eric Idle ever done anything that hasn't been 100 per cent super-great after all?' - I get the irony, but among other things - Discworld II. I mean, he did a fine job of the acting, but the dialogue was mostly off, the story was off, the puzzles were off (do you do the beehive thing two times verbatim, or three? I forget.), many of the voices were off (Death in particular, and he's the major character), and I winced when they dragged in the Life of Brian stoning sketch (I read Idle objected pretty strongly to that but was overruled.) Arguably better graphics, but overall not a patch on the first game. I really need to get around to playing Noir - it's just such a pain to get running...

    Discworld actually introduced me to Pratchett (I'm American), so I know I wasn't cheating from the books. I didn't even know the game had any relationship to books at the time. My brother and I played the demo on a PC Gamer CD, loved it, bought the game (that is, begged for it) and completed it. A couple of years later I saw Interesting Times in a bookstore and happened to read the subtitle 'A Novel of Discworld'. 'Wait. What? Discwhat? There's...Ohhhhhh.' Bought, and I was off to fandom. That's its testament to me - the game not only sold itself to me, not only inspired me to complete it which was uncommon even in those days, but left such an impression that I made the leap of faith into a fantasy series - a species I held in contempt at the time - solely on its good name. It's that good.

    Edit: PS, 'Ooooooh! Sparklies!' from the Archchancellor's office became a catchphrase for having seen something neat among me, my brother and our friends for a while, and humming the 'first' couple bars of the catchy, looping City Watch Theme was a common act of semi-mock-cruelty.

    Edit edit: I missed this the first readthrough, but steady there MORZTAN. Pratchett's a parodist, you know; please be sure that it's him she's 'ripping off', right? And of course they don't feel alike to me at all. Among other things, there's little actual witch/wizard spellcasting in Discworld - about one magic spell per book - while HP dives into whole plot-critical magic ecosystems.
    Edited by 3 at 29/06/09 @ 17:52

  • NorfolkNClue #45 3 years ago

    This game was so fucking hard.

  • smelly #46 3 years ago

    Hint to the reviewer:

    When taking screenshots using fraps - turn the frame rate indicator to "off"

  • Batsphinx #47 3 years ago

    Smelly: I did, but DOSbox just wasn't having any of it. It was either ugly yellow numbers or nowt, sadly. Have since been informed of a work-around, so shouldn't be an issue next time.