The Hamlet - Manual

1. Introduction
2. The story
3. How to play
4. Things to know
5. Credits

1. Introduction

The game you are about to play, The Hamlet, was originally made for second AGS Team Challenge. The AGS Team Challenge was held during the summer 2004. During those weeks, teams were meant create a game with mystery as a theme. Every team had a writer, scripter, couple of artists and a musician in them. In the end, only two teams had finished their games, Creative Minds being other one of them. Apparently the game was buggy, unpolished and lacked the planned ending, so before releasing the game in public our team decided to polish it. That took longer than we thought, but the game is now finished as you can see. Thank you for downloading the game, we hope you enjoy playing it.

2. The story

John Landy, a middle aged man, receives a letter from an old friend of his, Allan. Allan is asking if John could come visit him in the hamlet where he is living in. As John has nothing better to do, he decides to get into his car and go meet his old friend.

But as John arrives the hamlet, he learns that Allan isn't home. Something mysterious is going on and John wants to know what it is.

3. How to play

The Hamlet is a point 'n' click adventure game, in the style of classic adventures by Sierra and Lucas Arts. The game uses a verb coin interface, similar to one in Gabriel Knight 3. Clicking somewhere on the screen with left mouse button makes John to walk as near as possible to the clicked location. When the mouse cursor is over hotspot or another character, the text in the bottom of the screen tells you on what hotspot the mouse cursor is at the moment. When clicking the hotspot or character with right mouse button you get a list of actions that are possible to perform on the clicked hotspot.

"The verb coin"

In some places (screen edges, open doors) you might notice the cursor becoming a red arrow. When clicking with left mouse button while the cursor is in this state, you can enter to another location in the game.

Let's explore some more...

You can access the menu by moving the mouse cursor to the top of the screen. The menu bar contains following buttons:
Inventory - This button will open up the inventory screen, scroll down to read how the inventory works.
Save Game - Clicking this button will open up the save game screen. You can save your current game and load it up later on.
Load Game - Will open up the load game screen. In there you can load your previously saved game.
Quit Game - Clicking this button will quit the game when you don't feel like playing it anymore.
View credits - Just a bit of information about the game.

The Hamlet, amongst many other point 'n' click adventure games, has inventory screen. Inventory contains all the items you have picked up during the game. Basically, the inventory works in similar way as the rest of the game's interface. When the mouse cursor is an arrow, you can select an inventory item by clicking the item with left mouse button. That way you can use the item on other items and hotspots. When you click an item with right mouse button, the verb coin will appear. That way you can perform different actions on your items.

The inventory screen

4. Things to know

There are some things you might want to keep in mind when playing The Hamlet. The game was designed for resolution 320x200. However, some of the newer graphics cards might not support resolution that low. If you're experiencing problems with the game, you might want to try running the winsetup.exe and run the game on higher resolution, in a window instead of full screen or try forcing alternate letterbox resolution. If you have CRT monitor, you can try using 85 Hz display.

The game has digital soundtrack and sound effects. If you are experiencing any problems with sound, you can try changing the digital sound device in game setup.

5. Credits

Game engine - Adventure game studio by Chris Jones
Writing - Velislav Ivanov
Scripting - Grant Williams, Velislav Ivanov
Graphics - Indrek Plavutski, Iwan Vaughan, Petteri Aartolahti, "pixelcat"
Music - Petteri Aartolahti
Beta Testing - Erik Igelström, Lisa Taylor

© Creative Minds 2004