Garage (full title: GARAGE: Bad Dream Adventure; Japanese: ガラージュ) is a Japanese surrealist point and click adventure game developed by Kinotrope and published by Toshiba-EMI for Windows and Macintosh in 1999.
| GARAGE: Bad Dream Adventure | |
|---|---|
 Box art for the original 1999 release. | |
| Developer(s) | Kinotrope[a] |
| Publisher(s) | Toshiba-EMI Sakuba Metal Works (Digital) |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows Mac OS Android iOS |
| Release | Mac OS
|
| Genre(s) | Adventure Horror |
Plot and gameplay
editGarage is a surreal and nightmarish point and click adventure inspired by the works of Carl Jung, set inside the mind of a man named Yang. Yang finds himself inside of a therapy machine known as Garage, which creates within the user's mind a dystopian world similar to Kowloon Walled City. The city is inhabited by biomechanical entities trapped on a web of tracks, repeating their days in a dark society. The player takes control of a small bio-machine tasked with finding its "shadow" – a mysterious entity which seems to reflect another facet of the player character themself – and to escape the city in the process. Along the way, the player must meet other machines, solve puzzles, fish for frogs, and balance their ever-dwindling supplies of Ego and Fuel. The game's graphics are pre-rendered and digitized.
Development
editThe game was written and designed by Japanese surrealist artist Tomomi Sakuba.[1] It was also art-directed by Sakuba, produced by Masahiro Ikuta, co-produced by Akihiko Kawa, and programmed by Akiya Hayashi. Its 3D graphics were created by Gengo Ito and Hiroki Watanabe, with music composed by Tomonori Tanaka.[2]
Sakuba began his interest in games with the Cyan, Inc. title Cosmic Osmo, which he had played around 1990. After learning that the game had been created in HyperCard, a software that was pre-installed for free on Mac computers at the time, he went to the library and began studying the software. He made a few experimental projects including Hobbit's Great Adventure and Talking before setting his sights on developing a full-fledged game.[3]
When sketching out the design of the hero, Sakuba settled on a creature with an organic head on the body of a machine. He eventually decided to apply this design to all the characters.[4] At least one poster was designed before the final poster was chosen for marketing.[5] The official website for the game was published in August 1995, where the director maintained a diary of the game's progress.[6]
Release
editThe first release of this game was limited to 3,000 copies. The game's publisher, Toshiba-EMI, withdrew from CD-ROM publishing before further copies could be produced.[7] Even in Japan, where the game was released, original copies of Garage are considered extremely rare, with only a few thousand in existence. When a used copy of the game appeared on the trading site Suruga-ya, it initially had an asking price of 300,000 yen.
Its first availability on the internet can be attributed to members of the 4chan's retro gaming board, /vr/, who discovered it on an auction site, and pooled funds together in order to acquire and preserve it.[1] The game's creator initially held resistance to republishing it, citing issues of "game balance", as well as his lack of rights to the property.[8] A limited re-release, titled "Garage Private Edition", went on sale in mid-2007, and quickly sold out.[7] With permission of Tomomi Sakuba, the game was a repackaging of the original release.[7]
On March 31, 2020, LoneDev reverse engineered the game and implemented a patch to translate the videogame into English. The GarageDoor patch[9] was discussed on Discord and released on Github. The project had greatly increased interest[10] in the videogame in western countries because the language barrier was not a problem anymore. This patch also allowed to play the game on non-Japanese Windows 10 systems.
On December 10, 2021, an official remastered version of Garage, titled Garage: Complete Version, was released on iOS and Android devices, being the first time the game would be officially playable in English – featuring UI and game balance improvements, new chapters, sidequests and multiple different endings.[11] This version was later ported to Microsoft Windows, and released on Steam as Garage: Bad Dream Adventure on July 7, 2022.[12]
Reception
editHardcore Gaming 101 deemed Garage a "profoundly uncomfortable game to look at", due to its unsettling nature.[1]
Notes
edit- ^ Android, iOS and Steam versions developed by Sakuba Metal Works and SmokymonkeyS.
References
edit- ^ a b c Kalata, Kurt (February 23, 2018). "Garage: Bad Dream Adventure". Hardcore Gaming 101.
- ^ Sakuba, Tomomi (2018). "Garage Staff". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
- ^ Sakuba, Tomomi (October 10, 1999). "Creating games". Kinotrope (Official Garage website). Archived from the original on October 10, 1999. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
- ^ Sakuba, Tomomi (1997). "Character concept art". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
- ^ Sakuba, Tomomi (1999). "Other concept art". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
- ^ Sakuba, Tomomi (June 9, 2002). "The latest diary entry". Kinotrope (Official Garage website). Archived from the original on June 9, 2002. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
- ^ a b c Sakuba, Tomomi (April 30, 2008). "Garage Private Edition news". T-s-k-b (developer's website).
- ^ Sakuba, Tomomi (December 14, 2014). ""@Kadd9th それは簡単じゃないんです。Win7でも割とまともに動くようですけど、ゲームバランス自体が変わってしまっていますし、あのままで良いと思っているわけでもないので、リリース当初のままに再販することにも抵抗があります。そしてこれは私一人の著作物でもありませんので。"". Twitter.
- ^ LoneDev (March 31, 2020). "GarageDoor". Github. Archived from the original on November 24, 2023.
- ^ "Google Trends". Google Trends. November 24, 2023.
- ^ Estrada, Marcus (December 16, 2021). "Garage: Bad Dream Adventure Released on iOS and Android". Hardcore Gamer. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 17, 2021.
- ^ "Garage: Bad Dream Adventure on Steam". steampowered.com. Retrieved 17 June 2022.