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| Obsidian | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Rocket Science Games |
| Publisher(s) | SegaSoft |
| Producer(s) | Matthew Fassberg |
| Designer(s) | Adam Wolff Howard Cushnir Scott Kim |
| Programmer(s) | Andrew Rostaing |
| Artist(s) | Alex Laurant Roy Forge Smith |
| Composer(s) | Thomas Dolby Blake Leyh Kim Cascone |
| Engine | mTropolis |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS |
| Release | January 10, 1997 (Windows) May 13, 1997 (Mac OS) |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Obsidian is a 1997 graphic adventure game developed by Rocket Science Games and published by SegaSoft. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.
Based on a game design outline by VP of Development/Creative Director, Bill Davis, and written by Howard Cushnir and Adam Wolff, Obsidian is a first-person 3-D graphical adventure game, with a large puzzle element. The puzzles were designed by Scott Kim, Howard Cushnir and Adam Wolff. The soundtrack was composed by Thomas Dolby along with other composers at his company Beatnik, at the time known as Headspace.
The game spanned five CDs, and features pre-rendered environments, audio, and full-motion video (both live action and CGI). The strategy guide includes numerous small essays, providing background on such subjects as nanotechnology, Jungian psychology, and the nature of artificial intelligence.
Included is a minigame which uses a "twenty questions" algorithm (similar to what would eventually be used in 20Q). The game comes preprogrammed with a set of guesses, but after losing it asks the player for criteria that would have led it to a correct guess, and then records that information into a text file. Because of this, the game is able to (theoretically) "learn" how to become so good as to beat the player every time.