"I can't say who, but there are enough signs that somebody on the development team really cared about The Chosen, and this was their baby. Someone here had a vision... and we're paying the price for it." - Ross about The Chosen: Well of Souls
"I still don't know how to place this game. It did so many things right, then just sorta got drunk watching Captain Planet episodes. (...) I can tell a lot of heart went into this game and that took us into odd places. That's about the best I can ask from most games." - Ross about A New Beginning
I couldn't think of a better way to start this topic without taking these quotes from Ross himself, since I think the title is self-explanatory.
This is partially inspired by the topic "What is the Coolest Game YOU'VE Played?" by Rarefoil. But here it's for games that we can see the devs put some weight, but there's still clearly something wrong with it. So I ask: What games you've played, or know about, that you could see "somebody cared"?
The Chosen: Well of Souls and A New Beginning are two different "flavours" of this. One is just a bad game all around with serious balancing issues and a very dull story, but just like Ross pointed out, if they made the game as a quick cash-in it wouldn't be that long and the story wouldn't have as much dialogue it actually has. The other is more competently made, but it shoots itself on the foot due to the cartoony and preachy nature of the writing on a plot that wants you to take it seriously.
With that in mind, I could say that to fall into this category a game needs to be either really bad, but made by developers that (just like Ed Wood) are really passionate about it, or a potentially good game that might be misguided in one way or another. Or even something in between.
One game that would give this award is Limbo of the Lost.
To be honest, I never played this game, I'm familiar with it thanks to Mandalore's review. But it has reasons to deserve it in my opinion.
For those unaware, this is a point-and-click adventure game that came out in 2008, and it's mostly remembered due to it's controversy of using stolen assets from many places. So many in fact that there's an wiki dedicated to it.
I can see this game has a lot of heart despite shamelessly stealing from a lot of places. One reason is that this game was "sort of" being developed since 1990.
Limbo of the Lost was first conceptualised by two guys, but they were extremely unlucky on finding a competent team to help them materialise their project properly, and a publisher interested in backing their game. They only got one extra guy later to help on the project. And the amount of plagiarized stuff only shows two things: One thing is that they weren't very competent by themselves to create, well, most of it (some few elements are original, still). And another thing is that they really wanted their baby project to see the light of day, no matter the cost.
I mean, a LOT of the stolen material was so blatant that a lawsuit was guaranteed. Why even take this risk just to release a game that should ideally been released roughly seventeen years ago compared to the time it was actually released? And a game that I don't think had any hype surrounding it? They could've just gave up on the whole thing. But they persisted.
If the creators of The Chosen: Well of Souls carry the spirit of Ed Wood, I could say that the creators of Limbo of the Lost also carry the spirit of Dr. Frankenstein. Just like the doctor they created a abomination, but Victor Frankenstein didn't created the monster "for the evulz", he created it to show the world he could do it.
At least that's my take on it. I wanted to post other games that I think may deserve this award, but I'm tired for now. In the meantime you guys can share games that you've played that you may think deserve this award.
