''The Adventures of Fatman'' is a

point and click adventure An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

released in 2003.

Gameplay

The game consists of the user playing as the eponymous Fatman, superhero protector of Shadowlawn, investigating an explosion at the ACNE chemical plant, and how exactly the CEO of Mary & Kate cosmetics was involved. The villain of the game is Toxicman, a mutated thug who has a power to transform others into zombies. The game features over 30 locations, and over 20 characters with 1,000 fully recorded lines of dialogue, with an original score featuring over fifty tracks. The game also enables you to listen to an "Audio Commentary" while playing, for every location.

Development

''The Adventures of Fatman'' was created by U.S. independent studio SOCKO! Entertainment and released in May 2003. The game was designed by Michael Doak and produced using the popular

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

game creation software the

Adventure Game Studio Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language ...

. ''Fatman'' was originally released as an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

commercial game. When Socko! Entertainment closed down in late 2003 they released the game under the freely distributed

Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

(Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) as "

Abandonware Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the g ...

". In October 2015 the game was rereleased on Steam.

Reception

The game received mostly favourable reviews. It received a DIY Games award for 'Adventure game of the year', and 'Excellence in music', and was nominated for 'Overall game of the year'. It also won two

AGS Awards Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language b ...

.AGS games pages: ''The Adventures of Fatman''
(cited 13 December 2006)

References

External links

Original SOCKO! Entertainment website
(archived 2003)
Reopened SOCKO! Entertainment website
(offline)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adventures of Fatman, The 2003 video games Windows games Windows-only games Adventure games Point-and-click adventure games Adventure Game Studio games Creative Commons-licensed video games AGS Award winners Indie games Video games developed in the United States