Classic: Reality-On-The-Norm

By: Derek Yu

On: June 1st, 2009

Reality-On-The-Norm is a long-running episodic series of adventure games started by members of the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) community. Conceptualized in 2000, the first official game, Lunchtime of the Damned, was released in early 2001 by none other than Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the creator of the Chzo Mythos and Zero Punctuation. The latest game, Edge of Reality, was released in January 2009. In total, there are an impressive 82 games and over 100 characters listed on the website!

The best part is that anyone and everyone may contribute a game to RON, so long as you don’t violate the community’s rules, such as killing off other people’s characters or revealing the bum’s true identity. The RON website has various resources, including an extensive character line-up, to help you get started. Playing the games is probably the best way to start, however.

(Source: Andy Hull, via TIGForums)

TIGdb: Entry for Lunchtime of the Damned

Posted in Adventure, Community, Developers, Highly Recommended, Windows | Tags: Yahtzee

Kenzya

Damn.. These came out so long ago
dacowboy

wow. must be someone with major balls to call their game “EDGE of Reality”…
AGuy

Man, I remember playing these. Some of them are pretty great.
Cyborg Warrior Pornstar

C’mon Derek, feature Fifi’s Whorehouse.
http://chaoseed.com/garden John Evans

I saw Dave Gilbert give a great talk about these games at a NYC game developer meeting. They sounded like lots of fun (although I’m sorry to say I’ve been too distracted to check out the actual games). We need more shared-universe projects!
Ann

I have always loved the concept of RON, but unfortunately it has suffered quite a bit from random quality, and inconsistency. There are a couple treasures hidden in there.
Sergio

Having played these games back in the day, I can recommend a few that I thought were good at the time:

I Spy, and sort-of-sequel III Spy

The Melt and Drake Trilogy (sadly incomplete, includes Cabbages and Kings, Kittens and Cacti and Apocalypse Meow)

The Postman Only Dies Once

Defender of RON
Movius

RON was/is great. I think I played them all back in the day through to the surfing one then lost track.

Full of zany moments, like making one game crash due to trying to add an entire church to your inventory.