I just finished Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator - Case 7: The Cardinal Sins. It’s the seventh chapter in the 8-part freeware graphic adventure series created by my friend Francisco Gonzalez. If you haven’t checked the games out yet and you like old-school adventure games, I recommend the series. Every case is quite enjoyable, and I’ve also contributed to bits and pieces here and there; I was even the model for one of the characters on Case 6. This time around, I reworked the graphical user interface for it, although I kept it to the classic Sierra adventure game style as well for consistency with the previous cases.
One of the things that strike me about these games is how much effort Francisco puts into them in terms of production. He’s pretty much the sole designer, programmer, artist, and animator; the only thing he doesn’t do is music but he does contribute to some of the voice acting which, by the way, is all lip-synched. So, for a freeware game is pretty good. There are several things in the games that I would criticize here and there, but these games are a prime example of what making games for a hobby is like, where you can really do whatever you want for fun, and while you get fans and get criticism, in the end these games are primarily made for Francisco’s enjoyment, and for the graphic adventure fans.
He started working on these games around 2003. He’s about to start Case 8, the last case in the series, and I can’t wait to see the whole series to be complete.