Grim Fandango

Grim Fandango is an adventure game, in which the player controls Manuel "Manny" Calavera (calavera being Spanish for 'skull') as he follows Mercedes "Meche" Colomar in the Underworld. It uses the GrimE engine, pre-rendering static backgrounds from 3D models, while the main objects and characters are animated in 3D. Additionally, cutscenes are pre-rendered in 3D. The player controls Manny's movements and actions with a keyboard, a joystick, or a gamepad.

The remastered edition allows control via a mouse as well. Manny must collect objects that can be used with either other collectible objects, parts of the scenery, or with other people in the Land of the Dead to solve puzzles and progress. The game has no HUD. Unlike the earlier 2D LucasArts games, the player is informed of objects or persons of interest not by text floating on the screen when the player passes a cursor over them, but instead by the fact that Manny will turn his head toward that object or person as he walks by.

Grim Fandango takes place in the Land of the Dead (the Eighth Underworld), where recently departed souls aim to make their way to the Land of Eternal Rest (the Ninth Underworld) on the Four Year Journey of the Soul. Good deeds in life are rewarded by access to better travel packages, provided by the Department of Death, to assist in making the journey (such as sports cars and luxury ocean cruises), the best of which is the Number Nine, an express train that takes four minutes to reach the gate to the Ninth Underworld. However, souls who did not lead a kind life are left to travel through the Land of the Dead on foot, which would take around four years. Such souls often lose faith in the existence of the Ninth Underworld and instead find jobs and stay in the Land of the Dead.

The travel agents of the Department of Death act as Grim Reapers to escort the souls from the Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead, and then determine which mode of transport the soul has merited. Each year on the Day of the Dead, these souls are allowed to visit their families in the Land of the Living.

Grim Fandango's development was led by project leader Tim Schafer, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle and creator of Full Throttle and the more recent Psychonauts and Brütal Legend. Schafer had conceived a Day of the Dead-themed adventure before production of Full Throttle began, and he submitted both concepts to LucasArts for approval at the same time. Full Throttle was accepted instead because of its greater mainstream appeal; it became a hit and opened the way for Schafer to create Grim Fandango. Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts noted that the pitching process for Grim Fandango was "a breeze" because of Schafer's earlier success, despite the new project's unusual theme.

Development began soon after the completion of Full Throttle in June 1995. Grim Fandango was an attempt by LucasArts to rejuvenate the graphic adventure genre, in decline by 1998. In response to complaints that Full Throttle was too short, Schafer set the goal of having twice as many puzzles as Full Throttle, which demanded a more lengthy and ambitious story to accommodate them. According to Schafer, Grim Fandago was developed on a $3 million budget.

Grim Fandango gained acclaim. The aggregating review website Metacritic gave it a score of 94/100. Critics lauded the art direction in particular, with GameSpot rating the visual design as "consistently great". PC Zone emphasized the production as a whole calling the direction, costumes, characters, music, and atmosphere expertly done.

They also said it would make a "superb film". The San Francisco Chronicle stated "Grim Fandango feels like a wild dance through a cartoonish film-noir adventure. Its wacky characters, seductive puzzle-filled plot and a nearly invisible interface allow players to lose themselves in the game just as cinemagoers might get lost in a movie." The Houston Chronicle, in naming Grim Fandango the best game of 1998 along with Half-Life, said the graphics were "jaw-dropping" and said it was "full of both dark and light humor".

In 2005, The Guardian characterized the game as "the last genuine classic to come from LucasArts, the company that helped define adventure games, Tim Schafer's noir-pastiche follows skull-faced Manny Calavera through a bureaucratic parody of the Land of the Dead. With a look that takes from both Mexican mythology and art deco, Grim Fandango is as unique an artistic statement as mainstream gaming has managed to offer. While loved by devotees, its limited sales prompted LucasArts to back away from original adventures to simply exploit franchises".

Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef, in a 2012 retrospective look, believed that Grim Fandango's combination of film noir and the adventure game genre was the first of its kind and a natural fit due to the script-heavy nature of both, and would later help influence games with similar themes like the Ace Attorney series and L.A. Noire.