For sinners, this is a four-year journey made on foot, and many do not complete it, being eaten, "sprouted," or ending up taking jobs at way-points along the route.
Grim Fandango takes place in the Land of the Dead, where recently departed souls make their way to the Ninth Underworld. As in most LucasArts adventure games, the player can never get into a "dead-end" situation, due to the death of the character or another limitation, from which progress is impossible. Manny can engage in dialogue with other characters through conversation trees to gain hints of what needs to be done to solve the puzzles or to progress the plot. 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 towards that object or person as he walks by. 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 in order to solve puzzles and progress in the game. The player controls Manny's movements and actions with a keyboard, a joystick, or a gamepad. The game uses the GrimE engine, pre-rendering static backgrounds from 3D models, while the main objects and characters are animated in 3D. 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.
However, the game was considered a commercial failure and factored into LucasArts' termination of their adventure game development, contributing to the decline of the adventure game genre. Grim Fandango was selected for several gaming awards at the time of release, and is often listed in publishers' lists of top games of all time. The game received positive reviews, praising its artistic design and overall game direction in particular. The story follows travel agent Manuel "Manny" Calavera as he attempts to save Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, a newly arrived but virtuous soul, during her long journey. Grim Fandango's world combines elements of the Aztec belief of afterlife with style aspects of film noir, including The Maltese Falcon, On the Waterfront and Casablanca, to create the Land of the Dead, through which recently departed souls, represented in the game as calaca-like figures, must travel before they reach their final destination, the Ninth Underworld. As with other LucasArts adventure games, the player must converse with other characters and examine, collect, and use objects correctly to solve puzzles in order to progress. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered, static backgrounds. Grim Fandango is a personal computer game in the graphic adventure genre released by LucasArts in 1998 and primarily written by Tim Schafer. Credits | Soundtrack | Codes | Walkthrough