Adventure Game Heroes: Al Lowe

Working for Sierra On-Line in the 80s and early 90s, Al Lowe, one of the pioneers in the industry, was responsible for one of the most renowned adventure game series ever: Leisure Suit Larry. It was about this middle aged loser trying to score with the most beautiful women he could find, no matter how much the odds where against him; but his toils would be neverending, and the women always came out on top in one way or another. All in beautiful, 16 colors of low resolution.

"Leisure Suit Larry" - The Original

What prevented it from being a sleezy lowbrow sexcentric game was the comic genius of Al Lowe. This wasn´t about sex, but pure plain and simple gaming entertainment with a cheeky flavor to it, the hot ladies were just the cream on top. Was it male chauvinist? Sure, but not misogynist in any way. For me, it was a revolution - a revolution that introduced me to the world of graphical adventure games. I would later play better adventure games, but I would always have a softspot for Larry.

Someone please remind me why I like this game;)

Al would later be involved in games like "Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist", and "Torin´s passage" which are a testament to his continued brilliance. Unfortunately, he´s no longer active within the gaming industry.

But what does this have to do with game development, you say? Well, you see Al has his own website, and has kindly invited us to view some of his design documents(!). Al never writes dialogue until the game is made, but the documents still let us get into Al´s mindset to see how he structures his games, with general design decisions, plots, character development, and even technical aspects. In short, it´s a goldmine of adventure game developing genius. The link for the site is below:

Al Lowe´s Humor site

The stuff you want is in the downloads section. Make sure to scroll down past the games.

Next time I hope to get some new sketches and designs up. Until then,

Hasta pronto!