Game: Poker Night at the Inventory 1 & 2
Developer: Telltale Games
Genre: Card Game/Poker Simulator
Releases:
– Poker Night at the Inventory: 2010 (PC)
– Poker Night at the Inventory 2: 2013 (PC)
Ah, Telltale Games, the dream of a game studio producing Adventure Games that turned into a crunch mode-nightmare. What started with the idea of making Adventure Games appealing again for a modern market by streamlining choices in the “X will remember that”-style became more and more about growth, revenue, acquiring more franchises, pushing more product, and therefore caused a blandification of their games and the eventual shut-down of the company as a whole. Now, it is easy to read from these lines that I am not a fan of Telltale’s works; but then again Adventure Games as a whole are not my forte, so I am probably not the best source to talk to. However, even Telltale Games managed to produce titles that I find charming in an odd way, even though they have little to do with choices in dialogue, and more with choices in rational thinking and gambling. Early in the studio’s life, the team worked on a poker simulator with the name “Telltale Texas Hold’em”, using generic characters around a poker table to play against. Then, on May 15, 2009, Telltale Games started a survey with the goal of potentially reviving that franchise, but using characters from the various franchises they had the rights to use instead of producing some no-name face across the table. Thus started the existence of the “Poker Night” games, a subject that I would like to cover today on the 19th day of Blaugust 2022.
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