Ahha, this document came to my attention last night from this video [0] that bubbled in my YouTube recs - I don't know if it's the same for OP or just a coincidence, but I highly recommend it too:

GDC Talk: "One Page Designs", by Stone Librande

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_wLks1kAg

Always fascinating to peek behind the curtain at how these classics were built. Grim Fandango had some truly brilliant, and occasionally maddening, puzzles.

Loved this as a teen, although I actually don't think I ever got past year 3.

It's interesting to see how the "non-linearity" is still very linear, it's just that you have three different goals at once.

I just finished re-playing Day of the Tentacle with my kid, and what's amazing about that is the intersecting non-linearity. The three different characters each have multiple of their own goals, but they're forever needing to trade things back and forth, so often the path of one will be blocked until the other one has gotten the thing they need.

The map for the goals for DOT must be like spaghetti.

Fun fact: Brad went on to lead 18F. As someone who has worked professionally with him, it's wild to come to grips with the impact he's had on the game industry from Lua to leading divisions of Sony Playstation. He's a humble and sharp guy.

Grim Fandango is interesting because they are responsible for Lua’s popularity as a gaming scripting language:

https://www.lua.org/doc/hopl.pdf

Grim Fandango was one of the first games I bought out of my own pocket. And as was the norm back then, this used up all my games budget for months, so I had to stick to this game, for better or worse, for a long time. I remember it took me a very long time to even find the Tube Room, it's easy to miss unless you do the 3D equivalent of pixelhunting to find the place where you need to take a turn. And boy, was I stuck in Rubacava!

I also remember that it was slightly difficult to buy the game - I was at least 13 at the time, the game had an age rating of 12, but (gasp!) there were skeletons on the cover, and the tag line mentioned corruption and crime. So the lady in the shop actually called her boss before eventually selling the game to me.

One of my all time favorites and one I introduced my Son to as a child. He loved it enough to complete it and get a tattoo as an adult.

Phenomenal game and a fun fact: Grim Fandango was AFAICT the first high-profile game built on Lua and became the catalyst for industry adoption

Obligatory link to The Digital Antiquarian's treatment of the game:

https://www.filfre.net/2024/11/grim-fandango/

This game is iconic!