My Journey with Sanctum of
Slime
Back
This is a bit of a change-up from my usual posts here. This is more of a blog entry for posterity if anything else. Hope this is as interesting as I think it is!
Around the end of
March 2022, development on the game Ghostbusters: Spirits
Unleashed was being shared with the public, and that
made me curious to play the frequently forgotten entry in the
series. That being 2011's Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime.
At this point I had seen the characters from this game appear
in the IDW comics a few times, but I hadn't actually seen or
heard about any gameplay. Information about it both on
Wikipedia and the Ghostbusters Fandom Wiki was scarce with the
latter containing a lot of dead links.
Getting the game in the first place was quite a journey in it of itself. I first looked for it on Steam, and all that popped up in the search results was a demo for the game. I click the demo, but it just redirects to the main store page. I try using the browser version but get the same results. I try manually entering the url to the game's store page and still nothing. I even try using the mobile app to look for it, and it still gives me nothing. Finally I just Google search "Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime PC Download" and get some interesting results. Amazon still had the game available for purchase for $10, but I wasn't really keen on paying that much for a mediocre game.
Pirating the game was simply not going to work though. I only found 4 torrents across the web. Each of them on sketchy websites, and only 1 of them having any active seeders. Of course on that one torrent, there was only 1 person seeding it. Not even the pirates wanted this game.
So I go back to Amazon and figure I can just use the leftover funds from a gift card I got for Christmas to cover most of the cost, so in the end I only paid $1.75 for the game. After playing it for maybe half an hour, I got stuck on level 3. I was playing by myself as the PC version has no online multiplayer anymore; only local couch co-op. The AI in this game is so terrible, the more difficult minibosses and bosses are impossible. But for the parts I was able to play, it was kinda fun. I just wish I had people to play it with.
Getting the game in the first place was quite a journey in it of itself. I first looked for it on Steam, and all that popped up in the search results was a demo for the game. I click the demo, but it just redirects to the main store page. I try using the browser version but get the same results. I try manually entering the url to the game's store page and still nothing. I even try using the mobile app to look for it, and it still gives me nothing. Finally I just Google search "Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime PC Download" and get some interesting results. Amazon still had the game available for purchase for $10, but I wasn't really keen on paying that much for a mediocre game.
Pirating the game was simply not going to work though. I only found 4 torrents across the web. Each of them on sketchy websites, and only 1 of them having any active seeders. Of course on that one torrent, there was only 1 person seeding it. Not even the pirates wanted this game.
So I go back to Amazon and figure I can just use the leftover funds from a gift card I got for Christmas to cover most of the cost, so in the end I only paid $1.75 for the game. After playing it for maybe half an hour, I got stuck on level 3. I was playing by myself as the PC version has no online multiplayer anymore; only local couch co-op. The AI in this game is so terrible, the more difficult minibosses and bosses are impossible. But for the parts I was able to play, it was kinda fun. I just wish I had people to play it with.
The story goes like
this: In 1989 after the events of Ghostbusters II,
Janosz was committed to Parkview Hospital where he met a man
named Ismael who claimed to be the last member of the cult of
Dumazu. Ismael convinces Janosz to obtain a shard of the Relic
of Nilhe to help bring Dumazu back to life with Dana as a
reward for Janosz.
After Janosz is released from the hospital in 2010, ghost activity ramps up and becomes too much for the original team to handle, so they bring in a fresh new team to help carry the load. Alan Crendall, Samuel Hazer, Bridget Gibbons, and Gabriel Sitter. Through the game, they're tasked with finding out the truth behind Ismael and uncovering the plot to resurrect Dumazu.
So pretty standard Ghostbusters stuff I would say. Originally, Alan was going to be named Oscar which lead many fans to speculate that he would be the same Oscar from Ghostbusters II just all grown up now, but as far as I can tell, that isn't fully confirmed. He is still Oscar in the game files though; Oscar Wallace.
After Janosz is released from the hospital in 2010, ghost activity ramps up and becomes too much for the original team to handle, so they bring in a fresh new team to help carry the load. Alan Crendall, Samuel Hazer, Bridget Gibbons, and Gabriel Sitter. Through the game, they're tasked with finding out the truth behind Ismael and uncovering the plot to resurrect Dumazu.
So pretty standard Ghostbusters stuff I would say. Originally, Alan was going to be named Oscar which lead many fans to speculate that he would be the same Oscar from Ghostbusters II just all grown up now, but as far as I can tell, that isn't fully confirmed. He is still Oscar in the game files though; Oscar Wallace.
I
went back to what research I could find on the
Ghostbusters Wiki and the game's actual Wikipedia page
and learned some very interesting (to me) things about
the development behind this game. Now, the section about
the game's development on the Ghostbusters Wiki is
mostly just documenting what was released about the game
during development. There's only one paragraph of
background information and it only has a single source
at the end that leads to a dead link, so take these next
few paragraphs with a grain of salt.
From what I gather, the game was originally going to be developed by Terminal Reality, the same studio that made the 2009 game, but was given to Behavior Interactive Santiago when Terminal Reality decided to work on a Star Wars game instead. Judging by Terminal Reality's wiki page and looking at the list of games they made, that Star Wars game would have been Kinect Star Wars.
Behavior Interactive Santiago was first known as Wanako games. They were acquired by Vivendi Games which later merged with Activision to create Activision Blizzard. Wanako was then acquired by Artificial Mind & Movement which later changed its name to Behavior Interactive thus making Wanako the Santiago studio of Behavior Interactive. In 2017, the Santiago studio would be shut down. Judging by Steam community posts I was able to find, that's about when Sanctum of Slime was removed from the platform.
The game was built in only 4 months, and it shows. A lot of the assets are recycled from the 2009 game most likely to save time and costs. There's also no voice acting whatsoever. Animated cutscenes are replaced by comic pages. The music also seems to be recycled from 2009. Even the upgrades that can be unlocked in levels 2 and 3 are oddly similar to the Composite Particle System and the Dark Matter Generator from the 2009 game too, albeit they are slightly different. Everything about the game feels rushed, and it's a shame that it wasn't given more time to become something that could at least be considered "good."
From what I gather, the game was originally going to be developed by Terminal Reality, the same studio that made the 2009 game, but was given to Behavior Interactive Santiago when Terminal Reality decided to work on a Star Wars game instead. Judging by Terminal Reality's wiki page and looking at the list of games they made, that Star Wars game would have been Kinect Star Wars.
Behavior Interactive Santiago was first known as Wanako games. They were acquired by Vivendi Games which later merged with Activision to create Activision Blizzard. Wanako was then acquired by Artificial Mind & Movement which later changed its name to Behavior Interactive thus making Wanako the Santiago studio of Behavior Interactive. In 2017, the Santiago studio would be shut down. Judging by Steam community posts I was able to find, that's about when Sanctum of Slime was removed from the platform.
The game was built in only 4 months, and it shows. A lot of the assets are recycled from the 2009 game most likely to save time and costs. There's also no voice acting whatsoever. Animated cutscenes are replaced by comic pages. The music also seems to be recycled from 2009. Even the upgrades that can be unlocked in levels 2 and 3 are oddly similar to the Composite Particle System and the Dark Matter Generator from the 2009 game too, albeit they are slightly different. Everything about the game feels rushed, and it's a shame that it wasn't given more time to become something that could at least be considered "good."
Anyway, back to my
experience with the game. I went ahead and shelved the game
after being unable to progress after level 3, but my business
with the game didn't stop there. I wanted to crack open the
files and find a way to save those comic pages somehow. In May
2022, my first attempt at trying to get into the .pak files in
that held all the game data was unsuccessful. Mostly because I
was going about it all wrong. It wasn't until late November
2022 when I decided to try again.
Using Dragon UnPACKer 5 was a lot better than trying to decrypt the files and use PAK Explorer. I don't know why Dragon UnPACKer worked where PAK Explorer didn't, but I'm not going to question it if it works. I didn't find much of what I could save, but I was able to save the incredibly crusty character art, some unused concept art, the textures for the character models, and most importantly: the comic pages! Unfortunately, they didn't have the text bubbles, but I considered this to be a victory nonetheless.
I installed paint.net to save the pages as .pngs and uploaded them to the Sanctum of Slime page on the Ghostbusters Wiki. Luckily, someone else had made a transcript of the comic pages and the in-game banter between the new team and put it up on GameFAQs.
Now why would I go to all this trouble to preserve a mediocre game that was rushed out of development that I only just found out about a little less than a year ago as of me writing this? Well, because I want to be the one to remember it if everyone else has forgotten about it. I don't think it will be completely forgotten anytime soon as it's featured on the fan wiki, but just in case we have a Library of Alexandria moment with Fandom.com, then I want to make sure this game is remembered in some way. I care so much because I'm choosing to care.
Using Dragon UnPACKer 5 was a lot better than trying to decrypt the files and use PAK Explorer. I don't know why Dragon UnPACKer worked where PAK Explorer didn't, but I'm not going to question it if it works. I didn't find much of what I could save, but I was able to save the incredibly crusty character art, some unused concept art, the textures for the character models, and most importantly: the comic pages! Unfortunately, they didn't have the text bubbles, but I considered this to be a victory nonetheless.
I installed paint.net to save the pages as .pngs and uploaded them to the Sanctum of Slime page on the Ghostbusters Wiki. Luckily, someone else had made a transcript of the comic pages and the in-game banter between the new team and put it up on GameFAQs.
Now why would I go to all this trouble to preserve a mediocre game that was rushed out of development that I only just found out about a little less than a year ago as of me writing this? Well, because I want to be the one to remember it if everyone else has forgotten about it. I don't think it will be completely forgotten anytime soon as it's featured on the fan wiki, but just in case we have a Library of Alexandria moment with Fandom.com, then I want to make sure this game is remembered in some way. I care so much because I'm choosing to care.