One of the most pronounced differences in game design between Sierra and LucasArts was that Sierra game designers seemed to take a near perverse delight in killing the player over the most trivial things, often as part of the humour, sometimes through arcade sequences, or even in Gold Rush through random chance. This meant: save early, save often.

Even if you didn’t always die, there were quite a few “dead man walking” situations (though, to be fair, there were a few deaths or DMWs in LucasArts adventures, too). I wasn’t sure whether to avoid deaths and DMWs in my game altogether, or to keep them in to have that authentic Sierra feel. It was an easy decision to try to make sure that a DMW is not possible, but for deaths it wasn’t quite so clear. So instead, I’ve chosen to leave it up to the player:

That dialog box pops up at the start of the game and you, as the player, can decide whether you want the genuine retro experience with the chance of dying (or otherwise losing) or whether you just want to make your way through the game to see how the story turns out. To still give you some incentive to do the right thing, points will be deducted from the score when an otherwise lethal event would occur. But at least you can just continue playing.