Month: June 2025

Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator Case 1 – In Search of the Skunk-Ape thoughts

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: Grundislav Games
Publisher: Grundislav Games
Year: 2004 (Deluxe version: 2006)
Genre: Adventure

a park ranger talking a guy in a building

I just installed ScummVM on my new MacBook this weekend and have started loading as many games as I could on it. After seeing how many early AGS games I put on there, I thought it would be a fun excuse to revisit some of the games from that era since I have some nostalgia for that time. This includes the first game in the Ben Jordan Paranormal Investigator series. The first game just turned 20 last year, which is also a bit weird to see. I played the Deluxe version, which came out in 2006. I thiiiink it’s the first game by Grundislav Games? You play as a dude named Ben Jordan on your first case as a paranormal investigator and check out a series of murders of park rangers by a creature known as the Skunk-Ape. It’s a horror comedy series, which I don’t think you see too often in video games either.

It still holds up! The puzzles aren’t too difficult but don’t feel like a waste of time either, and it’s only about 60-90 minutes so you can easily do it in one sitting. Some of the puzzles make him seem like more of a sociopath than I remember, but I guess that’s kind of the whole deal with this style of adventure game. Plus it’s a comedy so it works in the game anyway. Obviously the developer would go on to do bigger and better things but I think some of the fun with revisiting these early AGS games is seeing how they got started. Even if they didn’t go on to make commercial games, early AGS games are fun to check out because you get to watch a whole community figure out how to make these after Lucasarts and Sierra collapsed, and the lack of polish in the art and voice acting is really charming to me. That doesn’t mean that I think it’s bad, it’s still lovely stuff and I think it’s worth playing outside of its context, but it’s a different kind of nostalgia than what you would get from revisiting a Lucasarts or Sierra game.

Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator Case 1 – In Search of the Skunk-Ape is available for free/pay-what-you-want on Itch.io

Blog Roundup (1-6-2025)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Happy pride month! Play some games by queer games devs. Maybe some goofy ones for free from here? Or of course, the 1995 fmv game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery. As usual, here are some things I liked reading in my RSS feed reader this week. I’ve complained about Inoreader before but I’m still using it because I haven’t found a replacement that fits my needs yet. I will keep pushing RSS feed readers because it beats constantly checking social media IMO.

I’ve mentioned Collection Chamber before but the monthly updates are always exciting to me. It’s an abandonware site that packages the games to work on modern versions of Windows. I never even heard of most of this month’s games other than i Ninja, but I love Cryo’s weird broken adventures so it’s fun to see Zero Zone in there. It’s probably bad and I’ll probably love it.

Wraithkal continues to do roundups of Screenshot Saturday posts found on Mastodon. I don’t know if there’s anyone doing the equivalent of posts on Bluesky but that would be nice if anyone is thinking of a weekly blog post to do.

May was ME/CFS Awareness Month and eladnarra has a post about it.

I’m a huge fan of DOS Game Club and they have a new episode. If you’re looking for a forum to talk about old DOS games, they’re a great community to hang out with.

Sidequesting has an interview with Goth Donut Games about their upcoming Castlevania-like Lady Dracula.

Speaking of Sidequesting, they have also started highlighting smaller indie game sites like mine. This is going to be awkward when I start making posts about personal stuff and Doctor Who very soon since I still consider this to be a personal blog even with 99% of the posts being about video games, but I still appreciate the pat on the back.

schledorn highlights four games that he thinks deserve more attention. Bear Blog is great. If you don’t have a blog and want to start one, consider using that service.

Essay Games has thoughts on Despelote, a game I keep meaning to play.

Here’s a guide on making Monkey Island 2 sound better from the International House of Mojo.

Indie Hell Zone took a look at some of the games in the RPG Maker 2025 Game Jam.

Screenshot taken from Brain Baking

Brain Baking has rescued custom levels they made in the 90s for Lode Runner: The Legend Returns. I love seeing people preserve levels, games, and mods they made when they were younger. I will also take any opportunity to recommend the fan remake of this game.

There’s also two dev logs I recommend. One from the designer of Six Ages talking about his new game and one from Ben Chandler, who has worked on so many adventure games, talking about his own game and features some nice pictures and video of notes.