Microsoft just announced that they’re laying off up to 9,000 people. I don’t know, I think that if your company has to lay off 9,000 people, maybe some people in leadership positions fucked up and should be losing their jobs instead? Maybe finally kick Phil Spencer to the curb?
“We’re doing better than ever and here’s why we have to let people go.” WELL OK! But please, keep piling money into the AI furnace and forcing us to use garbage no one wants. If only there were people that said the Activision acquisition was a bad idea! I had already pulled away from their products because they’re participating in a genocide, but maybe this is when I finally become a Linux Desktop person as well.
Maybe we should have all listened to the developers of Pyst
The Steam Sale started a few days ago and people have been doing their recommendations. The Adventure Games Podcast has a nice page with their recommendations, Miri Teixeiri has a good recommendation thread on bluesky, but now I want to do one because that’s what blogs are for. As usual, I also think you should consider buying games on Itch.io but they’re not doing a sale right now. I’m also missing a ton of stuff because I can only write so much, so if you enjoy these then keep looking around. Despite the occasional discourse about it being dead, there’s constantly new games coming out and I even wrote a post a few weeks ago about all the releases this year. So in no order really, here’s a list of recommendations that are more focused on recent releases.
Of course I have to start off by recommending Cyan’s remakes of Myst and Riven. I already loved those games and I think the remakes are an improvement on both. Riven was already a masterclass in world building in video games but I think the remake does a lot to make the game easier to get into. Just make sure the FMV option for the first game is turned on.
Wadjet Eye Games is one of the best modern point-and-click adventure game developers and they keep getting better with each game. I strongly recommend their two most recent games. Old Skies is a time travel story and Unavowed is an urban fantasy thriller that feels a lot like a Bioware game minus the combat, where you build a party before going on missions.
Speaking of Wadjet Eye Games, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is a horror adventure set in rural Victorian England and developed by Cloak and Dagger Games, another adventure game developer I’m a fan of.
Grundislav Games is another adventure game developer that I think should come up when people talk about folks doing great stuff and keeping the genre alive. Lamplight City is a steampunk detective adventure and Rosewater is a western set in an alternate 19th century world. Both games are in the same world but you do not need to play them in a specific order.
Perfect Tides is a point-and-click adventure about being a teen in the year 2000 by Meredith Gran, creator of the comic Octopus Pie.
The Crimson Diamond is a mystery adventure game inspired by Sierra’s Laura Bow series with an EGA color palette.
If you’re looking for something that will challenge you, Lucy Dreaming and Will of Arthur Flabbington are both nice choices and remind me of 90s adventure games from a difficulty level standpoint.
Don’t Escape: 4 Days to Survive is interesting because it should be something I hate. You can softlock yourself into a bad ending and you constantly have to make tough choices to survive but it works! Unlike a lot of old adventures where I put an asterisk next to the recommendation because it’s good despite those things, it’s an intentional part of the game’s design and that’s actually a good thing.
NORCO has some of the best writing in a video game in recent years and was my favorite game overall in 2022. It’s a sci-fi mystery set in an alternate southern Louisiana.
Return to Monkey Island is the most recent game in the Monkey Island series and I think it’s some of that crew’s best work. The game does some really interesting stuff mechanically to update the genre that I hope we keep seeing in other games, and I think the writing (yes, even the ending) are top notch too.
Thaumistry: In Charm’s Way is a great fantasy comedy text adventure made by an Infocom alumni. I’d recommend this one if you’ve never played a text adventure before because it’s very friendly to new players.
Kentucky Route Zero is one of my favorite games ever. It’s described as “a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway running through the caves beneath Kentucky” and the vibes and writing are perfect. If you do play this one, I really recommend playing it slowly over a sequence of nights for maximum vibes.
Cosmic Void is another adventure game dev I’m a fan of. I recommend their sci-fi space opera Blood Nova and horror adventure Devil’s Hideout.
Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard reminds me so much of 90s adventure games but is very much doing its own thing too and features some great animation and pixel art.
Midnight Scenes is another series with great pixel art. The games are self contained horror adventures that can be played in a single sitting.
The Shapeshifting Detective is a murder mystery where you are able to shapeshift into various characters to get clues from people who will react to you differently based on who you are. It is a game packed with FMV, which has always been cool.
Immortality also uses FMV to have you investigate what happened to a missing actress through viewing clips of three unreleased films.
Hypnospace Outlaw is another favorite. You explore a 90s alternate internet and enforce moderation rules.
The Forgotten City is a mystery adventure where you find yourself in an ancient city and try to find out what’s going on through a timeloop and repeating the day.
Case of the Golden Idol has you solving deaths through a really unique interface where you gather clues and build a theory to what happened.
Phoenix Springs is an adventure I’ve praised a lot on social media. It’s a very surreal mystery adventure and I think the game mechanically does some really interesting stuff by using memories and thoughts as inventory items.
Darkside Detective is a series of very goofy supernatural point-and-click adventures.
Developer: Wurm Fud Publisher: Wurm Fud Year: 2024 Genre: Visual Novel
Backwater Eulogy is a very short (10-15 minutes) visual novel and autobiographical exploration of loss and the experience of grieving someone you had a complicated relationship with. I think this type of VN is described as a Kinetic Novel, since it is linear and there are no choices, with the interactive elements just being the user clicking to transition from one page to the next. I don’t have a problem with that! A game can just be a very well written story featuring lots of great pixel art, which is what this is. The music is very minimalist and low key but works well for the story the game is telling and helped with the immersion.
It hit me really hard as someone who has experienced a sudden and very upsetting loss lately. I didn’t have a complicated relationship with my aunt but I still think about things I wish I could have done to change the outcome, even though there’s nothing I could have actually done. The story is also strongly influenced by the developer living in the midwestern US and that also resonated with me. Sorry about this one being such a bummer. Sometimes you play a short game about a depressing topic but it’s exactly what you needed to play at the moment.
Backwater Eulogy is available on Steam and Itch.io.
Yesterday there was an article I read about the history of bisexuality in games, which I’ll always welcome, but it was a frustrating read because it left out so much and basically ignored anything before The Sims and anything that wasn’t a major hit. It was this quote specifically that I really didn’t care for:
Because when games started tentatively including queer representation in the late 00s, it began with playersexuality: the idea that characters would be attracted to the player, no matter who they were. You could marry someone of any gender in Skyrim or the later Harvest Moon games, for example. Liara in Mass Effect would want whichever Shepherd – male or female – you chose to be.
It’s very possible I’m misreading what it’s saying, but this isn’t true in any reading I could think of. The representation is certainly notable, but queer games go back all the way to the late 80s at least, with games like Caper in the Castro in 1989 and Gayblade in 1992. Both are games by developers who are part of the LGBTQ+ community and are about people in the community.
Even if you’re ignoring indie games (and why would you?), there’s plenty of examples from larger publishers in the 80s and 90s. If we’re just talking about video game characters, Infocom’s game Moonmist from 1986 has a Lesbian woman and a bisexual woman as NPCs. If the article means playersexuality, that goes back to at least 1992 with Ultima VII: The Black Gate. There’s also games with a big budget like Phantasmagoria 2 in 1996 that explicitly have a bisexual male protagonist if the subtext that’s basically text in Gabriel Knight 2 was too subtle for some people. There’s so many other examples listed too from a basic Wikipedia search. Granted, a lot of the examples listed are very homophobic and transphobic, but there’s positive representation in the 80s and 90s too and it’s just really frustrating to see this history get ignored. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it happen at a games outlet and it probably won’t be the last.
On a more positive note, I really liked this recent page listing games developed by trans people before 2010, which extends basically to the beginning of the games industry. Trans game developers have always been here and always will be.
