Billy Masters Was Right is a short adventure game inspired by 80s films like The ‘Burbs and has an aesthetic inspired by Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, but does not use the same verb system as those games. This one does the standard left/right mouse button system you see in most adventures these days, with the left mouse button for using/picking up objects and the right mouse button to look at things. I’ve always been a fan of the big head character design of those games and it always makes me happy to see people make them. I even made one myself. It’s the first game I’ve played by Postmodern Adventures, who has made a bunch of adventure games this point and has moved onto making commercial games for a while now. It’s good stuff! All the puzzles felt very fair and while I have 80’s pop culture exhaustion at this point, I enjoyed it here and it fit with the style of game. It’s certainly not used as a “remember how much better the 80’s were?” and even has a little dig at Reagan. There’s one or two plot threads that maybe felt a little out of place to me, but it’s a nice little adventure game that will take you about 30-60 minutes to play through and I can’t complain about the Pay-What-You-Want price tag. I’ll have to play more games by Postmodern Adventures in the future.
Billy Masters Was Right is available as Pay-What-You-Want on Itch.io
Fuck ICE. I have so much love to everyone pushing back on them in LA right now and hopefully one day ICE will be abolished.
Well, here’s what I’ve been reading lately:
Technology
A few days ago I posted a list of everything I follow in my RSS feed reader and it looks like some other folks were doing that too. Maybe you’ll find some new sites to follow through LunarLoony and reidrac. They’re better organized than my post too.
Andrew Plotkin has posted some data points connected to how AI data scrapers have been hitting his site. I don’t believe I’ve been getting hit like other folks but it’s been more than zero and I’m not happy about it.
The story of how the classic puzzle game Boulder Dash was created, with an interview with the creator.
The Lords of Midnight was a little before my time and I haven’t made the time to play it yet, but here’s an article about the history of the game and why it’s great.
Well I did warn you all that I think of this as a personal blog and not a games site so this one is a bit heavier.
We said goodbye to my aunt yesterday, after she suddenly passed away about two weeks ago. We were very close and she was basically a third grandmother to my kids, so we’ve all been struggling with that since then, and we will continue to miss her very much. I know it’s cliched but if you have loved ones in your life, please make an effort to talk to them regularly and make sure they know how much you love them.
I Don’t Think I’ve Walked This Stretch of Road Before is a short narrative game, about 20 minutes long, where you walk down a road while ruminating on your thoughts. The gameplay is rather simple, you walk down a linear path, sometimes walking around objects or through buildings while looking at objects from your past and reading your thoughts, but I really appreciated what the game was saying about its subjects like mental health, trauma, and cycles that you can break when you have children. I think a much worse game would have gone in a darker and lazier direction with its focus and I appreciate the game because as careful as it was.
And on a more superficial note, I just think the graphics are neat. The game was built with Gamemaker: Studio, which is an engine that’s not really meant for 3D games, and the Itch page goes into the weirdness on doing something like that.
There’s not a whole lot to say about this one. Treating my blog as a journal of all the commercial (and sometimes freeware) games I’ve played means there’s sometimes really short entries like this. It’s just a nice short game and I would recommend it if you’re fine with paying $2 or more for a short walking sim (complimentary). I also recommend hexcavator’s other games. B-Sides is a nice point-and-click adventure and Stay Home Vol. 1 is a toy where you play around with objects in a room and I wish we got more of those.
I Don’t Think I’ve Walked This Stretch of Road Before is available on Itch.io
I could argue that instead of buying a Nintendo Switch 2 game, you could buy all the games here, but these are two very different things and I may as well argue that you should buy $80 worth of books or Doctor Who audio dramas or prosciutto. Do you know how much prosciutto you can get for $80? Not that much if you buy the good stuff! Maybe I’m just bitter that I don’t have a Nintendo Switch 2 and can’t join the rest of you in taste testing the cartridges.
There’s also been a bunch of summer games fests happening this week. I have not followed these at all. Don’t care! I will let other people do the work in figuring out what I should be looking at.
This week’s shoutout is for Graceless Games. I’m a huge fan and think you should pick up some of their games on Itch.io
Anyway, here’s the games. As usual, if you worked on something that you’d like included, just let me know. I miss plenty of stuff.
I think everyone knows Deltrarune is out. It’s not for me but I’m happy for everyone else.
HardAF (Steam) is a Meatboy-like but the entire level is dark and you use the blood from your previous deaths to figure out where the obstacles are at. It’s good stuff. There’s a demo that I think people should check out.
As a child of the 90s that played a lot of multimedia cd-roms made by musicians, I get very excited about musicians making video games. We got two of them this week! Aesop Rock’s Black Hole Superette Experience (Steam) has you listening to his music while exploring a convenience store and The New Flesh (Steam) is a game where you explore a surreal space in a city while listening to upcoming songs by Red Vox. I haven’t played either so I can’t tell you if they’re as good as Peter Gabriel’s Eve, but both are free.
The Lego RPG Jam is a game jam where you write ttrpg systems inspired by your favorite Lego sets.
astoryinpieces keeps making great experimental and adult games for the Game Boy and she has another! Four of a Kind (Itch.io) is a horror anthology featuring 4 short stories.
Gaurodan (dev site) is a shmup inspired by 80s arcade games where you fly around as a dinosaur and blow shit up. It’s free but the dev does take donations. This is an old game but it got an update and it’s new to me
DOMINOID (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want puzzle game where you stack dominids and create combos.
Kabuto Park (Steam) looks like a very cute bug catching game and has a demo.
A weirdly specific thing I get excited about is using a yo-yo to fight enemies in video games. Don’t know why, just is. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo (Steam/Switch) is a top-down action game where you get to do that and even has a demo.
Name Change Simulator (Itch.io) is a free visual novel all about getting rid of your deadname.
Anyway, that’s it for this week. Hope you found something nice to play!
Something I’ve thought about posting for a while is a list of everything I follow in my RSS feed reader and now that I’ve seen exactly one person asking for most feeds to follow, that is enough for me to put together a list on Google Sheets. I’m still using Inoreader even though AI crap is starting to creep in since it seems to be the best one for my needs but maybe I’ll switch. I think RSS is the best way to follow sites since I don’t have to constantly check social media to make sure I don’t miss anything.
There are some massive warnings and caveats about this list:
Look, I know it’s a mess but it’s my trash heap and I can live in it whatever way I want. That said, I’m going to clean it up and divide it better.
I’ve divided it into different topics but websites are more than one thing and a lot of these could be categorized better.
I also totally half assed that description field once I saw how big it was getting.
Don’t be offended if I left your site out. There’s already been a few sites I added this morning that I was a fan of but realized I had only been looking at them when I saw their posts on social media, which is something I’m trying to pull away from. I welcome more sites so please link to yours here in the comments or as a reply on wherever you saw this posted.
With all that said, I hope you find this giant list useful and add some things to add to your RSS feed reader. If you’re looking for more websites, I also have my Cool Site Zone
I’m so sorry but I’m still thinking about that season finale of Doctor Who and have to put down my thoughts so they will leave my brain. Obviously this will have tons of spoilers so beware. It’s also very rambly.
Well ok, that was a weird and frustrating one. For the most part I really loved this season of Doctor Who. I would even go as far as to say that it’s probably the best season the show has had in a long time. I even really liked the first episode of the finale and lots of parts of the second episode too. I don’t think it’s RTD’s worst finale, he’s had other ones that I think were stinkers, but man oh man, parts of this were very frustrating. A lot of that frustration is maybe unfair. Ncuti has left the show and I wanted him on for many years. He was fantastic and I would have no problem if he had stayed on for another 10 seasons. To some extent I feel that way about everyone that stars in the show, but he was great. There’s also the aspect of the fandom being total chuds. I guess every fandom can be bad but it seemed to really stand out that parts of the fandom were basically rooting for the show to fail and kept pointing out the ratings. This never made a whole lot of sense because as far as I can tell, people were also streaming the show instead of watching it live so yes, of course tv ratings are going to be off. That’s kind how that works. Didn’t really make things less frustrating.
It doesn’t help that the regeneration itself seemed to be pandering to those people and stunt casting to boost the chances of Disney picking it up or whatever the logic was. I’m sure she’ll be great, she’s a fantastic actress, but we just had a stunt regeneration two years ago so it’s tiring to see it again. It sounds like the show is still happening whether Disney picks it up or not and there will just be a delay if they don’t. This is also going to kill me if we have to wait two years to see what happens next, because I’m still a fan and need to know. Everyone keeps being coy about how the credits don’t actually introduce her as The Doctor, so maybe the Doctor immediately changes their face to someone else and Jeff Minter is actually the next Doctor, but I’m going to contradict myself and say that if she is the next Doctor, she should stay on for 8 years. If someone is the Doctor, I want them to stay on for a very long time! I know this comes at the expense at whatever actor comes along next and also kicks ass but I want someone to beat Tom Baker’s record.
I’m also not going to dig into it but that finale had some really weird gender role stuff too that I didn’t care for and it just feeling like a very rushed episode.
So what did I actually like about it? Well, quite a bit actually. It was great to see Jodie come back. She’s great and I’m looking forward to her audio dramas with Big Finish. Ncuti was great as usual and some of his best acting was in this. I don’t see him doing audio drama stuff but I thought that about Eccleston and was wrong there. The two Ranis were also great and it’s too bad we’ll probably never see one of them again. I know Doctor Who can write itself out of anything but…well, it doesn’t seem super likely. A lot of people hate what they did with Omega but I don’t really mind. It’s fine.
Anyway, lots of people were yelling about how RTD has killed the show and I don’t think that’s true. I’ve actually really enjoyed most of his run so far, which has surprised me since I was so ready for him to leave during his original run, but I also wish it wasn’t looking backward so much.
Developer: Grundislav Games Publisher: Grundislav Games Year: 2004 (Deluxe version: 2006) Genre: Adventure
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
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.
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.
I was supposed to write into Quest! Quest! about this but dropped the ball so now it’s a blog post. So first I’ll say that if you enjoy adventure games, you should listen to the very good and funny Quest! Quest! podcast. The topic of co-op adventure games had come up and there’s not a ton, but they exist. This post is also going to ignore the escape room games out there. It seems like there’s a few of them and people like them, but I just know nothing about them because I’m more focused on traditional adventure games. But Escape Academy and Escape Simulator are out there and seem nice. This is also ignoring that really any adventure game can be a co-op game if you just share your screen and work together to solve puzzles.
We Were Here Together
The We Were Here series has you and a partner split up as you walk through a series of puzzles in a location such as an old castle and communicating through walkie-talkies about what you see. The game wants you to communicate through the in-game chat and not a voice chat outside of the game like Discord because of how walkie-talkies work and only one person being able to talk at a time. The first game in the series is free if you want to try it out.
The Last Night of Alexisgradis an asymmetric, two-player interactive fiction where each player takes on the role of a leader of a nation on the last night of a war. It’s built in Twine and the way this one works is that you each play up until a certain point, the game provides you with a code, and the other player inputs the code that you received to see where the game takes you next. I wouldn’t say this one is co-op at all, but it was interesting to see a multiplayer Twine game and I really enjoyed the writing in it.
And of course there can’t be an adventure game article by me without mentioning Myst Online. It’s one of my favorites. It’s still up and completely free too!
The rest of these I haven’t played but hope to some day. If you’re reading this and we know each other, let me know if you want to play one of them.
Tick Tock: A Tale for Twois a 2D point-and-click adventure where you are both trapped in a magical world and must escape. It features cross-platform play and the artwork looks nice.
Operation: Tango is a first person 3D adventure where it looks like you and a friend are doing spy stuff to save the world. A nice thing about this one is that it looks like only one player has to buy the game and the other player can play for free.
Whispers in the West is a point-and-click western murder mystery that supports co-op for 2-4 players. The base game includes a tutorial, mini mystery, and full length one with DLC for additional mysteries. This is another one where only one person has to buy the game and everyone else can play for free.
The Past Within (Steam/Itch.io) is a co-op first-person point-and-click adventure in the Rusty Lake series. Puzzles involve one person being in the past and one in the future and communicating in whatever way they want. I haven’t played it but it looks like they aren’t directly connecting to each other over the internet in-game and just rely on what the other person sees to solve puzzles. Both players need a copy of the game to play but it sounds like both paths are very different.
A Lively Haunt is a horror graphic parser game in the style of early Sierra adventures like King’s Quest and Space Quest where you walk around and type your commands. This one supports two players on the same machine by having two keyboards plugged in, but I imagine that playing through something like Parsec would work too? I learned about this one from WilcoWeb!
I suppose all the games like It Takes Two and A Way Out by Hazelight Studios could count as well. They aren’t my thing but good luck to all game developers I guess.
Shivers 2 and Zork: Grand Inquisitor also shipped with multiplayer. I believe they just allowed a player to connect and use a mouse cursor to point at stuff and type comments to help solve puzzles. The online services for both shut down a long time ago but I think it’s interesting they were attempted. I’m guessing they were pressured to insert online multiplayer into their games since they were the hot new thing, and it feels like a proto version of sharing your screen over Discord. The demo for Quest for Glory 5 also shipped with co-op and it would have been interesting if that made it into the full game. My understanding is that you can still play that one but it’s a massive headache to get working.
Well, that’s all I could think of but I would love to hear other recommendations!
EDIT: Since this post a month ago I’ve discovered some more!
