Developer: Jason Godbey Publisher: Jason Godbey Year: 2019 Genre: Adventure Game
Discolored is a 2019 first person adventure game created by Jason Godbey that I recently picked up because I saw the recently released sequel pop up on a few sites and was in the mood for a Myst-like game. There isn’t much of a plot, you are told that a diner in the middle of the desert has lost all color and you are sent to investigate. This is essentially all the plot you come across in the game and just exists to get you to the puzzles as soon as possible. Fortunately the puzzling in this is very good. The game starts off with having no colors in the world, but through various poking and prodding, you add some to the world and they allow you to interact with more objects in the game. It’s a nice way to keep you from feeling overwhelmed when you are first introduced to the world but it also keeps the small environment interesting to look at as you keep seeing it in new ways as additional colors are added. The game also features some clever puzzles using perspective.
The game has two modes for controls, free-roam and point-and-click. Usually the point-and-click mode in first-person adventure games feels like an afterthought but I thought it felt very good to control and actually used it quite a bit since I have been having some wrist pain lately and needed this control scheme to play it.
It’s a short game. I completed it in two nights but each session was very short and the puzzles made me think but I was never stuck for very long or frustrated. The game even has a built-in hint system if you want help with a puzzle. I said at the beginning of the review that I was in the mood for a Myst-like but it really wasn’t a Myst-like game at all. This isn’t the developer’s fault as they never claimed it’s like Myst, but I will explain what makes a game a Myst-like anyway since this is my website. A Myst-inspired game to me actually has quite a lot of storytelling being done through the environment and this storytelling is tightly integrated with the puzzles in the world, where this game just felt like an excuse to have a bunch of good puzzles related to color and perspective. Nothing wrong with that at all and it’s just not what I expected going in due to my assumptions with first person adventure games.
I really enjoyed my time with this game and I’m looking forward to playing Jason’s other games. I already own The Search from a charity bundle on Itch.io and Discolored 2 looks to be much more ambitious and seems to have more of a story and adds more characters.
Recently played through this one with the kids and it still holds up! My kids are fans of Chuchel so I thought it would go back to their earlier stuff since this one is so short and simple. The game originally came out in 2003 but we played the remastered release from 2021, which updates the visuals and music but didn’t go too far with the updates. There’s not a whole lot to say about it. You help a little space gnome save his home by pointing and clicking on stuff and it only takes 15 minutes to play. I suppose there are technically puzzles, but most of the fun comes from clicking on things and seeing what happens. I suppose it’s sorta like the Gobliiins series in that way, but much, much easier. Anyway, my kids liked it and we’ll be playing 2 and 3 soonish.
This game was such a big deal when it came out! This was during the adventure game drought when Sierra and Lucasarts had recently stopped making adventure games so people were starved for high quality adventure games. One of my biggest memories of hanging out on the Adventure Gamers forums was people making a thread about this game every week saying “have you all seen this game Samorost? It’s great!” and not realizing that there had already been many threads on the game. It happened to the point of it becoming a meme on the forums. But I think it shows that even when the genre was “dead” there were still folks making memorable point-and-click adventure games.
The game was such a success that it led to the studio becoming a full time gig for the folks there. First by making tiny free browser games like this for companies (man, remember flash games being a profitable gig for devs?) and then making their own games. In fact, I think it took a while for me to get to playing Samorost 2 because it came out in 2005 and was a digital purchase, before indie games were being sold on Steam. I don’t think I even had any way of buying the game and I don’t think I even considered asking my parents because I knew they wouldn’t buy a game online. I think it had even received some criticism for being too short for a paid game.
The studio stuck with this format for a long time. It wasn’t until the last few years that they started to explore horror and branching out from their linear style of adventure game design more. The format works for me though and I can play a lot of their games with my kids, which is always a plus, since that’s when I usually have time to play video games. They’ve been taking their biggest swing with their current game in development, which is supposed to arrive next year. It will have been a five year gap between games, which is wild to think about. But as long as they keep making solid adventure games, I’ll keep picking them up.
Samorost is available for free on Steam, Itch.io, and many other places.
It turns out that when you don’t wait a couple weeks to write these, the posts are actually quite a bit smaller. Who would have guessed? As usual, if you enjoy these then tell a friend, or do a post on your own blog of recent games and other art you’ve been enjoying.
After being in development for over a decade, horror point-and-click adventure ASYLUM (Steam) is now available. I’m always a little bit nervous when a game is set in a mental institute but I was a fan of the developer’s previous game Scratches, which is no longer on Steam due to a fallout with the co-designer, although they have said it’s fine if people find that game….online. They also have a free adventure game they released 10 years ago called Serena.
Expelled! (Steam/Switch/iOS) is the newest game by interactive fiction developers Inkle. You are a student at a school that has been framed for attempted murder and must prove your innocence or find someone to take the fall in a limited period of time. It follows a similar framework as one of Inkle’s previous games, Overboard, which I was a massive fan of. Hooray for interactive fiction.
Jetpac Defenders (Itch.io) is just a nice and free Defender clone made in Picotron.
qualia (Steam) is a free interactive fiction horror game about what it means to be human. Be sure to read the content warnings and be aware that the game does have a jumpscare if that kind of thing isn’t for you.
Blobun (Steam/Itch.io) is a cute, top-down puzzle game where you are a blob bunny and must touch every tile of a surface. If you bought that massive California Wildfire Relief charity bundle on Itch then you already own this game.
The 5th LSD Jam has concluded and you can check out the entries on Itch.io. LSDJAM 2024 is a game jam where people are prompted to “Create an interactive experience based on dreams to celebrate the release of LSD: Dream Emulator.” The only one I played out of these is Ephemeral Frame, a great puzzle adventure game where the main gameplay mechanic is using picture frames to enter new areas and features some fantastic visuals as well, but I’m sure the other games also have trippy visuals and are worth a look too.
The Imaginary Cards Jam is a jam on Itch.io where folks are making cards to games that do not exist yet. It’s just a fun excuse to make up little cards without thinking too much about mechanics since the games aren’t real. There’s still 10 days left in the jam so consider joining!
Not a new game but I just played the browser puzzle game DungeonScape (Itch.io) and recommend it.
PSYCHOSEXUAL DREAM CRISIS (Itch.io) is a short erotic sci-fi story that is playable in the browser, and the download on the page features 16 short animations.
Every paid game by thecatamites is on sale right now in this bundle on Itch. Worth it for Anthology of the Killer alone, one of last year’s best games.
There’s also a big spring sale happening on Steam right now too.
Crowdfunding
There’s two tabletop game crowdfunding campaigns right now that I think are worth checking out. This Kickstarter is for two games, a solo journaling game about cooking for your loved ones, and a storygame of doomed travelers on a perilous journey home.
A Land Once Magic is a worldbuilding TTRPG by Viditya Voleti, one of my favorite ttrpg designers.
Jay Tholen just launched a Patreon to fund development of Dreamsettler, the sequel to Hypnospace Outlaw.
Wishlists
Aerial_Knight’s DropShot (Steam) looks like an incredibly stylish FPS. I love the finger gun mechanic and I was a fan of the dev’s previous games, the Never Yield series.
Developer: Dave Gilbert Publisher: Dave Gilbert Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
Yeah that’s right, I’m still playing games in the Reality-on-the-Norm series, a collaborative universe created by the Adventure Game Studio community in 2001. The ninth game in the series is The Repossessor. You play the role of Death, who has come to Reality to reclaim the soul of Michael Gower, the zombie that your character reanimated in the first game and is now running for mayor of the town. The version I played was downloaded from the RON site and I didn’t realize until I had completed it that it was actually a remastered or remade version of the game, explaining why there was a huge graphical leap from the previous game and could now run in ScummVM, making it the easiest game to get running so far.
The most interesting thing about this entry is that it’s by Dave Gilbert, founder of Wadjet Eye Games. I had made a post about the game and he confirmed that it was his first game and built in a weekend. I have to say, it’s an incredibly impressive first game. I know some of that is coming from the game being a remastered version that looks nicer, but even from a design perspective I think it’s the best game so far. The remade version even some nice little touches like an instrumental version of Don’t Fear the Reaper playing in a room or two. Like previous RON games, it’s a little tricky to recommend specific games because they all build on previous ones, but I think you could manage to jump into this one since all you need to know is that there’s a zombie running for mayor in a town. Playing through this series has been a delight and continues to improve with each game as the community figures out how to make adventure games and use AGS.
I’m a bit behind on these just because I’ve been so busy lately but I’ve wanted to get one out there since there’s a few time limited things in here. Even the rushed ones like these take a bit of time to write so I always appreciate when people share these or make their own blog posts about indie games they enjoy so people can discover new games. I also always love comments on what folks have been playing.
The Games
The big one this week is the California Fire Relief Bundle (Itch.io), where you can pay $10 or more and get a lot of great games like Tunic, Neon Struct, Skatebird, and more. My recommendation with this is to always dig a bit and try something you normally wouldn’t have. If you haven’t played a solo tabletop rpg before, look for one of those. Never played a ZX Spectrum game (I’m American so read this as someone saying “Zee Ex” and then backing up and saying “Zed Ex”) before? Download an emulator and play Last Train To Tranz-Central.
Type Help (Itch.io) is a brilliant Obra-Dinn/Roottrees are Missing-like that is free and playable in the browser. Don’t really want to give too much away but it’s very impressive that this was all done in Twine and critically acclaimed interactive fiction author Andrew Plotkin has also discussed why it’s brilliant on his blog.
Root Bear (bluesky link) got an update on the Playdate. My kids love this game so I feel like I should recommend it.
A new bundle called the Indie Allies 2025 has launched on Humble and described as “Play great titles that help support BIPOC game developers & studios with our Indie Allies 2025 Bundle.” I know Humble has been up to bullshit lately but you can alter the cut they take to almost nothing and get some cool games from it, which money going to a non-profit too. I’m also just a big fan of Super Space Club, Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield, and On the Peril of Parrots and think more people should play all 3 games. I’m sure the other games in the bundle are good too.
pinboll (Itch.io) is a cute pinball game available as pay-what-you-want where the table gradually has more elements added to it as you play more balls. I also think it’s very fun to have a global leaderboard for a little game like this. I found this one through the review on Indie Games+. Support your local indie game review outlets that are covering small stuff like this.
Basilica (Itch.io) is just a nice little free builder toy where you create courtyards and towers. Go check out the rest of their builder games on their itch page, those are lovely too.
I love the classic DOS game Skyroads so yeah, I’ll take a spiritual sequel to that. Skylanes (Itch.io) is one of those available as pay-what-you-want and I think they did a good job.
Play with Your Own Junk (dev site) is a free collection of games you can play at home using household materials.
A new issue of the free interactive fiction magazine ChoiceBeat (Itch.io) is out! Am I just mentioning this because this site got a mention? No! Am I above getting influenced through flattery? Also no! But I’ve been a fan of the zine for a while and will continue to recommend them because it’s free and it’s always nice seeing people talk about interactive fiction.
The Museum of All Things (Itch.io) is a free virtual museum inspired by 90s educational shows and games where it generates museum exhibits on the fly by downloading material from Wikipedia. I absolutely loved this one! It’s just so much fun to walk around, checking out new exhibits that are connected to the one you are in, and falling down wikipedia rabbit holes but in the form of a 3D space.
Painting Tomorrow (Itch.io) is a free browser game created for the Trans Joy 2025 jam where you use a pinball table to paint every surface.
And maybe consider checking out everything else in the Trans Joy jam.
The CSS Puzzle Box (dev site) really is what it says on the tin. It’s a free browser game where you open up a puzzle box but it’s all done through CSS. Sometimes you just want to do some fun puzzles for free and marvel at the tech behind it.
The Rest of the Games
Ok, so like I said at the top, I’ve been busy and haven’t been able to play much lately. So here’s a huge list of games I haven’t played but I’ve seen people sharing and recommending so I’m going to post them, because if I don’t then I’ll probably never get around to it. Apologies for this being rushed, these games all look interesting and deserve longer writeups on other blogs so maybe you’ll check some of them out?
OMEGA 6 The Triangle Stars (Steam) is a visual novel/rpg/adventure game by Nintendo art director turned manga artist, Takaya Imamura, and developers of the Retro Mystery Club series, Happymeal.
Bee-Fore the Storm (Itch.io) is described as “a retro mashup featuring shmup, platformer, arcade shooter, and light simulation genres, all wrapped up for the Game Boy!” It really is a Game Boy game, in addition to being playtable on other platforms too. There’s also adult material in here, which you don’t see too often in a Game Boy game. I really like the dev’s previous game LesbiAnts.
Desecrators (Steam) looks like a ding dang Descent-like and the Steam reviews are positive so sure, I’ll take another one of those..
Cyrano (Steam) has you write love letters and cross swords in a one hour adaptation of the classic play: Cyrano de Bergerac. That doesn’t come up in games very often and I like the developer a lot.
The Local (Steam) is a free multiplayer FPS inspired by Jet Set Radio, I think? I really like the art.
Au Revoir (Steam) is a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure described by the HauntedPS1 curator page as “Blade Runner Point and Click with a Haunted PS1 coat of paint. The puzzles ask you to really pay attention to the environment around you, but luckily that environment is a treat to take in.” I haven’t seen it pop up in the adventure game community so maybe folks over there would be interested in it.
Microtopia (Steam) is a strategy game that looks like one of those supply chain building things, but this one has you controlling ants on a circuit board and I think that’s a really cool look.
Back Alley Games #012 (Itch.io) is a video game zine by the Chicago non-profit Indie City Games.
The Castle of Count 100 (Itch.io) is a free browser boss rush game made in ZZT.
I…uhhh….don’t really know what Juice Galaxy is (Steam/Itch.io) but it looks interesting.
Ten Things I Learned In The Red Room (Itch.io) is a free Twine game by the great IF writer Nessa Cannon and made as a tribute to David Lynch.
I haven’t played the free walking simulator Light Engine (Itch.io), but look at that art!
HALL of the DWARF KING (Itch.io) is a dungeon crawler for the Playdate along with two other dungeon crawler jam games. If you don’t have a Playdate it includes a PDF that you can print and cut up for an IRL game board and cards used to set your encounter order for 1-3 players.
Apache Canyon (GitHub) is a new game released for the Acorn Electron & BBC Micro and free to download.
Bloodlust: Santa Monica (Itch.io) is a free adventure game demake of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. This was actually released a while ago but keeps getting updates and it’s new to me so maybe it’s new to you as well.
Metamorph (Steam) is a horror adventure game described by the HauntedPS1 curator as “Fantastic short Kafka inspired game with HPS1 vibes. Discover the ordeal of being known and, if you’re lucky, the rewards of being loved.”
Alliance Peacefighter (Steam) is a Wing Commander-like that has launched a demo and I really like the art and the crew of various animals and aliens, not a human in sight.
Stellar Mess: Operation Kush (Steam/Itch.io) is the second part in the Stellar Mess series. As an enjoyer of the era of Lucasarts adventure games where the art was in EGA and people had big heads, I think it deserves a shoutout.
Daniel Albu (Bluesky announcement) basically remade the microscope puzzle from The 7th Guest but…y’know….actually playable. It’s available for free on iOS and Android.
Sculplings (Steam) is a new game in Early Access that uses clay so of course I’m excited.
Adam Saltsman has once again created a free PICO-8 game. Cave of Cards (Itch.io) is a game where you clear dungeons with poker hands.
We got a new Indiepocalypse! Issue 62 (Itch.io) has the game cybeRRRevolution, which I think everyone should play.
The Parry Jam (Itch.io) is a jam where people just make up mechanics for parrying and also entire games based around it.
Metal Garden (Itch.io) is a short, atmospheric singleplayer FPS game that can be finished in a single sitting (one to three hours). I like that it looks like a mid-00’s FPS for the PC.
MainFrames (Steam) looks like a very fun platformer that uses OS windows that you move around as a gameplay mechanic.
Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate (Steam) is an….immersive sim? parody of Harry Potter that is now in Early Access. I think it would be fun to play in co-op, which is always a feature I appreciate in games.
Crowfunding
Celestial Bodies (Kickstarter) is a GM-less ttrpg by Binary Star Games where you pilot your mech to claim the bodies of dead gods in deep space.
Rad-Venture (Kickstarter) is a 3D platformer inspired by classics like Rayman. I’ve played an early version years ago and want this to be completed so bad. It has a demo too! Go check it out.
I mentioned a few times that I helped organize a games anthology for the district library (anthology link on the library’s site here but I prefer you play the updated version of my game here) and even made a point-and-click adventure game for it, but I don’t actually think I actually did a post about it or why it happened? So for the sake of incredibly specific Michigan game dev history, here’s the deal with all that.
Back on my birthday last year, in August, I got an email from the Ann Arbor District Library saying that they were interested in commissioning a video game or anthology for the city’s bicentennial celebration. The Ann Arbor District Library had been doing a series of commissioned works such as music, documentaries, interviews, writing, and other works to celebrate the city. They had proposed doing a small anthology of games, 3 in total, about a historical figure in the city named Dr. Alvin Wood Chase. He was basically the city’s version of Dr. Oz in the late 1800s and sold recipes for remedies to ailments that didn’t work and found some success doing so. The printing house he established is still standing today. You can read more about him at the link at the top. Each game would be about a different stage of his life and by a different developer. As an aside, I’m not actually the first person to make a game for the Ann Arbor District Library, that would be the text adventure games that Christopher Becker made for an Interactive Fiction program at the library.
Dr. Chase’s First Adventure, by me
Originally I was just an organizer because I didn’t think I would be able to create a game since my family just had a baby, but then I got FOMO and asked if I could make a backup game. This got approved and with everyone picking a different era, development commenced. We had about two months to make our games, with each one having the goal of about 10-15 minutes of gameplay. Unfortunately one person had to drop out due to medical issues, but they’re ok now. It was a challenge for me since it was my first game in Adventure Game Studio, but I actually got it done. The other two games are great, one is a puzzle game about running a printing press and the other is an adventure game made in the Game Boy about the end of his life.
Dr. Chase’s Mean Steam Machine by Flyover Games
The games and anthology page were published on December 30th, right before the end of the year. I am so proud of this project, maybe even more than the Locally Sourced Anthology that I helped with and came out during the summer. Not because I think one is better than the other, but I got to finally check off making a game in AGS, a goal of mine for an incredibly long time. It was a delight to make a game for the Ann Arbor District Library, a place I love visiting. Most importantly, I got to show the game to my kids and one of them immediately found a few bugs that no other tester did, so I got to fix those bugs and add her in the credits as a tester. For whatever reason she wants to grow up and be a video game QA person so it was fun to be able to give her her first video game credit.
My playthrough of Reality-On-The-Norm continues with the 8th game in the series. It was nice to play two entries in a row without having to fuss too much with getting them to work. This one has you playing as Elandra, who has appeared in some of the previous games, and you must help an amateur rocket builder. On average the series has been improving in the quality of the art and gameplay design. This one even features a really nice location select screen.
The game’s location select screen
I think the writing is the best in the series so far too! It’s genuinely fun going back to these and seeing topical nerd humor like an unironic All Your Base Are Belong to Us reference. Part of the fun of playing this series is that it’s a time capsule of a specific point in the adventure game community.
Folks, we’ve got an All Your Base reference
Another way this thing is a time capsule of the community is how many Yahtzee references it has. I posted the following screenshot without any context, because I forgot, and someone thought that there was maybe some in-community fighting happening but no, he had helped with the art in this game and someone in the team threw this reference in there as a fun joke. Maybe there was drama at some later point but it certainly wasn’t happening with this game.
I mentioned in a previous review that a dev saw my RON posting on Bluesky and this was that game. It was entirely positive, since I did have a good time playing this game, but I still imagine that it’s probably weird to see someone playing a game you made almost 25 years ago. They even mentioned that it was like doing an excavation on their 19 year old brain when I mentioned that reference. So generally I’ve kept any and all criticism off social media, as light as it may be, because who wants someone throwing rocks at something you made that long ago when you were a kid. The only real criticism I even have with this is just that it had some frustrating pixel hunting but that’s kinda it. I may have played an updated version too? It makes references to picking up items later and a walkthrough I found references picking up an item and going to rooms that I never came across.
A fun thing about it being a shared universe is that we’re starting to get more callbacks and it’s almost a sequel to the first game. I thought the epilogue and animated cutscene in an early AGS game was fun to watch. Even though I just complained about this game having some goofy design stuff, so far I think it’s the best one I’ve played and it’s fun watching a community learn how to make adventure games and referencing stuff that happened in this universe 8 games ago. Overall I had a lot of fun with this short game and would recommend it to others. Just be sure to play previous entries like the first game before doing this one.
Developer: Ben Pettengill Publisher: Ben Pettengill Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
Well this one was weird. My playthrough of the Reality-On-The-Norm shared adventure game universe continues with the 7th game in the series. I skipped ahead a few because I couldn’t get some to work in DosBox, ScummVM, or my Windows 98 VM. Return of Die Vie Ess is about a scientist in Reality who has plans to take over the world. You play as Nameless Law Official and must stop his scheme. Other than the return of Davy Jones as a character you interact with, and walking around the town of Reality, there isn’t that much of a connection to the previous games. Most of the characters are new and the scientist does all of his scheming from a room that you never go in, so it feels very disconnected from your actions. I’m assuming that some of the new characters will pop up in later games.
The game itself is very straightforward and only took about 5 minutes to beat. It’s still pleasant enough, except for the ending making a very odd detour with a random joke from the scientist about a sex worker and Davy Jones having a comment about unprotected sex. They come out of nowhere and it’s unfortunate mark on an otherwise fine game. Other than that, the game is ok enough and I think it’s worth playing if you’re going to take the same odd journey as I have and try to play through this series.
Like I said in other reviews, it’s hard to be too critical because these were games by teenagers and folks in their early 20s in the early 2000s. I cannot even imagine what 14 year old me would have put in a game if I made one at this time, probably jokes that have aged much more poorly than anything in these games, so I can’t judge anyone for a joke in a freeware game from almost 25 years ago and really isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.
I’ve been posting about these games as I play them on Bluesky and Mastodon and even with me being completely positive about the games on there, because I am genuinely having a good time playing these including this game, I think it did trip out one or two devs who worked on these when they saw them on Bluesky, since they had worked on them decades ago. I took a screenshot of an All Your Base joke and a dev commented that it’s like I’m doing an excavation of their 19 year old brain. They liked the post so I don’t think they were mad about it. I wasn’t dunking on the game, but it’s still probably a trip to have someone commenting on what you were doing at 19, 24 years later. I don’t know how I would feel about it if I had made games at that age, which is why I’m not really broadcasting these reviews despite enjoying the series, other than the automatic posts my blog does to Mastodon.
Is this probably more thought than what should go into a 5 minute freeware game from 2001? Yeah probably, but I like logging everything I play through on here since other folks aren’t talking about these games. Not that I’m really expecting anyone to talk about something like this on social media, and demanding that people do would probably make me sound like Jim Gaffigan wanting to talk about the movie Heat, but I think someone should since it’s an interesting time for the genre that I don’t see discussed too much. It’s also why I went back and removed the “Review: ” title from all of my review posts. You can still check out the Review category that all of these posts have, but it’s almost more of a log at this point and having it categorized in the post title made it sound too dang formal. But who knows, maybe I’ll sell out and throw it back in when I desire that SEO boost.
Developer: Ben Pettengill Publisher: Ben Pettengill Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
My playthrough of the Reality-on-the-Norm series continues. I tried to get the 2nd game working but wasn’t able to so I gave up and moved ahead to the third game. It doesn’t matter too much since they’re all standalone games that make references to previous games, but that’s it.
This one has you once again playing as teen magician Davy Jones. His magical ring has been stolen by Russian spies and it’s up to you to get it back. There’s not a whole lot to say about this one. It’s not as good as the first one in my opinion but is still alright enough. It’s more immature than the first game and there’s some humor in it that hasn’t aged great, although neither game has aged as poorly as I expected, given that it was made by people in their teens or early 20s in the early 2000’s, so that’s been a nice surprise. It’s hard for me to be that critical of them since it’s such a weird project and people are also figuring out how to use the engine. So far each game has had a different project setup too.
As you can see in the above screenshot, there’s some weird perspective stuff going on in the MS Paint art, but I think that’s actually kind of the charm for me. I really enjoy that the art isn’t polished but also isn’t just trying to emulate The Secret of Monkey Island or King’s Quest. I have a lot of nostalgia for this era of adventure games, where the community decided to make their own games since Lucasarts and Sierra stopped making them, and had to figure out how to do that. Like I said with the first game, it’s hard to recommend specific 15 minute games, especially ones in the middle of a shared universe, but it is fun going through this series if you can get the games to work.
Developer: Ben Croshaw Publisher: Ben Croshaw Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
In the early 00’s, adventure games were in a weird spot with Sierra imploding and Lucasarts pulling away from adventure games. There were still a few commercial adventure games being made but with the advent of tools like Adventure Game Studio, the adventure game community decided to make their own adventure games. One of the most interesting projects from this time was Reality-on-the-Norm, a community effort to create a shared universe. This universe ended up having dozens of games, with the most recent being released in 2019. Anyone can still make a RON game, you just need to follow the rules that have been established over the development of this universe, created so one game dev doesn’t step on the toes of another dev by doing anything drastic like killing an established character.
I had never actually played any of these before, so I thought that it would be a fun opportunity to check out the series through the Adventure Game Club (see link at top), starting with the first game. Lunchtime of the Damned is a point-and-click adventure released in 2001 and created by Ben Croshaw, who went on to be the YouTuber Yahtzee and makes a lot of videos that I don’t think are any good. This one has you accidentally creating a zombie and then stopping him before he can murder more people.
So, what did I think about it? It’s alright! It’s hard to be critical of it because it’s a game created by a community that was not only learning how to make adventure games, but also learning a new tool. It’s got obtuse moments with some puzzles being implemented in a clunky way and it’s doing the adventure game trope of an area not having anything interesting, but then leaving and coming back revealing something new to interact with. Some of the humor is dated and edgelordy but it’s still way better than I expected. There’s still something about it that’s charming to me though. I didn’t play any of the RON games at the time but I did play some of the other ones created by the AGS community, so the MS Paint art and lack of polish really works for me. I also think parts are genuinely funny and while there are some bits of puzzles that have issues, most of it is perfectly fine. It makes me wish I had played more AGS games at the time, because I think I would have really loved following along with these games and playing them as it came out. I also wish I didn’t spend more time figuring out how to get it to work, but that’s not the game’s fault. ScummVM does support AGS but I don’t believe it supports anything this old at the moment, so I ended up using a Windows 98 VM because DOSBox wasn’t working for me either.
It’s hard to have a Would I Recommend? thing for this because it’s only 15 minutes long and so much of it hinges on if you have been playing adventure games for a long time since it’s a little tricky to get this working. I can tell you I had fun playing it though. I would definitely recommend going back and just exploring the early AGS games if you’re a fan of the genre. Not just because I think it’s historically interesting and you can see where a lot of today’s adventure game designers came from, but also because there’s still a lot of good stuff in there.