adventure

Dot’s Home thoughts

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Developer: Weathered Sweater, Aerial_Knight, Titan ARX Interactive
Publisher: Rise-Home Stories Project
Year: 2021
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a woman looking at a couple in a home and saying "Wait a minute, grandma? grandpa?"
Screenshot taken from Steam

Dot’s Home is a free point-and-click adventure about a young Black woman in Detroit who travels through time in her family’s past and sees how various decisions she makes will impact the present. It will probably surprise no one that I loved this since it’s an adventure game set in Detroit about racial and housing justice, and at least one local person worked on it. While there have been other video games set in Detroit, this is the best one I’ve played that’s actually about the city and its history. They’re generally racing games, set in a dystopia like Robocop, or whatever you would call Detroit: Become Human. I know they’re out there but I don’t think I’ve seen any stories in any medium depicting real issues that the city deals with like gentrification, racism in the suburbs, and white flight that happened in the last century.

It’s definitely not a criticism but while I do call it a point-and-click adventure since that’s how it controls, I would say it plays more like a visual novel. You do not really solve any puzzles and most of the choices you make are done through dialog trees. I think this is fine but I don’t want to accidentally set the expectation that you’re reassembling a shredded newspaper to get a clue into a housing crisis. If I did have any criticisms of the game, it’s that I don’t think the game really does a great job explaining one choice may be better than the other at times. There’s a point early on where you can tell a couple to either buy a home or rent it for a while and then buy it, and it’s not really unless you do two playthroughs where you try each that you get an understanding that the couple gets exploited if they buy it without having more money saved up first. It’s a short game too so you can’t save during playthroughs and basically need to play the game twice to get the full picture. At the same time, it’s a short game so it’s not the end of the world having to play it twice either.

That frustration aside, I’m really happy this game exists. I never ever see anything like this documented in video games and very rarely in other forms of media, and by folks that actually care about the city and issues that marginalized people have to deal with. With it being a free game that takes about 30 minutes to complete, I do recommend trying it out if this is something that sounds interesting to you.

Dot’s Home is available for Windows and Mac on Steam

The Dissident by Wavey Games

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Developer: Wavey Games
Year: 2026
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a woman at a table with a lit cigarette
Screenshot taken from Itch.io

As a longtime (3 years) fan of Wavey Games, I was very excited to see that they just released a new game. The Dissident is a short pay-what-you-want first-person point-and-click adventure game where you must assist someone escaping the authorities by helping her get into her own dreams by fixing and using an altered tape recorder. It’s a very surreal plot and the whole game follows this vibe but not at the expense of the puzzles, which all felt very fair. They were the right level of challenge for this type of game, where I did have to pause and think for a minute but nothing too tough, which I think is good in a game like this where the draw for me is exploring the world. The game’s puzzles also provide a few points where it makes the most sense to map something or write some notes, which I enjoy doing in adventure games.

One thing I really enjoy in the works of Wavey Games is the use of retro aesthetics that people generally don’t think about. Their previous games Melon Head and Celestial Coffee Quest (highly recommend both) both used an EGA-palette and this one has a CGA-palette. Even though I considered the CGA colors to be incredibly ugly at the time when DOS shareware games were coming out, it’s fun seeing it intentionally selected for the look of a game and I think it’s used very well here. Most of the game has a nice jazzy soundtrack too, which all fits in very well with the weird but relaxed mystery vibe the game is going for. It’s just a nice little adventure game that you can play in a sitting so go check it out and then play some of the other adventures by Wavey Games if you like this one.

The Dissident is available on Itch.io for Windows and Mac.

More Adventure Games for Halloween

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

A few days ago, I wrote a post listing some adventure games that I would recommend for the Halloween season. I thought I would do another one since there’s so many games I wanted to recommend. 

Before I do that, I should probably mention The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, which comes out today. I haven’t played it yet but it’s probably a game that will be good since it’s developed by Cloak and Dagger Games, a studio I recommend later in this article, and published by Wadjet Eye Games, who are responsible for a lot of wonderful games as well like Unavowed and The Shivah.

The Corruption Within

image of a pixel art mansion at night

The Corruption Within is a first-person psychological horror game set in the Victorian era. The game was developed by Cosmic Void and Dave Seaman, who both made adventure games on their own that I enjoyed. Cosmic Void created the Space Quest-inspired series Tachyon Dreams and Dave Seaman created the comedy series Captain Disaster under the developer name CaptainD. I was really charmed by the atmosphere in this game, the interesting cast of characters, and pixel art. The puzzles were challenging but never felt unfair or held me up too long, and the game only took me about 90 minutes to complete so it never wore out its welcome.

Both developers have new games coming out very soon. Cosmic Void is creating a sci-fi adventure game called Blood Nova and CaptainD has the retro-looking puzzle game Snow Problem.

Dark Fall

view of the inside of a train station at night, dimly lit, from the top of stairs

Dark Fall is a first-person adventure game created by Jonathan Boakes in 2002, which I guess makes this both an indie and a retro game. You play someone who has received a message from his frightened brother asking for help at an abandoned train station. The game involves you investigating the ghosts that inhabit the station and felt authentic to me, someone who doesn’t know a single thing about ghost hunting. I have a soft spot for it since it came out during a time when there weren’t many commercial adventure games being released and very few of them were worth playing. That said, I think the game holds up outside of that context. The game manages to be very creepy without resorting to jump scares and I thought the various storylines of the people you read about in the station were interesting. 

I think I would maybe have a hard time recommending it to someone who doesn’t enjoy puzzles, but if you do or at least don’t mind having a hint guide open, then I think it’s a game worth checking out if you have an interest in ghost stories. Jonathan has continued making games in the Dark Fall series so if the game sounds interesting but you want a more modern game, consider checking out one of the later games in the series since they’re standalone outside of some references and two games sharing the same location.

Don’t Escape: 4 Days to Survive

view of a house at dusk. the moon is visible and messed up

Don’t Escape: 4 Days to Survive showed me how much an adventure game could innovate on genre mechanics that I used to think should have been left in the 80s. It is a post-apocalyptic survival adventure where you must carefully manage your time if you want to survive. In many ways, this game reminded me of early Sierra adventure games which I felt had dated mechanics. It’s easy to die and you can softlock yourself if you aren’t careful. But with the way the game is broken down into four chapters and relies on replaying them to maximize your time use, these mechanics felt very fresh to me and I didn’t find it frustrating in the ways that I often do with early adventure games. If you bought the Bundle for Ukraine that was on Itch earlier this year, you already own the game.

Football Game

a football player saying "excuse me mr. mahoney?"

When people describe something being Lynchian, it usually means that it’s set in a small town and there’s some quirky characters. Football Game is certainly a game inspired by him but its inspiration is more than just borrowing the aesthetics of his work, and tonally feels closer to later Lynch works like Twin Peaks: The Return. There is a feeling of uneasiness that carries through the entire game, assisted by the fantastic soundtrack by JUPITER-C. The game is only an hour long and I’d recommend it to any Lynch fan.

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