Modern Parser Graphic Adventures

August 6, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

If you are a fan of classic graphic adventures that use a parser, such as the King’s Quest and Space Quest series, then you’ll want to check out the modern parser adventure scene, where people are building new games that look and play like games from that era but updated to have a more robust parser and avoiding problems like softlocks.

My favorite of these is Snail Trek. It’s a fairly short episodic series where you play as a group of snails checking out a planet to see if it can be a new homeworld for them. I loved how flexible the parser was and how it would offer word suggestions. The player is also encouraged to check out player deaths because they’re humorous and will reload you back to before you made your mistake. The first episode of four is free.

Gif from Enclosure 3D of a man entering and exiting a shower

Most of the modern parser graphic adventures seem to be on Itch so I made a list of them. I recommend playing all of them. None of them are too long and they all have something unique to offer. The Aching is a new game for DOS that has a Dosbox wrapper so you don’t have to do any weird configuration to play it in Windows. The Crimson Diamond is a mystery inspired by the classic Sierra game The Colonel’s Bequest. It’s currently in development so the download on the Itch and Steam page is just a demo but you can watch dev streams for the game every Tuesday. The Tachyon Dreams trilogy and Spy Quest series are by developers of modern adventure games like Blood Nova. Enclosure 3D is a remake of an adventure game from 2004 but with a really snazzy 3D engine that I would love to see applied to more parser games.

There’s also games not on Itch like Betrayed Alliance and Fortune and Glory, a text parser rpg that is currently in development. I’m sure there’s plenty of games I’m missing but it’s exciting seeing so many developers revisiting ideas from games in the 80s and building upon them.

screenshot from The Aching of someone walking next to a giant mouth in a wall

FMV Friday for August 4, 2023

August 4, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

The power was out at my home for two days last week so I was unable to do one of these, so here’s the FMV stuff I’ve been into lately. It’s a short one since I’ve only played one game but I thought it was cool. I previously mentioned that the game engine Narrat now supports video for its scenes and character portraits and the first game to use it was submitted to the Narrat game jam that just ended. A walk through the forest is a game where you walk on a trail, identifying plants and reading thoughts from the developer. I thought it was a pleasant game to play and it inspired me to work on two different things so hopefully I can share one of those in the next few weeks, depending on how busy I am. It’s a really nice and short game that’s playable in the browser so go check it out.

screenshot from the game featuring a photo of a forest and some things in the forest being highlighted.

Decker and Color Support

August 1, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

I just saw a game implement color in an app made with Decker so I thought for my first post in Blaugust, the event where people try to make a blog post every day this month, I would quickly explain what Decker is and how to make apps with color.

What’s Decker?

Decker is a platform for creating multimedia apps in the style of Hypercard for the Macintosh during the 80s and 90s, but designed to be even more approachable and possible to use in a web browser as well. If you’ve never used a Decker app before, there was just a jam on Itch where you can check it out.

What’s This About Color Support?

For a while I’ve been wishing for it to support color because my first experience with Hypercard was playing Myst, which used a heavily modified version of Hypercard, and thinking that it could be a good game engine for making a very specific kind of adventure game. Well it turns out it has had the ability to do color this whole time. This post here explains what the process is. It’s a little more technical than just pushing a button but I’m happy to see it there. An entry in the Decker jam I mentioned even has a nature slideshow in color. It’s a lovely thing that reminds me of an early internet and hopefully we’ll see more apps in this style in the near future. Maybe I’ll even do one.

FMV Friday for July 21, 2023

July 21, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Here are some of the FMV games I played this week and other various FMV things that may be of interest.

After Hours

After Hours is a short student game released in 2019 by Bahiyya Khan. It is a vignette game about a young woman who was molested as a child and suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder as a result. I thought the game handled the subject very well and the performance by the designer was good too. I’m hoping that it gets a more public release someday but I believe you can still get the game by subscribing to Humble Choice and downloading the game through the indie game collection that subscribers get.

Virtua Bird Trainer: The Game

Virtua Bird Trainer: The Game is a short adaptation of a Youtube video which replicates the aesthetics of Sega Saturn games. It’s a short, fun game by the creator of Indiepocalypse, which you should also check out.

Murderous Muses

Earlier this week the Youtube channel Conversations with Curtis, which is hosted by the lead of the 90s FMV game Phantasmagoria 2, had an interview and Let’s Play with Tim Cowles from D’Avekki Studios for the studio’s newest game Murderous Muses. It’s a good interview and the game looks interesting too. Turns out it just went on sale on Steam yesterday so I guess I’ll pick it up now.

Narrat

Last night I saw that the interactive fiction/rpg game engine Narrat now supports video. From looking at other things made with the engine, the dialog and text usually seems to follow a format more like you’d see in a game like Disco Elysium so it seems like some really interesting stuff could be made in it.

My New Game

I also released a FMV game earlier this week. The game isn’t anything amazing (outside of the lead actress) but I had a good time working with the engine and want to use it more. I used the Charles Engine, a package for Unity that lets you easily create choice based FMV games. The engine was created by Charles Games, who previously made some other games I liked. I bought the plugin when it first came out and then just….sorta forgot. But I really enjoyed using it and the game got many more downloads than I expected so I’m hoping to make more FMV games in the near future.

FMV Friday

July 14, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

For research for something I’m working on, and also just because I genuinely like them, I’ve started playing a lot more games with FMV in them and I guess I should write about them so people have more games to check out. No idea how often I’ll do this but maybe you’ll discover some neat stuff.

Internet Court

A pleasant surprise this week was Internet Court. I had seen previous games by the studio show up on Steam before but never really heard much about their games but a positive review on Adventure Gamers was enough to get me to check it out during the Steam sale and I’m glad I did. If you watch the trailer, you can tell that it’s extremely low budget and maybe doesn’t feature the most professional actors but even with its lack of polish (or because of it?) it is extremely charming. It’s just very silly fun but never leans into doing an intentionally bad thing on purpose. The game’s Steam page jokes about the game only having one actual actor but everyone involved, including the moms of the developers, gives it their all to delivery genuinely funny performances and I’m looking forward to checking out other games by the studio.

Markus Ritter – The Lost Family

This is a weird one. Markus Ritter is a short FMV game inspired by 90s adventure games like the Gabriel Knight, and especially the second Gabriel Knight game, down to having the player character having the last name Ritter and at least one other Gabriel Knight reference thrown in there. I have no idea what to rate it. It plays fine. The game takes itself so seriously but the acting is pretty goofy, and not all of it intentionally, that it ends up being amusing and charming in its own way I guess? Even the rough edges are unintentionally charming, like the many shots where the lead actor walks back to the camera to turn it off and it shakes a little when they do that and they just don’t clip that part out of the final product. I guess it has a sequel in August and I’m curious about it so it did something right. I’m being rough on it but it’s free so check it out if you’re really into 90s point-and-click adventure games with FMV like I am. It has some nice quality of life stuff in there too, like a built-in hint system and being able to highlight all the spots you can click on.

Aran’s Bike Trip

I wasn’t sure if I should put this in here since I don’t think there’s really any FMV in here, just 360 panorama photos you can interact with, but it’s neat so I’m putting it in here anyway. Aran’s Bike Trip is a game by Sokpop Collective, a small group that has been making a variety of short games for years, where you follow someone along on a biking trip one of the developer’s took. All you do is look at panoramic photos of the Dutch countryside while looking at notes from the designer and listen to calming music but it’s very nice. Sometimes a game can just be an excuse to look at photos of beautiful places in the world.

Date Me

I also wanted to check out some of the FMV games on Itch so I downloaded Date Me, a very short and gay dating sim created (I think) by university students. It’s funny and free so you might as well try it if that sounds like something you’re interested in but my biggest takeaway from it was mostly that I’m very jealous of college students doing goofy games like this instead of the boring, massive projects that people in my computer club were trying to push when I was in school. Where were the people like this?! This is far more exciting and was actually completed. Oh well.

Recent Games I’ve Enjoyed

June 5, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Here are some new games I’ve been playing this last week

System Shock Remake

They actually pulled it off! I’m sure the development of this was a nightmare. They spent about 8 years working on it, had to restart development at one point because it wasn’t turning out the way they wanted it too, and other things popped up, but it’s great! The remake updates just enough so the game is much more approachable than the original, while still feeling like a faithful remake and an immersive sim with more fiddly bits than we’ve seen from other recent immersive sims. The art is so good too. If I recall, it’s similar to what they had for the demo they were making in Unity, then they switched to Unreal and went for a more realistic look, but then realized it wasn’t working at all and went back to the old art style but in Unreal. Go check it out, it’s really good.

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer

Slayers X is a spinoff of Hypnospace Outlaw where you are playing a “lost” FPS from the 90s created by a character from that game who recently found his missing code and is releasing the game today. I think what really impressed me with this game is how much more faithful it is to the 90s style of FPS and Build engine era of games than everything else in the recent retro FPS trend. For better or worse this also includes the bits likes levels being weirdly designed and disorienting, but I think this is part of the charm of that style of FPS so I’m glad it’s been kept in. It also happens to be very funny, as you would expect for a Hypnospace Outlaw related game.

Queer Games Bundle 2023

I already wrote about this last week but just wanted to bring it up again. There’s a lot of great games in here and it’s only $60, which is the price of a AAA game. There’s also a version of the bundle that’s $10 if you can’t afford that at the moment.

Indiepocalypse 41

There’s a new one of these. It’s good! If you never checked out an issue of Indiepocalypse, consider picking one up. They are all good starting points and each has some great games in them. It’s just a fantastic place for curation and discovering new games and game devs.

Queer Games Bundle 2023

June 1, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

A new Queer Games Bundle is out this month. I loved the ones from previous years so I’m immediately picking this one up too. In an episode of the Adventure Game Club podcast last year, we recommended a bunch of games that are also in the bundle this year, but here are some more games I really like in this year’s bundle

LesbiAnts – I wrote about this one before but it’s a very good rpg for the Game Boy where you play as ants.
Funny Walk – Very funny adventure game laser targeted at people with a fascination with digitized sprites like in Dark Seed 2. You do not need to play the other two games in the trilogy to understand this.
A Circle of Charity – It’s a brilliant game set on an old Windows desktop so of course I’m recommending it
WASTE EATER – Wrote about this before too but it’s a great IF game and only 10 minutes long so I don’t want to say too much. It’s cool!
Ladykiller in a Bind – Very funny adult visual novel by the developer of other great games like Digital: A Love Story

Some Neat Games (May 15-21)

May 23, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Here are some games I played this week that I think a lot of people missed but are pretty cool.

Firmament
After many years in development Cyan, the creators of Myst, finally released their newest game. I’m still playing through it but it’s really everything I would want from a game by this studio. The puzzles have been very solid. it’s a beautiful game, and I’ve been enjoying the world building. I heard some complaints from people saying it’s too easy but given that Cyan gets so much criticism for all their other games being too hard, it just feels like they can’t win at this point. I’ve also been playing this on desktop, where I heard the VR version is a little buggy but they’ve been working on bug fixes this last week and pushing updates quickly so hopefully that’s resolved soon.

Blue Suburbia
Blue Suburbia is a demo for an upcoming game by Nathalie Lawhead. The game is about their experiences in the games industry. They go into more detail about that on their blog so I won’t bring it up here but I thought Blue Suburbia was an incredible experience and I’m interested in the full game. It’s technically very interesting too and wild to see playable Bitsys implemented in the Unreal engine.

VIVIDLOPE
VIVIDLOPE is a fun puzzle game that feels like a lost Dreamcast game. They perfectly nailed everything about the aesthetic of games from that era and it’s just a well made game outside of that. It has a demo if you want to try it out.

There were a couple games I haven’t played but seem really neat. HRO looks like a fun interactive fiction game set in space. I enjoyed the stream I watched of it. Glypha is a remake of a Joust-inspired game from the Macintosh era and I’m glad they kept the black and white graphics. Hand of Doom is a first person rpg that does a fantastic job capturing the weird aesthetics of mid 90s PC rpgs. The same dev made a game for the first Dread X collection in a very similar style (this may just be an expanded version of that?) and I really liked it at the time.

Some Neat Games (May 8-14)

May 17, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Here’s some games on Itch.io that came out last week that I liked

8th Knight

8th Knight is a game created for the TweetTweetJam. The goal for this jam is to create a game in 500 characters. Generally people go with PICO-8 but other things are allowed too. It’s just a fun little procedurally-generated platforming game and I enjoyed reading the source code on the Itch page

PocketBolo

PocketBolo is a remake of the shareware game Bolo Ball from 1992 created for the TIC-80. It’s a pretty straightforward remake, I just had fun revisiting a game from my childhood.

Four Color Art Jam Zine

Technically this is a zine, not a game. But it collects a lot of games and art from the Four Color Art Jam where people made games and art using four specific colors. I thought it was a really cool way to highlight submissions from the jam and now I kinda want to do something similar for the DOS Games Jam.

Lets Make a Froggy Games

While this is a pretty simplistic game with some cute art, the highlight of this is actually the development stream that was done to help beginners learn Unity. You can check out the game, stream, and project assets here. The developer has made a few games I really like such as Cr1me Fr0g and By the World’s Wind which are on their Itch page.

Some Neat Games (May 1-7, 2023)

May 9, 2023 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

I just did one of these a week ago but a bunch of cool things have come out since then that I’ve played and I think they’re worth checking out.

Gobliiins 5

a bunch of various goblins and potato people on a snail-like thing

After many years, we finally have a new Gobliiins! Gobliiins is an adventure game series that started in the early 90s, by French game designers Pierre Gilhodes and Muriel Tramis. After three games, they moved onto other things (like the wonderful Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth) and then eventually the studio Coktel Vision closed. Years later Pierre released Gobliiins 4 in 2009 but I bounced off of this due to the ugly 3D graphics and early puzzles. I’ve heard it improves later on so I’ll have to give it another chance. Unfortunately I’ll have to do it from my physical copy since it’s not legally available on any digital stores.

Which brings us to 2023 and a new Gobliiins game after being crowdfunded on a couple sites. I had pretty low expectations but it’s actually a nice little game and everything I wanted as a fan of the original trilogy. It’s rough around the edges due to it being a solo dev game and Pierre’s first game in Adventure Game Studio, but it has everything I wanted like nice art, weird sound effects playing all the time, and goofy little guys. I don’t know if it would be the first game in the series that I would recommend to new players, that might still be Goblins 3, but I do think 5 is a solid entry in the series and worth checking out if you were a fan of previous games.

Undrium

Undrium is a free platformer by BitGlint Games, a small studio (single dev?) who has been remaking ZX Spectrum games and doing homages to that era for a while. To be honest, Rob does a much better explanation of the game and why it’s so good on his blog. So all I’ll really add is that as someone who was too young for that whole era, I just think it’s a really good game even when I have no nostalgia for that time and nothing to compare it too.

Dinocar

Dinocar is a really cute tabletop rpg where you play as dinosaurs driving cars and build a little dinosaur city in the process. I played this with my 3 and 6 year olds and we all had a great time, even if my 3 year old had no interest in following the rules. The art is great and the layout and game structure made sense to my 6 year old and I. The same designer also made the game Sprouts which I keep meaning to play as well.

Indiepocalypse #40

I’ve talked about it a billion times by now but the new issue of Indiepocalypse is out and as usual, very good. I just think Indiepocalypse is doing very good curation work and bringing more attention to a lot of neat indie games while helping some others get made in the process. I’ve discovered so many games through the zine and this issue is no exception. At the moment there’s also a little PWYW bundle ($1 minimum) where you can get a bunch of games that were commissioned for the zine. It’s good! Go check out an issue! You can buy them in cassette form now!

Aseprite 95

the layout of aseprite redesigned to look like a windows 95 app

This isn’t a game. I just think it’s a nice theme if you use Aseprite and also have an attachment to Windows 95 because of nostalgia.

Doom II RPG

Technically it’s not a new game, it’s a port of a mobile game from over a decade ago. But the mobile version has been unplayable on iOS for a very long time now because Apple absolutely doesn’t care about games preservation so I’m very happy it exists. Back when mobile phones were starting to have more complex games on their platforms, John Carmack created a few turn-based rpgs using the Doom and Wolfenstein properties. Ars Technica goes into the history a bit more and how you can download it here but they’re actually very good games and worth checking out if you’re a fan of Doom or rpgs like Eye of the Beholder.