There were a lot of really cool indie games in April! Here’s some things you might be interested in! I hate writing intros!
The Aching
One of the games I was most excited for this month is The Aching. It’s an adventure game inspired by 80s Sierra adventure games but without the things in those games that annoy me like frequent softlocks, poor parser, and hugely problematic writing. I don’t mind deaths in adventure games but this doesn’t have those either and it actually has some fun puzzles that involve great harm happening to your character. I love the art and how it runs on basically everything, including DOS. It started as an entry in the DOS Games Jam I organize and it’s cool seeing how far it has come. It’s the first game publisher by DOS games publisher Hadrosaurus Software and hopefully many more will follow.
Breathe
Breathe is a relaxing walking simulator (their words, not mine!) by PRINCESS INTERNET CAFé. I was a huge fan of one of their previous games about a dying MMO, Running Back to You. I was impressed how this was made with a heavily modified version of Bitsy. It’s fun seeing how much people have changed Bitsy and I’m curious what they’ll do with it next.
Barren Planet
Barren Planet is another DOS game that came out this month! I love seeing games come out for platforms that are supposed to be dead but people continue making exciting things for them. Barren Planet is a turn-based strategy game where two corporations battle on another planet. The campaign starts off pretty simple but introduces new mechanics and units with each level. I also got to beta test this one too!
LesbiAnts
LesbiAnts is a rpg for the Game Boy with erotic elements. You play as a colony of ants investigating mysterious seed pods and fighting mutated insects. Not only do I love seeing games for “dead” platforms as stated above, it’s exciting to see queer games that Nintendo would never approve of being made for their platforms. The Itch page also has a playable demo in the browser if you want to try it out.
DOMINO CLUB Dream Gallery Jam
We also got a batch of new DOMINO CLUB games this month! DOMINO CLUB is a collective of game developers who anonymously create experimental games during jams that occur 1-2 times a year. Each jam has games doing really exciting and new things and there’s always a couple games in each jam that I absolutely love. If you’re looking for a place to start, why not try im doing better now or TRAUMAKT~4.SEXE
I’ve been adding a lot of things to MobyGames lately after initially noticing a couple of things missing in my local games community and now it spiraling into me adding stuff from Steam Curator pages and lots of smaller adventure games and interactive fiction, and now I have Some Thoughts
MobyGames is the one I decided to focus on, despite being owned by Atari, since it has the most games and is the one that games historians seem to look at the most. For example, here’s a recent comment from someone at the Video Games History Foundation on cohost after I posted similar thoughts there.
“For the study we’re doing with VGHF, we picked MobyGames for that reason. Even then there’s still some pretty big holes; there’s like 1600 GB/GBC/GBA games in MobyGames and they’re missing another 200. But it’s the best for what it’s covering, for sure. (For comparison, IGDB has 290 C64 games, MobyGames has over 5000)”
That said, MobyGames isn’t perfect either. It’s going through a redesign right now that’s introduced some bugs, which will eventually get fixed but has made contributing harder at the moment. It’s a headache to credit people, especially when the person has used various names or isn’t using a legal birth name. They’re working on improving this too but at the moment it’s still annoying. It also takes forever to approve new game entries. I know it’s all volunteers but man, the current wait time for approving new game entries at MobyGames is estimated at 5 months?
IGDB seems to move much faster and has more entries for games on Itch but also doesn’t seem to have credits for very many games and has some inconsistency with multiple entries per game, etc. There is a process for removing duplicates but it basically requires contacting an admin. And as mentioned before, it’s just missing tons of older games. So maybe there’s just no ideal games database and everyone is doing the best they can with what we got. I’m also not really thrilled about them being owned by Atari and Amazon either.
There’s also more specialized ones like IFDB and the one on AdventureGamers.com that aren’t owned by a big company but again, specialized to just one genre. There’s also the Giant Bomb one but I don’t really think people should invest more time into that one with it being owned by Fandom now, especially when they seem to be letting go of everyone.
I still think people should contribute to these places though, it doesn’t have to be MobyGames. I’ve been adding info from the Michigan game dev communities I’m involved in and there’s just so much missing, so I imagine there’s a lot of stuff other people here know about that isn’t being documented and it would be nice to have more info about these games preserved. There’s just so many games, especially on Itch, that haven’t been documented at all.
Here’s some very brief thoughts on games that came out in January that I really enjoyed
Luckily, My Arm is a Shotgun
This is a new game by the developer of The Chameleon where you play as a little dude on an island trying to escape. You explore the island in search of parts for your boat and shoot monsters with the shotgun arm mentioned in the title of this game. It’s a fun, cheap game that’s available on Itch. Weirdly enough, it reminded me of Ocean’s Jurassic Park game from the early 90s. It’s much better than that but the way some parts of the island were designed looked somewhat like that. Who knows. I should probably just stop thinking about bad games from the 90s with great soundtracks.
WASTE EATER
WASTE EATER is a short (10 minute) interactive fiction game about rebuilding the world after the apocalypse and is both melancholic and hopeful. Since it’s so short I don’t want to say much about it other than I thought it was great and moving, and people should check it out.
Boundless Dungeon of Sexual Misadventures
I was a fan of the developer’s previous game Some Sword / Some Play and was excited to see her create a tabletop game. It uses a tarot deck to provide prompts for writing sexy stories and I thought the mechanics to inspire writing were cleverly designed. As you can probably guess, both games mentioned here are adult games and not safe for work.
Tachyon Dreams 3
This is the third game in a trilogy of adventure games by an adventure game dev Cosmic Void. I’m a fan of the Tachyon Dreams trilogy because it’s strongly inspired by the classic Sierra games from the 80s which were graphic adventures but used a text parser for commands, like the early Space Quest and King’s Quest games. However, the parser is better designed than those and adventure game designed has improved so much by then so it’s fun to revisit that style of adventure game design without the frustrating parts. If you are looking for more games in this style, I also recommend Snail Trek, which is available on Steam, and this list of parser graphic adventures I put together on Itch
Happy New Year! 2023 has barely started and there’s already so much I’m excited to play this year and thought I would write about some of them. As usual with these sorts of lists, there’s going to be so many games I just forget to list. Some of my favorite games are those that come from nowhere or are games made by single developers so this will probably actually not even be close to what my favorite games of the year are. Some of these games are available on other platforms but because of my unusually specific interests, all of them are on the PC and most are adventure games.
She Dreams Elsewhere
She Dreams Elsewhere is a surreal RPG with a stunning art style. The art and creature design look wild and I’m looking forward to exploring this world when the game comes out.
Tactical Breach Wizards
Tactical Breach Wizards is the newest game by Tom Francis, designer of Gunpoint and Heat Signature. It looks to be a fun tactics game with a fantasy influence and the screenshots showing off dialog indicate that it has the same humor his earlier games had.
Acronia
Acronia is a queer DOS game inspired by Apogee-era shareware games such as Duke Nukem 1 and BioMenace. I loved the alpha version of the game that is available on their Itch page and hope that we see a full version released this year.
The Crimson Diamond
The Crimson Diamond is a point-and-click adventure game strongly influenced by Sierra’s 1989 adventure game The Colonel’s Bequest. I’ve been following the development of the game for a while now through the developer’s weekly dev streams and the demo on the game’s Steam page and everything indicates this should be a great mystery to solve.
Super Space Club
Super Space Club is a chill arcade space shooter. I really like everything about the presentation of the game and there’s a demo on Steam too.
The Drifter
The Drifter is a point-and-click adventure by Powerhoof, developers of games like Crawl. This is their first commercial adventure game but they’ve done a few short, free adventure games that I’ve enjoyed. It’s developed with their Unity plugin PowerQuest and it’s nice seeing another tool pop up for adventure game developers as well.
Exophobia
Exophobia is a Metroidvania FPS inspired by FPS from the 90s. I enjoyed my time with the demo when it came out. I don’t know if the Blake Stone series was an inspiration for this game but it reminds me of that era of FPS instead of most of the retro FPS revival shooters that seem to be inspired by ID Software and Build-engine games.
Rosewater
Rosewater is the next point-and-click adventure by developer Grundislav Games. It’s a western set in the same universe as their previous game, Lamplight City. I’m excited for the diverse cast of characters, focus on multiple solutions, and love the rotoscoped animations.
Frogsong
Frogsong is a cute action-adventure where you play as a frog named Chorus and need to explore strange lands so you can save your village. I really liked playing the demo with my daughter and we’re both looking forward to the full game scheduled for release early this year.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory
SKALD is a party-based rpg inspired by 80s CRPGs. I haven’t played the demo yet but I really like how it looks, I’m interested in the setting they’ve been showing off so far, and as a fan of the era of games that inspired it, I’m looking forward to seeing how they modernize that style of game.
Firmament
As a longtime fan of Cyan and the Myst games, it is always a huge delight to see them create new adventure games. I was a big fan of Obduction, their last game that was set outside of the Myst series and this is looking great as well. The game was designed for, but does not require, VR devices and after playing their Myst remake in 2021, I would say they have a very good grasp on how to design games for virtual reality.
Old Skies
Old Skies is the newest game developed by point-and-click adventure game studio Wadjet Eye Games. While they’ve produced other adventure games in recent years like The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, this will be the first they’ve developed since Unavowed. The time travel premise sounds like a lot of fun and it features great art by Ben Chandler.
Hellscreen
Hellscreen is a fast-paced FPS set to enter Early Access early this year. The game has a novel mechanic of having a rear-view mirror to help you see what’s happening as you fight. I really like the use of color and cosmic horror theme.
Agent 64
Agent 64 is a new FPS inspired by Rare’s classic N64 games Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. I think it emulates the style of those games perfectly and the demo, which is available on the Steam page, was a lot of fun.
Thirsty Suitors
Thirsty Suitors looks like a very stylish adventure game with a fun variety of mini-games to keep players engaged and as a fan of the writers involved, I’m sure the story will be a delight to follow as well. A demo is available on the Steam page.
Loco Motive
I loved the original version of this game that appeared in the 2020 AdventureX game jam and this looks like a nice remake of that game with improved graphics. I’m interested in seeing how they expand the story as well.
Slayers X/Dreamsettler
I was a huge fan of Hypnospace Outlaw so it’s a delight to see that we’re getting two games set in that universe coming out this year. Slayers X is a FPS with numetal vibes that seems to be inspired by Build-engine era FPS, games like Duke Nukem 3D and Blood, that is “designed” by Zane, one of the characters from Hypnospace Outlaw. I enjoyed the demo and I’m looking forward to playing more.
Dreamsettler looks to be closer to a sequel to the original game but this time inspired by early 00’s internet. I’m looking forward to exploring that world again.
Akka Arrh
Llamasoft has been delivering bangers for over 40 years now and this looks like another one. Akka Arrh is a remake of a prototype of a game that was never released until it was leaked very recently and has everything you’d expect from a Jeff Minter game like bulls, audio samples, and bright, flashing colors.
Gobliiins 5
Gobliiins 5 is another entry in the adventure game series created in the 90s by Pierre Gilhodes and Muriel Tramis. Coktel Vision developed the three games in the 90s with Pierra developing a 4th game in the series in 2009. While I bounced off Gobliiins 4 because of its dull 3D graphics and puzzles (which I heard improve later in the game), I am hoping this is a return to form. I already think the return to 2D graphics is an improvement and it’s fun watching the game get developed in Adventure Game Studio through its Kickstarter updates.
[I] doesn’t exist
[I] doesn’t exist is a text adventure in the spirit of games like Zork but is aimed at being more approachable by having beautiful pixel art and a conversational approach to interact with the game instead of the traditional approach of using a specific set of verbs. Commercial text adventures are rare today so it’s exciting to see this being made.
Nighthawks
Nighthawks is a RPG written and designed by Richard Cobbett (Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies) with art by Ben Chandler (Technobabylon, PISS), and produced by Wadjet Eye Games. From following the Kickstarter updates, the worldbuilding seems like a lot of fun and it should be a pretty lengthy game.
Captain Disaster 3
This year we should see the third game in the Captain Disaster series. The first two games were fun sci-fi adventures and I’m really impressed by the improvement in art style in the screenshots that have been posted so far.
Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends is a 2D platformer based on the Little Nemo comic series. I think the art is fantastic and as a fan of the character ever since I played the NES game many years ago, it’s nice to see another video game being made starring the character.
A Long Journey to an Uncertain End
A Long Journey to an Uncertain End is a sci-fi management sim where you recruit a crew for your ship and take jobs to keep ahead of your abusive Ex. I like the art and it looks very gay.
Wonky Works
Wonky Works is the newest game in development by ondydev. I don’t know much about it but I’m a fan of the developer’s previous games like Tres-Bashers and Binky’s Trash Service
Tachyon Dreams 3
The Tachyon Dreams games are a series of short, comedy sci-fi games influenced by Sierra’s graphic parser games from the 80s like Space Quest. I had fun playing the first two games and it was nice that they were available as Pay-What-You-Want so I’m looking forward to another one. The third game is planned to come out at the end of January or early February.
Sam & Max Season 3 Remaster
It’s not really a new game but I’ve enjoyed the remasters of Telltale’s Sam & Max games by Skunkape. They make the games look like how I remember the game looking and not how they actually looked, and are generally hands off with the content of the game, only making small changes to parts where the humor has not and other small enhancements. The Sam & Max series got better with each season so I’m looking forward to revisiting the best one Telltale made.
A Highland Song
A Highland Song is a new adventure game by Inkle, creators of games like 80 Days and Overboard. I really enjoy the setting and beautiful 2.5D art, and my enjoyment of Inkle’s previous games make this an instant purchase for me when this comes out.
El Paso, Elsewhere
El Paso, Elsewhere is a third-person shooter by Strange Scaffold where you fight werewolves and vampires in a massive hotel. In the early 00’s we had a wave of shooters utilizing features like Bullet Time and diving while shooting after the massive success of Max Payne and then getting dropped completely so it’s exciting to me to see a game revisit this era of action games.
Incubus – A Ghost Hunter’s Tale
I’m a fan of Darkling Room’s Dark Fall series of adventure games and this looks like another fun ghost hunting adventure by the developer. Ghost hunting isn’t something I follow or know anything about but I still think it’s kinda fun getting a peek at that community through these games. I think it looks nice for a game by a small team and I will always get excited by the addition of FMV to adventure games.
System Shock
After a long period of development, Nightdive’s remake of System Shock is finally coming out soon. The game has run into its issues, it had to make the switch from Unity to Unreal, switch art styles, and reduce its scope, but the game is shaping up to be a solid remake of the classic. With System Shock 3 seeming like it’s no longer in development, this might be all we’re getting from the series for a long time.
Phonopolis
Amanita Design has been designing point-and-click adventures for decades so I’m very interested in checking out Phonopolis when it comes out. The game looks like a drastic departure in style from their previous games but the stop-motion animation style they’re going for in this game looks cool to me and I’m interested in seeing how moving to 3D changes how they design adventure games.
Alone in the Dark
Being a fan of Alone in the Dark is the video game equivalent of being a Weezer fan. There hasn’t been a good entry in the series since the first game and even that one gets harder to recommend to people because of the gameplay mechanics aging poorly over time. However, this one is a remake of the first game, set in the early 1900s, and has two playable characters again so could this finally be another good Alone in the Dark game? Maybe?
ScummVM support for Director
This is not a new game but it’s very important to me. ScummVM has been working on adding support for games made in Director for a long time now and maybe this is the year where we finally see it implemented. Imagine a future where you can play Bad Day on the Midway without having to fire up a virtual machine running Windows 95.
One of the things that has helped keep sanity the last few years with the whole pandemic and all has been organizing the DOS Games Jam. The DOS Games Jam is a casual game jam I’ve been running twice a year since the beginning of the pandemic that is focused on celebrating games from that era by making new DOS games and games for modern computers inspired by that era. It’s important to me that the game jam is as stress free as I could possibly make it; there’s no voting, required theme, it’s a month long and often gets extensions, and people can start development before the jam officially starts. I guess it could be argued it’s not much of a game jam if it’s this casual but I’ve never been very comfortable with how many game jams force people to crunch.
If you ever wanted to start making DOS games but didn’t know how to get started, here are some tools that could help:
PunyInform is a library written in Inform 6 which allows people to create text adventure games / interactive fiction to be played on 8-bit computers as well as newer platforms.
LoveDOS – A framework for making 2D DOS games in Lua.
dos-like is a programming library/framework, kind of like a tiny game engine, for writing games and programs with a similar feel to MS-DOS productions from the early 90s. It’s technically not for making DOS games, just games that feel like they’re from that era, but it’s very cool and I’m putting it in the list anyway.
DOjS is a JavaScript programming environment for systems running MS-DOS, FreeDOS or any DOS based Windows (like 95, 98, ME).
jSH is a script interpreter for DOS based operating systems like MS-DOS, FreeDOS or any DOS based Windows (like 95, 98, ME).
If you have game development questions or just want to talk about DOS games in a welcoming and inclusive environment, consider joining the DOS Shareware Zone discord
With the most recent jam wrapping up just now, I thought I would highlight some of my favorite games from previous jams. I had to leave a ton of games I really like off this list or else this writeup would go on for forever. If you’d like to see more, check out the page for the newest jam, which has all the entries for this jam and links to the previous jam pages.
SlipSpeed
SlipSpeed is a futuristic racing game for DOS and Windows that looks a little like the classic Micro Machines game for the NES but with hover cars. The composer for the game also co-hosts the lovely DOS Game Club which had me on as a guest to talk about the game jam. It also exists in a big box physical version. If you bought the Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid you already own this game.
Death Taxi 3000
Death Taxi 3000 is a game like the Crazy Taxi series where you pick up passengers and drop them off at different points in the city all while trying to save time by taking shortcuts and avoiding obstacles. While the full version of the game is on Steam, the shareware version is for DOS only.
Neut Tower
Neut Tower is a puzzle game for DOS and web browsers about escaping an office tower after an earthquake. It reminded me of puzzle games I used to play on shareware compilation discs in the 90s.
Super Spray n’ Slay 3D
Super Spray n’ Slay 3D is a surreal FPS for modern computers where you play as a maid cleaning up a hotel. During the 90s there were a lot of FPS doing unusual concepts after Doom came out and this feels like something that would fit in along that group.
Kalevala
One of the fun things about the DOS Games Jam is seeing how people revisit concepts tried in games that never took off for various reasons. I really like the adventure game Kalevala because it uses the ellipsoid aesthetic that obscure DOS game Ecstatica used but hasn’t been seen since then.
Acronia
Acronia is a platformer game inspired by DOS platformers like Duke Nukem and BioMenace. It’s currently in an alpha state but I couldn’t be more excited for the full version based on my experiences with this early version.
ASCII Delve
The DOS Games Jam isn’t just for computer games. ASCII Delve is a solo tabletop rpg inspired by Rogue and it’s fun seeing how tabletop games can use aesthetics and ideas from older computer games when so many of those were inspired by D&D.
The Anarchic Kingdom
The Anarchic Kingdom is a strategy game for DOS where you play as a lord building up your kingdom and attack other lords. I also really enjoy Cyningstan’s other games and recommend Ossuary as well
SpaceButton
SpaceButton is a text adventure that can be played with just a single button. I thought it was a well-designed text adventure but what I really loved was its focus on accessibility. The web version even has screen reader support.
Cats of Broombas
Cats on Broombas is an adorable puzzle game for DOS where you guide cats around on Roombas to gather all the stars on a screen. I thought the puzzles were well designed and not frustrating, and loved the EGA graphics too. I hope we eventually get a full version.
Hopefully you discover some cool new games and consider looking at some old games for new ideas to try putting in your next game!
It turns out 2022 was a great year for adventure games and interactive fiction. Typically, they’re genres where you can kinda sorta play all the big ones that come out that year but there was such an overwhelming amount of them that there’s many I’ll have to get to next year like Perfect Tides and Blood Nova. Instead of picking one Game of the Year to rule them all, I just selected four in no order that were my favorites this year. I’m also leaving off a ton of stuff I really liked such as Immortality just because I have to stop somewhere. All four of these games are also discussed on various episodes of the Adventure Game Club podcast, so consider checking that out if you want longer discussions on why I thought these games were so good.
Return to Monkey Island
I never expected it but we got a new Monkey Island this year and we didn’t have to wait too long for it after the surprise announcement on April Fool’s Day. I feel like people have varying opinions on parts of it like the art style and ending but I don’t care, I loved it all. I also thought that mechanically it was one of the best designed adventure games, meaning all the quality-of-life stuff like double click to run, an in-game hint book, item highlighting, and hovering over items to get text on what Guybrush was thinking. Adventure games have had some of these things before but it was still nice seeing all of it executed so well in this game.
NORCO
I loved the writing in this game and will be thinking about it for a long time. The way this game talked about poverty, family members with illnesses, and living in a city that is slowly decaying resonated strongly with me and they’re all things we don’t see discussed enough in games. I thought the art was beautiful, loved the soundtrack enough to buy it on vinyl, and the game continues to improve by getting patches that add features like being able to skip the combat.
Citizen Sleeper
This was another game I had been waiting a long time for and it did not disappoint. I loved how it was strongly influenced by indie tabletop rpgs to handle how you take actions and I hope we see other video games look at indie ttrpgs for inspiration instead of getting so many games borrowing dated mechanics from D&D. The ending I got was beautiful and made me cry so I guess that means it’s Real Art. I’m also failing to mention everything else about the game that worked for me like the way it handles exploration to come across events, the art, and music, but I thought that was all incredible as well. I’m looking forward to revisiting the game once all of the DLC is out.
He Fucked the Girl Out of Me
If you follow me on social media you’ve probably seen me discuss this game a billion times, including a post I just made a few days ago, so I’ll just briefly say that it’s a fantastic game plus it’s short and free (but leave a tip anyway!) so if you’re ok with the things mentioned in the content warnings then it’s a must play.
Best Old Game – Riven: The Sequel to Myst
I replayed Riven earlier this year for Adventure Game Club and huge surprise, I still think it rules. It still looks great and the world building is incredible. If you’ve never played a Myst game before, please do not start with this one. The new Myst remake is a great place to start. I will never shut up about Myst.
Best New Trend – Indie Game Anthologies
So this isn’t actually new or a trend but it seemed like there were more of them this year than previous years and I’m ok with that. I previously wrote about them here.
Anyway, those are my GOTY awards no one asked for. It turns out video games are pretty neat!
I’ll do some sort of GOTY list sometime soon but I thought I would write about various games I enjoyed that people may have missed while all the holiday sales are going on. There’s a ton missing from this since it’s just a list I quickly threw together and I played a lot this year.
He Fucked the Girl Out of Me
If there’s a game on this list where I would do some sort of For Your Consideration Lynch-inspired campaign where I would sit outside with a cow, He Fucked the Girl Out of Me would be it. This is a game about the developer’s experiences doing sex work and the trauma that came from that. It was one of my favorite games this year and I thought the writing was incredible. Making a Game Boy game of something Nintendo would never approve for their platforms was an interesting choice too. The game lists the content warnings so please read those before playing.
Dungeon Lad
Dungeon Lad is an arcade roguelike where you’re constantly on a timer and must quickly move through floors while picking up power ups. Just started playing this after picking it up in the Steam sale that’s going on now and it’s been a lot of fun.
Mezzanine
Mezzanine is a free adventure game absolutely nails the look and feel of mid-90s Myst clones that I haven’t seen any other indie game do. It’s worth checking out if you’re into Y2K aesthetics.
Elsewhere in the Night is a short (60 minutes) first-person adventure game with art by Sierra’s Manhunter series. Even though I am a defender of those games, this is vastly more playable and fair but is still very weird. The same developers also released the game Blood Nova a few months ago and I’m excited to play that in the Adventure Game Club
Legend of Etad
I was just really impressed by how they pulled off this dungeon crawler for the Playdate. The community for the handheld is doing a lot of neat stuff and I’m looking forward to what they do next year.
Funny Walk – A Garbage Voyage
I’m a big fan of Graceless Games and it was nice to see them release another game a few months ago. The use of digitized sprites that a lot of adventure games did in the 90s is something I’m extremely into and they have a unique sense of humor that I love.
BOSSGAME: The Final Boss Is My Heart
I don’t know if this game is that obscure because I’ve seen it covered on a few games sites but whatever, I’m going to mention it anyway. BOSSGAME is a mobile game about two girlfriends fighting monsters and it rules. Even if you’re not great at action games, there’s some nice accessibility options in here and it’s worth playing just for the art and writing. I have it on iOS but I’m looking forward to the PC versions that’s coming out in the spring.
Jennifer Wilde
Jennifer Wilde is a point-and-click adventure about a young French woman in the 1920’s teaming up with the ghost of Oscar Wilde to solve the murder of her father. I discuss it more in my review for Adventure Gamers but I was pleased by how they managed to pull off this absurd sounding concept to tell a queer story with unique puzzle mechanics.
Ten Tales From the Records of the Adamant Gambit
I guess this was technically made at the end of last year but Itch publish date lists this as earlier this year, possibly a revised version, so I’m listing it anyway. This is an anthology of short games made in Bitsy telling stories about the people on a massive starship. I was shocked by how much the developers could do in Bitsy.
Hope you had a nice holiday season and discover a few games from this list that you end up loving!
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
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
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
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
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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Since it’s now the Halloween season, I thought I would do a tiny write-up on four indie point-and-click adventure games I would recommend for this time of year. I’m missing a ton of great games so I’ll try to do another one soon.
Stasis
Stasis is an isometric horror adventure by The Brotherhood released in 2015. You play as someone who wakes up from stasis on an abandoned spacecraft and need to figure out what happened to everyone. This is the only game on the list that features death scenes which I know not everyone is into, but they are kind of fun to watch since they are very over the top and the game encourages you to find them as well since they award achievements as well. I’ve seen a few people compare it to the classic game Sanitarium since they’re both isometric horror games and while they’re different kinds of horror, I do think fans of that game would enjoy this as well. HowLongToBeat lists the game at around 8 hours long which sounds right to me.
The developers of the game went on to develop Cayne, a free standalone horror game set in the same universe so if you are unsure about picking up Stasis or just don’t have the budget for it right now, consider checking that out. More recently they released a post-apocalyptic adventure game called Beautiful Desolation and are working on another Stasis game right now.
If you’re looking for something a bit lighter, I would recommend The Darkside Detective. It’s a comedy adventure game released by Spooky Doorway in 2017. You play as Detective McQueen and investigate nine paranormal cases. The game isn’t very difficult and each case is short, making it a good game if you want something more relaxing at this time of year.
A sequel was released last year that follows the same format of a bunch of small cases, so if you enjoy the first game then the sequel is worth playing.
Technically this recommendation is a series of games, but Midnight Scenes is an anthology series by Octavi Navarro, who also worked on Thimbleweed Park. There are currently three games in the series, with each one being completely standalone. The games feature gorgeous pixel art and are only 15-20 minutes each, perfect if you’re looking for something that can be played in one sitting. Octavi also developed a few other short horror games outside of this series that I would recommend, The Supper and The Librarian. If you picked up the Bundle for Ukraine that was on Itch earlier this year, you already own the entire Midnight Scenes series.
If On a Winter’s Night, Four Travelers is an isometric adventure game with horror elements about four people on board a train during a masked ball, with flashbacks that focus on each individual character. Even if it wasn’t a free game I would be impressed by the art and amount of care that went into the writing. Since the game does handle some sensitive topics, please read the content warnings at the bottom of the page to make sure it’s something you can play.
