review

Landlord Quest thoughts

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Developer: katbrush
Publisher: katbrush
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a man in an office saying "Perseverence: If you can believe a sports car, you can achieve a sports car"

Landlord Quest is a short point-and-click adventure game where you play as a landlord who must do a task for one of your tenants but as expected in a comedy adventure game, this goes off the rails very quickly. It features multiple endings, with an extended ending if you do all the goals and max out your Landlord Score, but all of them are “good” unless you like landlords for some reason. It’s always a little goofy to try to write a longer review for any game that’s 30-45 minutes long but I wanted to write some kind of log since I thought it was a fun adventure game and always appreciate when a point-and-click adventure takes an anti-capitalist stance. It’s definitely not a pro-landlord game.

It features all the stuff you would want in a comedy adventure like good jokes, puzzles that are fair, and a mini game as well. The only criticism I have is that some of the inventory items are used in an odd way for the 9-verb scumm interface, with you generally clicking on the item itself and then the object you want to use it on and not clicking the Use verb first, but once you figure it out then it’s not a big deal.

The art is very nice too. The verb panel has the aesthetic of early Windows and I was really impressed with the animation, especially for a solo dev project. It’s good stuff! Sometimes it’s nice to just play through a short adventure game in one sitting and watch a landlord eat shit. It’s only $2 too! Other than the content warning of a possible violent suicide depiction not being for some folks, I feel very comfortable recommending it to adventure game fans who want a short comedy adventure. It’s available on Steam but if you buy it on Itch.io then you get the files to run it in ScummVM, making it playable on basically every platform.

Landlord Quest is available on Steam and Itch.io.

Virtue’s Heaven thoughts

~ mpklamerus ~ 4 Comments

Developer: MOKKOGRAD
Publisher: MOKKOGRAD
Year: 2025
Genre: Platformer
System: Windows

pixel art box art of the game that I made

Virtue’s Heaven is a 2D Metroid-like where you explore a world that has been ruined by capitalism and you set out to eliminate those that caused that destruction and free your friends. Unlike a lot of games in the Metroidvania genre, you do not get powerups that allow you to explore new areas. You have all of your abilities at the start of the game and destroying bosses will give you keys to open new areas and make you stronger. My experience with the game was one where I didn’t initially click with the game, but when I figured out how I was playing the game incorrectly it became one of the most satisfying gaming experiences in a long time.

a guy about to kick a robot
Screenshot from Steam

My initial experience with the game was that I was very impressed with the art and music, and thought the combat system, which is based entirely on melee attacks, was an incredibly interesting approach. However, soon it felt like the game was becoming too difficult. The combat started to feel like a slog because the character was not doing much damage and enemies were too strong. I knew it was me doing something wrong though, since the game had put so much thought into every other aspect, that I just got annoyed with myself for missing what was probably an obvious detail and then got distracted by other things and put the game down for a month.

Cut to a month later and I finally came back to the game to see how I would do with the game this time. Pretty quickly I saw that I was correct and missed an obvious detail. The game expects you to go back to town after defeating bosses to get an upgrade to get more health and be able to use more of the powerups you’ve obtained, which you get from freeing your friends. This time the game really clicked with me and I was so happy with how great the game felt. The combat was still challenging but very fair and it was immensely satisfying to keep getting more upgrades after beating bosses. I kinda hate the term juice for describing the feeling of sound effects and other effects that happen when the player interacts with the world, like an explosion after defeating an enemy, but folks, it’s got very good juice. Some of the best explosions in a video game to be honest. The game’s anti-capitalist theme was obviously a big selling point to me too. It feels very rare to see it in a setting like this so I really appreciate the developer taking the big swings with the story it’s telling. It’s not really a game that sets itself up for a sequel but I think there’s some really interesting directions that it could go in if they do decide to make one, which I would certainly be the first in line to buy.

guy dodging an attack in the guy

I should point out that the initial bounce off the game was entirely my fault. The game is very generous with reminders on other aspects of the game and I was probably playing the game and not feeling very patient, which is the wrong mindset when going into a new game. I could have also played the game at the wrong time, when I wasn’t in the mood to learn a new ruleset. This has happened to me before. One of my all time favorite games, Morrowind, is one that I had initially bounced off of but when I came back and was more patient, it really clicked with me and I loved it. I think this was a similar experience. I don’t necessarily like to say that it needs to be appreciated on its own terms, because that might make it sound like you need to accept the shortcomings of something. These weren’t issues with the game. I had just played it at the wrong time. I think it’s even harder now when there’s just so many games that it’s hard to be patient and understand what the game is doing. It’s not like it’s doing anything radical here, I’m not expected to learn a brand new number system like in Riven, but it was still very easy for me to get distracted to jump to something else.

It feels a little silly to write about this massive journey I took with a game that’s ultimately only 4-5 hours long but if a game takes you on an adventure, you have to write about it folks. I’m so glad I came back and recognized what I was doing wrong because it’s a game that I now love and hope more people check out.

Virtue’s Heaven is available on Steam and Itch.io

Crystal Caves HD thoughts

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Developer: Emberheart Games
Publisher: Apogee Games
Year: 2020
Genre: Platformer
System: Windows

Crystal Caves HD is a remaster of the 1991 shareware game by Apogee where you play as Mylo Steamwitz, a miner in outer space, trying to become rich. The platformer has you going through levels and grabbing all the crystals in each one while trying to avoid various monsters and traps. There’s also a puzzle element as you have to carefully plan the use of the timed power ups in the level to reach certain areas and the order that you’ll unlock doors and activate platforms. I used to play the original version quite a bit as a kid so it was nice to see this rerelease happen. Emberheart has done a few of them at this point, with Secret Agent and Monster Bash being the other two Apogee remasters they’ve done. I’ve previously played through the Secret Agent one and enjoyed that quite a bit, and the gameplay and additions in this remaster are very similar.

a miner jumping on metal or stone platforms behind a giant green monster
Image taken from Steam page

The remaster adds more color and smoother animation to the original game, music, an entire new episode of levels, and a level creator. I can see the argument for the additional colors removing some charm from the original game but I think it looks nice. The music is fine too but if I did have any criticisms of this remaster I think it’s that the music almost sounds more like something on an older video game console rather than a PC game from this era. This is a very minor gripe though. I think the new levels are very solid and feel like a good continuation of the previous three episodes, and the level editor seems to have been embraced by a very active community with the developer still adding stuff years later.

a screen about how the main character has found success with his burger restaurant, which is floating in space
This ending screen from episode 3, also in the original game, is just Monolith Burger from Space Quest 3, isn’t it?

I’m very possibly too nostalgia poisoned to accurately assess this game but I think it holds up pretty well and Emberheart has done a wonderful job with the remaster, just like they did with Secret Agent. If I had any complaints about the game, not the remaster, it’s that it becomes tedious to marathon the game and it’s why I very slowly played this over a year, but it’s still pleasant to play in short bursts. The developer has also done a remaster of Monster Bash, another Apogee shareware game I loved. I haven’t played it yet but the reception on Steam seems to be very positive and I’m sure it’s great if it’s anything like the other two they’ve done. I haven’t finished it yet but Emberheart also developed the fps Wizordum, which kinda feels like if Catacomb 3D had kept being iterated on instead of ID moving on to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. If you’re a retro FPS fan, I highly recommend it. There’s also an upcoming remaster of BioMenace that is not by this developer but looks amazing, with it having lots of features I wish this had, like the ability to switch between the old and new graphics. Give the demo a try if you have fond memories of the original.

Crystal Caves HD is available on Steam and GOG.

Ween: The Prophecy thoughts

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Developer: Coktel Vision
Publisher: Coktel Vision
Year: 1992
Genre: Adventure
System: DOS

two weird humanoids with giant mustaches saying "We're UKI and ORBI"

To be a fan of French DOS games is knowing that mechanically the game may not be the tightest thing, but it could be weird enough and take enough swings to be worth it. Some of my favorite games are French DOS games and include: Alone in the Dark, Little Big Adventure, Lost Eden, and The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble. I’m a huge fan of Coktel Vision so it was unfortunate that I mostly found Ween: The Prophecy to be a frustrating experience.

The game has a plot about you stopping an evil wizard, but it’s mostly an excuse for you to move to various rooms, in an almost puzzle room level-based format, and solve the various inventory puzzles before moving on to the next room. This is one of those games that quickly wraps up with a block of text when you beat the final puzzle. Unfortunately I frequently found these puzzles to rely heavily on moon logic or sometimes broken, which meant mostly doing trial and error and trying every item on everything, or just pulling up a walkthrough because I got tired of the sluggish response from every action. I took notes while playing and there’s many instances where I just did not understand what was happening in the game or instances of me trying an action, checking a walkthrough to see that I was doing the right action, but was just not trying it enough times for it to actually work. The entire game consists of these inventory puzzles so the game quickly became a huge slog to play. There are one or two points where there are multiple solutions, but those were the only clever bits in the game’s design.

an illustration of a boat and text at the bottom saying "Bad idea..."

Even worse than a game consisting of trial and error puzzles is that the game tells you that you had a bad idea, or that your character is getting frustrated, or something isn’t working. It’s aggressively hostile in a genre called Point-And-Click Adventure, where you often just want to click on something to get a description or to see what happens. Instead of either of those things happening though, you are just scolded. It’s immensely frustrating to play an adventure game where you are actually discouraged from clicking on things. I wasn’t even trying to solve a puzzle. It is just common practice to play around in an environment and click around but this is a game that does not want you to do that. I suppose to the game’s credit, I didn’t come across any softlocks.

It’s so frustrating that the game is so unfun to play because the parts surrounding it are nice. Like just about every other Coktel Vision game, I like the art and music. Charles Callet does a fantastic job on the soundtrack like he did on every other game he worked on. There’s also some really weird FMV in here that other people online seemed to find disturbing but I liked how weird it was. The weirdness is why I usually play French DOS games.

So unfortunately, I can’t really recommend this game. I generally love Coktel Vision’s games, even when the gameplay is a bit clunky like in Inca, because there’s usually a lot of really interesting stuff going on and the game has something to say. Ween: The Prophecy just does not have enough to justify playing through the game.

Ween: The Prophecy is not available for sale anywhere but is probably on your favorite abandonware site and playable through ScummVM.

Super Castlevania IV thoughts

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Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Year: 1991
Genre: Platformer
System: SNES

I just did my regular playthrough of Super Castlevania IV for the Halloween season. This used to be a yearly tradition for me but it’s been a while since I’ve play it so it was nice to revisit it. This time I did it through the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which includes a lot of the early games. I suspect that anything I say in this post has been repeated a billion times better by other folks but it’s still a lovely game. It’s always been one of my favorites in the series, with some of my favorite bits of it being the directional whipping and the jazzy soundtrack. Neither seems to really come up in later entries and that’s a shame. I know Mode 7 effects only make sense on a SNES but you know what? Later games should have had those too.

I’ve always been fascinated by this being a loose remake of the first game but still being labeled the fourth game of the series. It feels like something we probably wouldn’t see today with a lot of this stuff being more standardized. At the very least it feels different from how the industry does remakes today.

a man whipping the air over a skeleton's head
Screenshot taken from MobyGames. The background in this level rotates.

If I did have any complaints about the game, it’s that I personally feel like it starts to become a slog once you get to the castle. The game moves so quickly up until then and it has a wonderful variety of environments but then you get to the castle and the variety seems to drop and there’s a big difficulty spike. It remains this way for a few levels and then I think the level design becomes a lot more interesting again towards the end. It’s still a fantastic game though and the one I probably go to if I want to recommend a level-Castlevania game, partially because I haven’t played that many that aren’t on a Nintendo console.

Super Castlevania IV is part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, available on Switch, XBox, Playstation 4, and Windows.

The Lost Oregon City Gold thoughts

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Developer: Oh, a Rock! Studios
Publisher: Oh, a Rock! Studios
Year: 2022
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a dad thinking while his two daughters look. It's asking you what "25 cents" means.
Photo from Itch.io page

The Lost Oregon City Gold is an adventure game where a dad and his two daughters stumble across an old letter from an ancestor with clues pointing them to $25,000 in lost gold. It’s up to you to explore Oregon and find it. Most of the game is played in a first person view where you click on arrows to navigate various spaces in Oregon, made up of photos, and talking to people or solving puzzles that will point you to the next clue in your treasure hunt. Occasionally you make choices in dialog but they’re pretty low stakes decisions and there are parts where you can answer questions about Oregon’s history that you learn by playing the game. I suppose that technically this makes the game an edutainment title, but that might be a stretch.

image of a hand on a computer screen and text saying "Day 153. Got slapped for mispronouncing "Oregon"

As you can see, it’s not a very serious game. Photos of people, played by the devs and family and friends, are used for all of the characters and the plot itself is very silly. It all works for me though. Something I really like about the games by Oh, a Rock! Studios is that they all feel like a group of folks having lots of fun making games for each other but without all the inside jokes so they’re still very approachable for folks outside the group. They’re all just like a nice, relaxing, and goofy hangout session and would also recommend Internet Court and The Awkward Steve Duology for the same vibe. They don’t take themselves seriously but the games aren’t doing any sort of ironically bad FMV either.

The Lost Oregon City Gold is available on Steam and Itch.io for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse thoughts

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Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Year: 1992
Genre: Platformer
System: SNES

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse is platformer where you play a Mickey Mouse and must save Pluto after he’s been kidnapped by Emperor Pete (Spoiler: The whole thing is a dream). You do all your standard platforming stuff while going through a variety of environments. The main gimmick in this one is that you get a new type of power in each new area. I had played this one a long time ago and thought it would be fun to revisit and…..eh…..it’s fine. I thought I would have enjoyed it more since I have such a soft spot for this era of Capcom games but I often found myself getting frustrated by how finnicky the controls felt to me and the hit boxes on some of the bosses, which ended up being my least favorite part of the game. I was surprised by all of this because I remember it being a fairly short game back in the day, which must have warped in my mind to it being easy. Although I probably did play it on easy mode back in the day instead of at a harder difficulty.

Anyway, sometimes you revisit a game from your childhood and it ends up being merely ok. At least all the art and music is great and what I would expect from an early 90s Capcom game. The game eventually got a rerelease on the GBA where you can also play as Minnie and I believe this version also adds some mini games, but I don’t think there’s any way to play the game today.

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse has not been rereleased and is available on your favorite emulation site.

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me

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Developer: Taylor McCue
Publisher: Taylor McCue
Year: 2022
Genre: Visual Novel
System: Game Boy

pixel art I did of the game's box of ghosts hugging a girl

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me is a short Game Boy visual novel created in GB Studio about the developer’s experiences being a transgender sex worker and the trauma that came from doing that work. The player advances the story by walking around different scenes and talking to various characters and is about 40 minutes long.

a woman saying to a ghost: He's waiting for us. I'll see you inside"

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me was one of my favorite games of 2022 for many reasons. It’s incredible to see someone put out a semi-autobiographical story like this where where they are so vulnerable. The game uses the limitations of the Game Boy so well and I think the artwork in this game is fantastic. Another thing I loved about it was that it was for a platform created by Nintendo. Even today, Nintendo is known as a company that does not approve of adult queer content on their platforms and I loved seeing someone use one of their consoles to tell a personal story. It’s inspiring seeing retro consoles and computers being used to create experimental games and tell stories that we didn’t see very often in games thirty years ago, when queer games like Caper in the Castro and GayBlade were a rarity.

Unfortunately this is one of the games that has been hit by the Itch.io deindexings, making it harder to find. I know the developer has put it on the Internet Archive and encouraged other people to host downloads of it, but it’s still heartbreaking that queer stories like this are under attack because of pressure by Mastercard and Visa. I hope that one day people will be able to create their art without capitalism trying to stamp it out.

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me is available on Steam, Itch.io, and the Internet Archive.

Five Years Old Memories thoughts

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Developer: Komitsu
Publisher: Komitsu
Year: 2024
Genre: Visual Novel
System: Windows

a man drinking a beer and sitting in a chair


Five Years Old Memories is a short interactive experience where you listen to people in Japan talk about memories they have from when they were about five years old and interacting with animations that play while they talk. It’s very short and only takes about 20 minutes to play through. I’ve played it a few times now, with my most recent playthrough happening because I thought it would be fun to revisit and also get all the achivements, which rewarded me by stumbling upon an element or two that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The art is fantastic and it’s really cute seeing this storybook-like pictures animating as you listen to their stories. There’s not a whole lot to say about this one other than I really like it and think it’s worth checking out if this sounds appealing to you since it’s only $3.

Five Years Old Memories is available on Steam, Itch.io, and iOS.

Mystery House (1980) thoughts

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Developer: On-Line Systems
Publisher: On-Line Systems
Year: 1980
Genre: Adventure
System: Apple II

I finally played one of the first graphic adventures (the first I know of but I thought “this”very first” was under debate?) and the first game by Roberta Williams and Sierra and: It’s cute.

Mystery House is a text adventure with very basic line graphics where you are locked in a house with other folks and must find some hidden jewels. You start seeing dead bodies showing up and need to figure out who the murderer is and stop them before it’s too late. The actual design of the game is very basic, as you would expect for an adventure on home computers at this time, and you type in commands to walk around the house, find clues and items, and use them to progress elsewhere. It’s a pretty short game where you restart a few times since it relies on learning through failure a little bit but it’s not as cruel about it as a lot of later adventure games. The biggest thing I actually fought with was the parser. Even though it’s incredibly early in the genre’s lifespan, other text adventures already had better parsers at the time. I also found that the graphics also make the game harder since pure text tells you everything you can interact with, this game needs you to guess what the correct object name is to interact with it. Sometimes it’s also just hard to see what you should be trying to use. The game also features a pretty annoying maze. So maybe not a game I would really recommend to folks for the plot but I still had a fun enough time playing something of historical importance. Renga in Blue has a very good writeup of the game and I definitely liked it more than him, but I agree with all of the criticisms of it.

a person laying on the floor that has been strangled with pantyhose

One of the weirdest parts of the game to me is that there is an optional person you may never see, a grave digger named Joe. You can walk to a graveyard outside of the house (so I guess you aren’t actually locked in?) with six graves dug in the yard. If you walk into one of the graves, he buries you alive. But you don’t actually need to see him or go into the grave to complete the game so I have no idea why this screen exists. You can also stab him and kill him, which seems a bit excessive. But he does try to kill you if given the opportunity so I guess he deserves it? It’s all really weird.

It also got a release in Japan a little bit later with some slightly better graphics. I don’t know how the rest of the game or its parser is.

Anyway, glad I played it. It’s dated and simplistic but it’s also short enough that I think if you’re a little generous with the walkthrough to deal with the clunky parser, you might have some fun with the novelty of playing the first Sierra game.

Mystery House is public domain and available for free to download such as the ScummVM website.