#point and click adventure games

[alexhillmystery]

Go check out the new demo for Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn—my Nancy Drew inspired mystery point-and-click game.

This demo includes voice acting, animation and new areas to explore! 🙌

[oneinathousand]

If anyone here who is interested in Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages sees a Steam page for it by a developer calling itself “Greyenscape” who is selling the game for 15 dollars, don’t buy it, it’s not an authorized release. I have an acquaintance who can directly contact Harry Horse’s family, and they had no knowledge about it; the rights are split between them, the co art director, Alastair Graham, and the producer, Algy Williams, so presumably all three parties would have to be involved in any legitimate re-release. I follow Graham’s Instagram account and didn’t see anything about this, so I assume he doesn’t know about it, either.

Besides, there’s the issue with what Harry Horse may or may not have done at the end of his life which I’m pretty sure would make any real re-release attempt near-impossible because I feel like publishers would be reluctant to touch the game with a ten-foot pole.

Somebody’s trying to make some money off of people who don’t know how to emulate, and even if it were legitimate, 15 dollars is too much for a glitchy, short, practically unfinished old game like this. You can get Fallout 1 on Steam for less than that even without any deals and there’s so much more content.

If you would take a few seconds to flag this page for the legal violation, I would highly appreciate it.

[autolenaphilia]

Broken Sword: the Shadow of the Templars

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is a point-and-click adventure game by Revolution Software from 1996.

Broken Sword is an attempt to tell a serious conspiracy thriller/mystery story, with a complex plot and intelligent writing. Yet one that isn’t too serious and has plenty of humor and told with colorful visuals reminiscent of 2D animated movies.

It starts with a murder and bombing in Paris that our player character, the american tourist George Stobbart witnesses and narrowly avoids being killed by. And he decides to investigate the mysterious killing. He teams up with french photojournalist Nico Collard, and they soon discover a complex conspiracy involving the Knights Templar and their lost treasure.

Broken Sword is very much an amalgamation of its various influences, with there being clear influences by Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,various stories and myths regarding the Knights Templar, and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. Gabriel Knight overall is the most obvious influence, which is not surprising, because it was one of the few prior attempts to create this kind of serious mystery adventure game. The protagonists are even a comedic blonde-haired american man and a dark-haired intelligent woman. Yet it does synthesize its various influences into something that feels fresh.

The story and writing is excellent. It is a story that treats its audience like adults and respects their intelligence. So it isn’t afraid to drop in references to things like Alfred Jarry’s play King Ubu. And the writing carries this learning lightly, with a genuinely witty sense of humor. It’s one of the funniest games I ever played.

And you need the humor, because this kind of conspiracy thriller stuff needs a certain tone to work well. It needs to take itself and its characters seriously enough that there is some genuine tension, yet not take the conspiracy theories too seriously. And Broken Sword manages this balancing act well. The conspiracy theory about the knights templar is used to provide the story with a dramatic weight drawn from history, and combines that with modern paranoia about the chaos caused by global neoliberal capitalism, yet it never takes that stuff too seriously. I like the Eco-inspired reveal that the modern evil conspiracy isn’t actually ancient, it just pretends to be and wants to appropriate the power and prestige of the templars. And the game knows how to keep the conspiracy stuff just fantastical enough to remind us that this is a fantasy, without being too over-the-top for the game’s serious tone.

It’s not the same as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, where both the author and his most ardent fans took The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail conspiracy theory underlying the novel’s plot as fact. Broken Sword is often suspected of being an influence on The Da Vinci Code, which might be true, but might be a case of similar influences on both works. Broken Sword does reference The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail several times, characters are named Plantard and Lobineau, although the Jesus bloodline idea isn’t part of the actual plot, like it is in Gabriel Knight 3. What I would argue however is that Broken Sword is the kind of intelligently written conspiracy thriller that Dan Brown wants to write, but isn’t capable of writing.

The game is not perfect. The characters in the Syria sections rely on ethnic stereotyping that hasn’t aged well, even if I like the boy who learned english from Jeeves and Wooster tapes. And while George is far more likeable in this regard than Gabriel Knight, his closest predecessor, his infatuation with Nico does go into creep territory at one point very late in the game. These are both things that director Charles Cecil himself regrets. Still, I very much enjoy the writing in this game.

The fairly grounded if humorous tone of the game is reflected in the gameplay too. The game is very standard point-and-click adventure, no surprises here. But the game’s puzzles are largely devoid of the moon logic that could sometimes be a problem for contemporary adventure games, a design decision that reflects Broken Sword’s tone. The puzzle design is fairly simple, but therefore fairly intuitive. And that makes for a rather fun game to play. There are a few dodgy puzzles, but overall this game feels fair.

This is an adventure game where you can die, at multiple points in the story. And this does work to make the gameplay reflect the tension of the game’s thriller plot, by having actual stakes, game-overs, that George can actually die. And true to the game’s tone, they can be funny too. And while your progress can be set back quite a bit by a game-over if your last save was a long time ago, that’s perfectly fine. It has a point in creating tension. And there are no Sierra-esque “dead ends” or unwinnable situations that I could find, of the type “the player missed an item they need to progress, but can’t go back for it, so they are stuck,” so the game doesn’t become too hard. Those are not fine, and they are thankfully not in Broken Sword.

Finally the game’s presentation is top-notch all around. The graphics on a technical level is nothing spectacular by today’s standards, it’s fairly low-res 2D graphics. But by 1996 computer technology had progressed to the point that Revolution could use more detailed and slicker-looking 2D art than the pixelart of many previous point-and-click adventure games, and they took full advantage of that. The art design of this game is excellent. This game looks gorgeous, especially the lovingly-detailed backgrounds. Broken Sword has this warm and colorful cartoon-like look to it, reminding me of traditional 2d animated movies and the Tintin comic books. And the game’s animated cutscenes fit fairly seamlessly with the rest of the game, due to artstyle consistency (not always the case with video games), and help with the animated movie feel.The animated movie feeling is so convincing because Revolution Software hired people with that kind of experience to do the game’s art and animation, such as Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen who worked for Don Bluth, or Roslind Allen who had actually worked for Disney on the Ducktales movie.

They similarly looked outside the video game industry when it came to the game’s music. The game’s composer Barrington Pheloung had composed music for various theatrical films and television shows, most notably Inspector Morse. And Pheloung composed an excellent soundtrack, that helps with the game’s epic feel, and the music is actually performed by an actual orchestra, instead of just using MIDI as many game soundtracks did at the time.

The game is fully voice-acted, which was becoming standard at the time, but the high quality of the voice acting is anything but common, not even today. The accents are often dodgy, but in a fun way. The standout actor is of course Rolf Saxon as George Stobbart, which would turn into the role of a lifetime for him. He would reprise in all future Broken Sword games and he feels irreplaceable as George.

Broken Sword: the Shadow of the Templars was a huge success, and remains popular and beloved to this day. It spawned a franchise that is still on-going. It feels like a point-and-click adventure game milestone. And this is despite it not being a very innovative game, there is little in the gameplay, story or presentation that we haven’t seen before. As a game, it really doesn’t do much that we haven’t seen in its predecessors in the genre by Lucasarts or Sierra or even Revolution Software’s own previous games, like the excellent Beneath a Steel Sky.

Broken Sword is still an adventure game classic that deserves its accolades. That’s because it does what it does very well, with a minimum of flaws. The game is not all that original in concept, but the execution is of the highest quality. It manages to become a classic milestone game by that alone.

Broken Sword is such an enjoyable experience to play that it feels like a benchmark of quality for point-and-click adventure games, one that is rarely met. In fact, Revolution Software’s Broken Sword sequels haven’t really reached the heights of the original, as much as I like the second and even the third game in the series.

Revolution haven’t even been able to fully recapture the magic in the game’s remaster from 2009, the Director’s Cut, which is overall a weaker version than the 1996 original. It adds puzzles and entire sections of the game where you play as Nico, but they don’t add much to the story. These additions are artificially grafted onto the original and feel like it, as they detract from the pacing. It reveals how tight the original game design and pacing is. The new art is by the great Dave Gibbons, but similarly it clashes with the original art. The new animations are worse too, often looking like a cheaply made motion comic compared to the movie-like original animations. The remaster also removes things, including bizarrely censoring the blood and violence in cutscenes. It’s a weird decision that maybe has to do with the fact that the remaster was created for the DS and Wii consoles, made by the sometimes aggressively family-friendly Nintendo. This also included removing the ability for George to die and get a game-over, removing the tension that created.

However, if you buy the Director’s Cut on GOG, it includes the original MS-DOS version of the game as an extra. And that version is easy to get running on non-dos systems with Scummvm. And this is something I recommend you do, it’s a great game.

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Saw you were thinking of doing more point and click adventure games and I have a few suggestions! 

Primordia :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YvWQi_5fsw

Honestly I think it would be right up your alley.

On the more horror side

Excavation of Hob’s barrow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-1C_9RQJb8

Kathy Rain : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aW1YcrEc0M

A little more on the fantasy fanciful side

Beyond The Edge of Owlsgard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXeHb_dN9qo

Wytchwood : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufvmbqHVbLY

Though that one is a little closer to a crafting game.

Enjoy :D

--------

THANK YOU!

Sorry it took me awhile to read this submission. I’ve been adding a lot of Adventure Games to my “to play” list lately. Mainly cause of PushingupRoses and their new Podcast “Save Your Game” so I recommend giving that a listen if you’re up for any game recommendations, Modern or Old.

So I’ll go down this line and look at the trailers to see if I’m interested.

Primordia:

OH GOD! Primordia’s art style reminds me of like Dark Seed. Which is appropriate cus I think Geiger did the artwork on that game. (darkseed not this) but it also reminds me of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind with it’s art direction. I might just check it out for the Bug, Goth Steampunk style alone.

Excavation of Hob’s barrow:

I’ve heard of this game! It was actually brought up and Discussed in the “Save your Game” podcast and I looked up the art and thought about giving this one the old college try. I love me a good mystery and gothic horror intrigue. Definitely one to keep in mind.

Kathy Rain:

I actually did play this one! Well, I played it once, and it was the original, not the Directors Cut. I don’t know what changes the Directors Cut made, and since I only played it once, I don’t really remember a lot of the puzzles or how it concluded. But I loved the atmosphere and I just love that the 90s was so long ago, that modern Adventure Games can like use it for a retro setting now. I want to see a lot more games take place in the 90s. Like the 80s had their turn, and I love scifi and the future, but we just need more games set in that weird era of leaking out of the 80s and dissolving to grunge. I think a small town community in the 90s is a good setting for a game in general. I should give Kathy Rain another go, it’s still in my steam library untouched.

Beyond the Edge of Owlsguard:

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!  My little inner furry absolutely LOVES this. Like the juxtaposition of a somewhat realistic Pixel art background, blended in with the super cartoony look of Anthro animals just has me instantly hooked on the artstyle alone. Like it looks like one of the more sillier games in tone of Monkey Island or Sam and Max hit the Road and that is fine by me! The graphic interface is very old school and it seems to be very self aware of the adventure game genre. I don’t doubt things will get dark and serious by how they introduced the main threat but... Like I will probably just pick this up for the art style alone!

Wytchwood:

Ah this looks really interesting. It really reminds me of Cult of the lamb weirdly. With crafting and dungeon elements. I might give it a go, but it doesn’t capture my interest immediately like some others.

Also, I’ll drop a recommendation I’ve heard of: 

Perfect Tides

The year is 2000. You’re a teenager. You only have online friends and you’re trying to navigate puberty and the world of sex. Some people might not like that kind of thing, especially if they cringe hard at second hand embarrassment, but from what I’ve heard, this whole thing is like a mix of “Night in the Woods” and “Watamote” more the later then the former. I heard that this game isn’t afraid to make it’s main character utterly unlikeable and it’s a real coming of age story. And like, what it’s like to be alone as a teenager only having online friends to seek companionship with. I honestly can’t wait to try out this one. It looks like an existential time and a half.

[magicmalcolm]

I'm not saying I ship two bundles of pixels (one of whom is notoriously one pixel taller than the other), but I could certainly be tempted...

[noirerererer]

I hella love Monkey Island

[rosamayarts]

[trandtalk]

Google's new adventure game takes the Top-Down trip in ancient Mesomerika

Google’s new adventure game takes the Top-Down trip in ancient Mesomerika

Google’s art and culture section has published an interesting new educational game about the ancient Meso America. Credit social media The Dissent of the Serpent Game is now available for playing through your browser or Google Arts & Culture iOS and Android apps. There is a light plot of the Serpent, a small video shows what the beginning of the game is seen. When exploring a museum, Lord…

[entertainment4you]

https://blogspinners.com/best-new-point-and-click-adventure-games-2022/

There is nothing better than playing a computer game or watching your favourite TV show when you’re feeling in the mood for it. But sometimes that’s not enough and you wish there was just something more to it. That’s where point and click adventure games come in, giving players a story line with puzzles they have to complete while they explore the game world. So if you’re looking for something new, check out some of these amazing games coming out this year!

[keydekyie]

"Don't run. Never run. No matter how frightened you are."

"But, then... what can you do? How can one fight... that?"

"Stand your ground. Look them dead in the eye."

"That will stop them?"

"No. But they'll have to live with themselves, and perhaps the next one will be luckier."

[arconinternet]

Adventure Maker (Windows, 1999-2013)

An easy-to-use first-person (primarily, but optionally third-person) adventure game engine, unsupported since 2013 and unavailable for purchase since 2017 (when the venerable Kagi registration service died). You can download it here.

You can find links to free games made with the program on the Wayback Machine here. Don't forget to check the linked sites on the live web too. Games listed as not working on Vista (and thus even following versions of WIndows) may work after using this patch from the Carol Reed series site (Carol Reed games 1-3 used to need it, but no longer do - the other games use other engines - game NINETEEN coming on Jan 1st!).

[alexhillmystery]

Growing up I loved playing point and click games like King’s Quest, Dust: A Tale of the Wired West and the Nancy Drew series.

Now I’m creating my own mystery series, Alex Hill! 🕵️‍♀️🔎👻

Check out the demo and wishlist it on Steam!

[oneinathousand]

The developers of the new Gollum game, Daedalic Entertainment, were previously known for mostly creating modern 2D point-and-click adventure games like Deponia, The Whispered World, and Anna’s Quest, which probably explains the occasional obtuse puzzles and pixel-hunting that apparently goes on in Gollum, and all you have to do is look at screenshots or gameplay footage of any of those to see that this is a textbook case of devs biting off more than they can chew.

Even their works with more detailed graphics are still harkening back to very old adventure game conventions and seem to be just above indie in terms of budget and scale, so I can’t imagine that the vast majority of them were the ones to decide they should take a left turn and tackle something way bigger, that being a fully 3-D platformer with elements of stealth based on the most famous fantasy franchise of all time.

Whose idea was it, anyway, their French owners, a company called Nacon? Why not just make a game more in-line with what Daedelic were used to making, something smaller-scale that doesn’t charge 60 dollars to get all the lore compendiums and emotes and shit? They were being set up for failure, and I hope they take the lessons learned and move on.

[autolenaphilia]

The mainstream games industry is clamoring for more and more realistic graphics, and here I am playing the original Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, (via Scummvm), a 2D point-and-click adventure game from 1996, and I'm so delighted with its graphics. The comic book art is so charming and colorful. It feels like I'm playing an interactable bande dessinée in the vein of Tintin or Spirou. And honestly I prefer that to anything realistic. Like I already got the real world? So when I play a video game, I would prefer to escape into the world of a comic book like Broken Sword allows me to.

Like just look at these random screenshots i took, this rules.

[mumpsetc]

I Hear He's a Self Made Man

[magicmalcolm]

It's not often a Video Game Protagonist gets called out for picking up everything they can in the name of Just In Case.