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The Aggie Awards - The Best Adventure Games of 2014

Written by AG Staff
It will take you 42 minutes to read this feature.


Article updated Friday, February 20th. Already read about Day One and Day Two? Skip straight ahead to the final day's presentation!
 


Now that most of the other poseurs have had their chance, it’s time for the only hardware presentation that REALLY matters: the Aggie Awards from Adventure Gamers!  Sure, there may be better-dressed celebrities at those other events, but they also have longer speeches and commercials. Most importantly, you’re actually invited to this ceremony! After all, these are your awards as much as ours.

We didn’t get all the comebacks we anticipated in 2014, but thanks largely to the crowdfunding phenomenon, a few of the genre’s titans made welcome returns to the fold. But just as the real Titans discovered, there are always younger (experientially speaking), hungrier up-and-comers eager to overthrow them. The result was a brutal battle of ballots to the last game standing.

For all this talk about triumph and defeat, however, really there are no losers here. We don’t mean in that “everyone gets a ribbon just for showing up” way either. Just reaching this stage is already a tremendous accomplishment for the developers involved. This is a chance to applaud all the fine work on display throughout 2014, with a special acknowledgement reserved for a final few. So check any (potential) outrage at the door, and join us for the fun and frivolity.

The awards presentation will run daily from Wednesday through Friday, so don’t wander off!

First up: a special music presentation from Tom Felbar.


And now, let us commence the 2014 Aggie Awards, dedicated to our dear friend and colleague, Astrid Beulink.
 


Table of Contents


Day One


Page 1: You’re looking at it
Page 2: Best Story
Page 3: Best Writing – Comedy
Page 7: Best Concept

 

Day Two


Page 8: Best Setting
Page 9: Best Graphic Design
Page 10: Best Animation
Page 11: Best Music
Page 12: Best Voice Acting
Page 13: Best Sound Effects

 

Day Three


Page 14: The Silver Aggies
Page 15: Best Console/ Handheld Adventure (Exclusive)
Page 16: Best Non-Traditional Adventure
Page 17: Best Traditional Adventure
Page 18: Best Adventure of 2014
Page 19: Final Notes
 


First up: Best Story... the envelope, please!


Best Story: The Blackwell Epiphany

In The Blackwell Epiphany, Dave Gilbert had the unenviable task not only of telling a story worthy of wrapping up the beloved indie series, but also of tying up threads he’d established years earlier in the four preceding games. He ended up telling two stories in one: a mystery involving souls who are ripped apart before they can cross over, and a high-stakes send-off for the duo who have become like friends these past eight years, resolving questions about Rosa’s family history and Joey’s past in gratifying, permanent ways. The tears flowed, but with those tears came much-needed closure.

The Blackwell games have always focused on a reluctant spirit medium struggling to control her power, accompanied by a spectral sidekick who doesn’t have to take everything so seriously. In Epiphany, Gilbert puts a genius spin on his own convention: Rosa is now powerless to save the dead, while Joey is suddenly – ironically – in mortal danger. When the story hits a mini-climax halfway through, the mystery seems to be solved all too soon… and then the case goes even deeper, with Joey and Rosa directly in the crosshairs. This halfway point is when Epiphany’s story shifts from good to great; it’s when we realize that in Rosa and Joey’s final outing, Dave Gilbert’s giving us all he’s got.

But the driving plot isn’t necessarily what makes this story stand out. The strength lies in how every element – themes, characters, setting, mood – contribute to the overall arc, all of them guiding us toward The End. That ending may have been controversial, but it’s one Gilbert says he envisioned from the beginning. We were headed this way all along, we just didn’t know it yet. And when the credits rolled we felt, if not happy with the outcome, at least fulfilled. From a narrative standpoint, The Blackwell Epiphany is a finale done right, making it the obvious choice for this year’s Best Story award.

Runners-Up:


Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

The Wolf Among Us

The Last Door

Valiant Hearts: The Great War
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


More than fifteen years since the cliffhanger ending of Overseer, Tex finally returned and didn’t disappoint his many fans. Cleverly accounting for the missing years between installments, Tesla Effect once again delivered an ever-escalating sci-fi-comedy-noir yarn in which Tex awakens with a serious head wound and no recent memories. While investigating his conspiratorial attackers and his own troubled past, Tex stumbles across a catastrophic invention that is somehow entwined with tantalizing clues about his long-lost love. Better yet, player choices trigger one of five different bitter-to-sweet endings. Yep, sounds like another winning Tex Murphy tale, all right!

Runners-Up:


The Blackwell Epiphany

The Wolf Among Us

The Talos Principle

Danganronpa (series)
 


Next up: Best Writing – Comedy... the envelope, please!


Best Writing – Comedy: Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

A Broken Sword adventure may not be the most obvious candidate for best comedic writing, but the series has always been a great blend of both drama and comedy, and The Serpent’s Curse is no different. While it never intends to be laugh-a-minute, the game is all the funnier for its judicious use of humour rather than the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. Protagonist George Stobbart is full of dry and cutting one-liners, like expressing his lack of surprise that a café has no customers after meeting its pretentious owner, and he continually lightens the mood during darker moments.

But it isn’t just the main man who brings the gags. Nico’s snappy banter is always a welcome feature, and the colourful supporting cast add to the comedy as well, even if sometimes they don’t intend to (though the writers surely did). “Nobody move – especially you on the floor,” declares the serious Inspector Navet as he enters a crime scene where a man lies dead. Elsewhere you’ll find the likes of a gruff but oddly articulate henchman gardener played totally against stereotype, and a recently widowed French woman whose mourning manifests itself in delusions, each of whom offer chuckles in outlandish situations. And the return of everyone’s (least) favourite goat was an inside joke for series fans that showed the developers aren’t above poking fun even at themselves. Never offensive, never crass, the comedy here may be more subtle than most, but it’s a clever script filled with zingers, and its Aggie Award is no joke. Welcome back, Revolution, and thanks for the laughs.

Runners-Up:


Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure

Detective Grimoire

Jazzpunk

Quest for Infamy
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Like Broken Sword, the Tex Murphy games are not primarily comedies – they just happen to be funnier than most of those that are. Over the years, the series has developed a unique personality – or rather multiple personalities. Through dialogue choices, you can often affect how Tex responds. With a droll quip? A self-deprecating denial? Or an over-the-top demand? The comedic writing in Tesla Effect is all the more remarkable because each of Tex’s diverse responses works in the context of the story arc. Do you want to laugh with Tex? Laugh at him? Be impressed? Be appalled? Sooner or later you will be given these choices, all of them equally entertaining yet leaving his core charisma intact. Tex isn’t the only funny character, but he does get all the best lines, and now he’s laughing all the way to the readers’ Aggie podium.

Runners-Up:


Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

Jazzpunk

The Blackwell Epiphany

The Journey Down: Chapter Two
 


Next up: Best Writing – Drama... the envelope, please!


Best Writing – Drama: The Wolf Among Us

While it might seem surprising to give the Aggie award for Best Dramatic Writing to a game whose major characters include a foul-mouthed, four-foot toad, an escaped pig with a taste for whiskey, and a hot-tempered lycanthropic sheriff, the ability to handle its fantastical cast of characters with such a masterful touch is exactly why The Wolf Among Us is so deserving. These are fairy tale characters in human disguise living in modern-day New York, and there is such reverence shown to each character’s individual pathos that it’s almost impossible not to get caught up in their motivations, conflicts, and tragic flaws. The writing compels us to viscerally experience each Fable’s miserable plight while building towards an unforgettable conclusion.

Even more impressively, as Sheriff Bigby Wolf struggles to control the beast inside, the script feels entirely authentic throughout every player choice, allowing you to craft the Bigby you want to play, not one the writers have railroaded you into inhabiting. The Wolf Among Us may be based on Bill Willingham’s innovative comic series, but Telltale’s adaption is every bit as fascinating and strange, due in no small part to the studio’s continued excellence (and experimentation) in interactive storytelling.

Runners-Up:


The Blackwell Epiphany

The Talos Principle

Hadean Lands

Kentucky Route Zero: Act III
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Call us crazy, but are we sensing a pattern here? As we were saying, the Tex Murphy games are not primarily comedies, as in between the yuks you can always count on a cracking mystery full of intrigue, romance, violence and drama. Cheating death in a creepy research lab, confronting the efforts of a brutal conspiracy, and exposing heartbreaking tales of loneliness and loss are all part of Tex’s repertoire, capped by a spine-tingling last ditch effort to redeem an imperfect world. These are no laughing matters (though we will anyway), and by winning this reader award, Tesla Effect earns a clean sweep in the script department.

Runners-Up:


The Blackwell Epiphany

The Wolf Among Us

The Talos Principle

The Walking Dead: Season Two
 


Next up: Best Character... the envelope, please!


Best Character: Tex Murphy (Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure)

Tex Murphy is one of the most beloved adventure game protagonists in genre history, who left us on a cliffhanger well over a decade ago, apparently forever. When Tesla Effect was successfully crowdfunded in 2012, devoted series fans were thrilled by the opportunity to renew acquaintances with the lovable PI from future New San Francisco who embodies a mix of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and more than a touch of Jacques Clouseau. The series has always managed to walk the line between hard-boiled noir and comedy, peppering Tex’s mysteries with wry humour and even goofy slapstick. It’s hard not to root for a detective who spends one minute searching the apartment of a murdered man for clues, and the next scaring a hardened criminal with an animatronic clown.

But with the excitement of Tex’s long-overdue return came a little trepidation. As the star of his own live-action FMV series, could series creator Chris Jones successfully pick up where he left off? Fortunately, the years have been kind to Jones, and Tex proves just as charming and lovable as ever. Donning the familiar brown fedora and trench coat feels just as comfortable as ever, and we can’t help but agree with Tex’s friend Louie LaMintz that it sure is good to have the ol’ "Moiph" back. For bringing the magic one more time, even in the face of intense competition, the rough-around-the-edges but ever-endearing gumshoe with a heart of gold gets an Aggie to match as our pick for Best Character of 2014.

Runners-Up:


Bigby Wolf (The Wolf Among Us)

Joey Mallone (The Blackwell Epiphany)

Clementine (The Walking Dead: Season Two)

George Stobbart (Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse)
 


Readers’ Choice: Tex Murphy (Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure)


Like there was any doubt! Tex would arguably be top-five on a best character of all time list, so he had no trouble taking the crown for 2014, even in a field of strong contenders. Smarter than Smart Alex. More charming than a sentry robot. Up on the rooftops using a zipline, down in the labyrinth sneaking past cloaked guards. We needed a stubborn hero, a wise-cracking lover. We needed a detective with a bullet hole in his fedora. For sixteen years we needed Tex Murphy. He finally returned, and nothing says “welcome back” quite like a unanimous Aggie Award.

Runners-Up:


Bigby Wolf (The Wolf Among Us

Joey Mallone (The Blackwell Epiphany)

George Stobbart (Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse)

Rosangela Blackwell (The Blackwell Epiphany)
 


Next up: Best Gameplay... the envelope, please!


Best Gameplay: The Talos Principle

A great puzzle challenges you, forcing you to turn it over in your mind and examine it from every angle, yet it eventually yields to your determination and cunning, and the elegance of its solution makes you wonder why it took so long to figure out. There’s only a small margin for success – not so easy that you breeze through, not so hard that you become frustrated. The Talos Principle hits this sweet spot time and time again, taking a set of seemingly simple building blocks (pressure plates, beams of light, crates) and turning them into a smorgasbord of brain candy that constantly stretch your abilities and imagination.

Smooth and responsive controls ensure that you’re never fighting to put your ideas into action, and the game ramps up the difficulty slowly but smartly, adding mechanics one by one, each one stacking new layers of complexity and cleverness on top. The collectible stars scattered throughout the environment lay at the end of some of the most fantastically devious puzzles we’ve seen in years, trials that require immense patience and creativity to overcome, yet they are completely optional, giving the determined player even more to tackle while allowing others to escape unscathed. And all this from Croteam, the Croatian developer best known for the guns-blazing Serious Sam shooters. Who knew they had it in them? Well, now everyone will know by the Aggie Award for Best Gameplay on their mantel.

Runners-Up:


The Blackwell Epiphany

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Valiant Hearts: The Great War
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Story and gameplay? Tesla Effect is a throwback to the days when it wasn’t one or the other, sealing the deal for readers with some good old-fashioned Tex Murphy adventuring. The series has consistently featured a wonderful variety of tasks, and this game is no exception. From witty dialogue options to logical(-ish) inventory combinations to sequencing challenges involving baseball cards, sacred symbols, and nuclear reactor cooling rods, Tex’s latest adventure provides dozens of ways to think both in and outside the box. A dollop of stealth and a dash of death-dealing traps add even more flavour to the puzzle mix. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?

Runners-Up:


The Talos Principle

The Blackwell Epiphany

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse
 


Next up: Best Concept... the envelope, please!


Best Concept: Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

With their seventh Sherlock Holmes adventure, Frogwares promised to give players the experience of actually being the Great Detective. This led to a number of interesting changes to the game mechanics, chief among them the much improved multi-part deduction system. Rather than merely filling clue gaps in on a board, here you must link together relevant observations as they appear organically in the first stage. Logical connections lead to possible conclusions in the second stage, but choosing between these inferences is anything but cut-and-dried. Where in the past you could often eliminate bad choices by their obvious absurdity, each deduction now has a sense of plausibility and is supported by an explanation of why you might reason that way.

The higher stakes this time around make getting it right all the more important: ill-informed or poor reasoning can not only leave you stumbling in the dark, it can also lead you dangerously astray, even to the point of convicting the wrong suspect. While its implementation could have done with some further tweaking, the system itself is a solid accomplishment and a big leap forward. For giving us what may be the best representation of deductive inference in a video game to date, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments takes our Best Concept award for 2014.

Runners-Up:


The Talos Principle

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Murdered: Soul Suspect

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright
 


Readers’ Choice: The Talos Principle


Wait, what? (Does double take.) A winner other than Tex Murphy? Yes, while Tex relied more on the tried-and-true, The Talos Principle skillfully blended high-minded concepts into one beautiful whole, from the philosophical arguments with a sentient computer program to a depiction of humanity dealing with its own end via emails, blog posts, and chat transcripts, all within the context of a giant environmental obstacle course filled with puzzles to overcome. It’s taken the Portal formula and run with it, giving The Talos Principle its own distinctive identity and a reader Aggie to show for it.

Runners-Up:


The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Danganronpa (series)

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
 


Next up: Best Setting... the envelope, please!


Best Setting: Tengami

Nyamyam’s gorgeous side-scrolling adventure starts off deceptively simple: You open the pages of an unassuming book sitting on a table. It appears to be a simple pop-up book, but the illustrations within become so much more than mere drawings on a page. As you turn through the pages, the backgrounds change from lush, green forests to deep auburn hills to soft indigo woods with golden undertones. Guiding an unnamed Japanese protagonist, your journey through these backdrops becomes almost meditative as the colors, the soft Eastern music, the chirping birds, and the soft rush of water splashing combine to soothe and relax you.

But the ingenuity of Tengami’s design is that it transcends mood-setting and becomes an integral part of the gaming experience. Each lovely location is depicted through layered paper cutouts, and simple swipes of the screen not only cause pages to fold in on themselves and transition between vibrant colors and scenes, they also move parts of the landscape as you rearrange the papered terraces, bridges, and chasms around you to make your way through the world. The environments become puzzles themselves that you must unlock to progress. It is such a wondrous melding of setting and gameplay that you will often forget that you are, after all, simply turning and interacting with pages as you “read” through a picture book. Tengami uses the serene power of its setting to truly immerse you in a Zen-like experience, making it a deserving winner of our Best Setting Aggie Award for 2014.

Runners-Up:


Lumino City

The Dream Machine: Episode 5

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

A Golden Wake
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Ahh, Chandler Avenue… It felt like coming home to see familiar places like Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Hotel, Louie’s Brew & Stew, and Rook’s Pawn Shop. Home was not quite like we (or Tex) remembered it, however. Chelsee’s newsstand had long since been abandoned, and seven troubling years had passed. But even though time had taken its toll on the neighbourhood, it was still great fun to revisit Tesla Effect’s mash-up world of futuristic technology and old-school sensibilities, populated by mutants and humans (norms) alike. For so thoroughly immersing us in 2050 New San Francisco, the newest Tex Murphy adventure bags another reader award for Best Setting.

Runners-Up:


The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Talos Principle

A Golden Wake

The Wolf Among Us
 


Next up: Best Graphic Design... the envelope, please!


Best Graphic Design: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Great art comes in all different styles, and traditionally the Aggies have favoured a more distinctively hand-crafted look than those with cutting-edge graphical fidelity. This year is a different story. There are very few game environments rendered as realistically as Red Creek Valley in The Astronauts’ The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, which is essential for a game where the primary activity is wandering through the wilderness and exploring creepy abandoned houses.

The beauty is all in the details: the dense foliage, the sun glinting over the mountains and shimmering through the trees, the rusting water pumps in the dam, the rotting planks of untreated wood in the long abandoned homes. Look closely and you can see every pit and crack in every boulder, every nail in every plank of wood. There are scenes in the game that look all but photorealistic, thanks to an innovative technique where in-game models were generated from dozens of photographs of real world objects. The results speak for themselves. You’ll spend as much if not more time simply gawking in wide-eyed amazement as you do playing. It’s the next-best thing to actually being there, and for so fully immersing us in its richly detailed world, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter takes the award for Best Graphic Design of 2014.

Runners-Up:


The Wolf Among Us

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Kentucky Route Zero: Act III
 


Readers’ Choice: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter


As computer graphics become increasingly realistic, there’s always a danger of falling into the Uncanny Valley. But if you’re The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, you bypass that unwanted destination and arrive straight at the jaw-dropping Red Creek Valley instead. Apparently we all stopped to soak in the gorgeous views of forests, lakes, and railway bridges while passing through the cemetery, tunnels, abandoned homes and underground mines, each looking utterly authentic. Has the torch finally been passed from 2D to 3D? Of course not. But with games as stunning as this, the gap has officially been closed.

Runners-Up:


The Wolf Among Us

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

The Talos Principle

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
 


Next up: Best Animation... the envelope, please!


Best Animation: Valiant Hearts: The Great War

At first glance, cartoon animation might seem to be almost the antithesis of the grim brutality of war. But then the bombs start to fall… and planes fly overhead, tanks rumble across corpse-strewn battlefields, smoke billows from distant strikes, and hundreds of soldiers charge against armoured machine gun sentries, most of them falling dead in their tracks. Such are just some of the horrors thrust upon the brave men who fought in World War I, all evocatively recreated in Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Imagine a graphic novel-style rendition of Saving Private Ryan’s Omaha Beach landing and you’ll get the idea. (Wrong war, but all-too-similar results for its combatants.)

The animation may be deceptively simple, but it perfectly encapsulates the conditions of warfare and the emotional turmoil of those caught in its path. Often frantic, like when you’re forced to flee in a car from invading zeppelins, and at times serene, such as poignant moments in a hospital full of wounded, backgrounds can be full of action in one moment and tellingly still the next. Even subtle touches like dust falling in a deserted house or insects buzzing around lamps contribute to a living, breathing world in peril – or rather a dying, gasping world in peril. For making us truly feel the fury of war, Valiant Hearts is a most deserving winner for Best Animation this year.

Runners-Up:


Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright

The Wolf Among Us

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Murdered: Soul Suspect
 


Readers’ Choice: Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse


The tables are turned in the 2D vs. 3D debate, as we’ve both chosen 2D adventures for Best Animation, albeit different ones. Admittedly, the actual characters in Broken Sword 5 are animated in 3D, but let’s not quibble over technical details. What matters is how beautiful the game looks in action, right from the opening cutscene of an eagle swooping down Catalonian mountains. It’s not just the cinematics that impress, however, but the extensive in-game animations, whether engaging in gunfights, shimmying across beams, or escaping a deadly cable car ambush high up in the air. There’s even a dance sequence, and of course who can forget Moue’s full-bladdered squirming or George being butted by a goat? For making The Serpent’s Curse feel like a cartoon come to life, the latest adventure of George and Nico earns the reader nod this year.

Runners-Up:


The Wolf Among Us

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Murdered: Soul Suspect
 


Next up: Best Music... the envelope, please!


Best Music: The Journey Down: Chapter Two

By far the most bittersweet acknowledgement for 2014 is our Best Music Aggie, awarded posthumously to The Journey Down’s primary composer Simon D’souza, who passed away after a battle with cancer during development of the game, and to Jamie Salisbury, who took over when Simon became too ill to wrap up production. But rest assured, this is no sympathy vote. This is Heath Ledger’s Joker – a standout accomplishment fully deserving on its own merit, made all the more tragic due to the fate that befell the artist.

The Journey Down: Chapter Two perfectly mixes the jazzy brass tones of Port Artue’s speakeasies and seedy back alleys with swelling orchestral pieces whenever the suspense ramps up – then reminds us it’s all in the service of good-natured, tongue-in-cheek fun, marrying its madcap on-screen hijinks with upbeat Caribbean flavour, sass and attitude. While the comedic elements of the series’ middle installment were dialed back a bit from its predecessor, its score remains as enchanting as it is unforgettable, and is clearly worthy of highest honors. But don’t just take our word for it: the soundtrack is available for purchase, with proceeds going to charity.

Runners-Up:


Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

Kentucky Route Zero: Act III

Moebius: Empire Rising

The Wolf Among Us
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Some readers were shocked that Tesla Effect didn’t even make our finals (one of several painful omissions for us), and they’ve put their ballots where their mouths were, along with a whole heap of others. And not without reason. In keeping with its filmic approach, the music in Tesla Effect is often sparked by cinematic events rather than supplying atmosphere for each location. Composed by Bobby James, it ranges from an orchestral introduction full of yearning and bravado, to a lonesome bugle call rising amid the rubble of Chandler Avenue, to the growling, rumbling instrumental accompaniment when Tex learns his ultimate fate. The score never overpowers the action, sometimes raising tension with a creative mix of odd rhythms, dissonance, and resonating electronic tones. Two endings even feature special tracks, including a wonderful riff on Spaghetti Westerns at the Petrified Forest Bar-B-Q. Score another reader Aggie for Tex!

Runners-Up:


The Wolf Among Us

The Talos Principle

The Journey Down: Chapter Two

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse
 


Next up: Best Voice Acting... the envelope, please!


Best Voice Acting: Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

It just wouldn't be a Broken Sword game without Rolf Saxon's instantly recognizable voice as George (or is that Georges?). The mix of wide-eyed enthusiasm, good-natured stoicism and lighthearted banter really brings George alive and turns him into a real person any of us can identify with. Recruiting professional actors for game work all too often results in phoned in performances, but not here; even after all these years, Saxon (whose diverse credits range from the Teletubbies to Mission: Impossible) is clearly having just as much fun as ever.

The same can be said for pretty much the whole cast, who bring equally serious pedigrees to their parts (with collective roles in everything from the soap EastEnders to the children's classic Watership Down, with numerous games in between) and convey a real sense of engagement and whimsy, weird foreign accents and all. With comic sparring dialogue such a core part of the series' appeal, it is always crucial that Revolution get it right. Well, in The Serpent’s Curse they nailed it once again. The other fantastic finalists certainly made themselves heard, but ultimately we found that our Best Voice Acting award had already been spoken for.

Runners-Up:


The Wolf Among Us

The Blackwell Epiphany

The Walking Dead: Season Two

Detective Grimoire
 


Readers’ Choice: The Wolf Among Us


When listening to fairy tales as children, you probably didn’t imagine the likes of the Big Bad Wolf, Geogie Porgie, or one of the three little pigs sounding anything like Adam Harrington, Kevin Howarth, or Brian Sommer, respectively. But Bill Willingham’s Fables aren’t your grandparents’ folk heroes, and these modern day outcasts in New York are voiced to near-perfection in Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us. The cast is huge: Snow White, Mr. Toad, Ichabod Crane, Beauty and the Beast, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and more, all of them given top-notch performances that make them come to life as real characters rather than simply cartoon caricatures. The voice acting and direction deserve much of the credit for this, and with this Aggie Award, credit is duly given.

Runners-Up:


Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure

The Blackwell Epiphany

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

The Walking Dead: Season Two
 


Next up: Best Sound Effects... the envelope, please!


Best Sound Effects: FRACT OSC

In the uniquely experimental FRACT OSC, players enter into a bizarre geometric landscape that seems to be holding its breath, its abstract heart barely alive, reduced to pulsating, electronic tones. Your efforts gradually awaken this dreamlike world, as color blooms and sound booms. White circles reverberate as you transport through them. Giant platforms rumble and are mashed together. Neon light-pillars buzz, machinery whines, and echoes vibrate upwards. Chasms open to dizzying drops; if you leap, static crackles on the landing. Puzzle grids resound to your touch, triggering layers of tonal cadences.

As you progress, you unlock a giant synthesizer, an electronic playground for sound sequencing and modulation. And finally, caught up in a spectacle of aural and visual sensations, you bring all previous puzzle elements together in a rhythmic, kaleidoscopic, resonant finale. The goal is ultimately to revive this desolate world with sound, making it all the more important to create an immersive audio stage upon which to play. In accomplishing this so convincingly, FRACT OSC silenced all other competitors to earn this year’s Best Sound Effects award.

Runners-Up:


The Last Door

Kentucky Route Zero: Act III

Jazzpunk

Among the Sleep
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Sound effects are an unheralded aspect of game design, rarely noticed except when done wrong. In turn, many developers often give short shrift to this aspect, figuring that good enough is… good enough. But the best games recognize its importance in maintaining immersion, even if it never gets any attention. The year 2050 provides an intriguing soundscape for Tesla Effect. There’s the whooshing sound as Tex’s speeder lands, the shlink of an electronic syringe, the shlunk of a high-tech door, or the zing as Tex puts his hand through a hologram. Some sounds are more mundane, like the slow-motion clunk of a golf club, followed by a thunk as the ball rebounds against Tex’s head. Or the all-too-familiar beep and boom of a just-activated motion sensor mine. And there are horrifying sounds, like the screeching and buzzing of giant bees, the throaty roar of zombie-esque mutants, or the sound of distant thunder as Tex (once again) finds himself looking down at his own tombstone. You readers obviously liked what you heard, and that low rumbling noise is the sound of the Tex Murphy Aggie juggernaut rolling on.

Runners-Up:


The Talos Principle

Jazzpunk

The Last Door

The Walking Dead: Season Two
 


Next up: The Silver Aggies!


The Silver Aggies


Back by popular demand (or at least, what we assumed would be popular had anyone actually demanded it) are the Silver Aggies! These are the honourable mentions – awards that don’t fit neatly into the main event, having a narrower focus and/or a shallower pool to choose from. There may be slightly less prestige involved, but the games merit a little extra attention nonetheless. Don’t think of it like a second-place finish at the Adventure Gaming Olympics, but rather a first-place finish in the demonstration sports!
 


Best of the Rest – Detective Grimoire


This is the award dedicated to the game that consistently rated well in our regular categories, yet never managed to win a golden Aggie. (Too-late spoiler alert!) Topping our list of honourable mentions this year is Detective Grimoire, SFB Games’ lite mystery romp through Boggy’s Bog, a wacky theme park haunted by a mythical swamp monster.

When the park owner is discovered dead, the monster is serendipitously fingered as the likely perpetrator. Enter Detective Grimoire, who confronts a slew of quirky suspects using an interrogation system that allows the expertly voiced characters to gossip freely and facetiously about one another. Challenges include matching clues, suspects, and sentence fragments, plus minigames that require the correct patterning of various elements. Such tasks suit the game’s lighthearted hand-painted environments and vivid cartoon-like characters. It’s far from the deepest or longest of adventures, but Detective Grimoire oozes charm and makes for an enjoyable diversion. If you’ve overlooked it until now, put those sleuthing skills to work, track down a copy and see for yourself.

 

Best Update/Remake – J.U.L.I.A. Among the Stars


To understand this award, let’s be clear about our criterion. This is not an acknowledgement of the “best game that got updated” but rather the “game that got the best update”. That’s an important distinction, or Gabriel Knight would have mopped the floor with the competition, despite their stellar quality. But while Jane Jensen’s remade classic had plenty of fans on staff (as did several others), the game that benefited most from its update was CBE’s sci-fi adventure J.U.L.I.A. Among the Stars.

We were already supportive of the experimental, indie-to-the-point-of-being-avant-garde 2012 original, but a successful crowdfunding campaign allowed developers Jan Kavan and Lukáš Medek to revisit the game and implement a host of impressive new features, including a significant high-definition graphical overhaul, new cinematics and character models, a more intuitive interface, both new and revised backstory details, and redesigned puzzles. In many ways it feels like an all-new game built upon the same basic premise, while still retaining enough of its predecessor’s indie sensibilities to make the game stand out from the competition. This is a remake done right.

 

Best Game No One Has Played – Hadean Lands


This is the award a developer least wants their game to win, but may be happiest that it did. For a variety of reasons, some high quality adventures inevitably slip through the cracks of mainstream attention. This year that distinction goes to Andrew Plotkin’s Hadean Lands in particular, a text adventure that squarely places it in a niche-within-a-niche. The Interactive Fiction community is still alive and well, but for all those who think that text games disappeared with Infocom, this clever sci-fi offering likely didn’t even register on their radar. But it deserves to, for this is very much a modern-day IF classic – and no, that is not a contradiction in terms.

First seeing the austere parser interface may trick you into thinking Hadean Lands a throwback to the 1980s, but it is actually very innovative, duly nodding to the past while making every effort to modernize and perfect the craft. Stranded on a damaged spaceship, players are left to tackle a fantastically complex puzzle system of alchemic formulas and piece together a story fragmented by fractures in time. Combined with a massive, richly detailed map to explore and a wonderful playfulness in the prose that balances an otherwise eerie atmosphere, players will find themselves stranded in a thoroughly immersive, involving world for countless hours. If you like to read and enjoy solving challenging puzzles but have written off text adventures as a thing of the past, now’s the time to reconsider. What the Hadean Lands have you got to lose?

 

Best Episode – The Dream Machine: Chapter 5


Ideally there would be no “episodes” up for individual Aggies, and in cases like Broken Age, Dreamfall Chapters, and Game of Thrones we’ve held off award eligibility until the games are complete. But not all episodes are created equal, so we’ve made concessions for series that will take YEARS to finish (if ever), and whose episodes feel more like actual sequels than mere serial installments. Still, as incomplete games they’re at a competitive disadvantage, so it’s only fitting that we acknowledge the best of an outstanding crop.

This year, proving that anything worth having is worth waiting for, the fifth episode of the under-appreciated Dream Machine series set a new standard of excellence. Once again hand-crafted entirely from clay and cardboard and filmed using stop-motion animation, the stunning locations take players into two surreal dream worlds, including a darkened, Escher-like cubist void and a scenic forest tormented by a thief stealing body organs. There you encounter a bevy of clever and challenging puzzles that refuse to hold your hand, ensuring a substantial 5-7 hours of compelling gameplay. It’s very much the penultimate episode of a six-part series, so you can’t jump straight in cold. But for those who invest in a thoroughly engaging series, this installment itself puts many standalone contemporaries to shame.

 

Best Surprise – The Fall: Episode One


Don’t you just love when you go into a game with zero expectations and are pleasantly surprised? Such was the case with Over the Moon’s The Fall, a three-part sci-fi adventure that debuted in 2014. It’s not that the first episode underwhelmed us prior to release, it simply fooled us. We mistakenly presumed it to be a Metroidvania-style side-scroller with a few adventure elements tacked on, so we were delighted to discover that it’s really the other way around.

The Fall successfully mixes morose atmosphere, suspenseful setting, and a unique twist on its playable protagonist. Injured after a fall from orbit onto a seemingly abandoned planet, astronaut Josephs is near death and only kept alive by his space suit's life support system, an AI named A.R.I.D. With Josephs' recovery as its prime directive, A.R.I.D. takes over the suit's motor functions, and enters a dismantled droid repurposing facility that seems abandoned, but isn't quite. Through a thrilling blend of classic adventure puzzles and interaction with the facility's remaining automated systems that have been slowly sinking into a kind of computerized madness, players will gradually uncover the dark and startling events that took place so long ago... and what ancient ghosts still haunt these mechanical ruins to this day. If you’ve missed out so far, don’t let this Fall slip right through the cracks.

 

Best "Almost" Adventure – 80 Days


As everybody knows by now, genre barriers are being crossed at unprecedented rates these days. Nothing makes sense anymore. Platformers are full of puzzles, story games have no challenge… human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! To us, the best “almost” adventure (if not quite meeting even our liberal interpretation of the word) of the past year was 80 Days, in which author Meg Jayanth took Jules Verne's classic story and developed layers of interactive intrigue that invite continued exploration – all through the power of the written word (supported by an accessible, minimal graphic interface).

As a gamebook highlighting player choice, 80 Days deftly creates a real living, breathing world that continues to amuse and delight through multiple playthroughs. Not only does it provide a global playground for a whirlwind steampunk journey, each individual location introduces singular characters and compelling plots and intrigue to get caught up in. It might not be a classic adventure game, but it certainly provides all the elements of a classic adventure.

 

Best Crowdfunded Adventure – Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse


The Silver Aggies are meant to highlight games that wouldn’t win an award otherwise, but in many ways, this may be the most intriguing head-to-head contest of all. Ever since Tim Schafer blew the lid off the Kickstarter craze, we’ve been treated to wave after wave of beloved design legends emerging from the woodwork to embrace the genre once again. Sadly, Schafer himself failed to cross the finish line in 2014, along with the Two Guys from Andromeda, the Quest for Glory Coles, and the clay wizards behind Armikrog, among others. But still… Jane Jensen, Charles Cecil, Chris Jones et al. back making adventures? Someone pinch us; we’re still not convinced we aren’t dreaming. (Ow! Okay, guess we aren’t.) And that’s not counting the little, lesser-known indies made possible only through crowd-sourcing.

It’s already crystal clear which game our readers preferred, but which did we find gave the most bang for its publicly-funded buck? None other than Broken Sword 5. The series’ enduring appeal is based on the charming, bantering, will-they-or-won't-they relationship of George and Nico, laid on top of a grandiose conspiracy theory and wrapped in beautiful, hand-drawn 2D graphics and one of Barrington Pheloung's lush orchestral scores. Many felt Revolution were starting to lose their way in recent years, but The Serpent's Curse is a roaring return to form for the series, celebrating everything that made the original so great. It would never have happened without public support, so take a bow, backers!
 


Next up: Best Console/Handheld Adventure... the envelope, please!


Best Console/Handheld Adventure (Exclusive): Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright

Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright are legends among handheld adventure game protagonists. Both the top-hatted archeologist and spiky-haired defense attorney have been the stars of their own long-running, highly regarded Nintendo series, Layton laying claim to two previous awards all on his own (and Wright largely the victim of pre-dating the Aggies). So when it was announced that the two hit franchises would be getting a crossover on the 3DS, expectations were high indeed, mixed with a degree of trepidation – after all, the two series are very different in style. But while some loose ends could have been tied up better and the puzzles proved easier and less numerous than in regular installments, the extent to which the developers managed to allay those fears and meet our expectations is stunning.

The gripping tragedy of Ace Attorney cases multiplied by the sense of scale of a Layton mystery makes Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright the most grim adventure either have experienced, and one of the most compelling. Replacing the investigative parts of a Phoenix Wright game with Layton-style gameplay is a match made in puzzling heaven – occasional exposition dumps notwithstanding – and the developers even saw fit to freshen up the subsequent witch trials with some new game mechanics. The delightful cartoon graphics and rich animation look as good as you’d expect from either series, while the strong rhythms from Phoenix Wright and the rich instrumental palette from Professor Layton fuse to give rise to the best soundtrack of either of its series. With the main Layton series seemingly concluded and there being no guarantee of  future Ace Attorney localizations outside Japan, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright may be the last we have heard of either of these gentlemen for a while. But they couldn't have picked a better note to leave on, and for that they deserve our 2014 award for best exclusive console or handheld adventure.

Runners-Up:


The Silent Age: Episode Two

Danganronpa (series)

Tengami

The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle: Episode 1 – A Dreadly Business
 


Readers’ Choice: Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright


By far the biggest winner in this category was “No answer”, earning a whopping 79 more votes than its next-highest competitor. This goes to show that adventure gamers are still largely a PC/Mac-centric group. But of those that were nominated, this was also the most competitive category of all. We say it every year, and it happened once again: Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright won the reader award by one vote! Even with two cracks at it, the Danganronpa series wasn’t quite able to top the star-studded lineup in Nintendo’s 3DS crossover adventure.

Runners-Up:


Danganronpa (series)

The Silent Age: Episode Two

The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle: Episode 1 – A Dreadly Business

Tengami
 


Next up: Best Non-Traditional Adventure... the envelope, please!


Best Non-Traditional Adventure: The Talos Principle

The disembodied voice of God; QR codes with vague messages from strangers; anachronistic castles, temples, and ruins pockmarked with laser beams, force fields, and floating Tetris-like pieces… There’s clearly nothing traditional about The Talos Principle. Since the emergence of Valve’s Portal series, there have been a number of games emulating its classic puzzle-room structure and sense of underlying mystery concealed by an invisible overseer, but none that do it as well as The Talos Principle. This was a huge surprise coming from Croteam, better known for their work on the frantic retro shooter franchise Serious Sam. A quiet, contemplative puzzle game represents a complete 180 for the Croatian developer, but we’re happy to say they absolutely nailed the landing.

This is a puzzle game at its core, and what puzzles! There are myriad brain teasers that will test your spatial reasoning, timing, and ability to think laterally. They tiptoe right to the line of frustration and then relent, making you feel brilliant for reaching the solutions yourself. The most challenging ones are purely optional, representing the best of both worlds for players. Enveloping these puzzles is a gorgeous world full of secrets and a compelling backdrop that tells the story of a dying world with intelligence, humour, and heart. It sounds even better than it looks, and there’s a series of incredibly thought-provoking dialogues between two machines that manage to feel deeply human. The question of what qualifies as human is a mainstay of science fiction, but rarely is it handled so thoughtfully. For successfully merging so many fine elements into one cohesive whole, The Talos Principle is entirely worthy of our 2014 Best Non-Traditional Adventure award.

Runners-Up:


Valiant Hearts: The Great War

The Wolf Among Us

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright
 


Readers’ Choice: The Talos Principle


Remember way back when people squawked about calling Portal an adventure? Yeah, us either. Because here we are just a few short years later, and the Portal legacy has now laid the groundwork for a consistently engaging first-person puzzler model for other developers to build on. The result? A unanimous selection among staff and readers for The Talos Principle as the best game not featuring bottomless inventory, adventure game logic, and point-and-click mechanics. What it does offer is one of the most thought-provoking, substantial experiences of the year in both story and gameplay alike. And did we mention it’s from the folks that made Serious-freaking-Sam??!!

Runners-Up:


The Wolf Among Us

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Kentucky Route Zero: Act III
 


Next up: Best Traditional Adventure... the envelope, please!


Best Traditional Adventure: The Blackwell Epiphany

While not without their own distinctive elements, including dual playable characters, research-based puzzles, and notes serving as inventory, the Blackwell games have always been the epitome of traditional adventure game design with their low-res pixel art graphics and point-and-click interface right out of the golden age. In the eight years since The Blackwell Legacy, though, designer Dave Gilbert has been honing his craft, with each installment coming out longer, meatier, and more ambitious. He’s at the top of his game with The Blackwell Epiphany and this grand finale represents the best this series has to offer: masterful storytelling; clever, well-integrated puzzles; characters we can care about; and a powerful ending that’s both surprising and exactly what we should have seen coming.

Its visual style may be sparse compared to games that max out the latest and greatest hardware, but Gilbert and artist Ben Chandler have a knack for cramming detail and atmosphere into every pixelated scene. In Epiphany, a well-placed animation is truly worth a thousand polygons. The game also gets Rosa and Joey’s evolved relationship just right: they banter like longtime partners, finish each other’s sentences, and when one is in trouble you hear the other’s worry. That’s a testament not only to the solid script, but also to the performances of veteran Blackwell voice actors Rebecca Whittaker and Abe Goldfarb. Last but not least, a story that all too easily could have ignored questions and plot points raised in earlier installments instead does justice to the long game Dave has been playing all along, addressing Joey’s past, pushing Rosa’s legacy to its inevitable conclusion. Many of the classic adventures Blackwell emulates were multi-game series, but few (if any) had as thoughtful an arc or such satisfying closure.

Players are put in a bittersweet spot this time around: it’s so good that you can’t wait to find out what happens, but knowing it’s the final act you don’t want to reach the end too quickly. These games have always been about deaths that come too soon, and playing The Blackwell Epiphany feels sort of the same way: Rosa, Joey, it’s too soon to say goodbye. But just like letting go of the past lets its ghosts move onto better things, the silver lining for us is that after eight years tied to this series, Dave Gilbert is now free to explore new game ideas. A Best Traditional Adventure Aggie might be a hard act to follow, but we’re eager to go wherever he decides to take us next.

Runners-Up:


Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure

Hadean Lands

The Journey Down: Chapter Two
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


The irony of a Tex Murphy game winning the readers’ Best Traditional Adventure award is that back in the series’ heyday it may well have headlined the non-traditional category. The games have always progressively pushed the envelope: real-time 3D navigation, extensive use of full-motion video, dialogue choices leading to alternate paths and endings, plus occasional stealth sequences and timed challenges. In 2014, many of the trails it once blazed have now become accepted adventure conventions. Of course, Tesla Effect didn’t win just for being traditional: it also contains a cast full of unforgettable personalities, an intricate plot, cunning brainteasers, and outlandish locations, while its updated interface, hint system, and skip feature accommodate players of all types, showing the series is still evolving, still adapting with the times. 

Runners-Up:


The Blackwell Epiphany

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

The Journey Down: Chapter Two

Memento Mori 2: Guardians of Immortality
 


Next up: The moment you’ve all been waiting for – Best Adventure of 2014... the envelope, please!


Best Adventure of 2014: The Blackwell Epiphany

The bad news about our 2014 Adventure Game of the Year is that as the final installment of the five-part Blackwell series, it should not be played on its own or out of turn. The good news about our 2014 Adventure Game of the Year is that as the final installment of the five-part Blackwell series, it should not be played on its own or out of turn. Yes, if you’ve missed out on the popular paranormal indie series from Dave Gilbert and Wadjet Eye Games until now, it’s best to start all the way back at the beginning, with the complete assurance that it’s all leading to a climactic “epiphany” that sends the series out on the highest of notes.

The Blackwell series has actually been kicking around for over a decade, originally appearing in 2003 as a freeware title by the name of Bestowers of Eternity. Following a name change and design overhaul, things really began in earnest in 2006 with the commercial release of The Blackwell Legacy, and there’s been no looking back ever since. Its two playable stars are the socially awkward spirit medium Rosangela Blackwell, and Joey Mallone, a wise-cracking, Prohibition-era ghost who has been inextricably tied to several generations of long-suffering Blackwell women (including Rosa’s aunt Lauren, who got her own flashback prequel in Blackwell Unbound). Like her maternal predecessors, Rosa can see and talk to spirits – including Joey, often to her chagrin – and is fated to help lost souls across New York City find their way to the afterlife, however reluctantly.

The symbiotic Rosa-Joey dynamic forms the crux of both Blackwell’s story and gameplay. Their unlikely partnership leads to plenty of snappy banter that belies a burgeoning friendship and respect, and the two must continually work together to succeed, Rosa tangibly interacting with the real world and the ethereal Joey able to bypass physical barriers. Each new spectral “case” involves its own relatable human drama that touches on surprisingly deep themes, but as the protagonists’ relationship evolves, the larger questions remain: who was Joey in life, and why is he bound to the Blackwell women in death, and they to him under penalty of hereditary dementia? There are brief glimpses of answers along the way, but it isn’t until Epiphany that this mystery comes to the fore. And when it finally does, against a terrifying backdrop of malevolent entities threatening to destroy people’s very souls, the result is incredibly poignant. We don’t use this word loosely, but it’s as close to the “perfect” ending for the series as we could have hoped.

But Blackwell Epiphany isn’t just the narrative high point of the series – every element reaches (or remains at) its peak here. With four solid but unspectacular games of experimentation under his belt, including a few small missteps here and there, for the series finale Gilbert finally nailed the formula in all respects. While never the most challenging adventure series, the gameplay in Epiphany is the most substantial by far, its dual-protagonist puzzles slickly integrated into the supernatural story. Production values are superb, from the smoky, mournful saxophone jazz to the always-stellar voice acting from newcomers and returning characters alike, and of course the gorgeous pixel art. To be sure, the unapologetically retro, low-res graphics would have looked right at home twenty years ago. But since great art is timeless, that just means they look every bit as lovely now as they would have then. And with more ambient animations than ever before, Blackwell’s New York has never looked more alive (so to speak). It’s wonderfully atmospheric and delightfully nostalgic all at the same time.

As if a brilliant core game weren’t enough, Wadjet Eye once again added a wealth of bonus extras, including in-game developer commentary (primarily from Gilbert and artist Ben Chandler), recording bloopers, and a deleted scene, among others. That’s going well above and beyond the call of duty, particularly for a small independent developer, offering an entire entertainment package. In this digital age, that’s as close as we come to “feelies” anymore.

We’ve always admired the Blackwell games, but we’ll admit: we didn’t see this coming. Three years in the making, Gilbert and co. haven’t just bettered their previous efforts with Epiphany, they’ve blown them out of the water. This is compelling adventure gaming with mature, confident storytelling at its best, capped by a finale so emotionally charged that if you’re not moved by it, you’d best take a pulse – like the ghosts that Rosa and Joey must help move on, it’s possible you’re dead and just don’t know it.

So should you play The Blackwell Epiphany? That’s easy. The answer is an enthusiastic and unequivocal… maybe! No no, we’re not hedging our recommendation, just adding a caveat. What you should play is The Blackwell Legacy, and then work your way up from there if you haven’t already. You CAN jump in at the end, but the sensational final payoff will be all the sweeter if you see the series through from start to finish.

With all the “big name” developers and franchises arriving back on the scene of late, many of them funded from public coffers, it’s a testament to Dave Gilbert’s perseverance and growth as a writer/designer that the self-financed Blackwell Epiphany was able to take on all comers and triumph, and for that we are pleased to bestow upon it our top Aggie Award for Best Adventure of 2014. We’re sorry to see the last of Rosa and Joey, but they certainly got the send-off they deserved. For those of you who have missed out on the series so far, it’s time to finally see the light.

Runners-Up:


The Talos Principle

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
 


Readers’ Choice: Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure


Now THIS we saw coming. (We’re adventure gamers, after all – we’re trained in picking up subtle clues like the same game winning 9 of 12 previous awards for which it was eligible.) It was a long, long wait for “Project Fedora” – most of it spent not believing the day would ever come – but the end result was clearly worth every minute. While Tesla Effect may not quite have achieved the heights of Under a Killing Moon or The Pandora Directive, it was still classic Tex: a complex, multi-layered story, delightful blend of thematic genres, snappy dialogue between memorable characters, tons of optional interactions, loads of puzzles and gameplay variety, a great score, and hours of slickly-directed live-action video. Oh, and five different endings. Are we forgetting anything? Probably, but we’re out of space. Besides, you knew all that already: you voted it the Best Adventure of 2014.

Runners-Up:


The Blackwell Epiphany

The Talos Principle

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

The Wolf Among Us
 


And so endeth the 2014 Aggie Awards. Still to come, a few final notes and the complete game list. As always, we encourage feedback in the comments section below. (The respectful, insightful kind that understands the celebratory purpose of the Aggies, in case that needs to be said.)

The Adventure Gamers staff would like to offer our sincere congratulations to all the developers that won awards, and our thanks to the many readers who participated in our public voting poll.

Now, everyone take a short breather, then get back to making and playing games, because 2015 looks to be an exceptional year for adventures!


Final Notes


To be eligible, a game must have been launched through digital distribution, self-published online, or commercially released in either North America or the United Kingdom in the calendar year 2014.

Although they are both full-fledged games and were not originally listed together, for final voting purposes we've chosen to combine the two Danganronpa games as one, as we did in 2012 for Deponia 2 and 3.

Although their respective first episodes were released in 2014, Dreamfall Chapters, Game of Thrones, and Tales from the Borderlands will be carried over to 2015.
 


Complete list of eligible games


PC/Mac (includes multi-platform releases)

 

Console/Handheld (exclusives)

Cryptic Escape (iOS, Android)
Doggins (iOS, Android)
Hellraid: The Escape (iOS, Android)
Sea of Giants (iOS/Android)
Tengami (iOS)
 


Contributors to the writing of this article include: Jack Allin, Harald Bastiaanse, Nathaniel Berens, Scott Bruner, Drummond Doroski, Joe Keeley, Peter Mattsson, Merlina McGovern, Emily Morganti, Pascal Tekaia, Steven Watson, Becky Waxman.

The Aggie Award was designed by Bill Tiller.