Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’ve been playing freeware games during the past weeks and guess I’m ready for a top. In fact I think I managed to play everything I wanted to and even more (a couple of games I stumbled across which are not in the original list as I realise now). I intentionally skipped most visual novels, walking sims and 3D horrors as I usually do with commercial titles, as well as games that simply didn’t appeal to me.

1. The Telwynium: Book Two — one of the first 2022 games I played and enjoyed immensely. Hugely inspired by Sierra’s Camelot. It seems a bit unfair to honour it as the best title since I played both books in a row and now they feel like one game to me (and it ends on a cliffhanger), but it’s still a top pick for me.

2. Were Wolf? — mentioned somewhere that I enjoy werewolves in games. This one was no exception despite being one of the last games on my list. You play as a werewolf imprisoned in a monastery for being a werewolf who quickly makes an escape to take revenge on the bishop. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but not something I’d call offensive, with Monty Python-like humour and a nice option to sniff everything. The playtime is under an hour, so I really hope they’ll develop it into a full-length title.

3. Powers in the Basement — a solid tribute to Monkey Island and Simon the Sorcerer: good length, very good pixel art/animation, countless inventory puzzles. It’s just that both writing and gameplay lack something. You start as a teenage prince on a quest to, eh, I forgot already. Something about finding a shirt in a castle. Then you start picking up everything which is not nailed down until your inventory becomes clogged with both useful and useless items, then you start figuring out what to do with them. And that’s it, no plot to speak of, jokes are hit-and-miss, it’s mostly about solving inventory puzzles which range in quality. One of the better LucasArts clones, but not something I intend to replay in the future.

Honourable mentions:

The Witch’s Lullaby — another early title I already reviewed inspired by King’s Quest and alike. Short and easy, but very satisfying.
Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship — not familiar with the series, but this was a very cute and amusing Space Quest-inspired short game.
Stowaway — a little sci-fi horror game by the great George Broussard who posted it at the forums during the summer. Nothing groundbreaking, just a nice Alien-inspired space trouble.
The Mysterious Gear Chest — one of those games not in the list I found (here it is). Inspired by Zak McKracken/X-Files (story-wise) and Maniac Mansion gameplay-wise, with 3 playable characters, although you spend most of the time playing as one of them. Starts easy, then gets harder (and buggier), why I haven’t finished it yet. Overall a nice production.
Lily’s Well — another RPG Maker horror adventure which gained a lot of attention, surprisingly not from Japan despite it plays exactly like the early Japanese console games. Very retro look and controls, interesting mechanics where you have to collect various materials to construct a rope and climb down to the bottom of a well. You climb — and die, then climb again and die a different death, and you have to repeat it many times to reach the true final. Gameplay becomes very repetitive at one point, especially if you start playing it like a normal person who tries to solve every puzzle and search for every item. This is NOT how it was intended to be played, you have to try all options one by one (meaning all lengths of rope) and watch all gruesome deaths. Which was also uncomfortable since you play as a 9-year-old girl. I’m highly against this modern unhealthy trend of showing graphic child abuse in games/movies, and I didn’t like it here either, but I admit the game was pretty unique, and it did feel like playing a little girl who only discovered the world around her. The plot twist was also great.
The Feast — a rather original, but nasty game with a clear socio-political message and limited gameplay mechanics inspired by Kafka, Dogville and The Cat Lady. Intended for multiple replays, but I stumbled across a bug during the second play, lost interest and quit.
The Gay Agenda — an amusing satirical adventure that ends all too soon, also too many cock jokes for me.
The Unluckiest Man — a very stylish 3D game with a gripping story of a man who lost his wife and now slowly goes insane. Reminded me a lot of Crime and Punishment. The only problem I have with this game is that it’s not a game, just a short interactive story. Hopefully they will make it into a commercial adventure sometimes in the future.
Karambola — one of the best games I’ve played. Stunning surrealistic visuals, great puzzle-based gameplay, a very nice afterfeel. Too bad it was made in 2016

great picks!

also: thanks for making me feel slightly less bad for not picking the near-perfect but more traditional games. The one’s you mentioned, plus the Alien Prison Escape game had very cool and well-implemented puzzles.

Ah yes, played Alien Prison Escape as well and quite enjoyed it, but then I also hit a game-stopping bug where I got stuck in the dialogue (the Rock Paper Scissors game which I didn’t figure out anyway and had to leave it unfinished). Quite a lot of bugs in those games, then again, many of them were made during the 1-2-3 weeks period, and it’s still nothing compared to the horrors of SpaceVenture))

Lol then I probably misspelled the title while searching it on the first page, sorry for the confusion. I discovered it by following one of the suggested links at itch.io which is a pretty useful feature. Of course, this also resulted in me playing some non-2022 games, so I stopped doing that)

GateKeeper - 23 March 2023 08:29 PM

Sorry about that, but at least no one accidentally voted for it.

Why sorry, I had great time with the game which I would’ve probably never played otherwise. It has a strong “early Amanita” vibe to it. And I want to thank you for this freeware marathon, it took me back to the earlier Internet days when commercial adventures were in agony and many talented (or not) amateurs discovered AGS and Flash. Today we have Kickstarter, Steam, bundles and other means to commercialise indie efforts, guess this is why there are no more epic freeware ags similar to A Tale of Two Kingdoms, Heroine’s Quest, Space Quest: Incinerations, King’s Quest 2 VGA, etc. Most 2022 games are short and limited to 1-10 screens. Ironically this game I’m still playing — The Mysterious Gear Chest — is the closest to something one may call “epic” despite it’s only 6 Mb.

Finished The Mysterious Gear Chest and I think I’d rate it above Powers in the Basement after all. While it’s certainly less polished (made in just 2 weeks for some competition), with some repetitive backgrounds, limited animation and just one looping track that becomes annoying all too soon, I still found it more enjoyable as it managed to catch that early Lucasfilm charm better than the pixel-perfect Powers. This is particularly true of Gear’s wacky plot, characters and writing in general.

shout out to Adventure jam 2022!

jams are a great way of drumming up some interest - and usually there are several interesting communities behind ‘em.

mores votes would’ve been nice. it’s probably going to get increasingly difficult to get that kind of attention and engagement, which is unfortunate.

the little resurgence of the genre with high quality indie dev releases was fostered on the places like AGS forums. it’s not just that it “produced” a couple of good designers, it’s a vibrant community that helps, works together and provides all sort of inspiration.

one more thank you to Gatekeeper; that was a lot of games you managed to “short"list - maybe i’m getting a little corny, so let me just say

it was a Good Thing.

if anything, there’s a little spotlight shining on 6 really cool games.