Adventure Gamers - Forums

I just finished Obsidian from 1997. I remember playing this probably more than 20 years ago, but I’m not sure I ever finished it back then. It’s a truly great game for those of us who enjoy puzzle heavy games with a first person perspective. The game looks great and the surreal atmosphere is top notch. A couple of the puzzles are really complex but ultimately very satisfying to solve. Sometimes the objective of a puzzle is just as hard to figure out as the solution itself. The game has a no-hands-hold approach to the puzzle design.

The soundtrack is a bit disappointing and on a few occasions it was hard figuring out what could and should be done to advance in the game. And half a point off for that last puzzle before the ending sequence. Can’t imagine anyone enjoying that one.

4/5 stars. Highly recommended. I played it with ScummVM. For now it’s only supported in the daily build, but I imagine it will soon be officially supported. It worked flawlessly.

Lady Kestrel - 25 November 2022 10:43 AM

I agree that Obsidian is a great game for those of us who love first person puzzlers, although I do recall some hair pulling, not only with the last puzzle but also with some waves.  It has some excellent humor, too, especially in the first section.

Some hair-pulling moments for sure, but mostly fair puzzles I thought. Are you referring to the aligning the ocean waves puzzle? Maybe I was lucky there. I can see how that one can be frustrating in the same way as the last puzzle though. Yeah, the cynical humor in the game was definitely on the plus side. I enjoyed the first part of the game the most.

Thanks Lady K! I’ll check it out.

Tangle Tower 4/5
Very nice game, didn’t expect an experience like this at this price point. Characters outstanding, story satisfying, audio excellent. Puzzles could be more challenging and less mobile game like and general gameplay a bit more fleshed out and this would have been a modern classic. Typical case of developers chosing money (targeting a casual mobile game experience) over excellence/substance. Still a great experience well worth the time.

Hey! Been awhile since I’ve written anything, mostly because I was slammed with work and life, so didn’t really have time to play much. Kinda raked my brain for what I did end up playing in the last 9 or so months and came up with these games:

Acolyte
I remember buying it upon release because I really liked that you work with an AI where you put in your own conversation options, and it supposed to recognize and response to them. Obviously, some big tech cover-up conspiracy, and obviously I was at the center of the investigation – little person against big corp – the classic trope stuff. I generally enjoyed this one, despite that AI language recognition was pretty raw and unpolished (even demos I played last month have exhibited incredible progress in AI conversations in game), but it was fun and… brain-breakingly hard. Not just do you have to use internet, send emails and decipher a bunch of stuff, but the kind of cyphers that are used in this game – well, I didn’t even know they exist. I like a challenge, but this was well beyond my capabilities of decoding information, so I ended up using help which I rarely do. If you want to break your brain – this might be up your alley.

Lord Winklebottom Investigates
This was a solid entertaining point’n’click for the lovers of dry British banter and the word “tea” in the middle of every other sentence. Humorous and silly. I thought I’d be investigating strange happenings myself, but the game is more so ABOUT heroes investigating than investigation in its purer sense. Didn’t diminish my enjoyment of it thought, as a parody of a murder mystery. Not the game of the year or anything, but I had fun.

Watch Over Christmas
Another solid, but not mind-blowing point’n’click. Very Chrtistmass -y and cute (although main hero did tend to excuse quite questionable actions with “It’s for the good!” frequently). Lots of back and forth and fetch questing here, but not in the way that burdens you but rather in a way that feels very familiar, as we all done that plenty. Basically, another Christmas story that will have a chance to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but nothing to necessarily yell on every corner about. I liked (completely different in theme) PNC “Not Another Weekend” from the same developer a lot more, but in general – Dionus Games turnes out to be a solid adventure games dev.

CaseCracker
Another investigative game, but unlike Acolyte it’s simply pleasantly challenging. Text-based investigation, where you work with cases, witness’ statements and evidence, and you must comb over everything to find inconsistencies and/or words that could lead to finding out necessary information. Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t that easy and, I’ve gotta say, most of the cases I have worked through do follow solid logic, so it’s a matter of paying attention and deducing some, too. Really enjoyed this one. Can easily recommend it to those who love puzzles based on logic.

GRUNND
I backed this one, (something I rarely do) because I liked the dark, sinister atmosphere I got from the demo, and I thought that writing was interesting and the story - intriguing. I pretty much got all that from the game, but I ended up completely lost in the end. What I thought was “intriguing” beginning turned out to be a whole game, where I wasn’t sure what I was doing and why.  After playing the game, I still don’t know, but I’ve read somewhere that there will be more parts to it, so the game will hopefully explain some of it. Also, there were sufficient number of bugs present, so maybe it should have been in development a bit longer. Aesthetics, soundtrack, visuals and voice-over were on point, however. I just kinda missed the overall understanding of what’s happening (aka the story) when I played.

The Wardrobe
This was the last one I finished, not too long ago. Really enjoyed it. Silly, absurd story, good mix of humor (4th wall, dark, loony, dry plus the game consistently insults the player), great graphics, surprisingly good voice-over, and 90s nostalgia galore. I can totally see myself playing it in, say 96-97, and it would feel right in place. The only drawback is moon logic in puzzles; even when I used help – I still wasn’t sure why the solution went that way in some cases. For most of it, puzzles are fine, but there are several completely illogical cases there. However, maybe because I haven’t dealt with moon logic in a while, or maybe because the rest of the game was rather entertaining – it didn’t bring down my enjoyment all that much. Strangely. I had fun.

I recently played through The Legend of Kyrandia Book One (Fables & Fiends was it?) for the second time. I didn’t know about any of the games when they were first released, so I first played through all three in 2015. I had forgotten a lot about them. I don’t recall how many times I had to consult walkthroughs for the first two games (I’m rather certain the first time I did was the gemstone puzzle in the first game). I didn’t recall it being that bad back then, but this experience felt tedious to play with how slowly the character walks and how many areas were just filler.

The last adventure game I finished for the first time was Spellcasting 301, maybe in the past month or so. After reading Wilco’s thread, I got the impression that the third Spellcasting game was the toughest of Legend’s text games next to Timequest, so I was surprised I managed to figure out as much of the game as I did without outside help (the last contest was the only one I consulted the hintbook to solve) as I have not completed very many adventure games without a hintbook, walkthrough, etc. Despite its flawed design, I actually liked the game, and am excited that I have now completed all of the Legend text parsers ^_^ Now, I have only the last four Legend games to play although I don’t have Blackstone Chronicles.

A Vampyre Story ... yepp, that old thing. Wanted to play it some years ago but couldn’t get it to run. The GOG versions works now though, so, yeah, thought I’d finally get around to it.

It’s of a course a comedic vampire story about a kinda weird heroine and her bat sidekick. Honestly, I was mostly thinking that more p&c games should have sidekicks - so convenient to have the protagonist be able to talk to somebody at all times instead of the classic “talk to themselves” thing they usually do.

Humor is kinda all over the place. Sometimes pop culture meta joke, sometimes just some wordplay, sometimes just throwing random insults around ... kinda keeps things going but in the end still not too sure about the tone. I mean, the plot is actually quite grim. Which gets pretty lost under everything else.

Pace overall is fairly slow with mostly simple “use item on this” type of puzzles. Honestly it sometimes felt more like a “walk around and explore and have the characters fool around” game than a puzzle game. I sometimes (ch.2 mostly tbh) felt puzzles were a little bit moon-logic-y or at least of the “just try everything with everything” sorta thing because it seemed unlikely to me you’d genuinely think that that of all things is a solution.

Of course, famously, the game covers only “chapter 1” (escape from the castle, which works quite well as an adventure part) and “chapter 2” (escape from the town, kinda, explore your vampirism, kinda, which I felt featured too many areas with too little guidance and too few puzzles to really be as fun). Can’t say the game got my insanely invested into what’ll happen next chapter, so don’t really care that it’s never going to happen.

... alllthoooough ...

The conversation doesn’t get a chance to cover the Autumn Moon games in depth (might I suggest a follow-up?), but the designer/artist does confirm that he regained the rights to A Vampyre Story 2 several years back, and drops the bombshell that he is actively at work on a demo for the long-halted game to pitch out to publishers. In addition, he promises that the original game will return to Steam in a matter of months, retooled so that it will actually run on your computer.

06 Jan, 2023, theretrohour.com podcast

I think the last adventure game I finished may have been Loom I believe last month. I played almost half of the LucasArts adventures in the 1990’s, but Loom is one of the games I didn’t know about at the time, and I didn’t try it until like 2016. When I first tried it, I gave up after I got stuck early on, and didn’t get back to it until recently.

It’s a neat game with unique gameplay (what other game employs a similar mechanic?) although it doesn’t seem like an ideal first for someone who has never played any LucasArts adventures. Knowing this was made by the imp of at least three Infocom adventures, I’m guessing an idea like this would have fit right in. It sort of came across as unfinished, though, with the short length, number of characters that were just background, and the cliffhanger ending (I have read it was originally supposed to have sequels).

Despite the manual stating a player never has to restore or start over, I ended up getting stuck because I didn’t think to take note of threads with notes I hadn’t learned at the time because I assumed I would be able to find them again when I needed them. I’m guessing this was an oversight. I thought I had read completing the game on the highest difficulty setting showed a new cutscene at the end, but I didn’t notice any differences when I tried another difficulty (the medium one?). Was this only in the original since gog seems to offer only the enhanced version?