Adventure Gamers - Forums

This is the final Adventure Game Scene of the Day Casual Friday post. It’s been a lot of fun, and also a PITA at times. When real life interfered, I was lucky enough to have some friends who were willing to fill in for me. Much appreciated Becky, chrissie, Lady K, and most recently cluelass. I also need to give a shout-out to Oscar, who stepped up and shared the load with me by posting his MAPS feature every other Friday for the past year.

Some may consider it cheating, but I am going to close with three of my favorite AGSotD postings. The first one was also my first one. Posted on June 19, 2015. There are other favorites, but these are the top three.

It is also interesting to note that many, and I mean MANY of the Casual Friday games went onto further glory as Casual Community Playthrough games. I wish someone would take the reins and bring that theme back to life.

Casual Friday

Excluding the visuals seen in the credits, this is the second to last scene in the third game of the Drawn trilogy, Drawn - Trail of Shadows. When playing the game the thought was, or at least my thought was that this was a game separate from the first two. When reaching this scene, however, it is instantly apparent that we’ve actually been playing the prequel to the other two. The scene in the background is the nightscape painting of the city as pictured in the first game, Drawn - The Painted Tower. (An appropriate title, all things considered.)

The boy we see is a youthful Franklin, who as an aging man is a central character in the first two games. This raised some interesting metaphysical questions during the game’s Playthrough discussion. First and foremost was what, or who exactly is Franklin? If he is capable of creating worlds, as well as people and creatures that inhabit them, then if not The God, he certainly must be a god.

And, since Franklin also occupies space in the worlds he creates, how can he do so without alerting others that their world is not real? Quite a lot to contemplate from one little scene.

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I’m not sure whether I’m treading on Diego’s Hybrid turf. But here goes. 

Emerald City Confidential has never had a place to call home. I think of it as a very sophisticated casual game.

AG reviewed it in 2009. (You can find the Emerald City Confidential review here.)

My opinion is that neither the reviewer nor the commentators thought of this as a real adventure game despite the fact that they place it in that genre.

It may not be totally fair, but I think the review and most of the comments thought of the game as a sophomoric adventure.

Sophisticated casual
Sophomoric adventure

You can see where I think the term Hybrid might come into play.

Regardless of the genre into which you decide to place the game, it is a wonderful game.

The Emerald City is, of course, the land of Oz. You will meet familiar characters, although with hard to decipher pseudonyms such as Dee Gale. Roughly translated as Dorothy of Tornado fame. Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion also appear. Some favorably depicted. Some not.

There are no HO scenes, which is why some may categorize this as an adventure. The puzzles are not terribly difficult, and the game is relatively short by advenure standards. Which is why some may think of this as a casual.

I think of this game as similar to any of the Drawn games. You could make a case for those either way as well. Me? I’m going to come down on the side of casual.

If you are looking for light adventure…or if you are looking for challenging casual… this is a game you must play.

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This screenshot is from Enigmatis 3 - The Shadow of Karkhala, the third, and possibly final installment of the Enigmatis game series from Artifex-Mundi. I say that because, unlike what we saw at the end of the first two games, we actually see our arch-nemesis, the Preacher, die at the end of game three. (Or at least I think we do. But I’ve played enough of these games to know
that villains can be resurrected by game developers at will. I believe the villainess in the popular ERS Puppetshow franchise has been resurrected at least four times.)

The main part of the game is set in Tibet. This is where Asmodai, the evil beast slain by the Archangel Raphael, is entombed. This is also where the last remaining acolyte of Asmodai, the Preacher, has come so that he can resurrect Asmodai and receive Asmodai’s soul into his body.

The three main characters, you, Rick and the Preacher are carryovers from the first two games. In this game they are joined by three new characters, B.B., a female archaeologist, a monk and his granddaughter Fang, (pronounced fong.) There are two other characters: another monk who died shortly before our arrival, but whose backstory is essential to understanding what is going on. And an entity similar to the raven in game two.

There are some hidden object scenes, but they are quite diverse and make excellent use of the HO engine developed by Artifex. The puzzles are fair, although I did require a walkthrough on two occasions. In one of those instances, the walkthrough was required because the puzzle’s instructions didn’t quite match up with what you had to do. I would say that the puzzles are challenging, but not impossible.

Music, graphics and voice acting are excellent and match the quality of the first two games.

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So there you have it! Thanks for all the views and posts along the way.

Tim

Emerald City Confidential is a brilliant game. Casual? Yes, but with puzzles. Great writing, with a mature treatment of the topic. I translated it into Spanish and I enjoyed every step of the way…

i think Casual here is always a matter of standard of difficulty as if when its casual then it means it has a casual easy difficultly tho i see adventures with easier standard being called full normal ags sometimes, but lets not get there, plz as this had been talked up and down and all around before.

i luv Emerald City Confidential, such a beautiful adventure, much captivating it was, the experience as i remember it

I enjoyed all 3 of these games, Tim, and think they’re a fitting ending to the AGSOD series.

Unfortunately, this was the end to the AGSotD Casual Friday part of the AGSotD thread. The rest of the thread died several months ago. So, I’m kind of proud that this post was the final post.

At the start of the discussion, including Casual Games in the AGSotD was highly controversial. And yet, it was the only one to survive to the end.

Thanks, Lady K, for all your support.