Latest Adventure Games News - PC page 105

What happens when you combine a ball, a kid and a time machine? So asks the upcoming title Inspire Me from Argentinian indie developer Blyts, due to hit Kickstarter later this month. (The answer, as it turns out, is nothing good for the time continuum, but lots of good for gamers.)

Would you like some horror with that caffeine? Caffeine may be known for keeping people on edge, but that fact is about to take on a whole new meaning in the upcoming science-fiction horror game Caffeine, currently seeking financing through Indiegogo.

With its grand tales and colorful characters, such as trickster god Loki and hammer-wielding Thor, Norse mythology has sparked imaginations for centuries. Countless books, movies and video games have been influenced by the myths, and upcoming first-person point-and-click adventure The Frostrune looks to make its own Norse-inspired mark on gamers, transporting them to the frozen, mysterious world of Nordic folklore.

As we’re increasingly coming to understand, patients in mental institutions were often not treated very well in the last century, to put it mildly. Partly due to a lack of proper medication and sanitation, partly due to the stressful conditions under which nurses had to work in the overcrowded and understaffed asylums, patients were subjected to 'treatments' such as shock therapy, solitary confinement or even lobotomies.

Polish indie developing team StockPoint hope to make a unique mark on the adventure gaming world, launching an Indiegogo campaign to fund Red Scourge, a point-and-click, semi-historical reimagining of the Polish-Soviet War during the early 20th century. The twist this time around? In place of the Soviet armed forces, the game will see Warsaw besieged by an army of military zombies. The story will feature two newly-engaged protagonists, Tomasz and Joanna. Tomasz is a young officer in the Polish army who is about to be called in for a special mission, separating him from his bride-to-be Joanna, the daughter of a noble Polish family. During his absence, both characters will learn more about the other, and in the face of the impending zombie war they will both inevitably change forever.

Fans of games featuring horribly-mutated Eastern European protagonists have likely been feeling ignored lately, but the upcoming comedy-adventure Paradigm promises to please this particular gamer demographic and, just maybe, garner a few more admirers in the process.

A new psychological adventure has appeared on the horizon for 2014. The first commercial game from fledgling developer Curiosity Studios, FOG: The Story of Jacques Matthews is the story of a shipwrecked fisherman who finds his crew missing and himself washed up on a mysterious, deserted island shrouded in dense fog. The game tells his story, from meeting an enigmatic girl who claims to be of help to him, to his attempts at solving the island’s mysteries and revealing the truth behind it. Far from being merely window dressing, the game’s eponymous fog also serves as the primary inspiration for several of its design choices. In keeping with the constantly shifting nature of fog, the game has been designed from the ground up with replay value in mind, giving level placement, visuals, audio, and even story elements the ability to randomly change from playthrough to playthrough. The developers acknowledge that such a plan will make it “difficult for us to create a long campaign…which is why we are focusing on providing plenty of bonus content and great replayability.”

Danish animator-turned-indie-developer Alina Constantin has a world she wants gamers to explore, but needs a Kickstart(er) to make the first chapter come alive.

Japanese independent developer iQiOi, led by Jeremy Blaustein (known for his work on the English version of Snatcher, as well as a slew of other properties in Konami’s stable), is reimagining Victorian-era London with a gritty steampunk vibe to explore their own version of the Whitechapel Jack the Ripper slayings in Blackmore, a new adventure now in the crucial final stage of its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

Erin Reynolds, designer and creative director behind the biofeedback horror adventure Nevermind, is hoping to bring a whole new level of interaction between game and player to the table, but her Kickstarter campaign is going to need some serious support in its final days.

Developer Sunlight Games is bringing to light a remake of one of Sierra On-Line’s lesser-known titles, Gold Rush!. For those unfamiliar, Gold Rush! was originally released back in 1988, towards the end of Sierra’s own metaphorical gold rush of games based on their AGI engine (think King’s Quest I – III).

As hordes of satisfied fans can attest, KING Art's The Book of Unwritten Tales was one of 2011’s very best adventures. A shorter-length, stand-alone prequel arrived the following year, but now the German developer is ready to announce a proper sequel in the world of Aventasia. Appropriately titled The Book of Unwritten Tales 2, the game is already fully funded thanks to Austrian publisher Nordic Games, but KING Art has taken to Kickstarter in hopes that community support can make the final release even better.

It’s been said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Each new age and civilization, no matter the amount of technological progress available to them, seems to suffer from the same set of challenges. That cycle certainly holds true for the inhabitants of Wax Lyrical Games’ upcoming cyberpunk dramedy, Mega Bad Code, in which advanced technology, classism, and crime set the stage for a futuristic, darkly funny murder mystery.

Following up on the 2013 release of ASA: A Space Adventure, indie developer Simon Mesnard is working on a follow-up called Catyph: The Kunci Experiment.

Berlin-based indie developer Sebastian Till is looking to leave his mark on old-school point-and-click adventures with his crowdfunding campaign for the upcoming Humanity’s Silence. Billed as a “minimalistic” adventure, the game tells the story of the crew of a spaceship which has just crash-landed on an unfamiliar planet. By interacting with the crew members and making choices guided by dialogue, it is up to the player to survive in the alien environment and discover what led to the crash. Inspired by fellow minimalist adventure Gods Will Be Watching, Humanity’s Silence features a single scrolling screen comprising the sole location in which the entire narrative plays out. A playable demo available through the game’s Indiegogo page offers a glimpse at how dialogue works within the context of gameplay; clicking a crew member on-screen brings up a large character cut-out, along with any dialog choices currently available for that character.