So Roberta Williams' original #KingsQuest had its 40th anniversary a few days ago and it got me wondering... was it not only the first game in the #AdventureGames genre but also the first #remaster as well (and after only 6 years)? Do any #RetroGaming experts know?
@OutofPrintArchive The first time Guybrush Threepwood ever spoke. My second favorite Monkey Island game. I will say my favorite is Monkey Island 2 : Lechuck's Revenge. Check out the first part of my playthrough of Curse of Monkey Island here :
I did a short guest spot in this @AGH video about "OH HELL NO" moments in #adventuregames. My pick might surprise you because it's from a game I actually love and adore... Gabriel Knight 2.
The account below is a discussion group. Follow it to see its discussions in your timeline, mention it to post to the group. (More info about how to use Fediverse groups: https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/)
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, have a look through this video: https://youtu.be/-2kwOGhxjHw. It explains both the Ghostbusters scam game and the current book scam. (And, yes, they ARE scams.)
@gamingonlinux and I wouldn't be surprised if they get a another big boost from your post
Especially given the timing. It's a bank holiday here in Ireland, where it is very popular, since it has one of the only decent representations of Irish culture in any game, ever.
The US DOS and international Amiga box art for Bloodnet is just so much prettier than my European DOS copy. Unfair.
Shockingly, the modern re-releases use the less cool art.
Both of these are clearly supposed to be protagonist Ransom Stark, who is admittedly kind of a sleazy asshole, but for real, which one would make you buy the cool cyberpunk vampire noir detective adventure/RPG?
(The one I don't like is a closer match to an early game scene, but the in-game art is all over the place, so IDGAF about cover art verisimilitude here.)
[Images marked sensitive for illustrated eye contact.]
Not indie game related, unless you count indie game soundtracks, but today is Bandcamp Friday so consider buying some music. Spotify really doesn’t pay anything and buying music (or at least use a streaming service that pays better royalties) is the only way they can really keep doing this for a living.
The Lawnmower Man
In the early 90s it felt like the film adaptation of The Lawnmower Man had a video game on every single platform so it makes me happy that there is now one for PICO-8.
Markus Ritter – Ghosts of the Past Markus Ritter – Ghosts of the Past is a FMV point-and-click adventure game described by the developers on the Steam page as “queer cheesy trash” and that is a 100% accurate description. Fortunately I am a goblin for FMV trash, especially ones inspired by Gabriel Knight 2, so this is absolutely for me. That said, it is EXTREMELY cheesy and might be too much for some people, so I would maybe recommend playing the free prequel game first to see if it’s your thing.
Madvent Calendar 4 – End of the Line
Since it’s December, we also have a new Madvent calendar from the HauntedPS1 community. Every year they release a free anthology of small horror games with a Playstation 1 aesthetic, with a new one unlocked each day. They’re really nice collections and it’s impressive that they manage to put together one of these every year and for free.
Okay, everyone who was in one of those "wouldn't AI coming to adventure games be disastrous/improbable/weird" conversations we had at @adventurex earlier this month should probably pay attention to this.
Point and click adventure Zarathustra uses AI Art and AI Voices
As someone who cannot art for shit, I can absolutely see why a person would do this. And it's not like they're charging money for the game. But I find it somewhat disheartening in a field of game development where "lovingly handcrafted" is kind of a given.
And, at the risk of sounding both precious and pretentious, the implications for the genre as an art form should this prove to be worthwhile are worrying.
Wanted to talk about some of my favourite indie games that really inspired or impacted me through my years of gaming (still do), and I never see ppl talk about -
🧵1/?
Dominique Pamplemousse - It's all Over When The Fat Lady Sings
Off-beat comedy, handmade, unique art-style, society commentary, musical, gender exploration - I backed Squinky on IndieGoGo when this first was announced and I still love and replay this regularly.
It's the kind of unique view and creativity I desperately want to see more of, and love experiencing. One day I'd too hope to leave the world with something like this
There's also a sequel and another exploratory game by Squinky that's worth playing too, and only 1$ https://squinky.itch.io/
Tell your friends and parents - the Kickstarter campaign for my upcoming point & click adventure game “Scott Whiskers in: the Search for Mr. Fumbleclaw” is LIVE! 😀 And so is the demo for this great game! 💾 Yes!! It’s time for you to meet Scott Whiskers in person and help him with his work at the local animal shelter. 🐈
Bagged myself a bit of a prize: a Leisure Suit Larry 1 with all the original inserts, including the somewhat hard-to-come-by Lefty's napkin. Got a bit lucky with this one.
This includes boxed releases primarily aimed at a sector of the market that had relatively recently been redefined as "casual" (generally including women, people aged over 30, and anyone who didn't buy gaming publications).
You'll recognize some of these - A Vampyre Story is now regarded as an unfairly overlooked gem. Frogwares is famed for spearheading their genre niche in the years following The Mystery of the Mummy.
And Telltale Games (nothing of theirs pictured but you can't have this conversation without them) was somehow immune to every market force, until it suddenly wasn't. hums a tune in the key of "you can't grow and crunch everything all at once"
It's probably not very visible that about half the releases I have here are not from anglophone regions, even though anglo games represent the majority of the rest of my collection. It's not coincidental, either, although there was still a surprisingly strong market for these titles in the English-speaking world, contrary to popular presentations.
The catalogue of popular-but-unsung adventure games includes non-Visual Novel adventure game releases for portable platforms such as the PS Vita and 3DS, largely appealing to the same audiences, like the CSI and NCIS tie-in games, James Noir's Hollywood Crimes, Unsolved Crimes, Mystery P.I, Women's Murder Club, Midnight Mysteries, so on.
And some of those touch on the most widely ignored and wildly popular adventure game subgenre:
Narrative hidden object/puzzle games.
These get a bit more attention now, with hybrids like Murder By Numbers coming to mind, but still has massive core franchises that are generally ignored.
New Mystery Case Files? Crickets from the gaming press. Queen's Quest? Never heard of her. Lost Lands? You can say that again.
Although Artifex Mundi is perhaps the most important breakout name in classic narrative HOGs, and hews very close to the genre's classic adventure game roots, it's Big Fish Games that's probably most widely synonymous with the Hidden Object Games. This is despite the company's recent efforts to tank its own reputation by leaning almost exclusively into the frankly unpleasant gambling side of its business.
Rival Legacy Games might just be able to eat their adventure gaming lunch at this point if their recent Amazon deals work to their advantage. Anyway, I digress.
Big Fish's site was and is a massive digital distribution platform for genre on home computers, but its audience - mostly women, not particularly young - didn't catch the imagination of a gaming press whose advertisers sought to appeal to a target demographic of mostly-youthful mostly-men.
The same publications' ads now target mostly-dads. Never let it be said that the industry doesn't move with the times.
The demographics of mobile gaming are better-documented, but similarly dismissed. I'm not going to even get started listing examples from the golden age(s) of mobile adventure gaming - some of them are famous, others are merely wildly popular, and they're all in danger of being forgotten due to the nature of the platforms.
I should note that I'm not a specialist in the demographics and statistics of games as a medium of entertainment, so excuse me if I've fucked up in my assertions. But I have worked in both the games and tech press and on the development side of things, including for mobile and casual publishers, and these observations and opinions are largely based on those parts of my background.