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Adventure Games Thread 2021 - The Future of Fine Leather Jackets

Trailers for some games announced at The Game Awards:

TellTale is teaming up with Deck Nine (developers behind Life is Strange Before the Storm & True Colors) to create a new narrative adventure game based on "The Expanse," which seems like a fairly popular Sci-Fi book & television series. I haven't really heard of it but the style of the trailer is nice and I enjoyed True Colors. It's basically just "Science Fiction game with cartoon lady" in my mind right now, but Im looking forward to seeing more.


A cinematic trailer for the new Quantic Dream game and -- as far as I can tell -- their first licensed game "Star Wars Eclipse." The game is reportedly early in development and there's not too much information but I assume it's going to basically be Detroit Become Star Wars and I'm down for that.


There's also Star Trek game by Ex-TellTale devs "Dramatic Labs." From their website this seems to be a new studio formed by former Lucas Arts Alum/Tell Tale Games co-founder, Kevin Bruner. Who hasn't been heard from much since becoming the subject of controversy in TellTale's waning years. I always wondered how true the claims against him were. In any case Star Trek has already proven itself a snug fit for the adventure genre in the past so let's see what they can make of this new game.
 

Fuz

Banned
Trailers for some games announced at The Game Awards:

TellTale is teaming up with Deck Nine (developers behind Life is Strange Before the Storm & True Colors) to create a new narrative adventure game based on "The Expanse," which seems like a fairly popular Sci-Fi book & television series. I haven't really heard of it but the style of the trailer is nice and I enjoyed True Colors. It's basically just "Science Fiction game with cartoon lady" in my mind right now, but Im looking forward to seeing more.


A cinematic trailer for the new Quantic Dream game and -- as far as I can tell -- their first licensed game "Star Wars Eclipse." The game is reportedly early in development and there's not too much information but I assume it's going to basically be Detroit Become Star Wars and I'm down for that.


There's also Star Trek game by Ex-TellTale devs "Dramatic Labs." From their website this seems to be a new studio formed by former Lucas Arts Alum/Tell Tale Games co-founder, Kevin Bruner. Who hasn't been heard from much since becoming the subject of controversy in TellTale's waning years. I always wondered how true the claims against him were. In any case Star Trek has already proven itself a snug fit for the adventure genre in the past so let's see what they can make of this new game.

Three giant "MEH".


Anyway, Cleo is out: https://www.gog.com/game/cleo_a_pirates_tale
I think it looks fantastic and I will get to it eventually. Anyone trying it?
In other news, I played a bit of https://www.gog.com/game/the_captain and seems really good with tons of replayability. Just a first impression, though.
 


New trailer for Read Only Memories: Neurodiver. Short snippet of clips showing off some new designs, a bit of memory diving gameplay & a new song. This continues to be a super anticipated game for me. Hopefully it's getting close to completion.

Three giant "MEH".


Anyway, Cleo is out: https://www.gog.com/game/cleo_a_pirates_tale
I think it looks fantastic and I will get to it eventually. Anyone trying it?
In other news, I played a bit of https://www.gog.com/game/the_captain and seems really good with tons of replayability. Just a first impression, though.

Looks cool & I've seen it here and there but it wasn't a game I followed super close. Also curious see impressions from anyone who's played it.
 
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Fuz

Banned
Guys, don't sleep on The Captain.








I didn't, either.
5c9d294c2a0000ba024f7c14.jpg





Edit because I don't want to flood the thread with posts about it.
To summarize, avoiding any kind of spoiler, the premise: you are a starfleet captain traveling in space and on your route you can visit planets and space stations. Each "visit" consists of a few screens, often only one, and it plays like it was an episode of Star Trek TOS, which is obviously a huge influence on the game itself.
Still playing, it will probably take me quite some time to complete because I keep wanting to try and see where each choice leads me. Which is pretty dumb, since when you replay the game from the beginning you can autoselect the choices already unlocked and skip the parts you don't want to replay (excellent system, imo).
This game is fantastic. It's one of the best adventure games I played these years, on the podium with Thimbleweed Park and Memoria. the writing, the humour and dialogues are excellent (very short and straight to the point), especially love the snarky shuttle... but it also can be quite dark at times. It has a really good soundtrack. The pixel art style might not be for everyone (not completely sold about the characters myself, they remind me too much of Sworcery, which I hated) but it's really good and has some excellent backgrounds and often a great use of color. The puzzles are often really smart, there's a lot of "ooooh, lightbulb!" moments and they're always logical, varied and interesting. The sense of adventure and exploration is PHENOMENAL. There's tons of choices & consequences that really matter, and they're all viable and valid - I actually think I fucked up badly (stupid sexy wormholes) and I'm gonna get a bad ending, but I'm still going. And the combat... yes, there's combat... I dunno, since I'm going "full pacifist good guy". I've read good things about it but I only played a simulation on the ship's computer and it looked pretty bland.
I have a very short list of issues with it:
- Not much interaction with the crew members. Shame.
- Missing a hotspot button on the mouse wheel and having to go and click it on the top right corner is kind of annoying. A full rebind (also for inventory etc.) would have been nice.
- No manual savegames. Ok, the game autosaves EVERYWHERE and keeps them forever, but it's still inconvenient at times. And I want my usual list of favourite moments.
- Had to close an eye on a few puzzles which, altough well designed, pulled a little my suspension of disbelief: swapping conscience on the fly with a robot (which the ship even says it has never been done before in history)? Can't dig the sand with your hands or even get ANYTHING from the ship to dig to get the fuel cell needed to save Earth?
Pet peeves, though.

If you like Sci-Fi, buy it. If you like Star Trek, buy it. Heck, the only reason not to play it would be to really hate Star Trek or pixel art.

P.S.: Vampire On Titus Vampire On Titus add it to the GOTY 2021 list please. Need to change my vote.
 
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Fuz

Banned
This is really cute:





Stand out title from a recent adventure game jam is being made into a full length game by developer Robust Games. A colorful, expressive, and well animated adventure that just looks great from top to bottom. This is one to check out when it releases in the Summer of 2022.

I played the "demo" and it was really great. Nice improvement on the already good pixel art, hope they'll change the plot, though.
 
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arvfab

Banned


Stand out title from a recent adventure game jam is being made into a full length game by developer Robust Games. A colorful, expressive, and well animated adventure that just looks great from top to bottom. This is one to check out when it releases in the Summer of 2022.

Looks lovely. Bookmarked the post to have it on my radar.

You know if other platforms are announced? Games like this are a perfect fit for the Switch.
 


New launch trailer & the game is currently out on Steam and GOG. I'm pretty mild on the pre-release stuff they've shown. The voice acting feels off and Pendulo cant shake the stiff lip sync in their newer realtime 3D games. Still, I did enjoy Blacksad and I also like the original Hitchcock film this game takes inspiration from, so I may give it a whirl. Could be the 3rd Pendulo game I enjoy.
 
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New launch trailer & the game is currently out on Steam and GOG. I'm pretty mild on the pre-release stuff they've shown. The voice acting feels off and Pendulo cant shake the stiff lip sync in their newer realtime 3D games. Still, I did enjoy Blacksad and I also like the original Hitchcock film this game takes inspiration from, so I may give it a whirl. Could be the 3rd Pendulo game I enjoy.


30 bucks and theres 0 info on it. can't find one single gameplay video. Not good news imo.
 


English patch in development for Japan only PS1 adventure, Aconcagua. It was the first game I played on my degenerate JADV journey, and actually pretty playable even without OCR since all the voiced cut-scenes are in English already. Regardless, I'm glad the game will now be fully translated and those not walking the degen path can enjoy the game as well. Definite 90s hidden gem and the story is dumb action movie fun through-and-through.
 
Someone I game share with on Steam randomly bought Vertigo so I actually got to try it for free and whoo boy it does not make a good first impression. On a technical level the performance is struggling way too much for a game that's not on par with better looking games which run smoothly. The English voice acting was really bad and taking me out of it. I switched to Spanish voices and they seem better but I wish I didn't have to.

The story itself has an awkward start. It's pointlessly slow, switches between characters a lot in a way that felt clumsy to me (although, this could have easily been exacerbated by my annoyances with the VA early on), and the main character has a lot of tiresome sarcastic dialogue. He's just super unlikable in general and it felt like a chore to play as him. The tone of the game's dialogue is very different from the movie, which was incredibly sincere. Vertigo (the film) was refreshingly sincere when I watched it recently, since so many of todays films are filled with sardonic dialogue and forced wit (IMO).

Gameplay wise it seems to be fully choice based without even the mild deduction based puzzles featured in Blacksad. I only played for about an hour and a half so I cant speak to how impactful the choices & consequences feel. I can say that the choices I made seemed insignificant at the time, but take that w/ a grain of salt. Also, there's a lot of pointless QTEs for things that just don't need to be QTEs at all. At the point I stopped it seemed like they were introducing some mechanic of sorting through memories. So maybe I'll have something to say about that if I play any more.

The only part where things picked up for me were some if the interactions between the main character and his love interest. Not enough to keep me going though. At most I'll boot it up one more time and see if it gains any steam but right now I'm close to uninstalling the game and I'm really glad I didn't pay for it.
 
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Fuz

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Gameplay wise it seems to be fully choice based without even the mild deduction based puzzles featured in Blacksad. I only played for about an hour and a half so I cant speak to how impactful the choices & consequences feel. I can say that the choices I made seemed insignificant at the time, but take that w/ a grain of salt. Also, there's a lot of pointless QTEs for things that just don't need to be QTEs at all. At the point I stopped it seemed like they were introducing some mechanic of sorting through memories. So maybe I'll have something to say about that if I play any more.
Sounds like they were trying to fill Telltale's hole.
 
Someone I game share with on Steam randomly bought Vertigo so I actually got to try it for free and whoo boy it does not make a good first impression. On a technical level the performance is struggling way too much for a game that's not on par with better looking games which run smoothly. The English voice acting was really bad and taking me out of it. I switched to Spanish voices and they seem better but I wish I didn't have to.

The story itself has an awkward start. It's pointlessly slow, switches between characters a lot in a way that felt clumsy to me (although, this could have easily been exacerbated by my annoyances with the VA early on), and the main character has a lot of tiresome sarcastic dialogue. He's just super unlikable in general and it felt like a chore to play as him. The tone of the game's dialogue is very different from the movie, which was incredibly sincere. Vertigo (the film) was refreshingly sincere when I watched it recently, since so many of todays films are filled with sardonic dialogue and forced wit (IMO).

Gameplay wise it seems to be fully choice based without even the mild deduction based puzzles featured in Blacksad. I only played for about an hour and a half so I cant speak to how impactful the choices & consequences feel. I can say that the choices I made seemed insignificant at the time, but take that w/ a grain of salt. Also, there's a lot of pointless QTEs for things that just don't need to be QTEs at all. At the point I stopped it seemed like they were introducing some mechanic of sorting through memories. So maybe I'll have something to say about that if I play any more.

The only part where things picked up for me were some if the interactions between the main character and his love interest. Not enough to keep me going though. At most I'll boot it up one more time and see if it gains any steam but right now I'm close to uninstalling the game and I'm really glad I didn't pay for it.

Oh well..did not expect much anyway.
 

ShadowNate

Member
Someone I game share with on Steam randomly bought Vertigo so I actually got to try it for free and whoo boy it does not make a good first impression. On a technical level the performance is struggling way too much for a game that's not on par with better looking games which run smoothly. The English voice acting was really bad and taking me out of it. I switched to Spanish voices and they seem better but I wish I didn't have to.
I gave in, and got this. I love the movie too much, and decided to closely check this out too, even it ends up disappointing.
It is kind of slow (loading) and sluggish occasionally (but not much so far), but maybe they'll improve on this later with an update.
Gameplay wise it seems to be fully choice based without even the mild deduction based puzzles featured in Blacksad. I only played for about an hour and a half so I cant speak to how impactful the choices & consequences feel. I can say that the choices I made seemed insignificant at the time, but take that w/ a grain of salt. Also, there's a lot of pointless QTEs for things that just don't need to be QTEs at all.
I haven't progressed much in the game. But, yeah, at the start of it there's a lot of pointless QTEs which I hope are just the game's way of teaching the player how they work. But they kind of went on for a bit...
 
Fondly remembered 90s horror adventure game "I Have No Mouth and Must Scream" is available for free on GOG currently. I'm a big fan of the short story and the game has always seemed cool to me when I've caught bits and pieces of it in livestreams and such. Never actually played it all the way through but I guess I can now.
 
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Fuz

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Fondly remembered 90s horror adventure game "I Have No Mouth and Must Scream" is available for free on GOG currently. I'm a big fan of the short story and the game has always seemed cool to me when I've caught bits and pieces of it in livestreams and such. Never actually played it all the way through but I guess I can now.
It's depressing, desperate and soul crushing as fuck.
Great game toh. Keep a walkthrough at hand.
 

amigastar

Member
Just saw this adventure today, it's from the gibbous - a cthulhu adventure devs (which is on sale btw for 4 bucks), looks interesting.

 
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Never played it before but I'm sure some of you will like the news that a Flight of the Amazon Queen sequel is in the works after more than 25 years! Insane. I'm going to get the game off GOG and add it to my list. Any quick reviews would be appreciated.


I played flight of the amazon queen it's a good lucas-like adventure that's not quite as spectacular as the best of that studio from the 90s, but still a fun game in its own right. I love the 3D effect on the map screen where the character is overlooking the locations on the island. For sure a game worth playing IMO. I'd put it above Simon The Sorceror and in the Toonstruck range of 90s ADVs.
 

Fuz

Banned
I'd put it above Simon The Sorceror
Whoa there, Nelly!


I have a weird relationship with Flight of the Amazon Queen. I played it ages ago, don't remember ANYTHING (it's kinda common for me) except that it was exceedingly short. So, I thought, maybe I just played a demo. Then I got it on GOG and replayed some years ago - because I wanted to play the full game. Still don't remember a thing... and still got the impression it was super short while it should have been much longer and developed.
D8TTC.gif

Maybe I need to play it a third time.


P.S.
Buy The Captain.
 
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plushyp

Member


recent tweet showing off Rosewater's progress has my favorite screenshot of the game so far:
FG0OvNNWUAcA3DJ

New art style is definitely a huge miss for me but this is different for everyone so I can understand some liking it. However, the writing by Grundislav Games has gone from bad to worse. Definitely ignoring their output now.
 
Whoa there, Nelly!


I have a weird relationship with Flight of the Amazon Queen. I played it ages ago, don't remember ANYTHING (it's kinda common for me) except that it was exceedingly short. So, I thought, maybe I just played a demo. Then I got it on GOG and replayed some years ago - because I wanted to play the full game. Still don't remember a thing... and still got the impression it was super short while it should have been much longer and developed.
D8TTC.gif

Maybe I need to play it a third time.


P.S.
Buy The Captain.
That's odd, I don't recall the game feeling like it was too short. But like most games I've only played once, I tend to just remember a few key moments & my general impression of it.

I am about three hours into Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth. Very good. Surprised at how grounded the story is.
I should really get back to this one. This might be the one time I appreciate the episodic adventure format because I should be able to jump back in seamlessly.
 

Fuz

Banned
I ended up (re)playing Flight of the Amazon Queen. I think the versions I tried before stopped just after you left with the plane (although I thought I remembered some puzzle where you had to fix the plane). Maybe demo version?
Anyway, it's really, really good. Why don't they do games like this anymore? Great pixel graphics, nicely animated (no "character extends his arm and you have to imagine what he did" sort of stuff), nice voiceovers (animals are pretty funny), very corny dialogues... it's the P&C equivalent of Romancing the Stone. Story is very '90s, kinda silly at times and very lighthearted. Fun!
Almost done with it, I think, and I'm really enjoying it. By the by, Charon's music is a shameless ripoff of Monkey 2. His dialogue is also the funniest in the game.
A few things that bother me:
- The pointer doesn't detect hotspots if the character is moving. This is very annoying, you need to stop every time you need to check your surroundings.
- While the interface is a variation of the SCUMM (as we all know, the best possible interface in P&C Games), inventory icons are just too big and confusing to browse.
- Minor annoyance: items in the inventory needs to be used in the correct order. I.E. you can't "use stick on rope", you need to "use rope on stick" to tie it. Aggravated by the previous flaw.
- I can't punch Faye Russel.

"Modern" P&C developers REALLY need to take a look back.
 
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Working on the 2022 thread, it'll be done in a week. Was actually on track to be on time this year but I got COVID. No worries, though, it was mild and I'm mostly over it by now. In any case there's this sweet new trailer for the upcoming space adventure: Dexter Stardust. Dig the vibes of this trailer, the surf rock backing track is a great fit. I do wish the animation was more fluid but it's still an impressive effort for a small team and the designs themselves are fun. Hope this one turns out as fun as it seems.
 


Working on the 2022 thread, it'll be done in a week. Was actually on track to be on time this year but I got COVID. No worries, though, it was mild and I'm mostly over it by now. In any case there's this sweet new trailer for the upcoming space adventure: Dexter Stardust. Dig the vibes of this trailer, the surf rock backing track is a great fit. I do wish the animation was more fluid but it's still an impressive effort for a small team and the designs themselves are fun. Hope this one turns out as fun as it seems.


Take care dude!
 

TripleSun

Member


Working on the 2022 thread, it'll be done in a week. Was actually on track to be on time this year but I got COVID. No worries, though, it was mild and I'm mostly over it by now. In any case there's this sweet new trailer for the upcoming space adventure: Dexter Stardust. Dig the vibes of this trailer, the surf rock backing track is a great fit. I do wish the animation was more fluid but it's still an impressive effort for a small team and the designs themselves are fun. Hope this one turns out as fun as it seems.

Man, I can’t wait for this game. Love seeing more footage.

You do so much for the community, take all the time you need! Looking forward to another year of PnC.
 

Fuz

Banned
New blog post by Ken Williams about Activision's acquisition and Sierra IPs

Half-Life?
 

Fuz

Banned
Kapia is out today:
I liked the demo and I was looking forward to it, I'll probably play it in the next days, depending on my schedule.
 
Vampire On Titus Vampire On Titus you good dude? Still kicking? Just curious when we getting that juicy new thread up.
Yeah I'm doing well, thanks for asking. I was a bit earlier on the road to recovery than I figured in my last post. Don't want to exaggerate, its not the sickest I've ever been or anything, but I did take a little time off from working on things. Just to keep my hours regular and not risk making anything worse.

Now I'm 98~99% fine, some minimal congestion and the occasional cough persists. I'm finishing up some art for the thread right now and it may be done by tomorrow, without a doubt by Thursday. So you can expect the new OT to be done in the several weeks it'll take me to think of a new subtitle.
 
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