Got a slow weekend ahead? Well now it might be a little busier as there's a good few developers participating in The Big Adventure Event which is now live on Steam.
What's this all about then? Organised with help from indie developer and publisher Hitcents, it's a celebration of the classic adventure game genre. They've packed the event with demos, new games, livestreams and more. The event takes place from now January 21 until January 25.
It's a genuinely good event too, looking over there's a fair few titles I had totally forgotten about or had just never seen before. Plenty have a Linux demo too, which is wonderful to see.
Here's a few random upcoming picks of what to take a look at that I'm excited for:
Born Punk - "A former combat hacker, a corporate CEO and a malfunctioning android get possessed by mysterious, otherworldly entities and must band together to save themselves and uncover the entities' origins. Talk, puzzle and explore your way through this (often humorous) cyberpunk thriller."
Growbot - "A point-and-click adventure about a robot saving her home from a dark crystalline force. Set upon a biopunk space station bursting with fantastic plants and aliens."
Kathy Rain: Director's Cut (only just announced today!) - "Award-winning adventure Kathy Rain returns in the Director’s Cut, featuring an extended story with more puzzles to solve and new areas to explore. Witness the rise of an iconic detective as you uncover a dark and sinister truth hiding behind the calm exterior of a small rural town."
One Dreamer - "Help Frank, a burnt out indie game developer, rediscover his love for video games while struggling to release his debut title. Reprogram objects, fix bugs and solve coding puzzles as you journey through the English voiced story of One Dreamer."
Rosewater - "Rosewater is a thrilling Western adventure set in an alternate 19th century. Harley Leger and her ragtag posse embark on a harrowing journey across Western Vespuccia, encountering bandits, rebels, visionaries, eccentrics, and many more friends and foes on their quest for fame and riches."
Slender Threads - "Slender Threads is a point-and-click thriller adventure where unseen forces bind the fate of an unremarkable traveling salesman to the peculiar town he one day arrives in."
The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark - "Delouse your room with sage and pack up your travel-sized ouija board, it’s time to enter Twin Lakes - America’s 34th most haunted city. Join Detective McQueen as he puzzles his way through six chilling cases, risking life and pixelated limb to solve the macabre mysteries that plague this poor town."
The Drifter - "A Pulp Adventure Thriller - A drifter, murdered, finds himself alive again seconds before his death. Struggling to maintain his sanity, can he unravel the conspiracy surrounding his condition and those hunting him?"
See the full event page here.
Be sure to comment on anything you play that's worth a look to let your fellow GOL readers know.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/825060/Watch_Over_Christmas/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432680/Mechanic_8230/
Looking at the list of participants, doesn't look like an old-school adventure fan like me will run out of games to play any time soon.
Good
- The Drifter I played this much earlier. But based on the demo it's a good sci-fi thriller.
- Slender Threads Horror adventure where things tend to go from bad to worse. Worth trying out.
- Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit Seems to quite interesting adventure game. Puzzles are not too hard and graphically quite nice.
- Darkside Detective Both games are quite similar. Basically they're adventure games with lot of humour thrown in. For some the humor might be bit cringe-worthy, so maybe it's better to try the demos before buying.
Graphics are OK, though it's more pixelated than the most of the retro games. Pixels are in right place though.
Not sure
- Mechanic 8230 Quite nice looking adventure game with odd user interface. Only one item can be carried and in order to interact with anything, you have to be close to it.
- Oniria Crimes Seems to be crime scene investigation simulation spiced up with some strange humor. I gave up after I got everything almost correct. The thing is that final verdict doesn't tell what you got wrong and in this case there seem to be bit of ambiguity as there seemed to be two possible murderers. I might have missed something.
- Sarawak Mostly text based adventure in kind of WhatsApp style. There are some multiple choices thrown in and few interactive screen with puzzles. If you like a murder mystery story, this one might be for you.
- Roadwarden Kind of text adventure style RPG with some pictures thrown in. Quite interesting mashup, though I'm not sure if I would have patience for it. Demo has few quests and mysteries though I'm not sure if it has end screen. I just found that road has areas that can't be accessed in the demo, but maybe I missed something.
- Don't Forget Me Sci-fi adventure with bit clunky user interface. There's puzzle where you access peoples memories and you have to type words that let you access more memories. Luckily accessing all memories is not mandatory as I had no idea what few of the keywords could be.
- One Dreamer Quite odd one. Kind of hacking adventure game. User interface is bit clunky and game graphics are so low resolution that it gets bit hard to figure where to go. On the other hand there few scenes with nice enough aesthetics and plot seems to be somewhat heartwarming.
- Rosewater Quite ambitious adventure game. I watched small slice of the interview and there seems to be some story branching and multiple solutions to puzzles. Some of the animations are also rotoscoped.
I got stuck into the second room. There's integrated hint system, but it doesn't seem to helpful. Also I have no idea why I'm trying to do the the thing that the hint suggests.
Main menu says it's alpha, so final version could be lot better.
Graphically it has quite charming style, though it doesn't try to be modern.
Gameplay is pretty much clicking everything you can find and solving few puzzles. Demo had 3D minesweeper and safe with a code that you have to find. So in a sense bit like room escape game.
Graphics are voxels, but resolution is quite low. So quite retro.
Worldbuilding is done quite nicely with details about the world slowly revealed.
Worth a try anyway.
Puzzles are quite hard, so I didn't finish the demo last time and demo is not always available. So if you're interested in a western adventure, better try it quick in just in case if it vanishes again.
Broken
- Watch Over Christmas Nothing happens when starting up. There's visplayer process doing something.
- Not Another Weekend Same as previous.
- Forgotten Fields Partly playable, but there are graphical bugs. Some of the interacted things are just magenta squares. Randomly clicking things works for a while, but using inventory is impossible as whole screen gets magenta.
There are some usability issues. Sometimes game goes between cutscene and intaractive mode bit too smoothly. It takes a moment to realize that interaction is needed.
Plotwise it seems to bit of slice of life thing about writer having writers block.
In general plenty of retro graphics around and pixels are not necessarily getting smaller. Games are quite varied though and they are trying out different things.
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