Tag Archives: Adventure Games

PC Games

Trilby’s Notes

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Developer: Fully Ramblomatic
Publisher: Fully Ramblomatic
Year: 2006
Platform: Windows

Score: 5

The third game in Yahtzee Croshaw’s Chzo series, this game brings back Trilby himself but in a slightly different manner than in 5 Days a Stranger. The results are mixed, but it’s a refreshing change of pace and a solid entry for fans of the series.

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PC Games

Martha Is Dead

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Publisher: Wired Productions
Developer: LKA
Year: 2022
Platform: Windows, Xbox One, PS4, PS5

Rating: 1

Martha is, indeed, quite dead. At the same time, she is quite lucky. I spent six hours in this world and grew increasingly jealous of Martha every minute. Because by being dead, Martha never had to play this game. Despite my jealousy, I would like to think Martha’s spirit was looking out for me, as a repetitive game-crashing bug kept me from finishing. 

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PC Games

Gone Home

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Publisher: Fullbright Company
Developer: Fullbright Company
Year: 2013
Platform: Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, PS4, XBox One, Switch

Rating: 6

Walking simulators (a game where there are virtually no puzzles and you walk around unveiling the story) are fairly popular now, but they were few and far between for the first thirty years of gaming. An early one that comes to mind is Infocom’s A Mind Forever Voyaging, though being a text-only game it still felt like there was quite a bit of work to do. The Dark Eye comes close, though there’s a lot of guessing as how to advance the story and there are some binary choices to make. I would guess the first big modern version of the genre is Journey, though it wasn’t ported to the PC until 2019; no doubt it inspired the wave of PC games to come. And it appears the wave started with the excellent Gone Home.

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PC Games

Keyword: A Spider’s Thread

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Publisher: City From Naught
Developer: City From Naught
Year: 2021
Platform: Windows

Rating: 5

I worked in a video store in the late ’90s and my manager was the only person who could get rid of customer late fees. One day a verbally abusive regular came into the store and I knew she had a late fee so high the computer system wouldn’t let her rent unless she paid it off. I was not in the mood for that confrontation, so in a panic I tried to wildly guess my manager’s 4-digit password. I nailed it on the second try. Bye bye late fees!

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PC Games

Letters — a written adventure

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Publisher: 5am Games
Developer: 5am Games
Year: 2022
Platform: Windows, Mac, Switch

Rating: 7

Toying with lexicon has been an adventure game staple since the beginning, though it’s largely become a niche since the VGA era. Modern games that attempt to merge graphics and text gameplay have a daunting task of providing both a coherent story and an element of exploration while also engaging the brain with enough challenge. 5am Games, an all-women team from Switzerland, took on this challenge with their first game, Letters – a written adventure, and have largely succeeded. While the novelty of its unique gameplay mechanic wears off over time, the game’s charming aesthetic, word-driven approach and endearing young protagonist make for an earnest and delightfully unusual adventure.

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PC Games

Technobablyon

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Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games
Developer: Technocrat Games
Year: 2015
Platform: Windows, iOS

Rating: 8

I’ve always been cautious to play games that take place in cyberspace after my brutal first experience with Ripper. While it’s still generally not my cup of tea, I am happy to report that Technobabylon won me over despite (and in sometimes because of) it’s tech immersion.

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