The GWJ Adventure Game Club - Main Thread

Oh, boy. I'll be looking at what you all think. I enjoyed the game quite a bit and was pleasantly surprised at the story turns.

Oh, how exciting!! Spring is now officially on the way (I *think*, because it's still 5°c here, but there are flowers blooming, so...) and we're about to vote for our 30th game! Can you believe that? THIRTY! I'm just glad we kept going this long, feels like some small accomplishment. The survey is right this way, and will close at midnight on March 27th. Quick descriptions for this month's candidates with playtime estimates from HLTB (How Long To Beat) below, you know the drill, folks!

  • Flight of the Amazon Queen (1995, HLTB 8) - Inspired by Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Flight of the Amazon Queen centers on pilot Joe King's quest to rescue actress Faye Russel and overthrow his Dutch rival Anderson. His travels will take him through the Amazon jungle and face to face with mad scientist Dr Frank Ironstein.
  • Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure (2014, HLTB 12) - The sixth game in the Tex Murphy series, it follows detective Tex Murphy as he awakens seven years after the ending of the previous game. With no memory of what happened, his love interest missing and presumed dead, Tex must find out what happened. Expect FMV sequences!!
  • Machinarium (2009, HLTB 6) - A puzzle point and click by Amanita Design. While it may be a bit complex, it makes up for in charm. The soundtrack is drop dead gorgeous, the hand-drawn art is absolutely amazing.
  • Subsurface Circular (2017, HLTB 3) - Mostly text based, but with a third-person perspective, you play as a robot detective investifating the disappearances of a number of robots. As you travel in the Subsurface Circular (a subway for all intents and purposes), you will meet many different robotos or "Teks." Really enjoyed this one, it went on my GOTY list back in 2017 and I'd replay it gladly.
  • Memoria (2103, HLTB 9) - Two stories, two main characters, one epic experience: in Memoria, players travel through different time periods, while following two distinct protagonists: Sadja, a southern princess who wants to be a war hero, and Geron, a bird catcher who wants to lift the curse which plagues his fairy girlfriend.
  • Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988, HLTB 5) - This classic 1988 adventure game is the second game to use Lucasfilms' SCUMM engine. It's 1997 and aliens are invading, using a strange device to reduce intelligence of all people on Earth. Except Zak. And it's up to him to save the world!
  • Contradiction - Spot the Liar! (2015, HLTB 7) - This is one of the few FMV games on our list, and it follows the investigation of Detective Inspector Frederick Jenks into the apparent suicide of Kate Vine in the small village of Edenton.
  • Anchorhead (1998, HLTB ?) - Despite appearances, this isn't a Star Wars game. A Lovecraftian horror interactive fiction game, it takes place in New England, in an old, ancestral home where a ritual to summon a Great Old One is about to take place...
  • The Longest Journey (1999, HLTB 20) - In this classic point and click game, you play as April Ryan, a young woman who is chasing her dream of attending a prestigious art school. Her world is turned topsy turvy when she learns that there's actually two worlds: Stark, the world of science, the one she's known all her life, and Arcadia, a world of magic. And she must restore the balance between them.
  • Eleima's Pick : Whispers of a Machine (2019, HLTB 8) - A Sci-Fi Nordic Noir that tells the story of Vera, a cybernetically augmented detective in a post-AI world, who investigates a string of murders and unravels a dark conflict over forbidden technology. Despite having been nominated a few months back, this game has never been chosen by the almighty RNG, although it came close this month. It looks very pretty and the story seems fascinating, so I thought it was only fair that Whispers should get a fair shot at being game of the month.

Survey is right over here so head on down!

Thank you, Bubblefuzz, for breaking the tie. Keep those votes coming, folks!

Ooh I wonder which one.

Side note and in no way related to one of my votes... Subsurface Circular is on Sale on Switch, over here at least about £2.60.

I am running behind as usual, downloaded Observation on PS4.

Time to announce our game for April!

Whispers of a Machine!!

With only 14 participants casting a total of 41 votes, folks voted for 2.9 games (versus 3.5 last month).
Whispers of a Machine placed first with 8 votes (57.14%). Zak McKracken palced second again with 6 votes (42.86%). Two games tied for bronze with 5 votes each (35.71%): Memoria and Contradiction - Spot the Liar!. Tesla Effect and Subsurface Circular both had 4 votes (28.57%).
The Longest Journey got three votes, and trailing behind with 2 votes each (14.29%), Flight of the Amazon Queen, Machinarium, Anchorhead. Anchorhead was on probation and is therefore dropped. Flight of the Amazon Queen and Machinarium are going on probation, however.

You'll find the thread for Whispers of a Machine over this way.

oh woops I missed this one!

Good choice though. Whispers of a Machine was a fun little game (and pretty quick to get through)

For sure! I'm really looking forward to it, as I'd really enjoyed Kathy Rain (and found way too short!), so I'm pretty optimistic, and very confident I'll enjoy this one as well (so much so that I'd already picked it up on sale back during the holidays).
Oh and Kathy Rain is getting an extended, director's cut, apparently!

Downloaded Whispers along with a chunk of my Adventure Club backlog...

To the Moon
Thimbleweed Park
Kentucky Route Zero
Observation

Am in the mood for some of these games

I tend to finish most adventure games when get started, so let's see how I go.

Am still disappointed the Blackwell series isn't on Android.

Oh wow, that's quite the selection, you're really in for a treat!!!

Great, I'd also recently picked up Whispers of a Machine when on sale. (it's currently on sale on a few places right now)

Bubblefuzz wrote:

Downloaded Whispers along with a chunk of my Adventure Club backlog...

To the Moon
Thimbleweed Park
Kentucky Route Zero
Observation

Exactly my current adventure backlog, along with Night in the Woods! I should be finishing Observation by the end of the month, let's see if I can manage the last chapter of KR0 along with Whispers during April

Neutrino wrote:

Great, I'd also recently picked up Whispers of a Machine when on sale. (it's currently on sale on a few places right now)

Bubblefuzz wrote:

Downloaded Whispers along with a chunk of my Adventure Club backlog...

To the Moon
Thimbleweed Park
Kentucky Route Zero
Observation

Exactly my current adventure backlog, along with Night in the Woods! I should be finishing Observation by the end of the month, let's see if I can manage the last chapter of KR0 along with Whispers during April :)

Night in the Woods is top of my adventure wishlist, just don't own it yet

Bubblefuzz wrote:

Night in the Woods is top of my adventure wishlist, just don't own it yet

The PC version was a previous Epic Store freebie and it was also in the itch.io bundle for racial justice and equality. If you happened to purchase the bundle or claim from Epic you may have it

Neutrino wrote:
Bubblefuzz wrote:

Night in the Woods is top of my adventure wishlist, just don't own it yet

The PC version was a previous Epic Store freebie and it was also in the itch.io bundle for racial justice and equality. If you happened to purchase the bundle or claim from Epic you may have it :)

Ta for the tip, but switch/PS4 are my options really for this one.

Eleima wrote:
  • Contradiction - Spot the Liar! (2015, HLTB 7) - This is one of the few FMV games on our list, and it follows the investigation of Detective Inspector Frederick Jenks into the apparent suicide of Kate Vine in the small village of Edenton.

So, I just found out that there's a newer FMV adventure game that released last month called "Dark Side of the Moon" that has the actors that played Detective Inspector Jenks (Rupert Booth) and Emma Watson (Anarosa De Eizaguirre Butler) . The game isn't made by the same company and I'm not sure of the quality of the game itself, I just thought that it was neat to see two of the actors from a different FMV game show up in something else

I forgot to post this earlier, but I recently completed There is No Game: Wrong Dimension. It's available on Steam, but I played it on my iPad. The game is all about discovering what happens next, so I don't want to be too specific. It ends up having several callbacks to 90's adventure games, as well as other genres that I enjoy. It was only $5 on iOS and it looks like it is available for the same price on Android. It was a nice game to play in chunks before I went to bed, and it was quite enjoyable.

Wrong Dimension is very funny. There's also a previous There Is No Game that you can play for free.

Epic's free game next week is The Pillars of the Earth. Has anyone played it?

Pink Stripes wrote:

Wrong Dimension is very funny. There's also a previous There Is No Game that you can play for free.

Epic's free game next week is The Pillars of the Earth. Has anyone played it?

It was an Adventure Club pick back in 2019. I thought it was well done, but with the heavy themes and slow pacing I didn't get more than halfway through it.

I really liked it.

I double checked, and The Pillars of the Earth was #4 on my GotY list that year, above Control and What Remains of Edith Finch, so, uh, yeah, I'd recommend it.

This is a cool tweet from David Gilbert (Wadjet Eye) because WE turns 15 this year, so I thought I'd share here.

Is it almost that time of the month again? Better prep that poll!!!...

I feel like time got away from me this month. Lo and behold, May is just around the corner, and it's time for us to vote on the 31st game for our little club! Is it really almost May? Really, really!? Because it's felt more like February lately, weather wise! Anyway, the survey is right this way, and will close at midnight on April 26th. Quick descriptions for this month's candidates with playtime estimates from HLTB (How Long To Beat) below.

  • Lamplight City (2018, HLTB 13) - In classic "cop turned PI" fashion, players must solve a series of cases in an alternate, steampunk version of 19th century America. The end goal is to uncover what truly happened to your former, now deceased partner.
  • Full Throttle (1995, HLTB 5) - The third LucasArts game, and another Tim Schafer game, you follow Ben, the leader of a biker gang who has been framed for murder.
  • The Sexy Brutale (2017, HLTB 8) - An adventure puzzle game, The Sexy Brutale tasks you with exploring a mansion, while stuck in a time loop, as the inhabitants are killed off one by one.
  • Anna's Quest (2015, HLTB 10) - Developed by Krams Design and published by Daedalic, this adventure game follows titular character Anna as she makes her escape from an evil witch and saves her dying, bedridden grandfather. The colorful world is populated with trolls, wizards, sorceresses, ghosts, ghosts and teddy bears!
  • Blade Runner (1997, HLTB 13) - This isn't a direct adaptation of the 1982 Ridley Scott movie, but a "sidequel" which nonetheless features extracts of the film's soundtrack! Set in 2019 Los Angeles, the game tells the story of Ray McCoy, an elite detective charged with hunting down a group of dangerous replicants (sound familiar?), and is considered a "real-time 3D adventure".
  • King's Quest 6: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992, HLTB 8) - The sixth installment of the famous King's Quest series, this critically acclaimed game was one of the first Jane Jensen worked on. It was one of the first games in the genre to offer multiple endings. Featuring characters from various fairytales, KQ6 puts an interesting spin on those threads as Prince Alexander seeks to rescue his love, Princess Cassima.
  • Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (2015, HLTB 6) - Considered a spiritual successor to Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is set in 1984 and lets the player explore a small English town whose citizens have all mysteriously vanished. Little by little, you'll piece together the story of their lives and the wherefore and why of their disappearance.
  • Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (2006, HLTB 14) - The sequel to Longest Journey focuses on Zoe, a young woman returning to her home in Casablanca after dropping out of college in Cape Town. Her life feels rudderless until her old flame Reza disappears. As she investigates, she learns about the worlds of Stark and Arcadia, and those that would bring the worlds into chaos.
  • King's Quest 5: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder (1990, HLTB 8) - The fifth installment in the famous King's Quest series of adventure games, this was the first game to replace the typing interface with a point and click interface. As King Graham returns from a stroll in the forest, he is shocked to discover his castle, along with his entire family, has vanished! He sets out on a quest to rescue them all from an evil wizard...
  • Eleima's Pick : Eastshade (2019, HLTB 12) - As a traveling painter, you explore the bright and colorful island of Eastshade, capturing what you see on your easel. Interact with the inhabitants, help them, make friends, uncover secrets and forgotten places. A magical experience, by all accounts.

Survey is right over here so remember to vote!

I don't know about Paris, but the end of February in central Bavaria was much sunnier and warmer than now! Like, short sleeves on the playground warm....followed by a week of sledding, however.

My solo adventure gaming has taken a backseat to co-op and multiplayer games recently, so I'm getting a little behind with the Adventure Game Club games. I'll be finishing Observation this month but WoaM will probably take me all of May at this rate! I might just have to sit this month out to catch up.

AUs_TBirD wrote:

I don't know about Paris, but the end of February in central Bavaria was much sunnier and warmer than now! Like, short sleeves on the playground warm....followed by a week of sledding, however.

Yeah, it's been suuuuuper chillier now, but sunny all throughout, thankfully.

Neutrino wrote:

My solo adventure gaming has taken a backseat to co-op and multiplayer games recently, so I'm getting a little behind with the Adventure Game Club games. I'll be finishing Observation this month but WoaM will probably take me all of May at this rate! I might just have to sit this month out to catch up.

You're still entitled to an opinion if you want to let that one known in the vote.

So many great games on that list!

Pink Stripes wrote:

So many great games on that list!

I agree! I feel like I say it every time, so I tried not to this time around But yeah, some really awesome games there.

Oh, and there's no tie for first place. You folks aren't trying hard enough.

Voted for Eastshade because more people need to play Eastshade, it's lovely.

I confess I forget how voting works. Is this one where we vote on just one, or vote on everything we would like? I am so bad about following these votes and being excited about the games and then not actually playing. I'm gonna buy myself a copy of Zork Nemesis and play that any day now, I swear

mrlogical wrote:

I confess I forget how voting works. Is this one where we vote on just one, or vote on everything we would like? I am so bad about following these votes and being excited about the games and then not actually playing. I'm gonna buy myself a copy of Zork Nemesis and play that any day now, I swear :)

This one's a vote everything you like