adventure
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Chaos Theory: An adventure game is you!
I grew up on adventure games before I even knew they were called "adventure games." One of my earliest memories of a friend's computer was playing Adventure. Following that, I was hooked. Maniac Mansion. King's Quest. Zork. Planetfall. Leisure Suit Larry. Space Quest. The Secret of Monkey Island. Sam and Max Hit the Road. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Myst. Gabriel Knight. Syberia. The Longest Journey. Back to the Future. The Walking Dead. I've never stopped loving the fun of exploring these worlds, "earning" the next page of the story, and finding out all of the bizarre ways I could die. However, at some point in the '90s, games journalists apparently decided that "adventure games were dead." It's something we started hearing a lot of, especially in comparison to all of the fancy new graphics, gameplay features, and fast-paced shooters. Adventure games were seen as a relic of a time when computers couldn't process heavy graphic loads and players were a lot more patient. I never bought into the "adventure games are dead" mindset. I see them coming back like crazy these days, especially on tablets and mobile devices. And lo and behold, Funcom did something that I would have never thought possible: The studio made an MMO out of an adventure game. That's The Secret World, if you weren't following along.
Night of the Rabbit mixes Alice with The Doctor, now on Steam
Daedalic Entertainment once told us its fantasy adventure game, The Night of the Rabbit, was a mix of Alice in Wonderland and Doctor Who – a combination that seemed almost too good to be true. Turns out it's entirely true, and the game is now available on Steam for $20, for both PC and Mac. The Night of the Rabbit throws the main character, Jerry, into a world between worlds, populated by talking animals and dark forces, with overarching magical and scientific twists. Daedalic is behind the Edna and Harvey adventure series and the comedy-adventure franchise, Deponia.
PSA: Dust: An Elysian Tail explores Steam today
As promised, Dust: An Elysian Tail has found its way to Steam today. Until May 31, you can grab Dust for $13.50, ten percent off its usual $15 asking price. The action-adventure RPG from Humble Heart made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade back in August as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion. Despite how vast Dust: An Elysian Tail is, it's actually missing a third of its intended story, which was cut due to the months of extra time it would've taken to finalize the larger vision. Even with the omitted content, Dust: An Elysian Tail turned out to be a fine game.
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller launches episode 3, The Oracle
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, the Kickstarted adventure game from Phoenix Online Studios and Gabriel Knight writer Jane Jensen, is now on its third episode and things are really heating up. Watch the trailer and that line is funny, we promise. Well, funnier. Episode three is subtitled The Oracle, and it continues the tale of Erica, a psychic FBI agent, as she tracks down a serial killer. "Cognition's third episode picks up right where the last left off, with a body hurtling down the Enthon Towers' 33 stories to smash onto a parked police cruiser," the press release describes. Players are able to control Erica and the serial killer as the (gruesome) story unfolds. Cognition will have four parts in total, with the final called The Cain Killer. Grab The Oracle and any previous episodes via Phoenix Online – with sales live through tomorrow, May 17 at 3 p.m. ET – and if you like the series, vote for Cognition on Steam Greenlight.%Gallery-188646%
GOG.com adventure game sale offers cheap thrills
Need some more adventure in your life? GOG.com has you covered, knocking 60 percent off a dozen adventure games. Notable games include The Longest Journey, Blackwell, Botanicula, Gemini Rue, Machinarium, To the Moon and, for some reason, Incredipede. With the exception of Miasmata, Dreamfall and the Blackwell bundle, which are $5.99 apiece, all the games are $3.99 each. The sale ends Tuesday morning at 11:59 ET.
Daily iPad App: Tipping Point Adventure for iPad is clever and engaging
My experience as an adventure game player goes way back to the text-only Colossal Cave game, which then morphed into the classic Zork text games from Infocom (which, by the way, you can play even now on iOS with the Lost Treasures of Infocom app). Now, with speed and graphic power, games are a lot more immersive and fun to play. Tipping Point Adventure, is a recent iPad-only release that is rich in puzzles and high quality graphics. The game is currently on sale for U.S. $1.99 in the app store. You begin the game sitting in your virtual home watching TV, when a strange message sets you off on an epic adventure. At first, I was stabbing around the screen looking for things to interact with, but soon I saw a logic to the way the game was constructed. I liked a lot of the subtle things the author has done, like picking up the TV remote and selecting stations has old movies actually playing on the TV. The game has built-in hints available but there is no in-app purchase required to get them, so unlike some other games, you don't have to buy them. I still needed one or two of the built-in hints. One hint told me I had to go to a particular TV channel for a message, and with hundreds of channels available, I don't think I would have figured that one out for myself. %Gallery-187323% There's a sizable story line, lots of puzzles and challenges to play with, an original music score, and quite a few surprises to find. Tipping Point is a great, reasonably priced diversion that offers up a nice throwback experience to those old text-only adventure games of old. The game is a hefty 255 MB download, and requires iOS 4.3 or later.
PSA: Cryptic point-and-clicker Hiversaires out now on iOS
Hiversaires, a "cryptic point & click adventure game in a textless world," is out now on iOS for $2.99. The adventure game was developed by Devine Lu Linvega, a French Canadian designer currently living in Japan.Hiversaires was "created for adventurers who remember drawing maps to survive," its official site reads. Check out the game's mysterious art style in the gallery below. %Gallery-186413%
Armikrog is the new clay adventure game from The Neverhood creators
We heard last month that the folks behind 1996's The Neverhood were at work on a new clay-motion adventure game, and the name has now been revealed: It's called Armikrog. The title has also earned a website, a Twitter profile, and a Facebook page. There's also a very (very) short video clip available, but all it shows is a confusingly full whiteboard, the scrabblings on which may or may not have much to do with the final product.We do know that it's all being put together by Neverhood creator Doug TenNapel, with help from Mike Dietz and Ed Schofield (a.k.a. Pencil Test Studios) and Neverhood composer Terry Taylor.
Oculus Rift first-person adventure game The Gallery hits Kickstarter goal
The Gallery: Six Elements recently reached its $65,000 Kickstarter funding goal before its April 17 deadline. The project from CloudHead Games is a first-person adventure game designed with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset in mind, though the developer notes that it will not be required to play the game. The Gallery draws influences from the Myst adventure series, and has players traversing through six painted portals that represent the "core elements of life."The project is currently sitting at $70,036, just enough to achieve a stretch goal that grants the game Razer Hyrdra support, Sixense's PC motion controller. The Gallery will launch on PC and Mac, and is currently vying for a spot on Steam through Steam's Greenlight service.[Thanks, Rasmus!]
Daily iPhone App: The Silent Age is a great, stylistic point and click adventure
The Silent Age is quite an experience. It's a point-and-click adventure game, in the style of old games like Monkey Island and even Maniac Mansion. But as you can see from the screenshot above, it boasts a very original look and feel, one has a lot of style and a little bit of menace added in. The story is about a janitor who's pretty easygoing, when one day he's given a time-travel device and asked to save the world. And that's about all you need to know to start: The Silent Age unfolds itself like a puzzle box, very carefully and with a lot of excellent design. Unfortunately, the same issues that all of these point-and-click games seem to have are present here as well: The puzzles can sometimes get confusing, and the interface can sometimes not be 100 percent clear (usually, you need to find objects to use on other objects, but sometimes the solutions can be more abstract than obvious). But the good news is that The Silent Age's interface is very simple and straightforward, so there isn't a lot of room here for confusion. The game is more about experiencing the story and unlocking just what's going on, rather than trying to get you hung up on a specific puzzle. Plus, The Silent Age is currently completely free. At that price, there's no reason not to download this and check it out this weekend. It's probably not a game for everyone, but if you're ready for an experience that's a little strange and very experimental, give it a look.
New Sherlock Holmes game announced, uses Unreal Engine 3
Focus Home Interactive recently announced a new game in the Sherlock Holmes series called Crimes & Punishments. In development by Frogwares, the adventure game will feature eight cases in which players will guide Holmes through "important moral choices instead of simply enforcing justice by the book."Frogwares ditched its previous Sherlock Holmes engine in favor of Unreal Engine 3 for this game, and opted for a more modern-looking Holmes, seen above. Crimes & Punishments will launch on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 sometime in 2013. Yes, even the release date is a mystery. %Gallery-177885%
The Cave review: Seven spelunkers, none decent
The Cave is an adventure game, obviously. It's littered with puzzles and pieces of junk destined to become the only objects in the world worth having. The cave itself is a sentient, subterranean narrator, enveloping seven different explorers in a patchwork of dream-like environments that not only pertain to them, but contain the kind of contorted contexts in which a femur and a parrot are essential parts of progress.Those are all signs of the classic adventure, tinged with the incongruous vending machines, gift shops and eternally stranded island hermits you expect from a Ron Gilbert game. But there's something else inside The Cave, a familiar cynicism and cleverness that gradually emerges as each spelunker hits rock bottom. These people – even the monk and the chivalrous knight – are egotistical, unpleasant kleptomaniacs, and you're one of them.%Gallery-164293%
iON reveals Adventure and Air Pro 2 sports cameras, we go hands on
You may remember iON stepping out onto the action camera market back in spring, when we went hands on with the OG Air Pro. Fast forward to CES, and it's back with a brace of new cameras to capture your every move. First up is the iON Adventure, a 1080p GPS-enabled helmet cam with a twist, almost literally. The device has the same tubular format as the original, but the lens is actually on one of the longer sides, rather than at the end of the barrel, making it more suitable for chest mounting. The Adventure also has two memory card slots, meaning you can pack in a whole lot more footage, battery willing. For those extended shoots, a new loop recording mode allows continuous, non-stop recording between the two cards -- no more swapping out your micro-SD on the move. Other features include a vibrate-to-record function (it starts and stops recording when it detects movement) and a partnership with map / video sharing service Kinomap. The device has a sleek, gloss back finish, weighs just 4.2 ounces, and has a large, easily accessible record button on one end. While we only spent a short time with the camera, the quality of the build felt good, and the demo footage looked impressive. The Adventure will be available starting in March for $349. The second new family member is the Air Pro 2. As you might have guessed, this is the second iteration of the original we saw back in March. Much of the external design remains the same, with the distinct octagonal accents at either end of the barrel. The main difference being the image sensor upgrade, which can now shoot at 14 megapixels, with 60fps for video and a 180-degree mode for those extra wide shots. Last time we liked the Air Pro, but we'll be especially keen to see how the follow up performs. With more and more cameras launching into the market, differentiating can be difficult, something apparently not lost on iON, who has clearly tried hard to introduce new and distinct features. The Air Pro 2 also becomes available in March, with two versions -- one with WiFi, one without. The wireless enabled one will cost you $299, or $249 if you don't need the extra functionality. Sean Cooper contributed to this report
Editorial: Point out the definition of adventure games until it clicks
As the underground cult of indie development surges to the surface and crowdfunding allows vague ideas to transform into products, the scope of gaming bubbles and changes. Games now span spectrums of physical input and emotional amplitude, and our perspectives change with them.Amid this upheaval is an age-old genre that for some reason resists attempts of acceptance in the "hardcore" gaming audience: point-and-click adventures. They're just choose-your-own-adventure stories; they're interactive novels; the choices in them don't matter – all arguments against adventures as true games, while shoot-die-respawn titles play on, unchallenged.Joystiq's own Top 10 of 2012 list includes The Walking Dead, a high-profile and famously intense point-and-click, and my own Best of the Rest has Yesterday, a gritty adventure from Pendulo Studios. Obviously, we consider both of these games to be games. Other players, maybe not so much – so let the argument begin.In order to debate whether adventure games are, in fact, games, we first need a shared definition of the term. Without definition, you could argue that The Walking Dead isn't a game and I could just as passionately espouse why it is, and we could both be correct within the worlds of our own, secret definitions. While mutually assured correctness sounds like a wonderful conclusion, in reality it does nothing to examine the question at hand and leads to huffy frustration, leaving the debate unresolved forever.What we're really arguing is the definition of a "game," rather than any particular sub-genre, which are all just variations of that main theme. This is my definition.
Quest for Glory creators join with Brawsome to launch Kickstarter for Hero-U
Corey and Lori Cole are the creators of Quest for Glory, a highly regarded series of role-playing adventure games that first arrived in 1989 and then continued as a series of sequels through 1998. Now, the couple is planning another game called Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, and they've taken to Kickstarter to try and raise $400,000 to make it.That's a tidy sum, but this is a substantial project: Not only are the Coles developing the title, but Australian game developer Brawsome is on board as well, having recently released its own puzzle/RPG game, MacGuffin's Curse. Hero-U is set to play like a tactical, top-down RPG, but it is also supposed to include the charm, puzzles, and story that the Coles and their games are known for.If you're interested in contributing, the team is offering most of the usual Kickstarter bonuses, from a simple digital copy of the game and soundtrack, all the way up to the chance to get a personal D&D adventure from the Coles, or to appear in or help out with Hero-U's design yourself. The team's got about $290K left to earn and 26 days to get there, but given the pedigree of the folks behind this one we'd guess their chances are better than most.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Anna
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, Dreampainters talks ancient Italian legend, modern murder and the beauty of point-and-click adventure games with its new PC release, Anna. What's your game called and what's it about?The game is called Anna and is a point-and-click graphic adventure about a "sort of haunted" sawmill.What inspired you to make Anna?The main inspiration came from a real-life old sawmill in Valle D'Aosta, an all-mountain region in Italy (to be very precise, in Val D'Ayas). It is an ancient and beautiful place, with some legends about ghosts and hauting around it. We mixed all this with a set of local legends and personal stuff. This game is actually a true homage to Val D'Ayas and its heritage.%Gallery-167122%
Broken Sword returns (via Kickstarter) in 'The Serpent's Curse,' coming in 'early 2013'
It's been five years since the last Broken Sword franchise entry, but that doesn't mean Revolution Software forgot about its long-running adventure game series. The fifth entry – Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse – got announced this morning for PC/Mac alongside the launch of the project's Kickstarter page.Rather than following previous tradition, The Serpent's Curse is a hardcore first-person shooter set in the world of Broken Sword, but a thousand years into the future after the apocalypse ravaged society. KIDDING! It's another adventure game like previous entries – a teaser with the beginning of the next game is just above.If you invest $15 in the project, you'll receive a digital copy of the game "along with a host of bonus material." You can always invest more and get more stuff from Revolution, if that's your kinda thing. The folks at Revolution are allotting $400K just to develop their game, which needs to reach its goal by 30 days from now.
Fan-made Mass Effect adventure game surfaces
A Mass Effect fan-game by the name of Finding Shepard popped up on the Adventure Game Studio forums recently. Created by AGS forums user Nightfable, Finding Shepard is an in-progress game set in the Mass Effect universe that directly follows the events of Mass Effect 3.Without spoiling too much of the story from the series, Finding Shepard stars Jack, who is searching for Commander Shepard after the "destroy" version of the series' ending. The point-and-click adventure style of the game lends itself to some interesting takes on the climactic points of the series' plot, and gives fans that weren't thrilled with the ending (or the Extended Cut DLC) an opportunity to experience other stories that folks like Nightfable wish to tell in BioWare's universe.In other words, we'd totally play it. Check out screens from the project in our gallery below.%Gallery-162245%
Book of Unwritten Tales available in North America right now
King Art's Book of Unwritten Tales adventure game is now available in North America after launching in the UK late last year. The critically acclaimed point-and-click saga has a brand new re-launch trailer above, detailing the basic tropes found in the adventure genre – for those of you crazy enough to have skipped some of the classics.While BoUT, as it's called for short by fans, might borrow the trappings of yesteryear are decidedly in the vein of the current generation. You can grab the game for $19.99 at a digital or physical retailer near you.%Gallery-161485%
Why we don't need an end boss in Mists of Pandaria
In answering a forum post about the point of going to Pandaria (and let me just say, it's kind of a sad thing for me when adventurers need a reason to go to a new land and kill stuff for loot), Nethaera has gotten me thinking about Mists and what it says about us. Frankly, it's not just the big bad syndrome at work, either. That's certainly a part of it: We're conditioned by The Burning Crusade, Wrath and Cata to think of expansions like series or seasons of a television program, with an overarching threat at the end that ties the experience up with a nice little bow and unifies what we did. While The Burning Crusade effectively subverted this itself with the Sunwell Plateau raid (dethroning Illidan as the end boss of his own expansion), both Wrath and Cataclysm held true to the paradigm. Really, they almost had to. Even though there was a raid after ICC, no one mistook Halion for anything but a teaser, and there's nothing going on raid-wise in Cataclysm after Dragon Soul. With Mists of Pandaria, we're returning to the feeling, if not the execution, of classic World of Warcraft, with the world itself and our exploration of it being the focus. This doesn't mean that the previous expansions didn't have plenty of world to explore. But Mists of Pandaria sets up the theme of players and their actions and what they do to the world as well as what the world does to them. The world is full of wonders and terrors, and rather than picking one and building the expansion around it, we get to see what trouble we can get into. I find this a fascinating return to form for a few reasons.
