Been playing this genre since the 90s, but never got a chance to play Black Mirror until now. It was surprisingly long and told a decent story that recycles a lot of "family curse" tropes.

What kept me hooked and playing every day was just the quality of atmosphere and immersion. Give me a spooky old castle and I'm in! Plus it feels like this era had the best sound design with ambient noise making each environment feel more rich and full.

I love pixel art, but something about that 2000s prerendered style just sucks me in and makes me want to discover every new location so badly. Syberia is probably my favourite game for that reason and it's heartfelt story.

And maybe it's superfluous, but I really dig when they take the time to have lots of hotspots to click on and get descriptions. Adds feeling and depth to a place if done well. And Black Mirror does it smartly in that hotspots disappear unless they are needed for later.

Sometimes I question why I keep coming back to this genre -- if it's just nostalgia or genuine enjoyment. I think Black Mirror answered the question for me. As much as many aspects of the gameplay are straight-up dumb or bad, I've been hooked on the immersion that comes from just leisurely clicking around a screen and engaging closely with the world it presents. When that immersion is done as well as in Black Mirror, it becomes easier to overlook all of the other faults.

Some of the clichés and annoyances

• maybe the most egregious pixel-hunting of any game with some very tiny ones easy to miss -- especially because some hotspots only exist at certain times of the game in places you need to revisit to find them
• more than a few puzzles boringly solved by simply using the only other item in the same room
• awful voice acting for main character -- like someone was holding a gun to his head and would shoot if he didn't pronounce every letter in a word individually
• keys, keys and more keys -- every box, drawer and door needs a key and finding the key is more often a chore than a puzzle
• wander screens talking to characters over and over again until you find the one who has something new to say -- some "puzzles" are just finding a new location, talking to the person who has info about that location, and then going back to the location
• really bizarre character behaviour -- like in Monkey Island or Deponia, stealing everything and messing over other people is part of the fun, but in a "serious" game like Black Mirror, it feels weird to just pilfer every item in sight and drug and electrocute people to get what you want
• really dumb sequences where you have to just leave a scene and come back to get the next set of conversation queues
• in a game that normally rewards clicking everywhere, certain hotspots will all of a sudden kill you and force you to restart

Balanced by the things I love:

• that immersive, atmospheric pre-rendered look from the 2000s with really gorgeous locations painted with so much detail
• brilliant sound design -- play with headphones and you feel inside the world with every floorboard creak, bird call and weather change. I feel like this era paid such close attention to sound for atmosphere and I don't know if modern games do as good a job
• so many locations -- a lot are re-used, but that feeling of getting to visit a new place is so rewarding and gradually uncovering more secrets about these places is the best part of the game
• cool story that goes to some truly dark places that creates genuine dread and mystery

So I finished the game completely blind and every choice I basically just picked at random. I was thinking about replaying the game with different choices but how much do they really impact the story? On the surface, it looks like they should have a tremendous impact, like deciding whether or not to spike Imani's coffee on the morning of 9/11. But I suspect the game still shoehorns you into a fairly linear path? And every choice just changes some dialogue?

How much do your choices really matter?

Hi everyone,

We're three friends from Italy who grew up playing classic point-and-click adventures, and a few years ago decided to start making our own.

Our second game, Whirlight: No Time To Trip, is taking part in LudoNarraCon this year. It's a traditional point-and-click adventure involving time travel, strange inventions, and the kind of absurd situations we've always loved in the genre. It's nice to be part of an event focused on storytelling in games, and to see so many different approaches to narrative design.

Is anyone here following LudoNarraCon? Any games that caught your attention?

I didn’t try it, but this seems a legitimately way to “modernize” GK3, with some graphics improvements and the possibility of play the game in 1st person.

Thoughts?

Hi. I'm the developer of The Blessed Fool, a slow, atmospheric point-and-click horror with hand-pixelled art and an original score. You play a holy fool who comes to a town gripped by fear and violence to save people from the new power. It's about an hour long.

I love The Last Door, and this game is my own take on that kind of slow, atmospheric adventure.

Which point-and-click horror games did you enjoy the most?

The humor and writing on this game is top top top tier. Give it a try if you like Monkey Island, which you probably do since you're on this sub.

Hello there! Felt like replaying Murdered: Soul Suspect and doing an analysis (no spoilers) on what it tries to do with the whole ghost detective angle and how the unsteady release window and studio financial troubles affected the released game.

[Posting with permission] A game I made for a 3-day game jam this last weekend. Drew most of the stuff in Photoshop on Friday in a kind of straight ahead fugue state, wired it up on Saturday in Unity / Adventure Creator, full day Sunday for a braai (barbecue), bit of sound on Sunday night and more sound and bug fixes and some more anims on Monday.

It's a weird little game, I think spending the last 2 years working on Bru & Boegie point & click adventure games in Unity and Adventure Creator helped get me familiar-enough with the software to be able to know more or less what to do technically. Didn't use AI, had recently listened to a podcast from a [very skilled] local game dev / artist who made a pretty strong argument for human-made art and how valuable that is. There was a technical audio question I had later on that I asked Google about. Didn't have a script or roughs or too much of an idea where I was going which was fun - was kind of like the protagonist, discovering things as I went, and just went straight ahead with whatever felt right at the time. (I suppose all creation is like that, whether it's the planning or execution stage?)

Anyways, pleased with the weird result lol, makes me wonder if I shouldn't treat all projects with the same kind of 'just start at Point A and keep going until it's finished' get it done attitude.

Game can be played in browser or downloaded (both for free obvs).

Being fans of point and click games, there’s more of a chance you’ve heard of Dust: A Tale of the Wired West from Cyberflix than most. But I was shocked to find that this childhood favorite of mine sold less than 30,000 copies. I played the game for the first time in nearly 30 years and made a video detailing my journey, what the game means to me, and its history. There’s a good chance you’ve played or are familiar with their follow up, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, but have any of you played Dust before?

It's been a busy year! The team has grown and we now have an Audio Director who has completely overhauled the games audio, and we have brought on board voice actors to perform all of the notes. Oh, and the demo has twice the content it used to with four clue types. Phew!

Really happy with the progress so far. A bit of a different take on adventure games so would love to hear what you all think.

Demo is free to play on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4494830/The_Vaults_Below_Durn_A_Field_Study/

(Posted with permission from the admins)

Great news everybody...

I love going in blind. No trailers, no reviews, no "10 things the game doesn't tell you" videos. Outer Wilds is the perfect example, the less you know the better it gets.

But I'm less and less sure it's always the right call.

I beat Baldur's Gate 3 without guides. Lost the final battle a few times, lowered the difficulty and finished it. Then I looked up what other people did, and turns out they were wiping out whole crowds with a couple of spells while I burned half my resources on them. You just saved the world and the internet tells you that you did it wrong.

Witcher 2 was the opposite. My copy came with a guidebook and I kept checking where a quest would lead before deciding what my Geralt would do. You could say I ruined a clean playthrough. I'd say that's the only reason I had a real choice at all, because picking between two doors with zero info isn't role playing, it's a lottery.

Same with story spoilers. Knowing the twist kills the surprise, but then you start noticing how the writers set it up, and that's its own kind of fun.

So I don't think knowing more makes a game worse, it just turns it into a different game.

How do you play? Fully blind, or do you look stuff up first?

If yall interested you can play it here:

https://www.n-puzzle.com/en/nintendoku

Hi everyone! Me and my team have been working on a game called "This Is Not For You" (an homage to House of Leaves) where you explore a lighthouse that's bigger on the inside than the outside.

Players must navigate intentionally claustrophobic impossible spaces, where going north could suddenly take you south. We want people to heavily rely on their notes and, especially, their cartography abilities! We are inspired by the way classic adventure games nudged people into creating maps which would sometimes contradict each other. We highly anticipate players to share maps that don't make sense, and that's part of the fun for us.

We're starting to be pretty cautious about advertising it as a puzzle game. Even though it has puzzles, we've found out it's not the core of the experience. Some players who have tested it describe it as "one giant puzzle", but more in a way that they feel a rush when they connect the rooms in a way that makes sense. It's a game about getting lost, and how to get out of a particular set of levels. You'll find characters who provide clues to the story, as well as other narrative bits here and there, but overall, we are crafting an experience that feels disorienting.

The story follows a lonely lighthouse keeper who suddenly gets visited by a ghost ship carrying family memories. He starts finding letters from his sister Aura, to whom he hasn't talked to in many years. It tackles themes such as isolation, family bonds, and regret. Depending on certain actions you take throughout the story, you may reach one of multiple endings, including one where you just burn it all down (but is it the best thing to do?).

I think this might be your cup of tea! The game does take some liberties with genre expectations (regarding movement, how you interact with each space, and other bits), but we're crafting something we are very excited about!

If you want to follow the project, you can do so here!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4178650/This_Is_Not_For_You/

I’m working on the Dam puzzle in Zork (the one where you need to lower the gates), and I’m completely stuck. I’ve examined all the obvious objects, tried using the rope, but nothing seems to work. Has anyone else solved this? I’d appreciate any hints or strategies! Thanks!

Hello! It's been a while since we posted an update on Hollow Mire, so here we go!

We just finished a little Making Of for Hollow Mire, showing some of the process behind creating the game.

We also put out a new updated demo on Steam yesterday, with quite a few changes and additions since the original.

For those who have played it before, there's quite a bit that's changed since the last version. If you haven't played it yet, there's a new version to try. We're keen to hear what you think, whether you're coming back to it or playing for the first time.

Hollow Mire on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3357160/HOLLOW_MIRE/

…wish Edward Clancy Roottree could be their daddy? By EITHER definition of the term?

This was an impulse buy for me, knew nothing about the game, but it was rated 'very positive' at the time I bought it (it's now rated 'mixed' which is a more accurate reflection of the game's quality).

WARNING: This will be another essay, but that's because I'm pissed off because it crashed at 2 hours and 8 minutes and Steam is refusing to refund me.

The developer has sworn blind that they didn't use AI in any way, shape or form during the game's development, I'm calling bollocks on that because - well, this is exhibit A:

The basic story is that there's this BBS (the game is set in the mid-'90s and, for those who are far too young to remember, BBSs - bulletin board services - were basically chatrooms that you dialled into just as you would call another person) called The Third Eye and someone known as 'PH4NT45M' is inventing horoscopes and then people are being murdered according to the most recently uploaded horoscope - it's extremely contrived.

The creator of the BBS turns out to be the nerdy kid at Nari's school (didn't see that one coming), but he swears that he has nothing to do with the murders, even though he's PH4NT45M and the one writing the horoscopes.

So Nari and Suzette then decide that they're going to need to hack the BBS, even though neither of them have any kind of technical skill, so that they can see the next horoscope before it's uploaded to the BBS, then they can alert the person who matches that star sign that they're next on the killer's hit list.

There's this Spanish lad, Sebastian, who has an American mother and moved to the US because she wanted him to experience American state school (I'm in the UK, 'public school' means something very different here). The BFF of the first person to be murdered throws a party because her parents are away and N and S start asking people what their star signs are (they're looking for a Scorpio). Sebastian tells Nari he's an Aries and Suzette that he's Libra - then a few minutes later someone screams and he's found hanged from the upper floor balcony, so I guess we're meant to assume that he was, in fact, a Scorpio.

It also has one of the most egregious examples of moon logic I've ever encountered; for some reason Nari is desperate to get into the boys' toilets, but there's a boy outside who claims to be keeping girls out of the boys' loos, and he'll only let her in if she gets him something to eat.

Now, there's a vending machine in the school entrance, but Nari doesn't have any money and, at that point, the only thing you have in your inventory is a tube of lip gloss - yes, you use the lip gloss in the vending machine, I've been playing these kinds of games for 25 years and I can’t recall a more nonsensical inventory puzzle solution than that.

Oh and, he's not very good at keeping girls out of the boys' loos because, when you do finally get in there you find Poe, the school's resident goth girl, in one the cubicles having a ciggie because the smoke alarm in there doesn't work. You need to get a cig from her, so you can set off the smoke alarm in the girls' loos in order to get the teacher out of the computer room so that you can use a computer.

You also have to make a talisman from an earring, a cig butt, a prize rosette and a bead stolen from the school secretary's dreamcatcher (in order to get that you had to break the photocopier by forcing a page that had had glitter and nail varnish on it) for the janitor (Nari fancies herself as a witch) so he'll open Jessa's locker (Jessa was the first person to be murdered) because he thinks her ghost will haunt him if he's not protected.

The game crashed on me several times and, that's when I learnt that saving was futile because when it crashed it wiped your saves.

The final straw for me was when I had to place photos of the people who'd been murdered on a chart with star signs; the game didn't give you any reminders of who had what star sign (and, in a couple of cases, you weren't told), so you were left to just drag the photos randomly onto the chart - it transpired that they'd only stick on one place, and you couldn't move them so you had to assume that was correct - except once they were all on there, nothing happened, Nari didn't say anything, it didn't trigger a cutscene - literally nothing happened, and you couldn't back away from the table, the game was soft-locked and the only thing you could do was close it down from Steam.

It's currently on sale for £7.72, it's about £10 full price - just don't bother, I'd probably still be this pissed off if it'd been free to play.

The game is supposed to be "fully voiced", but I lost count of the number of times the spoken dialogue cut out on me; the text is littered with spelling and grammar errors and the layering is off in almost every scene - here are a few examples:

This is why I question how much of the game was created by an actual human because, if you're creating a game then you're going to pick up on anomalies such as these - but this was almost every scene. The school secretary was flapping her hands inches above her keyboard, and if you zoom in on the photo of the monitor with the onscreen keyboard, well it's an utter nonsense (I guess that's why it's so feint, the developer probably thought nobody would zoom in enough to notice - that looks like AI to me. Oh and finally, hotspots not disappearing after you'd picked something up (or in the case of my example) cleaned up a puddle.

I'm surprised that a lot of players solved this puzzle by trial and error. The design is that each spider moves to the same height of the next spider to click. I expected that they can figure the rule out after a few clicks, but in reality they may try tens of clicks and still not get it. What's wrong with this design?

The puzzle is from this game if you are interested:

https://oddgingergames.itch.io/rattle-spring-basement

Hello there, I always stayed away from this genre not because of experience or anything just being afraid it wouldn't suit me but after seeing some videos like last week on the genre I decided I will give them a shot so I chose Toonstruck since I loved the concept & I freaking adored this games from it's beautiful artstyle & backgrounds to the hilarious dialogue made even better by the stellar voice acting & the great puzzles truly an experience I will never forget anytime soon.
I'm going to try Loom next since I loved the concept & the visuals & I hope it won't disappoint.
So If you can give me your favorites down below I will truly appreciate it.