Adventure Game Guru

4/4 The best games keep to just 1, 2 or a few elements of movement. Steam rises, characters fidget (Machinarium) the sea jostles, lights flicker (Monkey 2) clouds+shadows shimmer (Full Throttle) wooden objects creak along (The Last Door). What you want are paintings with a pulse.

Calligram Studio's sadly departed Twitter for bluer skies, but I've now played Phoenix Springs and my previous tweet wasn't even half right. This isn't just one of the major adventure games of the decade, it's one of the major artistic experiences of my life. Wrote a lil review:

@GamesCreed1 @CalligramStudio This game is the furthest imaginable thing from emotionally charged. And that's the brilliance of it. It maintains a stony, detached equanimity, avoids cliché and sentimentality and leaves us to puzzle out its story's mysteries and ambiguities.

#PhoenixSprings is a visually stunning game with a gripping atmosphere and an emotionally charged story despite being only about four hours long. #PC #Review gamescreed.com/reviews/phoeni… @CalligramStudio

Only first heard of it like an hour ago, but this may well be a major event in Point-&-Click Land. Looks deeply original and impeccably crafted (and DRAWN, holy hell!). Could easily be wunna the big adventure games of the decade.

In one of the major adventure-game events of the year, Julia Minamata's given us what might be the most impeccable recreation of an E.G.A.-era game I've ever seen. This is an exquisite piece of work.

Been adding a bunch of newer releases to my upsettingly complete point-&-click index and God help us we have now passed the FIVE HUNDRED mark! May the next five hundred #AdventureGames be even better! Oh sweet aunt Mabel PLEASE let them be better!!! backloggd.com/u/BrianMcInnis…

@PointPixelAdv Thank *you* for breaking your back so the world can play this thing.

@PointNClickGuru Thank you for your words. ☺️

I am ULTRA-excited about today's release of The Legend of Skye, which I understand Charles Moya created entirely by himself — which is *astounding*. This thing has some of THE most gorgeous and superbly accurate-to-early-90s-LucasArts graphics I've seen probably EVER.

In 2013, Thomas Ryder made one of the top ten adventure games I've ever seen: The Silent Age. Today he and his team are finally releasing their new game Midnight Girl and I'm very, very excited.

@AGHotspot @oneshorteye @Cressup @PointNClickGeek @SQHistorian @danielalbu @ConvosCurtis @PhantomFellows @CGGpodcast @jeffreytripoli @decafjedi A fictional adventure is a narrative by definition.

It’s officially the middle of the year. What is your Narrative Adventure Game of the Year so far? #adventuregame #aghn @oneshorteye @Cressup @PointNClickGeek @SQHistorian @danielalbu @ConvosCurtis @PhantomFellows @CGGpodcast @jeffreytripoli @decafjedi

@SixtusFlaming Ah, thanks. Hadn't caught that. I guess The Dig seems to be the only game where it does that.

@PointNClickGuru Finally got around to try it. It's NOT the same. It is, indeed, possible to fix the aspect ratio via SCUMMVM's Edit Game tab, but it's implemented by artificially squeezing the pixels, results of which you can see below. This might be acceptable to some, certainly isn't to me.

This is GREAT! I currently only seem to have the original files for The Dig on my laptop, but its rendition is massively better than the GOG version, for example. Original aspect ratio and those delightfully dull grey menus that were there all the way from FoA, for example.

@super_elin (Pssst. That stuff isn't retro. It's vintage. Retro is when something new's made in the *style* of something older. Hence the name.)

Reminder that snes rpgs are the best rpgs 😌

23/22 Bonus example: I think Grim Fandango's best, most iconic & memorable locale is easily Rubacava from Year 2, and it's about half the game. But all you're trying to do is get outta there. There's very little story content there that connects with the game's broader narrative.

22/22 (Oops, not so short.) My 2 cents are that adv. games are at their best when they're less like a dense, navigable story & more like a sort of big, puzzle-based playground, with a story serving to make the goals clear. Tell the players a story, but don't talk their ears off.

1/? Short thread on dialogue-/story-heavy adventure games. I'm most of the way through Excavation of Hob's Barrow. As adventure games go, it's one of the best in years. But it's also a perfect example of the dialogue-heavy adv. games that seem to be more common now than ever.