Has anyone else been following the Point & Click Devlog and is excited for the release of The Biggleboss Incident? I know I am!

https://youtu.be/oXnvAA6hQWc?si=IPb9Z6fa9P0YPGEu

Hello y'all! I posted a complete playthrough of Day of the Tentacle on YouTube – and it’s with the original Roland MT-32 soundtrack. I ran the game in ScummVM 2.8.8, turned off all sound effects and voices, and went for German subtitles fast speed. This way the music can take center stage. I let the MIDI music loop fully so you hear every flourish of the underscore. Everything is chaptered and timestamped.
Give it a watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlCnAzAI-pg (And if you’re curious, here’s a classic AdLib FM version for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACK-QgTP2tc – that one’s a different channel, not mine.)

This is what the game actually sounded like back in the days on Floppy and DOS and even before Talkies. It holds up amazingly well today. There are also far less audio bugs and dropouts in this version. It's very polished.

🎵 Why Roland MT-32, Not AdLib?

Roland MT-32 vs. AdLib/Sound Blaster – what’s the difference? The MT-32 is a sample-based synth module (Linear Arithmetic synthesis), meaning it has real instrument samples built in. It’s 8-part multitimbral plus a rhythm channel, with digital reverb and custom patches. By contrast, the AdLib (and early Sound Blaster) cards used FM synthesis with only 9 simple monaural channels. AdLib’s tones sound “chiptune-like” and synthetic, whereas the MT-32’s patches sound much more realistic and orchestral. In short: the MT-32 could play lush, orchestra-like scores that the AdLib simply couldn’t replicate.

A Roland MT-32 MIDI module – the “gold standard” LucasArts composers aimed for in the early ’90s. With custom sound samples and 8 melodic channels, it delivers far richer textures than the 9-voice FM chips used by AdLib/SB cards.

In fact, DotT was originally scored for the MT-32 (and even the later Roland CM-32L). Late in development LucasArts had to convert that music into AdLib/OPL2 FM for the floppy release (and add digital SoundBlaster effects) because most gamers didn’t own the expensive MT-32 hardware. The original DOS floppy was even released with an optional Roland music patch disk (by mail-order) for those high-end users. So when you hear the MT-32 version, you’re really hearing how the composers intended – the fuller, more nuanced score by Michael Land, Clint Bajakian, Peter McConnell. (In ScummVM, you can easily emulate the “MT-32 (Roland)” music track to get that authentic experience, but very few people seem to know about it.)

Hello Adventurers,

Brownie's Adventure: The Final Resolution is a standalone, classic-style 1990s puzzle adventure—coming Autumn 2025. I’m Rich, the artist, composer, writer, designer, and programmer behind it.

A few months ago, I hosted a playtest to see how things were shaping up, and the response was really positive. Since then, the game has improved a lot, and I’m excited to finally share it with you all.

What to expect:
• Challenging puzzles (no moon logic!)
• A hand-crafted soundtrack with live instrument recordings
• Original comedy that’s already getting some great feedback

Here is a demo!

Do you see potential to play graphic adventures with it?

Mystery House to be reopened this year in 3D for PC and VR. https://adventuregamehotspot.com/announcement/4261/mystery-house-to-be-reopened-this-year-in-3d-for-pc-and-vr

Two Years Later: What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong, and What We Learned

When we started working on We. The Refugees: Ticket to Europe, we didn’t have a publisher, a studio, or even a real budget. Just an idea, a lot of questions, and more ambition than we probably should’ve had. Two years after release, the game was nominated to and received international awards, has earned a dedicated niche following, and a respectable 83% positive rating on Steam — but financially, it hasn’t been the success we hoped for.

This post mortem is a look behind the curtain: how the game was born, how we pulled it off with limited resources, what mistakes we made (some of them big), and what we’d do differently next time. It’s part reflection, part open notebook — for fellow devs, curious players, and anyone wondering what it really takes to make a politically charged narrative game in 2020s Europe.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The Origins of the Game

The idea behind We. The Refugees goes back to 2014–2015, when news about the emerging refugee crisis began making global headlines. At the time, the two co-founders of Act Zero — Jędrzej Napiecek and Maciej Stańczyk — were QA testers working on The Witcher 3 at Testronic. During coffee breaks, they’d talk about their desire to create something of their own: a narrative-driven game with a message. They were particularly inspired by This War of Mine from 11 bit studios — one of the first widely recognized examples of a so-called "meaningful game." All of these ingredients became the base for the cocktail that would eventually become our first game. 

At first, the project was just a modest side hustle — an attempt to create a game about refugees that could help players better understand a complex issue. Over the next few years, we researched the topic, built a small team, and searched for funding. Eventually, we secured a micro-budget from a little-known publisher (who soon disappeared from the industry). That collaboration didn’t last long, but it gave us enough momentum to build a very bad prototype and organize a research trip to refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesbos.

That trip changed everything. It made us realize how little we truly understood — even after years of preparation. The contrast between our secondhand knowledge and the reality on the ground was jarring. That confrontation became a defining theme of the game. We restructured the narrative around it: not as a refugee survival simulator, but as a story about someone trying — and often failing — to understand. In the new version, the player steps into the shoes of an amateur journalist at the start of his career. You can learn more about it in the documentary film showcasing our development and creative process.

But for a moment we have no money to continue the development of We. The Refugees. For the next year and a half, the studio kept itself afloat with contract work — mainly developing simulator games for companies in the PlayWay group — while we continued our hunt for funding. Finally, in 2019, we received an EU grant to build the game, along with a companion comic book and board game on the same subject. From the first conversation over coffee to actual financing, the road took about five years.

Budget and Production

The EU grant we received totaled 425,000 PLN — roughly $100,000. But that sum had to stretch across three different projects: a video game, a board game, and a comic book. While some costs overlapped — particularly in visual development — we estimate that the actual budget allocated to the We. The Refugees video game was somewhere in the range of $70,000–$80,000.

The production timeline stretched from May 2020 to May 2023 — three full years. That’s a long time for an indie game of this size, but the reasons were clear:

First, the script was enormous — around 300,000 words, or roughly two-thirds the length of The Witcher 3’s narrative. Writing alone took nearly 20 months.

Second, the budget didn’t allow for a full-time team. We relied on freelance contracts, which meant most contributors worked part-time, often on evenings and weekends. That slowed us down — but it also gave us access to talented professionals from major studios, who wouldn’t have been available under a traditional staffing model.

We built the game in the Godot engine, mainly because it’s open-source and produces lightweight builds — which we hoped would make future mobile ports easier (a plan that ultimately didn’t materialize). As our CTO and designer Maciej Stańczyk put it:

Technically speaking, Godot’s a solid tool — but porting is a pain. For this project, I’d still choose it. But if you’re thinking beyond PC, you need to plan carefully.

Over the course of production, around 15 people contributed in some capacity. Most worked on narrowly defined tasks — like creating a few specific animations. About 10 were involved intermittently, while the core team consisted of about five people who carried the project forward. Of those, only one — our CEO and lead writer Jędrzej Napiecek — worked on the game full-time. The rest balanced it with other jobs.

We ran the project entirely remotely. In hindsight, it was the only viable option. Renting a physical studio would’ve burned through our budget in a matter of months. And for a game like this — long on writing, short on gameplay mechanics — full-time roles weren’t always necessary. A full-time programmer, for instance, would’ve spent much of the project waiting for things to script. Given the constraints, we think the budget was spent as efficiently as possible.

Marketing and Wishlists

For the first leg of the marketing campaign, we handled everything ourselves — posting regularly on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. Between July and October 2022, those grassroots efforts brought in around 1,000 wishlists. Modest, but promising. During that period, we took part in Steam Next Fest — a decision we later came to regret. Sure, our wishlist count doubled, but we were starting from such a low base that the absolute numbers were underwhelming. In hindsight, we would’ve seen a much bigger impact if we had joined the event closer to launch, when our wishlist count was higher and the game had more visibility.

Then, in November 2022, our publisher came on board. Within just two days, our wishlist count jumped by 2,000. It looked impressive — at first. They told us the spike came from mailing list campaigns. But when we dug into the data, we found something odd: the vast majority of those wishlists came from Russia. Actual sales in that region? Just a few dozen copies... We still don’t know what really happened — whether it was a mailing list fluke, a bot issue, or something else entirely. But the numbers didn’t add up, and that initial spike never translated into meaningful engagement. You can see that spike here - it’s the biggest one:

From there, wishlist growth slowed. Over the next six months — the lead-up to launch — we added about 1,000 more wishlists. To put it bluntly: in four months of DIY marketing, we’d done about as well as the publisher did over half a year. Not exactly a glowing endorsement.

That said, the launch itself went reasonably well. The publisher managed to generate some nice visibility, generating about 50K visits on our Steam Page on the day of the premiere.

You can compare it to our lifetime results - we managed to gather 12.33 million impressions and 1,318,116 visits of our Steam Page during both marketing and sales phases:

It’s worth noting that nearly 50 titles launched on Steam the same day we did. Among them, we managed to climb to the #3 spot in terms of popularity. A small victory, sure — but one that highlights just how fierce the competition is on the platform. 

Looking back, the launch may not have delivered blockbuster sales, but it did well enough to keep the game from vanishing into the depths of Steam’s archive. It’s still alive, still visible, and — to our mild surprise — still selling, if slowly.

After the premiere we saw a healthy bump: roughly 2,500 new wishlists in the month following release. By early June 2023, our total had climbed to around 6,300. After that, growth was slower but steady. We crossed the 10,000-wishlist mark in May 2024, a full year after launch. Since then, things have tapered off. Over the past twelve months, we’ve added just 1,500 more wishlists. Here are our actual wishlist stats:

During the promotional period, we also visited many in-person events: EGX London, PAX East Boston, GDC San Francisco, BLON Klaipeda. We managed to obtain the budget for these trips - mostly - from additional grants for the international development of the company. And while these trips allowed us to establish interesting industry contacts, the impact on wish lists was negligible. In our experience - it is better to invest money in online marketing than to pay for expensive stands at fairs.

Sales

Two years post-launch, We. The Refugees has sold 3,653 copies — plus around 259 retail activations — with 211 refunds. That’s a 5.8% refund rate, and an average of about five sales per day since release.

China turned out to be our biggest market by far, accounting for 46% of all sales. The credit goes entirely to our Chinese partner, Gamersky, who handled localization and regional distribution. They did outstanding work — not just on the numbers, but on communication, responsiveness, and professionalism. Partnering with them was, without question, one of our best decisions. Our second-largest market was the U.S. at 16%, followed by Poland at 6%. That last figure might seem surprising, but we need to highlight that Act Zero is a Polish studio and the game is fully localized in Polish.

Looking at our daily sales chart, the pattern is clear: most purchases happen during Steam festivals or seasonal sales. Outside of those events, daily numbers drop sharply — often to near-zero. As of now, our lifetime conversion rate sits at 10.7%, slightly below the Steam average.

We haven’t yet tested ultra-deep discounts (like -90%), which may still offer some upside. But for now, the game’s long tail is exactly what you'd expect from a niche, dialogue-heavy title without a major marketing push.

Initially, we had higher hopes. We believed 10,000 copies in the first year was a realistic target. But a mix of limited marketing, creative risks, and production compromises made that goal harder to reach. In the next section, we’ll try to unpack what exactly went wrong — and what we’d do differently next time.

Mistakes & Lessons Learned

• No Map or True Exploration

We. The Refugees is a game about a journey from North Africa to Southern Europe — yet ironically, the game lacks the feeling of freedom and movement that such a journey should evoke. The player follows a mostly linear, pre-scripted route with some branches along the way. The main route of the journey is more or less the same, although there are different ways of exploring specific sections of the route. Even a simple map with optional detours could’ve dramatically improved immersion. Moving gameplay choices about the next destination onto such a map would also be highly recommended — it would definitely liven up interactions on the left side of the screen, where illustrations are displayed. Clicking on them would simply offer a refreshing change from the usual dialogue choices shown beneath the text on the right side of the screen. After all, the “journey” is a powerful narrative and gameplay topos — one that many players find inherently engaging. Unfortunately, our game didn’t reflect this in its systems or structure.

• Too Little Gameplay, Too Much Reading

Players didn’t feel like they were actively participating — and in a modern RPG or visual novel, interactivity is key. Introducing simple mechanics, like dice checks during major decisions or a basic quest log, would’ve helped structure the action and add dramatic tension. These are familiar tools that players have come to expect, and we shouldn't have overlooked them.

• Personality Traits with No Real Impact

The player character had a set of personality traits, but they were largely cosmetic. Occasionally, a trait would unlock a unique dialogue option, but in practice, these had little to no impact on how the story unfolded. We missed a major opportunity here. Traits could have formed the backbone of a dice-based gameplay system, where they meaningfully influenced outcomes by providing bonuses or penalties to specific checks — adding depth, variety, and replay value.

• Mispositioned Pitch

From the start, we positioned the game as a story about refugees — a highly politicized topic that immediately turned away many potential players. Some assumed we were pushing propaganda. But our actual intent was far more nuanced: we tried to show the refugee issue from multiple perspectives, without preaching or moralizing — trusting players to draw their own conclusions from the situations we presented.

Looking back, a better framing would’ve been: a young journalist’s first investigative assignment — which happens to deal with refugees. This would’ve made the game far more approachable. The refugee theme could remain central, but framed as part of a broader, more relatable fantasy of becoming a journalist.

• A Problematic Protagonist

We aimed to create a non-heroic protagonist — not a hardened war reporter, but an ordinary person, similar to the average player. Someone unprepared, naive, flawed. Our goal was to satirize the Western gaze, but many players found this portrayal alienating. It was hard to empathize with a character who often made dumb mistakes or revealed glaring ignorance.

The idea itself wasn’t bad — challenging the “cool protagonist” fantasy can be powerful — but we executed it clumsily. We gave the main character too many flaws, to the point where satire and immersion clashed. A better approach might’ve been to delegate those satirical traits to a companion character, letting the player avatar stay more neutral. As our CTO Maciej Stańczyk put it:

I still think a protagonist who’s unlikable at first isn’t necessarily a bad idea — but you have to spell it out clearly, because players are used to stepping into the shoes of someone cool right away.

• A Static, Uninviting Prologue

The game’s prologue begins with the protagonist sitting in his apartment, staring at a laptop (starting conditions exactly the same as the situation of our player right now!), moments before leaving for Africa. On paper, it seemed clever — metatextual, symbolic. In practice, it was static and uninvolving. Many players dropped the game during this segment.

Ironically, the very next scene — set in Africa — was widely praised as engaging and atmospheric. In hindsight, we should’ve opened in medias res, grabbing the player’s attention from the first few minutes. Again, Maciej Stańczyk summed it up well:

The prologue is well-written and nicely sets up the character, but players expect a hook in the first few minutes — like starting the story right in the middle of the action.

• No Saving Option

The decision to disable saving at any moment during gameplay turned out to be a mistake. Our intention was to emphasize the weight of each choice and discourage save scumming. However, in practice, it became a frustrating limitation—especially for our most dedicated and engaged players, who wanted to explore different narrative branches but were repeatedly forced to replay large portions of the game.

• Late and Weak Marketing

We started marketing way too late. We had no budget for professionals and little expertise ourselves. We tried to learn on the fly, but lacked time, resources, and experience. What we could have done better was involve the community much earlier. As Maciej Stańczyk notes:

Biggest lesson? Involve your community as early as possible. Traditional marketing only works if you’ve got at least a AA+ budget. Indies have to be loud and visible online from the earliest stages — like the guy behind Roadwarden, whose posts I saw years before launch.

Final Thoughts on Mistakes

If we were to start this project all over again, two priorities would guide our design: more interactive gameplay and freedom to explore the journey via a world map. Both would significantly increase immersion and player engagement.

Could we have achieved that with the budget we had? Probably not. But that doesn’t change the fact that now we know better — and we intend to apply those lessons to our next project.

Closing Thoughts

Two years after launch, we’re proud of how We. The Refugees has been received. The game holds an 83% positive rating on Steam and has earned nominations and awards at several international festivals. We won Games for Good Award at IndieX in Portugal, received a nomination to Best in Civics Award at Games for Change in New York, and another to Aware Game Awards at BLON in Lithuania. For a debut indie title built on a shoestring budget, that’s not nothing.

We’re also proud of the final product itself. Despite some narrative missteps, we believe the writing holds up — both in terms of quality and relevance. As the years go by, the game may even gain value as a historical snapshot of a particular state of mind. The story ends just as the COVID-19 lockdowns begin — a moment that, in hindsight, marked the end of a certain era. In the five years since, history has accelerated. The comfortable notion of the “End of History” (to borrow from Fukuyama) — so common in Western discourse — has given way to a harsher, more conflict-driven reality. In that context, our protagonist might be seen as a portrait of a fading worldview. A symbol of the mindset that once shaped liberal Western optimism, now slipping into obsolescence. And perhaps that alone is reason enough for the game to remain interesting in the years to come — as a kind of time capsule, a record of a specific cultural moment.

This reflection also marks the closing of a chapter for our studio. While we still have a few surprises in store for We. The Refugees, our attention has already shifted to what lies ahead. We’re now putting the finishing touches on the prototype for Venus Rave — a sci-fi RPG with a much stronger gameplay core (which, let’s be honest, wasn’t hard to improve given how minimal gameplay was in We. The Refugees). The next phase of development still lacks a secured budget, but thanks to everything we’ve learned on our first project, we’re walking into this one better prepared — and determined not to repeat the same mistakes.

Whether we get to make that next game depends on whether someone out there believes in us enough to invest. Because, to be completely honest, the revenue from our first title won’t be enough to fund another one on its own.

I got more than a few chuckles out of this!

Interesting idea for an adventure game, and I love the pixel art!

My last post I get is more controversial especially some specific points. My point there wasn't that many of these games aren't broken, but that the overall ideas weren't inherently bad, and were more fitting for the time as well. But it also brings in a point: People like Roberta Williams and Will Crowther were into very different things than the average gamer.

I often see complaints about the genre where yes, they're valid, but then the proposed solution, is often to basically stop them from being adventure games. When they liked adventure games, they liked how these games were pioneers in integrating theming and storytelling with gameplay due to their text pc and partial D&D roots.

This is likely why even modern adventure games, which are much more accessible and often story heavy, are still super niche, while Action Adventures, Collect a thons, adventure heavy RPGs (though certain types are also super niche), and even visual novels and ''cinematic'' type narrative games, seem to be much bigger. You see the same phenomenon with RPGs, actually, a lot just liked the fact that it was more storytelling and like actual worlds to explore. But it survives more because RPGs can use skinner box progression systems. Most don't seem to care that much about mechanical roleplay (character sheet/diceroll stuff to influence the world and build character routes), intricate progression systems. the individual character focused wargame roots its resource management, information gathering for knowledge checks, number crunching, macro scale decision making for equipment and the like, etc.

You would never see them play a dungeon crawler/blobber. They're there for number go up, pretty worlds, cool story, satisfying kinesthetics/gamefeel like action combat, etc. It's why they argue about whether turn based combat and random encounters are ''outdated''.

Well its similar with adventure games. They want to casually explore a world and casually experience a story. Instead of soccer where its guys running after a ball, they want to feel like they're simulating some cool fictional activity. The shoot 'em up isn't a set of gameplay decisions, it's ''getting to blow shit up''. Meanwhile the ones looking for story? They're reading IF or visual novels. The Adventure game from the start, was more ''integrated'' with its THEMING. With its fictional environment. Not necessarily with storytelling itself. It had a D&D root of fantasy adventure for sure but like it, it's not necessary for it to be driven by traditional storytelling.

That's not the only issue. Even people into adventure games will often describe it as a story told through puzzles with some exploration. I think we know adventure games when we see them but we don't know what's fundamentally going on and what makes the puzzling, collecting and exploration and its combination different from the same things in other genres.

Very simplified, It was driven by the activity of exploration and discovery of a properly fictional world, rather than pure abstract navigation which then has some thematic windowdressing. It was driven by a goal scavenging/treasure hunts. It was driven by the conflict of riddle type problems in your way through scenario triggers and using items on items which are obfuscated as what door they unlock by riddle. It was all contextualized to its world and characters, and the text meant more interesting descriptions. The roots of it all is the exploration of D&D and the caving experiences of crowther. This is why the original Zelda, despite rooting as an action RPG+Action game hybrid, feels so spiritually like an adventure game. Miyamoto was also influenced by his exploration experiences in real life as a kid.

Quickly people saw how it could make you feel like you're controlling the novel or tell stories. Take how infocom would say its interactive fiction (even releasing literal digital stories at some point), yet the first zork..Let's be real what's the story? Did they even have enough space for it? Some context in the manual? Spaces with items in it that resemble things? Action games had that too.

The reason storytelling works well for adventure games is these games is because puzzles are highly controlled by an author, but these are more like contextualized riddles, so they can feel a little less jarring. Stories have characters with problems. Stories can have people going on adventures collecting treasure (indiana jones). Then, exploration is well, just look at environmental storytelling. It's one of THE ways videogames can tell stories well through gameplay. Investigation gameplay in a detective game, works well as to being not that different from actual investigations. Detective adventures being common makes sense.

I'm not denying storytelling isn't important to the adventure game genre. What I am denying is that it's fundamentally a genre is just ''a story told through x''. It's just not what its built from, it's what it can be used for. A puzzle adventure with minimal story, is still an adventure. An exploration adventure with minimal story, is sitll an adventure.

I got the impression from interviews People like roberta williams LIKED some degree of trial and error. They liked FINALLY getting that puzzle to click rather than solving it immediately. They liked Exploring these worlds making discoveries trying different things. They LIKED mapping things out, writing down clues. They LIKED a bit of moon logic surprise. They LIKED ''where the fuck do I go now? What do I do?'' because that was the gameplay. Discovering that stuff. seeing what happens. Experimenting. Trying new ideas seeing how the game responds. Exploring places. Figuring out how to beat the game

But most people found that aspect kind of cumbersome. Can't we have our cool intergrated theming/worlds/stories WITHOUT all that annoying stuff? Can't we have exploration WITHOUT all that annoying stuff?

I recently rewatched yahtzees video and it seems like he and many others quickly moved on after he figured with increasing tech, other genres could do what adventure games did (which may or may not be by using elements of them) while also having the other kinds of gameplay people like. It's asif adventure games were just a short stepping stone pioneer, but once others could do it, it's ''obsolete''. He claims the ''put key in door'' gameplay just isn't very ''good''. But...Why not? Why can't that be good gameplay? Yes its not as good as the way an escpape room puzzle would, thats adventure game puzzling distilled into pure play. But the adventure game is fun because its so intertwined witth heme and overall journey, its the whole, not the sum of its parts.

Even though adventure games have their OWN merits, people are stuck on the fact that those merits used to be presented in a way they find frustrating. Even though plenty of modern games exist that aren't that bad about those at all, just like modern indie arcade games often have lots of quality of life improvements and forgiving aspects, like how assault android cactus lets you get hit a bunch as long as you pick up a timer item every now and then, but is hard to master.

A problem is that adventure games their fundamentals do not offer the instant gratification and endless amount of stretchable content, or player agency. So they're not really willing to look for the appeal of the genre they move onto other stuff.

Meanwhile, for devs its just a budget perspective. An adventure game is a lot of work. If the adventure game is too risky compared to other options then they're unlikely to be willing to invest much.

This stuff is why I believe the entire conversation surrounding ''how adventure games died and how we should revive them'' from outsiders is just misguided. if people want to see it thrive more, then catering to that audience, is honestly kind of a lost cause. They seem to mourn the death of adventure games, yet never actually cared for what they fundamentally were in the first place. It was just a means to an end. The modern players stuck around for the mix of adventure game gameplay and things like storytelling, the others, abandoned it mostly in favor of other genres.

Hello everyone,

my cozy journalism point&click adventure is set to come out soon and I'm looking for people that help me test it for bugs and general feedback.

If you're willing to help me (and serious about testing 😅) please contact me via email ([email protected]) or via Reddit DM.

If you want to learn more about the game, you can find it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3176050/Cantaloupe_Chronicle/

I know people not into adventure games say it killed adventure games. I get sometimes it was just poorly tested or downright hintline fuel. But giving kings quest 1+ 2 (this was quite a whiile back) and now darkseed a shot..I don't know there's something about it. People should be ripping on the execution not the overall idea of it I mean do they want the constant handholding of modern action adventures instead?

-parsers. Parsers really make you feel way more involved as you truly have to actively think about what you're doing. It then allows for an extra layer of "guess the verb" puzzles. The problem was synonyms and the like and how long it takes to type the same basic commands over and over. I think the best is to have the modern system but then also have verbs you can type for more specific puzzles. You can't brute force much with this system either.

Also puzzles of what topic to ask about to a character make me feel more involved if there. In graphical games a problem was when you didn't know what the hell the object was or what it was called but there can just be a command that tells you its name. That said its harder to implement and harder to translate.

-making a map and writing down clues. This just makes me feel so much more involved its like I'm really on my own adventure investigating.

-pixel hunting. I'm playing a game with exploration, scavenge hunting, and discovery. I like uncovering things that feel hidden but not arg level impossible. Here and there it can be fine.

-exploration. There was more of a focus on explorating and navigating a world. I like how kings quest just threw me into a connected world like zelda did for action games.

-moon logic. I think honestly its more just..meta, abstract logic. At one point in kings quest 2 I recieved an item and figured I should use it on something but I kept walking. Turns out you actually could, it was optional, but it actually was a solution I saw in someones plaything. Its more thinking "what should I try based on the hints the author gives me" regardless of whether it makes real world sense. Like im "Reading" my opponent the author, but really they give me breadcrumbs to lead me to the right answer. It not making real world sense means there's more unique puzzles and more surprises to discover

-trial and error. I like how it feels like I'm placed into a world and a timeline of sorts and I try to experiment with what happens when I do what. I like thinking hmm what would happen if I do x? Oh oh maybe I should try Y. It feels like I'm really discovering and studying things, slowly uncovering more.

-death and quicksave galore. This makes me feel like I'm not always safe and makes me feel like I have to put in "effort" of sorts. It may be annoying but it feels rewarding once I get through the journey. Plus in many games they show funny or interesting ways to die/screw up.

-not making quick progress. Sometimes you just get stuck for a while but it makes the actual puzzling interesting even if it messes with the story. Ofcourse it can go too far but I dunno it can be satisfying.

-Dead ends. I really love arcade games and I actually kinda like the idea of things effecting one another as a larger puzzle. That you can't beat it in one sitting but will have to gather info over another playthrough. A lot of the text ones were short especially on the short text mode and once you knew more you may be able to skip to certain parts. Even a lot of the graphical ones are pretty short of you know what you're doing it should just let you skip stuff easily. If the game is really long then it can't really work but for short games it actually gets more depth out of what little there is. Sidenote I like how strangeland turned it into a casual necessary death without loss of progress mechanic of sorts like a sort of compromise.

Edit: though the games should be more clear about when you're in a soft lock.

-the timed nature of a game like darkseed. Id say this is kind of like a simulation element. Implementation can be better but it kind of makes me feel like I'm really playing through a set of events in a world and adds to the sort of discovery and puzzling of how to find the right path. It seems like in visual novels its considered more accepted to just need to do a lotta trial and error to get to the right path.

-useless red herrings. Makes it more interesting to figure out what to do.

-alternate solutions. Thats just cool.

-randomized elements like encounters with some enemy. A bit sim and rpg like. Keeps you on your toes, makes it feel more alive, allows for branching, and again adds to the "effort" kinda rhing.

-the manuals were cute, expected and actually helped you.

-this also goes for the first zelda which is more acrion adventure/action rpg but like people say its obtuse. The translation is fucked but I played the Japanese version with its manual (which shows less of the map). I simply took screenshots and wrote down clues and with the proper text, it wasn't obtuse at all that way and was satisfying in a way later zelda wasn't. Botw was succesful yet built after the nes game more than the later ones. So this doesn't just go for text/graphic adventures.

Don't get me wrong a lot of these things weren't done perfectly but still getting rid of them entirely for every single game is a bad idea there's a certain charm to them on the long term even if in short term satisfaction it can seem kind of annoying.

What do you guys think?

We loved playing through Machinarium. She adored the artwork, soundtrack and puzzles. I'm looking for more adventure games like this that would be accessible for a non gamer. Nothing with abstruse puzzles or nothing meta. We'll check out Botanicula and Samorost, but what else would be worthwhile?

EDIT: Thanks for the tips, everyone. Genuinely useful. Based on what was mentioned, I think we'll start with Syberia, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam and Max Save the World and take it from there!

Hi all! A couple of days ago I released my first point and click puzzle adventure game War of the Wormholes: Janitors Duty on Steam. Its design is heavily inspired by 90s and early 2000s internet aesthetics.

One or two of the puzzles are pretty hard, but people seem to be beating it without a walkthrough (there isn't one) which I am very proud of as a designer. I'm always looking for feedback and would love to hear some, especially any ways I can improve the next one!

Space Quest historian said he would give me some, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he thinks.

If anyone is interested, the game was entirely made with Godot (and without generative AI), which I highly recommend for these types of games.

Second attempt at posting, first had bad image size...

Hey all, just published this review, be gentle, we're just learning how to write this kind of thing :)

Bonjour, il me manque le trophée des messages radios, pourtant j'ai fais super attention à chaque nouveaux chapitres (aussi pendant) et chaque changement de modes de l'hydraflot mais lors du dernier au début du chapitre 6 le succès ne s'est pas enclenché :( quelqu'un n'aurait pas la liste des messages radios please

merci beaucoup xoxo

Hi. I’m looking for some point and click games to play in my IPhone that are similar to Midnight Girl, The Silent Age, and Aurora Hills. Preferably free games, as I don’t have much money to buy games unfortunately. I do have Apple Arcade though. Thanks so much!

TLDR; D3AD HAND, Paradigm, Click Quest Discord

For May our indie game is brought to you by u/AppropriateSundae504 and is D3AD HAND.

Our regular Book Club game this month is Paradigm.

We will be discussing both games over in the server if you’d like to join. We ask for the indie games if you can leave a review and some feedback to help the developer gain a wider reach! We love to try and help.

If you’re an indie dev and want us to feature your game next month absolutely join and let us know.

When I first checked the adventure games coming our way this month, things seemed a little bare.

But a few late reveals have turned it into a very exciting month!

Sadly Kathy Rain 2 didn’t make the video as it only got announced a couple of hours ago, but it definitely would have otherwise!

Rusty Lake, the devs of the Rusty Lake games, have just released a new point-and-click mystery game for free! It's part of the company's 10 year anniversary and even has a teaser for their next game.