Thimbleweed Park - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Thimbleweed Park is a point-n-click adventure game created by the minds behind classics like the Monkey Island series and Maniac Mansion. Murder is afoot in the strange, small town and two agents are sent to find out what truly happened! You can find more of my thoughts in at 4:00:23 in the video above, but it's worth noting I enjoyed the game enough to continue and finish it the week after!

Sol705 - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Sol705 is a point-and-click adventure involving highschoolers, a local rock band, a talking cat and a story that's out of this world! It's surreal, brutally honest and definitely unique - you can find my thoughts on the game at 2:13:22 in the video above.

Marie's Room - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Marie's Room is an excellently written story-driven point-and-click adventure. You're tasked with collecting your friend's journal penned back in highschool some 20 years ago. Thus begins a trip down memory lane with a story of friendship, love, trust, compassion, secrets, betrayal... and much more. You can find my thoughts on the game (warning, includes spoilers) at 1:49:53 in the video above.

If you'd rather skip the spoilers, here's a brief take on the game. There's a great story here told in snippets, out of chronological order. Collecting these memories fills in the journal, which lets you understand what order all the events take place. The delivery is important, and Marie's Room does a wonderful job. Each segment is short enough to keep you from getting bored, but just long and personal enough to get you invested in the characters very quickly. If you're familiar with my thoughts on Doki Doki Literature Club, you'll understand just how much I appreciate the quality (over quantity) of writing found here. Marie's Room also has a great atmosphere for such a small area to explore - again quality over quantity - and a couple surprises as well.

Erayu - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

A boy discovers an unusual video game and becomes enthralled with it, à la The NeverEnding Story.

Erayu is a point-and-click adventure about a boy named Josh who happens to find an obscure video game (also called Erayu) during holiday break. Taking it home, Josh becomes engrossed with the title, pausing just long enough to take care of daily tasks. You play as both Josh in the "real world" and the main character of the video game he found.

Submachine Universe - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

What happens when you blend artificial intelligence, alternate dimensions and ancient legends? Are you sure you're ready for the answer?

The Secret of Tremendous Corporation - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

The Secret of Tremendous Corporation is an amusing point-and-click adventure with hand-drawn art. It's your first day as an intern at the company, and things take a strange turn as all the programmers and testers get kidnapped. You get wrapped up in an unusual tale of lies, spies, rebels and the Secret of the gaming industry!

Syberia II - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Join a genius inventor and his automaton engineer on a journey to a legendary island!

Syberia II is a point-and-click puzzle adventure game originally released in 2004. It's currently available free on Origin, likely to help promote the long-awaited sequel (Syberia III) that's set to release this month.

Syberia - OSCAR IS ATTACKED! More TONIGHT on Twitch!

Can we escape the lair of a madman? Tune in TONIGHT at 8pm ET at http://twitch.tv/shenanigans1930 to find out!

Syberia Stream Highlights, Continues Tonight on Twitch!

In case you missed last night's stream, let me catch you up to speed with this highlight video. The adventure continues tonight at 8pm at my Twitch channel!

There Is No Game & Mandagon - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

It's time for another double feature! This week, I'm checking out There Is No Game and Mandagon.

First up is There Is No Game, a point-and-click flash (non)game that won a DeceptionJam competition. Simply put, I rather enjoyed this title. It's clever and quite silly, but has a couple of little puzzles to figure out to proceed. If you're stuck, the narrator drops hints now and then to keep you going in the form of funny anecdotes.

Speaking of which, the narrator's accent and dialogue really make the game (despite his insistence that it is not a game). In an attempt to be a wise guy, I thought I'd reply to the narrator... and was pleasantly surprised to hear many of his next remarks sound like replies to my comments! It goes to show how much well-written dialogue (and timing) can really push a piece of work.

Mandagon (the second game) is an exploration platformer that covers some Tibetan philosophy concerning a parent's sacrifice for their sick child. The game's atmosphere reflects the sobering topic, but softens it with calming imagery of Tibetan temples and mystical totems. The music matched up quite well alongside the content and visual presentation, as it mostly felt peaceful but had some melancholy bits to keep it from being too serene.

After having some time to think on both games while collating the highlights, I have a somewhat worse impression of Mandagon. Ironically, there's more "game" in There Is No Game, which was supposed to be the joke of the episode. Topics aside, the dialogue's presentation was easier to relate to and there were more game elements to keep you interested in There Is No Game.

For a short title, Mandagon's gameplay is actually quite repetitive. You wander the map looking for tablets and place them in matching totems. The story is revealed along the way in the form of two-line rhymes written on signs. I'm fairly certain that one could ignore the signs entirely and still complete the game, though they would be somewhat confused by its ending. This really marginalizes the Tibetan philosophy the title was supposedly so inspired by, and I can't help but think there has to be a better way to tie it into the game.

The Knobbly Crook Ch. 1 - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Lie, cheat and steal to appease the voice in your head!

The Knobbly Crook is a point-and-click adventure game with a healthy dose of quirky humor, much in the vein of the Monkey Island series. You play as O'Sirus the Snip in a flashback as he recounts a tale that ultimately landed him in trouble.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep71: Sage Fusion

Explore a galaxy of conflict and intrigue where politics, wealth, religion and technology clash for supremacy!

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep61: Process

Stuck on a train, you have 20 minutes before it collides to your doom! Can you stop it in time?

Process is a point-n-click adventure game with a couple of interesting twists.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep58: Serena

A point-and-click story about a man's relationship and memories, created by a slew of developers.

Serena is less of a game (in the traditional sense) and more of an interactive story. You play as a man trying to piece together his memories of living in a cabin with his wife, Serena. He seems to have a severe case of amnesia and perceptual issues, as the opening of the game focuses on a photograph of him and his wife, whose face is blurred out. As you wander about the now-decrepit cabin looking at its contents, the man's memories slowly return, revealing what happened long ago.

I really liked the atmosphere of this title. The decayed cabin was dark and mysterious, but the protagonist kept things from being too depressing with an amusing anecdote here and there. Speaking of which, every story and memory, along with each written letter comes with full voice narration. While the game isn't incredibly long, it's nice to see that the developers (did I mention this was a large collaborative effort?) went with voice acting for every bit of information. The title would've lost a lot of immersive impact without it.

That said, it wasn't difficult to figure out what probably happened in this man's life that he had mysteriously (or conveniently) forgotten. I was able to pretty much call out the ending about halfway through the game, and there wasn't much of a surprise when I reached the game's conclusion. The tale itself was a little predictable, but I was pleased with how they doled out the story as a collection of anecdotes and memories.

In all, Serena was an interesting experience with great atmosphere and exposition. In some ways, it reminds me a lot of A Night In The Woods (which I played late last year), so if you liked either of these you might want to check out the other.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep50: Execute & Life vs Life

Another double feature for episode 50!

First up is Execute, a strategy battle game created for Ludum Dare 26. In this game, your job is to defeat all enemies as efficiently as possible. This idea is taken to the extreme, meaning that if you use too many actions, you end up losing the level (as if you had died).

While I appreciate the overall concept, the game could use a bit more polish (now that the time restriction from Ludum Dare is long over). Perhaps a clue as to how many actions are "too many" would've been helpful, as well as better-defined victory conditions for each level. I couldn't seem to find a winning combination for level two, and it felt pretty vague as to what I was doing wrong.

After that is Life vs Life, an interactive point-and-click type of title where you play as a pizza delivery guy in a city. While technically a game, it doesn't seem to have any failure states (including not getting fired for disregarding your job) and is more of an interactive short story. That said, everything you do in the game seems to have a larger influence on the city than you might at first expect. Continually tipping the street musician will eventually have him playing a sold out concert, and excessively feeding the pigeons can result in a huge flock of them taking over one end of town.

This game is broken up into days of the week. At the end of each day, you return to your apartment to fall asleep in front of the television. The decorations of your abode change slightly depending on what you've done. At the end of the week, the game is over with a message talking about how people choose to live their lives. It was interesting to try clicking around everywhere to see what happened, but after several playthroughs you'll probably have seen about everything Life vs Life has to offer.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep47: The Old Tree

An atmospheric adventure made in Flash

The Old Tree is a point-and-click adventure puzzler made in Flash. You assume the role of a creature that reminds me somewhat of a wacky wall crawler toy, and your job is to solve puzzles to get the little guy to the next screen.

This game has a great deal of atmosphere, with a dark but relaxing art style and music to match. Unlike many titles of the genre, you don't actually control the main character - instead you clear the way for him to continue his journey. This was kind of a nice change because you could focus more on the environment than where your character was positioned to solve the puzzles.

Sadly, the game lacks a lot of substance. The puzzles aren't terribly difficult and there seemed to be no penalty for failure - you just keep trying things until you sort it out. There's no replay value, unless you want to see the levels again (which admittedly look very nice). There doesn't seem to be a story, save for whatever you make up in your head as you go. It's also an incredibly short title, as you can finish the entire thing in less than 15 minutes.

If you're more about the journey than the destination, perhaps The Old Tree may be worth checking out.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep38: Real Horror Stories

Get ready for point-and-click scares and disturbing imagery!

Real Horror Stories is a click-based Flash game full of bizarre and disturbing scenes. The title of the game is incredibly misleading, as nothing presented in the game seems to be real (or even based on actual events).

The gameplay is uninspired and frightfully dull as you're placed in a scene with several clickable areas and no real clue as to why you're doing anything. Generally speaking, you keep clicking on whatever is available until something happens (typically an animation, sound, or jump scare). There are a handful of small puzzles scattered throughout to help break up the monotony, but they also break what little immersion the game had just built up as you're given seemingly endless time to solve them.

While the game is chock full of shocking imagery, I quickly lost any sense of danger or fear as I realized there was no potential for failure or death. The closest you get to "losing" is choosing one game ending over another, and even this can be easily replayed from a recent save point to see the other choice. I'm not quite certain why save points were added to the game in the first place, unless it was designed more for people playing on a mobile device during quick breaks.

The scariest thing about Real Horror Stories is that you actually have to pay for the iOS and Steam versions (the latter is an "ultimate" edition with added content).

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep36: The Terrible Old Man (H. P. Lovecraft)

The Terrible Old Man is a point-and-click adventure horror title, based on the H. P. Lovecraft short story of the same name.

I'll get my only complaint out of the way - this game isn't very long. Being based on a short story, there's not much source material for the game to really work with. I am glad to see that the game at least remained relatively faithful to the story instead of padding it for more content. 

There are numerous Lovecraft works that would make for interesting games, many of which are much longer than The Terrible Old Man. It leaves me to wonder why this particular piece was chosen to be adapted into a game over others? Maybe it was just a favorite tale of the developers. Perhaps it was more of a "proof of concept" to see if a story would work as a point-and-click adventure? If so, I think it came out pretty well and hope they decide to make more adaptations.

The gameplay itself was standard adventure fare - gather information, find and use items at appropriate times, etc. I liked the hand-drawn art style and the facial expressions were equal parts comical and disturbing, which helped play up the unusual atmosphere.

Hardcore point-and-click enthusiasts will find The Terrible Old Man to be lacking depth, but fans of H. P. Lovecraft should enjoy checking this one out for the novelty.