Summerventures 2017

This series originally ran on our Steam curation group in June of 2017.

It’s high time for a new series, and what better way to spend the hot, lazy summer than pointing and clicking through a mess of talky adventure games? That’s right, for the month of June I’m going to be reviewing point-and-click adventures, classics and remakes and indies alike. I won’t be doing the full 30 this time, however. These games are just too dense and tough to marathon, so the magic number for June is 22. That’s one review every weekday, so I get to rest on the weekends (and spend more time playing the things).

Reviews will go up around 8am every weekday, both here and on the store pages. Titles of posts here will link to the official review so feel free to click through and give them a thumb so others are more likely to see them. And as always, share your thoughts on the games I cover because they’re going to be all over the place and you might really like something I hate, and vice versa.

It’s gonna be a party, and everyone’s invited!

  1. Primordia
  2. Black Mirror III
  3. Puzzle Agent
  4. Puzzle Agent 2
  5. The Silent Age
  6. Else Heart.Break()
  7. The Sea Will Claim Everything
  8. A New Beginning – Final Cut
  9. The Shivah
  10. Nicolas Eymerich The Inquisitor
  11. Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes
  12. Between Me and The Night
  13. Namariel Legends: Iron Lord Premium Edition
  14. Botanicula
  15. The Grandfather
  16. Technobabylon
  17. The Dream Machine
  18. Machinarium
  19. Time Gentlemen, Please! and Ben There, Dan That!
  20. Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals
  21. Sinking Island
  22. Broken Sword 1 – Shadow of the Templars: Director’s Cut

 

 

Now that our Summerventures together have ended, it’s time for a look back at the pointy-clicky ground we covered.

The Good Stuff

If I had to pick a winner of the month, it would have to be The Sea Will Claim Everything. No other game was such a magnificent combination of quality writing and pure fun, though Botanicula and Machinarium probably edge it out for how good they can make you feel. Primordia and Technobabylon were both excellent examples of solid indie adventures with good writing and clever puzzles. The Dream Machine got me with how off-beat and dark it could get. The Silent Age and Namariel Legends are both good picks if you want something casual to click your way through. I can see now why Broken Sword is considered a classic, and while I wouldn’t call the Black Mirror games the same they did come together to form a fantastic trilogy of adventures. And then there’s Puzzle Agent, right on the line of good enough as long as you don’t expect much and don’t play the sequel.

The Bad Stuff

My big takeaway from the month is that when an adventure game goes bad, it goes REALLY bad. Pretty much every game on this list either had a story that wasn’t worth seeing through, or puzzles that were aggressively unfun. Plenty of titles here had real potential, particularly Else Heart.Break() and Sinking Island, but drop the ball hard in making any of it fun. Puzzle Agent 2 is a lesson in how not to make a sequel, and Nicolas Eymerich is a lesson in how not to set up a sequel. A few games were simply products of their times and lower expectations, like The Shivah and Time Gentlemen, Please! and Ben There, Dan That!. Other games, like the Daedalic ones and The Grandfather, are simply irredeemable. In any event, I would not suggest spending any time on any of these, except maybe Else Heart.Break() if you really want to dig for the crazy stuff that game is hiding deep down.

As always, I’d like to thank you all for reading along and sharing your thoughts if you did. Hopefully you found something to pick up from the sale or revisit when you feel like pointing and clicking your troubles away.