Adventure games from last 10 years with challenging puzzles

[Alpan]

Andrew Plotkin takes the same position: https://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/longestjourney.html

Off-topic, but somehow in all these years it never occurred to me to think Plotkin may have been reviewing other games, or look him up. The website and blog are such a nice trove of insights. Thanks for this.

 

[MRY]

He, Emily Short, and Adam Cadre always impressed me in their commentary as well as their work.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

It is actually funny how Dreamfall trilogy was a constant war between wonderful art & story vs. more and more added bad game mechanics. *noticed dialogue wheel in Chapters*

 

[Darth Roxor]

soul reaver is a platformer, who the fuck would ever compare it to derp souls

 

[Verylittlefishes]

soul reaver is a platformer, who the fuck would ever compare it to derp souls

Then Tomb Raider is a platformer.

 

[Darth Roxor]

are you gonna compare tomb raider to derp souls as well then

 

[Verylittlefishes]

are you gonna compare tomb raider to derp souls as well then

No.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Adventure games from last 10 years with challenging puzzles

=> Elsinore

https://store.steampowered.com/app/512890/Elsinore/

One of the most original adventure games I played in a while. Deserves full review in a thread once I have finished it for good, but I would say it is really, really smart.

Make sure not to talk too much to Peter Quince, he is the "I am going to tell you what to do next" helper in the game, but it is not clear until, well, he helps you a couple times.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Adventure games from last 10 years with challenging puzzles

=> Elsinore

https://store.steampowered.com/app/512890/Elsinore/

One of the most original adventure games I played in a while. Deserves full review in a thread once I have finished it for good, but I would say it is one of the smartest games I have seen in a while.

Make sure not to talk too much to Peter Quince, he is the "I am going to tell you what to do next" helper in the game, but it is not clear until, well, he helps you a couple times.

I was interested at first,but all black Shakespeare cast is too much for me.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Adventure games from last 10 years with challenging puzzles

=> Elsinore

https://store.steampowered.com/app/512890/Elsinore/

One of the most original adventure games I played in a while. Deserves full review in a thread once I have finished it for good, but I would say it is one of the smartest games I have seen in a while.

Make sure not to talk too much to Peter Quince, he is the "I am going to tell you what to do next" helper in the game, but it is not clear until, well, he helps you a couple times.

I was interested at first,but all black Shakespeare cast is too much for me.

All black cast ? What are the f*** you talking about ?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Adventure games from last 10 years with challenging puzzles

=> Elsinore

https://store.steampowered.com/app/512890/Elsinore/

One of the most original adventure games I played in a while. Deserves full review in a thread once I have finished it for good, but I would say it is one of the smartest games I have seen in a while.

Make sure not to talk too much to Peter Quince, he is the "I am going to tell you what to do next" helper in the game, but it is not clear until, well, he helps you a couple times.

I was interested at first,but all black Shakespeare cast is too much for me.

All black cast ? What are the f*** you talking about ?

Oh, and Guildenstern is a female now. Fantastic.

Actually it is more about cheap visuals that turns me away.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Adventure games from last 10 years with challenging puzzles

=> Elsinore

https://store.steampowered.com/app/512890/Elsinore/

One of the most original adventure games I played in a while. Deserves full review in a thread once I have finished it for good, but I would say it is one of the smartest games I have seen in a while.

Make sure not to talk too much to Peter Quince, he is the "I am going to tell you what to do next" helper in the game, but it is not clear until, well, he helps you a couple times.

I was interested at first,but all black Shakespeare cast is too much for me.

All black cast ? What are the f*** you talking about ?

Oh, and Guildenstern is a female now. Fantastic.

Actually it is more about cheap visuals that turns me away.

Can we roll back to your comment about a "black cast" ? Because it looks like you thought Othello is supposed to be white - him being the only non-white character in the game (that I encountered anyway). In which case let me laugh at you.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

In which case let me laugh at you.

so Black Ophelia is good for you?

 

[ValeVelKal]

In which case let me laugh at you.

so Black Ophelia is good for you?

I call that tanned Ophelia ?
I guess you see black people everywhere ^^. They are out to get you.

 

[V_K]

Yeah, that's totally inauthentic. They should have stuck to the standards of Shakespear's time and have Ophelia be a man in a dress.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Yeah, that's totally inauthentic. They should have stuck to the standards of Shakespear's time and have Ophelia be a man in a dress.

Well, we are talking about a game where Ophelia can meet Othello, soooooo...

But the first two third (I think, haven't finished of the game) is only Hamlet characters [with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gender swaps] and a few extras needed to plug some holes.

Also, I watched Buchner's "Danton's Death" with Saint Just played by a woman and she was so good in the role that I don't want to see Saint Just played as a man ever again .

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Yeah, that's totally inauthentic. They should have stuck to the standards of Shakespear's time and have Ophelia be a man in a dress.

Well, we are talking about a game where Ophelia can meet Othello, soooooo...

But the first two third (I think, haven't finished of the game) is only Hamlet characters [with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gender swaps] and a few extras needed to plug some holes.

Also, I watched Buchner's "Danton's Death" with Saint Just played by a woman and she was so good in the role that I don't want to see Saint Just played as a man ever again .

Whatever, man, I'm just really pissed at any frivolous modern reimagining of Shakespeare. Imagine your own characters, goddamit.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Yeah, that's totally inauthentic. They should have stuck to the standards of Shakespear's time and have Ophelia be a man in a dress.

Well, we are talking about a game where Ophelia can meet Othello, soooooo...

But the first two third (I think, haven't finished of the game) is only Hamlet characters [with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gender swaps] and a few extras needed to plug some holes.

Also, I watched Buchner's "Danton's Death" with Saint Just played by a woman and she was so good in the role that I don't want to see Saint Just played as a man ever again .

Whatever, man, I'm just really pissed at any frivolous modern reimagining of Shakespeare. Imagine your own characters, goddamit.

Well, as I see it, if it was not based on Shakespeare, I would be like "f**k, who is that Laertes guy again ? Is he my brother ? Or is that Hamlet ? And Eusebio is he my father or the captain of the guard ? Dude, who was the guy who got stabbed in the queen chamber, I sure hope it is not my brother or anyone I care about."

Here you pretty much directly jump into it : "Objectives : Save Polonius, Hamlet, self, everyone"

 

[V_K]

Applying the concept of historicism to Shakespearean theatre is also inauthentic, historicism wasn't invented until 19th century. Before that you have numerous plays and paintings portraying Ancient Greeks, Romans or Jews looking as people from whatever place and time the artist was from. Hamlet the play itself isn't terribly faithful to medieval Danish culture to put it very mildly. And the archetypal story that it is, it's been done to death with any combination of men, women, blacks, whites, animals, puppets, robots and it hasn't started yesterday.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Hamlet the play itself isn't terribly faithful to medieval Danish culture

cant be faithful to something that doesnt exist

 

[ValeVelKal]

Anyway, so putting aside Shakespearan theater.

You play as Ophelia. There are some 20 characters in the castle, who all have their own schedule for the whole three or four days of the "play" (from "talking to the ghost of my father" to "diner time"). The plot unfolds according to this schedule, Hamlet kills Polonius, and you commit suicide.

Spoiler

or rather, are murdered and thrown in the river so people believe it is suicide

The twist of the game is that :

Spoiler

Everytime you die, you come back at the beginning of the four days sequence, but with new pieces of information (eg : after your first death you learn that someone wants to kill you, and that Polonius sleeps with the Queen).

You can deliver ALL piece of information to ALL characters, but it is a really, really bad idea. if for instance you tell everyone you live in a time-loop you will be brought to a convent because you are crazy. Tell Hamlet that the man in the Queen's room is really Polonius, and now he wants to kill both the Queen and the King (and Polonius).

The whole point of the game is to deliver the correct information to the correct person to change the sequence of events, learn new information, die again, and give that new information to another person until you break the curse. You have a lot of way to throw spanners at the play (eg give an information, but also stop someone from meeting someone else at a critical moment, etc) but fate [and maybe a little someone] has a way to bring any change to an equally as bad, or worse outcome, so next life you are trying to either try to prevent the future bad / worse outcome, or maybe try to modify the sequence of events if a different way.

There is a limited inventory ; you don't have an inventory menu but you can for instance get the key for the room of the Queen consistently (every life) once you know where to look, which of course is an information you can get by helping some characters in some timeline.

The game starts slowly (first "life" follows the events of the play, so if you know it either you can play your Ophelia role, or you can watch what happens on the side, for instance follow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for two full days to see what they are up to, and possibly learn a few things along the way). After your first death, the game really really opens and I really felt like I was free to change the course of events with just one word at the correct moment.

Groundhog day : the game !

 

[V_K]

Hamlet the play itself isn't terribly faithful to medieval Danish culture

cant be faithful to something that doesnt exist

As if a potato would know.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Whatever, man, I'm just really pissed at any frivolous modern reimagining of Shakespeare. Imagine your own characters, goddamit.

It's almost as bad as when directors insist on giving their actors actual stage direction. WTF? IT'S NOT IN THE ACTUAL SCRIPT!!!

Obviously all true Shakespeare enthusiasts know that actors should only enter and exit, and otherwise should just stand on stage delivering their lines in perfect monotonic iambic pentameter while holding the poses of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

Also the irony of complaining about people reimagining Hamlet of all of Shakespeare's plays. You are aware that there is a strong historical record of that play being a reimagining of multiple sources?

 

[MRY]

It annoys me when these political disputes spill into the Adventure Game forum, which is generally not so afflicted. As an ardent Shakespeare fan, a few points, mostly already made above:

(1) Every Shakespeare production I've seen staged (~20?) was modernized in costuming and set design. The filmed ones I've seen are about 50/50. Many good ones (like Richard III and Coriolanus) were modernized. The non-modernized ones are set in the relevant historical era, whereas my understanding is that the norm for Shakespeare was to stage many of them in contemporary (to Shakespeare) ways.
(2) The first Shakespeare production I saw, which won me over forever, was the RSC putting on King Lear, and Paris France was played by a black actor. A dozen years later, I saw a superb King Lear staged at the Folger Library with an almost-all-black cast. While I am loath to make an appeal to authority, it seems to me that RSC and Folger are deeply in love with the Bard and his works.
(3) The question to me is whether a modernization of a Shakespearean work is done to uncover new aspects of the work and attract new audience (good!) or to undermine the play as written (bad).

I don't know what #3 means in this instance, but a lot of the attacks seem to presume that modernizing means contempt, which is not fair or accurate.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

On the whole agreed, but the pedant in me cannot let this stand... *ahem*

King Lear, and Paris was played...

I know I'm an asshole.