joshxdr

The Inner World is a hand-drawn point-and-click adventure game. The voice acting is very good, and the characters are very well written. The story is whimsical and silly and dramatic, suitable for both adults and children. The art is very cartoony and creative. The game shows hot spots when you press on the space bar, so there is no pixel hunting. The puzzles vary a lot from simple to devilishly hard. There is a very nice hint system if you get stuck. It is more fun to finish the puzzles without hints. Some of the puzzles are too hard for young children, so even though the story is child-appropriate, kids younger than 12 may get frustrated. The only drawback is that there is not enough variety in the music, some songs play over and over. I can recommend this game for fans of the point-and-click adventure genre.

Brothers is an isometric quasi-platform game with a lot of storytelling. The emphasis of the game is the storytelling and the visual art, which is stunning even on a low-end PC. The sounds are very interesting, although some of the songs get repetitive by the end. There are some puzzles which take a little thought, but nothing too difficult. Overall the game is quite easy, although engaging for the most part. As a kind of interactive storybook, this game is a great success. Even though there is no dialogue (the characters speak in gibberish) there is a lot of drama in the story. The scenery is extremely well done, and there are a lot of extra touches to give the brothers personality. As a game there are hits and misses. The dual-character-control idea is quite clever, and there are some cool things that you can do with this scheme. The potential of this concept is not fully realized, some of the same kinds of puzzles appear multiple times. There are a lot of puzzles, but most only take a minute or so of contemplation to see the answer. This is good for keeping the story moving, but it made the game somewhat easy and short. If you are into a game that is a kind of work of art, and is cleverly designed, this is the game for you. If you are looking for a hard-core challenge, this game may disappoint you.

The Fall is a 2-d point-and-click adventure game with some action/platform elements. The ambiance and story were very inventive, and the voice acting in general was surprisingly good. It works better as a story than as a game. The game is a little bit buggy for me, sometimes my guy would get stuck and I had to restart the game. Since this is an indy game this is not a huge surprise. The story is a very dark sci-fi tale in a kind of post-apocalyptic setting. The action and platforming elements were not great, the controls were just not tight enough for a good action game experience. For sci-fi adventure game fans, this game is worth a look. If you are expecting a good 2-d action game, best to move on to The Swapper, or Braid, or Fly'n, or Trine, or even Bastion.

Broken Age act I is the first half of a point-and-click adventure game. Overall I really liked this game. It has some of the best storytelling I have seen in a video game of any genre. It also has fantastic art and voice acting. The music and sounds also are very impressive. The overall production values of the game are top notch. The only drawback for me was the difficulty level. It was a little too easy, especially the Shay half of the game. This may be partly because I have played a lot of adventure games, so I have come to expect a certain difficulty level. I think this is a good adventure game for experienced player, and an excellent game for players who are new to the point-and-click adventure genre.

Dreamfall: TLJ is a 3-d third-person point and click adventure game. The game is a sequel to a classic adventure game released in 1998 called The Longest Journey. It is not necessary to play the original TLJ to play Dreamfall, but it helps a lot, since the game universe and many characters are the same. The game is very heavy on story, dialogue, and cinematics, and light on puzzles and gameplay. Story: the story is both the best and the worst I have ever seen in an adventure game. In the last two years I have completed 12 adventure games including old classics and modern indies. Dreamfall has a very complex and compelling story involving several interesting characters, political movements, and the complex game universe. It includes elements of comedy, drama, and tragedy. The story really gathers steam toward the end, resolving one storyline while introducing several more. Then, in the middle of the gathering drama and revelations, the game suddenly ends with no resolution to the fate of a dozen major characters and a dozen major plotlines. This is perhaps the most unsatisfying ending I have ever seen in a game, movie, book etc. Even if they did plan on a sequel, this was just plain terrible. I know a lot of people hated The Empire Strikes Back because of the unresolved plotlines. This is 100x worse. Gameplay: there are a few puzzles that require some thought, but overall the mental challenge of this game is on the light side for an adventure game. It is a little unfair to say that this is just an interactive movie, there are some clever puzzles. Unfortunately there are many times you are just sent on a mission to fetch a particular item and bring it to a particular place. The purpose of these brainless missions is to trigger cutscenes that move the story along. A lot of the action takes place in small rooms and tunnels. This means the camera that follows you has to zoom in and out a lot. I suppose this is a problem with any 3-d third-person game, but it can make you a bit dizzy. The interface was tweaked to be more "console friendly". This makes it a little more clunky for the PC, but not terrible. Fighting and stealth: the developers added a few fights and a few stealth sequences in the game. The fighting is flat out a waste of time. Just stand in front of your enemy and smash the mouse button and you win. Either that, or the enemy is so tough you always lose. The stealth sequences were much better, although they did not really fit in an adventure game. I like to play adventure games leisurely, with one hand on the mouse and the other hand holding a cup of coffee. I don't want action. Graphics: the graphics are dated by 2013 standards, but they are nice, especially the Dreamcore sequence. The close-up shots of faces look the worst. Lots of cutscenes, some of which are pretty cool. Sound: there seems to be a lot of interesting music and sounds, much better than the typical adventure game. Overall, from the quality of the story, to the quality of the sound and graphics, to the overall scope of the game, this had the potential to be EASILY the best adventure game of all time. Unfortunately the game was crippled by bizarre decisions by the developers: the mega-cliffhanger ending, the introduction of bad action elements, the clunky interface, the too-easy puzzles. What were they thinking?

Gemini Rue is a point-and-click adventure game with a noire-ish science fiction theme (kind of like Blade Runner). This game was developed with Adventure Game Studio, so the graphics are extremely low resolution by any standard (320 x 200). In spite of this very low standard of graphics, the game plays very well. The point-and-click mechanics all work very well, you can interact with the environment, use inventory items, climb boxes and ladders, and engage in dialogs with characters. The main appeal of Gemini Rue is the sci-fi story. It is a very ambitious and dramatic story told without a hint of sarcasm. There are times when the story really pulls you in, which is the sign **** story. There are also times were the story falls flat, where you can tell that the writer is a very ambitious college student (Josh Nuernburger). For instance, Boryokudan means "violent gang" in Japanese, and is the official, boring name that Japanese police have given the Yakuza so they sound less romantic. It seems Mr. Nuernberger decided Japanese was cool and typed "mafia" into an online translator. The way this word is pronounced by the voice actors is also bad. "Boryokudan" is very difficult for an English speaker to say correctly, and the voice actors have merely pronounced the word as it is spelled, with no attempt at approximating the Japanese pronunciation. The voice acting for the main characters is very good. Azriel (the main character) and the Director are excellent. For some of the lesser characters (the street vendor in particular) it seems that they just grabbed somebody off the street to read the lines. There is some challenge to this game in terms of figuring out what is going on and what is the logical next action to take, so it is engaging without being too difficult. There are a few puzzles in the game but none that I got stuck on. There were two instances where I got stuck and consulted a walkthrough, but this won't be necessary for most people (I tend to get impatient). There are a few action sequences involving shooting which are very easy. Overall I would say this is an excellent game for people who like point-and-click adventures and sci-fi stories. While very enjoyable, tt is not a perfect game and the graphics and production can seem a little amateurish at times.

Braid is a 2-D puzzle platform game where time control is the key game mechanic. There are a few places where quick reflexes are required, but for the most part solving the puzzles just requires figuring out the right sequence of actions. Most of the puzzles are intuitive yet difficult and require a lot of thought to solve. A few puzzles were so difficult that I had to consult a video walkthrough. The goal of the game is to collect puzzle pieces, and then assemble the puzzle on a canvas. The puzzles are artsy-fartsty paintings which are pretty decent, and it is trivial yet fun to put the puzzle together. There are also books in the game that contain pieces of a story. Just like the paintings, the developer is trying to get artsy-fartsy with this story as well. For me the story was too disjointed and "out there" for me, but this does not really detract from the game. The art and music for the game are very good. I played this game with a game controller on my PC, it is probably a bit harder to play in on a keyboard. Overall it is an excellent game that I can strongly recommend. If you like this game, you might like these 2-d puzzle games: Limbo, Vessel, The Swapper. You might also try 3-d puzzle games Portal, Portal 2, and Antichamber.

Fly'n is a 2-D platform action game. For me, it was VERY difficult. A lot of the moves required very precise motions of the analog stick and very precise timing on multiple buttons, often at the same time. I am not as young as I once was, and I am afraid that my reflexes are no longer fast enough for a game like this. For the parts that I was able to complete (the first half of the game) it was a lot of fun. The art is great, the sounds are cool, and your character is very cute. The game is fast paced and fun for the most part, my thumbs were sore after playing for a while on my controller. If you are young and have fast reflexes, this game would be a treat for people who like fast paced platform action games. If you lack mongoose-like reflexes, you may get frustrated.

The swapper is a very good 2-d puzzle platform game. It has art created from photographs of clay sculptures, so it has a claymation look to it. The puzzles revolve around making clones of yourself and swapping yourself with them. The puzzles start easy and get harder and harder. There is a science fiction story that develops as you progress in the game. The story was ok, kind of inspired by "2001" although a bit hokey at times. Some of the story is relayed to you by a narrator who is talking to you over a noisy radio. This means that it can be hard to understand the narrator, so in retrospect it would have been better to turn the subtitles on so I could understand the narrator. I am not a great puzzle-solver, so it took me a long time to solve some of the puzzles, and one puzzle I had to read a walkthrough to solve. My overall playing time was 11 hours, which includes at least two hours spent stuck on a few puzzles. This is decent playing time for an indie title and a very good deal for what I paid for. I would say this game is excellent but falls a little short of my all-time favorite puzzle-platfrom game Vessel. Some of the puzzle solving involved a lot of trial and error in addition to pure deduction. It took me a while to figure out that the right button does not stop the game, it just slows it down a lot. All it all I can strongly recommend this game.

Critter Chronicles is a point and click adventure game with a comedy theme. Most of the puzzles are inventory based, with a few minigames thrown in. None of the puzzles are too hard, although I did get stuck once on a minigame and had to consult a walkthrough. About half of the game was completed by my nine-year-old with a little help. I think this is a great game to play with your kids, they love the sophomoric humor. Some of the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny. Overall I thought this game was a little more polished and clever than the first one. I definitely recommend playing BoUT first before playing this game, since the story makes more sense this way. Overall the game was very entertaining for the story and the comedy, the puzzles keep you busy but are not all that challenging.

Limbo is a 2-d puzzle game with a horror theme. It has appeal from both artistic and game play aspects, but it is definitely NOT suitable for children. The look of the game is very stylized. The colors are black and white, with a dream-like presentation. Foreground objects are out-of-focus, giving a 3-d feel to the game. There are spooky atmospheric sounds, and some sounds that are cues to solve puzzles. The character you control is little boy who is completely in silhouette, with two shining dots to show his eyes when he is still alive. The controls are surprisingly simple, move is the analog stick, X is interact, A is jump. The actions your character takes depend on the context, if you jump toward a rope or chain, you grab it. It you jump toward a ledge, you grab the ledge and then up on the analog stick makes you climb up. From these simple mechanics come some very clever puzzles. Compared to Vessel, which has very complicated actions that use many buttons and both analog sticks, it is a credit to the developer that the puzzles were so good with such a simple control scheme. The game mechanics are not explained in-game. If you are patient, you can figure them all out yourself. I am not quite so patient so I consulted the walk-through a few times to figure some of these out. With a game of this difficulty, I think there is no shame to consult a walk-through once in a while if you get really stuck. Of course, there is satisfaction in solving a really devilish puzzle. I took at least an hour to solve a puzzle involving crates, a ramp, and an anti-gravity field. When I finally solved it there was a YES! moment. The horror theme of the game will be a big plus or a big minus depending on your taste. The puzzles are very hard, and take many unsuccessful tries before success. Usually an unsuccessful try means death. The character you control has realistic 2d rag-doll physics including simulated black-and-white gore, and many of the puzzles involve spikes, giant spinning saw blades, spider-like monster that can impale with their legs, etc. Considering that your character is always in black-and-white silhouette, it is surprisingly shocking when your little guy gets chewed up by a sawblade or impaled on a spike or squashed to jelly in a giant piston. For me this created a spooky and tense atmosphere that added to your motivation to solve the puzzle and avoid gory death. Once in a while it was a little too much and I had to look away during the obligatory death before the restart. Of course, if you are a fan of 3-d survival horror games and horror films, this game will be tame and charming by comparison. I would say that if you were grossed out by quasi-horror films like The Shining or Alien then Limbo will be too much for you. For everyone else, I would say this is an excellent game, perhaps the best 2-d puzzle platform game ever made.

Antichamber is a very good puzzle game, which uses the first-person perspective like a lot of shooter games. It is very ground-breaking in the sense that a lot of the game mechanics are completely new. So as far as originality is concerned, Antichamber scores big. Unfortunately, the actually game playing experience does not quite live up to the originality of the design. The puzzles all involve progress from one room to another. There is no storyline to speak of other than "inspirational posters" that you encounter at each puzzle. For me the satisfaction of solving the puzzles would have been greater if there was an overall story. Also, it would have been better if some of the puzzles had been of a type where you do more than just figure out how to move from point A to point B. There are a few cases where it is hard to tell if you have really solved the puzzle. If there had been a kind of running score, or a little "happy music" when you solved a puzzle, this would have enhanced the game experience. There is no tutorial at all as to the rules and mechanics of the game, you figure this all out during the game. In some cases this makes the game more fun, since figuring out the game mechanics is part of the puzzle. In other cases, it is just plain frustrating, since there is a lot of trial and error to figure out how the game works. One big problem is the color coding system. There are parts of the game that you will encounter early on that are impossible to solve before you progress in other areas. You can waste a lot of time and become very frustrated before you figure this out. I still think this is a very good game and well worth your money. I would recommend starting with a strategy guide that explains the basics of the game mechanics and the color coding system, and how to use the map in the starting area. Don't spend too much time in any one puzzle, use the esc key to go back to the starting area and choose a new puzzle (color appropriate) before spending too much time on any one puzzle.

(This review is for the single player game only) For those not familiar, Portal and Portal II are puzzle games that use the same viewpoint and controls of a first-person-shooter. Not quite as groundbreaking as the first Portal, but miles ahead in terms of graphics and gameplay. A bunch of new gameplay mechanics were added, and the mood and graphics were enhanced compared to the first Portal. The game seemed longer, and the humor was great. The comic relief character Wheatley played by Stephen Merchant was excellent. There are parts of the game that are very dark and foreboding, parts that are ridiculous and zany, and parts that are just plain weird. This is a must-play game for anyone that likes puzzles, a true classic game.

Book of Unwritten Tales is a humorous point-and-click adventure game. The visuals are pretty decent, about on par with Syberia II or TLJ:Dreamfall. Since the emphasis is on comedy, you need a sense of humor to enjoy this game. For me it was very funny, there were a lot of laugh out lout moments. It has a lot of references to nerd culture like DOD, WOW, LOR, etc. All of the puzzles are inventory based, and not very difficult. My nine-year-old was able to solve about half of the puzzles without any help from me. The game has a lot of lengthy conversations that include a lot of jokes. You will need to go of back and forth to fetch this item or that item, so the game took me a good 17 hours to finish. If you are looking for a lighthearted diversion that will occupy you for a long time, this is the game for you. If you are looking for a hard core puzzle game, look elsewhere.

Vessel is an excellent 2-D platform puzzle game. There are a few spots that require quick fingers and fast reflexes, although there are many puzzles where you just need to do the right things in the right order. Most of the puzzles are challenging without being impossible, so it is very satisfying when you solve a puzzle. I rate this game an 8 instead of a 9 because I ran into some game bugs on the final level (accelerator) that made the level unsolvable. I closed the game and restarted, and then I was able to complete the puzzle first try. I think there a few bugs like this in the game where you need to restart the game to make it work right. Still an excellent game and well worth your money.

Other than the graphics, this is one of the best adventure games I have ever played. The story is fast paced and engaging. The puzzles were challenging and logical. The music and voice acting were good. There were some new and interesting game mechanics. The first is the short-term and long-term memory system. Second is switching between the four main characters in order to solve puzzles. The character animations are good, each character has their own set of expressions. Some animations like walking around are jumpy like old 16 bit games. The biggest negative to this game is the graphics resolution, about the same as an old fashioned Sierra title from the early 90's. Since some of the puzzles and game mechanics rely on visual cues, this detracts from the overall playing experience. What is most impressive about this game is that it provides a good experience in spite of this primitive graphics resolution.

LA Noire is a strange game, in that it is a combination of 4 action games (car chase, foot chase, fist fight, gun fight) and an adventure-y detective game that is focused around interrogations. Since all these elements are woven around the same story, it really works, at first. After about five or six cases, it loses its luster somewhat. The foot chases, gun fights, and fist fights are too easy. The car chases are easy too as long as you remap your keyboard so that you are driving with two hands. The interrogations are HARD. Even if I read all your evidence carefully, and review your conversation log, and look carefully at the expressions of the suspect, I still get the answer wrong almost half the time. When you get an answer wrong, you often miss out on evidence that is necessary for later interrogations. So once you start bad, things just go downhill. The case always "solves itself" at the end no matter how bad you screw up the interrogations, and it does this in a very confusing way. It is very frustrating because you can tell you have missed out on half the story. I have replayed some of the cases using a walkthrough, and found out there were big chunks of the story that I completely missed because I botched the interrogations. I replayed a few cases hoping that I could learn to do better on the interrogations, but it hasn't helped yet. The concept of the detective part of the game is very cool, but in the end too difficult and frustrating. The action part of the game is a little too easy and a little too repetitive. The graphics are very good, the facial detail, the period music and details are great, clearly a AAA game in terms of production values. It seems like this game went straight from concept to game, without any play-testing to calibrate the gameplay to a level where it is challenging but still fun.

This was an excellent game. It requires some coordination and timing, and a lot of strategy and patience. The humor in the presentation was really good, it made me laugh out loud a few times. My only complaint is that when "flinging" the character automatically re-orients so that feet are oriented down (towards the earth). This rotation while flying for me was a little nauseating. So when I perform a fling often I would close my eyes after entering the portal. For this reason I give the game an 8 instead of a 9 or 10.

One of my all-time favorite adventure games. It improves on the first game with improved graphics and better game mechanics, especially dialogue. The graphics are no longer cutting edge as of 2012, but they are very nice to look at and complement the story well. Like the first game, this is more of an interactive story than a puzzle game. The puzzles are fun, but they are not the focus of the game. Most of the puzzles are solvable without too much difficulty. I used the hints a few times when I got stuck. An adventure game vet will not need hints too often. I can recommend this game to anyone who likes adventure games.

This is one of the real classic adventure games. It borrows a lot of the good from older classics like The Longest Journey, but applies a very unique steampunk style. The graphics are a bit dated by 2012 standards, but they are still very pretty to look at and they complement the story well. This game is an adventure first and a puzzle game second. The puzzles are fun but not very hard and not very numerous. I used hints once or twice, but that should not be necessary for most players. The game is well designed in that there are always cues to let the player know what needs to happen next. I would recommend this to anyone who likes adventure games. I don't remember a lot of bad language or adult themes, so I think this would be a good games for older children/tweens.

I liked Botanicula a lot. It tells a very cute story all with pictures and very expressive plants (?)! There were a lot of puzzles that tended toward the easy side of the spectrum. The graphics and artwork were excellent, it was beyond what I had imagined were possible using Flash. The depth of the puzzles did not match Machinarium (the best known Amanita game) but Botanicula is comparable in terms of creativity and style. This would be an excellent game for older kids who would be put off by the difficulty of Machinarium. I played this on a PC, but I would imagine an iPad would be the perfect platform for this game.

This is my favorite adventure game. The story and characters are very interesting despite the total absence of dialog! The puzzles are very tough, but also very logical. No "combine the fish-hook with the balloon of laughing gas" kind of nutty solutions. I used hints a few times, but later I regretted it because I was 75% to the solution when I gave up. The artwork is really beautiful, more so than any other game I have played. I used a version downloaded from Steam. I did not have any technical problems. I think this is a really special game that I would recommend to anyone who likes puzzles and adventure games.

I was extremely impressed by this game. It was a very fun experience even though the graphics were clearly dated (I played this in Nov 2012). The characters are great, the puzzles are fun but not too difficult. I got stuck and checked the UHS hints a few times, but 95% of the time I could solve the puzzle on my own. For me the difficulty level was perfect. It is always clear what the next problem to solve is. The game does a good job of giving the player cues as to what is important, what needs to happen next, etc. So in this way the game design was really well done. There was a good combination of humor and drama that I also like. The only downside is that is is maybe a bit too long. It took me ~30 hours (yes, I am slow) to finish. Some editing might have improved the game somewhat. The main character is a teenage girl, maybe hard for some players to identify with, although she is a likeable character. I am sure this game was a graphics phenomenon in 1999 when it was released. In 2012 the low res graphics and primitive animations are a bit distracting, so this is the main reason I give the game an 8 instead of a 9 or 10.

I have very mixed feelings about this game. There were some parts of the game that were genuinely funny, which was the goal of the developer of this comedy-based adventure game. There were some puzzles that were really fun and challenging. Unfortunately, there are some major problems in this game that made me consider abandoning it at several points. Some of the puzzles try to be cute and absurd rather than logical, which make them hard to solve other than trial and error. There are some puzzles where the cue to the player is not obvious enough. There are also parts of the game where it is not clear what you are supposed to do next. For example, in many adventure games if you talk to characters in the game, they will tend to point you toward your next task. The characters in Deponia will tell you tons of jokes and wierd stories (I clicked through a lot of it), but 90% of the dialog has nothing to do with helping you finish the game. There are some out-and-out bugs, including a minigame that was flat broken. I used a walk-through more for this game than any other I have ever played (that includes Myst, Riven, Siberia I/II, Machinarium, The Longest Journey, etc). The hero of the story was a little too detestable to be funny. The artwork, style, and creativity were all there for this to be an excellent game, but somehow the developers did not learn from other great games of this genre. The result is a disappointment.