The Road to AdventureX 2026 - Part One

Which famous adventure game community members will I meet this year?

The news is out! We already knew that AdventureX, THE narrative games convention, will be taking place on November 7 & 8 in the same venue as last year, the LSBU Hub building in the Elephant & Castle part of London. But this week, the speakers and panels have been announced as well. Time to put together my personal schedule for those two days!

It's Dave Gilbert, people! Waaaa!!!

First up is adventure game legend Dave Gilbert. And yes, you can call someone a legend when they get to celebrated the 20th anniversary of their development and publishing house, Wadjet Eye Games. And that's exactly what Dave will be talking about: 20 years of Wadjet Eye, from The Shivah to the upcoming Nighthawks (and perhaps even some sneak peeks on Ben Chandler's Gilt?) I haven't played all their games yet (for shame!) but this will definitely be a good incentive to fill that gaming cultural gap!

Matt Aukamp, one half of the Save Your Game podcast!

I certainly don't know every speaker or panel member, but there are still two key note speakers left to be announced. Last year the big surprise was Dominic Armato, so I'm very curious to find out which big names will show up this year. But I'll definitely end the first day listening to a live Save Your Game podcast by Matt Aukamp and Sarah Wilson (better known as PushingUpRoses). I have to make a confession, though: I'm very bad when it comes to listening to podcasts or watching online videos, so this will probably be the first episode I listen to...

Voice actor extraordinaire Sally Beaumont

On Sunday, I can't miss the talks of BAFTA Breakthrough Sally Beaumont, one of my favorite voice actors talking about her art, and Francisco González, giving a talk about remakes, reboots and remasters. I'm always surprised (in a good way!) to hear Sally in a new game I'm playing, and I try to keep up on Francisco's new Project Lion game after his amazing Rosewater last year.

Amazing storyteller Francisco González

There will be loads of other speakers at AdventureX this year: Märten Rattasepp, Aoife Gleeson, James Bore, Holly Nielsen, Jon Ingold, Jess Haskin, just to name a few. You can find the entire speaker list on the AdventureX website. But I'm definitely looking forward to the final panel on Sunday about detective/deduction games, hosted by Laura Cress and featuring developers Will Ackermann, Treasa McCabe, Robin Ward and Tim Sheinman, since I love playing those games (I have just finished Robin Ward's The Incident at Galley House) and I'm really curious to find out how they go about putting their games together.

You can find the entire schedule on the AdventureX website.

Of course there's more to AdventureX than speakers and panels. There will be loads of games to play as well! We don't know yet which titles made the selection, but once they're announced I'll be back with a list of my favorites as well!

"Solis", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "Despite offering only an hour of “gameplay,” by the time the credits rolled Solis had grown on me. The unique graphical style and unusual choice of soundtrack had come together nicely to make quite a beautiful whole, though it is certainly an acquired taste. The story pulled me in as well, and I was able to relate the information Billie discovered to the technological evolution we currently live in ourselves. But that’s why the game’s unexpected ending just when things were becoming interesting felt like such an uppercut. Perhaps the option to make different decisions provides some replay value, but for those like me who prefer single playthroughs, the experience is too linear to offer enough incentive to return for another night. I would, however, be interested to see what comes next if the story of Billie and her shady corporate overlords were to continue in a bigger, fuller installment later on."

New playthrough: "The Incident at Galley House"!

New game!

Usually I write my first playthrough post after the first hour into a game. This time, however, I was sucked in so deep, I'm already three hours along and I had a difficult time turning off The Incident at Galley House to return to my actual life. I'm extremely thankful for all donations I received through buymeacoffee.com/johnnynys for my reviews and playthrough posts, which allowed me to buy this new indie deduction game by Evil Trout, the developers of The Roottrees Are Dead!

Looks quite a lot like TR-49...

I'm an investigator sent to Galley House, where a bunch of dead bodies turned up which I have to identify. Using a technological device using coordinates made up of a timeline position, a room abbreviation and numbers referring to designated persons present in that moment, I can watch and listen to scenes from the past. Each scene holds clues to put together new coordinates for other scenes. The main goal is to find ALL scenes for ALL timeline positions to know where EACH person was at ANY given time and place.

Let's find out who these silhouettes are...

The gameplay feels like a combination of Return of the Obra Dinn, TR-49, and the board games Clue and Who is it? When watching the scenes, you can pause them whenever you want and open up an in-game notebook to jot down some leads. This way, I'm keeping a track of all coordinates (they highlight blue when they are correct and you've seen the flashbacks) and a list of characters. After three hours of playing, I think I have identified everyone and also discovered what they look like, but I'm still missing one last name. In any case, the scenes keep coming as I deduce new coordinates, and this experience is so addictive I can't wait to dive back into this mystery. Because strange things seem to be occurring in this Galley House, with three people already found dead, and I certainly don't yet have a clue what's going on exactly.

You can find the The Incident at Galley House on Steam and on itch.io!

"Elroy and the Aliens", my Nice Game Hints review!

Read my full review on Nice Game Hints!

Excerpt: "Elroy and the Aliens is one of those traditional adventure games with a conventional interface, inventory puzzles and lots of dialogues. It’s a cartoon comedy that sees no need to reinvent the genre. It was very fun to play through, with a loveable cast in a cool story. It’s a game with plenty of heart, though perhaps with too easy puzzles for some, and featuring enjoyable minigames if you like that sort of thing."

I decided to give Visionaire a try...

Please don't hate my placeholder art...

Dionous Games, the publisher that first got me into testing adventure games, have always promoted Visionaire Studio as a game engine. Recently they have succeeded in getting Visionaire available on Steam for everyone to give it a go.

A couple of years ago I worked together with Polytely Games on a jam game, The Crete Escape. I was only on board as a writer, an idea man (and, well, a small voice acting role...) but didn't work in Visionaire myself. I have written the first attempts at an adventure game, based on a short story my son wrote for a school assignment. But the lack of artistic (graphical) skills held me back.

Finally, I decided to give Visionaire a try. Testing Old Skies by Wadjet Eye Games showed me a good way to create placeholder backgrounds, so I said to myself, "At least put together something playable no matter what it looks like. You can figure out the graphical aspect later."

So I listened to myself, but even that wasn't easy. It took me 2,5 hours to get my character to move from room to room, but I still have no idea how character size works - as you can tell when my gorgeous protagonist tries to leave the kitchen again - or how you put together a simple two-click interface... 

I made a short video of my endeavours...

My respect for game developers has grown immensely, and it was big already. They must be the most patient people on the planet. How they can wrap their heads around all those settings... I salute them!

And then I'm not even talking about the graphical aspects yet! Everything that goes before implementation into Visionaire. What an immense job it is, creating a game. I already knew it was a huge undertaking, but now that it's less abstract to me, I can certainly understand how people need years to put together a couple of hours of adventure gaming.

I don't know if my little "game" will ever be completed, but I certainly have no illusions of becoming a true game developer. I might keep tinkering with it if only to get a better understanding of the process, but I'll leave the real work to the experts. I'm very happy playing their games, and writing up reviews or playthrough posts!

"The Tragedy at Deer Creek", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "Even without every question answered, the story behind The Tragedy at Deer Creek will compel you to keep slowly uncovering new layers by solving puzzles and finding documents and diaries left by the vanished nineteenth-century settlers. While the user interface feels a bit old-fashioned, and the challenge level might leave some gamers wishing for more, the presentation is beautifully bleak and pulls you immediately into the sadness of the story. I very much enjoyed my few hours spent in this ghost town, and my heart fell when I had to leave, wanting to find out more about its history and the people who once lived there, and the events that followed the tragedy that befell them. But my job there was done, and I guess some mysteries are better left buried in the past."

Unexpectedly gunned down during the "Swan Song" puzzles...

Swan Hunt...

After my first introduction with Swan Song, I completed chapter one and continued on with chapters two and three. After one hour of play, I've reached chapter four, where I have a feeling the story will take a turn.

I hate medicine that makes you feel worse...

The story of Amber, Edith and Tristan is not only told through voice recordings, but also letters and other documents and sometimes even items, like this medicine bottle. Quite peculiar are the photo frames displaying a room: there's a three-dimensional effect to them, with which you can see different corners of the room as you tilt the frame around.

A screenshot doesn't capture the beauty of this...

The puzzles themselves have become more interesting as well. They no longer limit themselves to sliding platforms. Now there are also rotating platforms, and hunters who will shoot down the wee swan whenever their color is activated. There's also a greater variety in the musical notes you can apply. I'm no musician so I don't know the correct terms, but there are beamed notes, slanted beamed notes, and tied notes where two tones are played simultaneously.

Success!!!

What I love is how you can sometimes get it right immediately, and then you feel great for having such a great sense of spatial and four-dimensional awareness, yet other times you can be convinced you got it right but fail miserably, and then need to try over and over because you just don't see it. And the beauty of it is, it never gets frustrating!

I'm very curious where the coming chapters will take me, and what kind of added difficulties I can still expect...

You can find the Swan Song on Steam and on itch.io!