Travelling the world in "Roots in the Sky" aka "The Hand of Glory 2!"

Yay, Alice is back!

After eight hours of playing Roots in the Sky: The Hand of Glory 2, what I've been looking forward to the most has finally happened. I'm sure it's not a surprise - she's on the game's cover and main menu art, after all - but of course I'm talking about the return of Alice Sharp! Oh, how much I enjoyed her presence in the first game... And now she and her computer skills are back to assist Lars once again!

How Sherlockian!

Not only will you have to tinker around with a variety of computer interfaces, Alice has also further developed her Sherlockian kinesics skills and can determine a person's hidden thoughts just by looking at them and making deductions. As she talks to people, some of her comments will trigger a reaction with them, which could be a tapping foot or an averted glance. You click on those aspects on time and when you get enough in a row, a deduction screen pop up where you can offer explanations for each of those reactions. Get them all right, and you will have a new approach to deal with that character. If you fail, no worries, you can keep trying until you get it right, so it's only your own pride at stake.

Motel rooms, always good for one clue or other...

Roots in the Sky automatically switches between Lars and Alice as the playable character when the story requires it, though later on there are puzzle situations where you can (and have to) switch manually. Each of them has their own inventory then. There were some puzzles where I resorted to taking a picture of the screen, because I had to replicate a pattern or code if you will in a different location, and I'm bad at remembering such details even for a short while.

My digital backer reward!

And of course I have been searching the game for my personal digital award as a Kickstarter backer: a newspaper article! There are several newspapers to be found in the game, each with a couple of backer stories, so I made sure to read every one of them!

And now we have left Rome, the main location of the first part, for some adventure game globetrotting in search of a killer and of course their motive behind it all. First stop is an archaeological dig in Jordan. What mysteries will we uncover this time?

You can find Roots in the Sky on Steam, GOG and itch.io!

New playthrough: "Roots in the Sky" aka "The Hand of Glory 2!"

New game!

Back in 2022, I played The Hand of Glory, a point 'n click adventure game that - to be honest - didn't look like much at first view, but once I got past the rather simple character designs I discovered it was an amazing story filled with intuitive puzzles that could definitely compete with the likes of Broken Sword and Gabriel Knight. Now, Madit Entertainment and Daring Touch are back with the sequel! I received an advanced copy since I backed it on Kickstarter, but I waited posting about it until the game was officially released. So here goes!

Nothing better than a dead body to start an adventure...

Surprise, surprise! Lars "Lazarus" Bundy is back from the dead! The main menu of Roots in the Sky offers a handy recap of the first game, and then the new game catches up with our main character in Rome five years later, in a new life, with a new identity, away from the people he loves in order to protect them from possible harm. He has become a bodyguard, but his latest client gets shot under his watch, giving us a new case to investigate. But not before we play through a little flashback scene to Bundy's childhood to show us how he became the man he is today.

No kid's room without a lot of trinkets...

After the first hour of gaming, nothing else much has happened, except for me cursing at the inventory interface. Roots in the Sky employs a one-click interface, so when you open up your inventory to choose an item, first you need to choose whether you want to actually pick up said item or examine it further. Being more used to two-button interfaces, with the left mouse button to manipulate and the right button to examine, I kept simply clicking on the object in question, and then leaving the inventory again thinking I had already selected it. I kept forgetting that extra, second click...

When in Rome...

Other than that, I totally love the game. There are many hotspots to interact with or examine, Bundy's character design has greatly improved since the first game. And this is an adventure where you really need to take your time to explore, talk to people and figure things out. It has a slow rhythm but that means you can really submerge yourself in this world, take it all in. And you have to, if you want to figure out what you are supposed to do exactly! At the same time it's a very cinematic experience, playing out as if you're watching a movie, with a captivating soundtrack and excellent voice cast.

And now it's time to really dig into this mystery!

You can find Roots in the Sky on Steam, GOG and itch.io!

New game playthrough: "Theropods"!

New game!

I don't remember being overly obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. But I was fourteen years old when Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park was turned into a movie by my then favorite director Steven Spielberg. So yeah, that's when I started throwing around their names like the next generation did with Pokémon. I don't quite recall another adventure game previously featuring dinosaurs (except when Rex takes a bite out of crime in The Dagger of Amon Ra, but he's a museum exhibit so that doesn't count). I'm quite excited, therefore, to finally be able to play Theropods, a pixel art, point 'n click game about a young primal woman hunting dinosaurs to avenge her mother, who was killed by one of the terrible beasts. Or at least, that's what I assumed the story would be about after seeing the horrific intro...

A peaceful family excursion... For now...

The game has been ten years in the making by Lost Token, and has finally been published by Dionous Games. The first thing to adjust to, is the lack of dialogue and other texts. That's partly why I never really got into the Amanita games. I love my dialogues too much, talking to other characters, getting clues and learning the story and backgrounds that way. In Theropods, it all comes down to gestures and inflections in their (made-up) language. It means listening carefully to how the main character grunts when you click on something, which can either mean "Nope" or "Perhaps..." The latter means you might need another item first, or that it's perhaps not the right time to do it yet.

A peaceful little settlement... For now...

There are suprisingly few hotspots, even though there's lots of activity and details in the locations. I found the hotspots were pretty hard to find, without labels and only a colour change in the cursor. And even then I wasn't always sure what I was looking at, or even what I had just picked up. And it's difficult using an inventory item when you don't even know what it is exactly. There's not much to the gameplay, which mostly entails figuring out the right order of where to click, with rarely more than one screen to play around in. I'm sorry to say I often resorted to using everything on everything, after employing the hotspot highlighter - which I normally never do! - just to make sure I hadn't missed anything during my thorough pixel hunt of that location. 

Caught him!

But other than that, Theropods is a fun game. The pixel art and animations are gorgeous and it's exactly their allure that made me want to play this game. I certainly wasn't disappointed in that regard. Even more astounding is the soundtrack. There's no other word to use than epic. It sounds full orchestral and when it comes to the genre or type of music it goes from The Lion King to indeed Jurassic Park, reminding me of composers like John Williams, James Horner and Alan Silvestri. The music seems to quicken and get more bombastic as you go from one isolated crisis to another. This leads to a very fast-paced story, from dinosaur hunting to a barbarian raid, from escaping T-Rex attacks to avoiding a spinosaurus underwater.

Could be Mara Whitefish's ancestor...

The game consists of six short chapters, and I played through them all in a total of two and a half hours. There are many cutscenes knitting the playable parts together. For some reason (I guess resolution related) these clips are smaller than the regular full screen, like an in-game movie screen with a stone border. You can skip these scenes, but really, why would you? They are equally gorgeous to look at. Unless you want to replay to go achievement hunting; there's supposed to be a dog hidden somewhere in the game, but I didn't find it... 

Here, fishy fishy fishy...

There's also a sci-fi element to Theropods. It's no spoiler, because it's in the game's description: an alien spacecraft crashes down on earth and its occupant gets tangled up in the entire dinosaur/barbarian situation. No, it's not Adam Driver, but it is a fun second playable character, effectively teaming up with the cave woman. There are scenes where you only play as one or the other, but there are also situations where you have to manually switch between the two to get things done. Each one has their own inventory as well but the essence of the gameplay remains the same: figure out in which order you have to let them do something so the scene progresses.

Add dramatic rain animation...

Theropods is a much shorter game than I had hoped for (especially after playing Roots in the Sky for fourteen and a half hours; those playthrough posts are coming soon!) but that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. Granted, the lack of text as some basic guidance can be frustrating if you're not used to games like that, but in the end none of the obstacles is ever that hard to overcome. Developer Lost Token has put together a fun and exciting story, a perfect alternative to watching an action-adventure movie if you have a couple of hours to spare. While pixel art, it harks back to cinematic experiences like The Land Before Time, of course because of that dinosaur theme but also in style and general atmosphere. It looks very cute from afar, but there definitely are some darker (think Negan in The Walking Dead) moments.

You can find Theropods on Steam, GOG and itch.io!

Totally lost on what to do in Legend Entertainment's "Spellcasting 201"...

My first lecture of the day...

You thought I had forgotten about Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance, didn't you? After all, I haven't played the game since late May. New adventure games kept pushing it to the background. Review assignments, dev requests, personal interest... Now, ten games later, I finally had a little time to return to Sorcerer's University of the very early 90s and see in what condition I left Ernie Eaglebeak. Last time I remember I was given an assignment to put a fake moustache on a statue on top of a tower. Problem is, the roof is too slippery and I can't reach its face. Compared to the first game, this one is a lot more open-worldish, without clear goals or clues on where to go and what to do. The writing is certainly excellent, but there's just so much of it, the game just becomes overwhelming.

My second lecture of the day... Exciting game...

So I started looking around campus for other things to do, keeping an eye on the schedule of my lessons. It has been so long since I played last, though, that I don't remember the locations of any... well... locations. The campus is a big place, and every action, including every movement, takes time. It's also a bit difficult to play with all the necessary documentation in digital format, so I keep ALT-TABbing between it and the game. And most verbs I'm using are "save" and "restore", it seems... Last time I was also able to open up the titular Sorcerer's Appliance, but I don't seem to be able to do anything inside it.

I seem to be missing some things...

So in the meantime I've attended two lectures and an alchemy class, where - after relentlessly restoring my game - I was finally able to turn a lump of iron into copper. No idea what for, to be honest. I also finally retraced my steps to the simulation lab, which transports me to a foresty location where I'm supposed to get on board a ship with a woman named Esmerelda, but it's guarded by a troll-like creature. I did find two spells there (which vanish again as soon as I leave the simulation) but no idea how to use them. I know there's a spell locked up tight in a janitor's closet, but no idea how to get my hands on it. 

So, three hours into the game, I'm still on the first day, and I've just picked up a small key one of the professors dropped. Perhaps it's time to go find a suitable lock... But I'll probably have to postpone this playthrough again in favor of some brand new adventure game releases! They just keep coming...

You can find the Spellcasting games on Steam and on GOG!

"Venice After Dark", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "I spent nine hours taking the vaporetto from one beautiful location to another and back again, encountering several eccentric yet loveable, well-voiced characters to help me uncover the mysteries of Venice After Dark. The supernatural elements kept the journey interesting, and I even had fun performing those visual and hearing tests. I wish I could have selected my own inventory items instead of Aiko automatically doing it for me, and I wasn’t fully sold on the abrupt late-game change in direction and final ending sequences. But the developers clearly put a lot of heart into this game, filling it with fun characters, a fair amount of puzzling, and a story exploring the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in our society today. Overall, I enjoyed my time in this cartoony version of Venice, so much so that it succeeded in rekindling my desire to visit the city myself one day."

"Lost On Cow Island", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "While at first I noticed only the many, many flaws and gruelling design decisions in Lost on Cow Island, pretty soon its virtues grabbed me. Between the gorgeous backgrounds, the fitting voices, and searching through dark corners with that candle, I found myself having fun almost in spite of the puzzles’ attempt to thwart my progress. Even if not everything makes sense or fits well together when you stop and think about it, that familiar old-school adventure game feel is definitely there. There is a lot to do and many inventory items to collect, with plenty of funny conversations in between. Actually using those items in the “correct” way, however, isn’t so much a matter of pushing your brain cells to the limit as resorting to puzzle experimentation until something randomly works. That too can be entertaining for a while, but in tossing out the last forty years of genre evolution, the game might just leave you twitching and disoriented like a mad cow yourself."

The Road to AdventureX 2026 - Part Two

And here it is: after the announcement of speakers and panels, the official selection of the games exhibited at AdventureX 2026 in London on November 7 and 8 has been released as well! There are thirty-two games in total. I'm not going to go over them all, but I will highlight six games I have a personal interest in, in simple, alphabetical order.

Crime or Punishment by Scale Issue has a very old school look, which reminds me of The Colonel's Bequest and Cruise for a Corpse, combined with the idea behind Overboard! This time, you are the cleanup crew and you need to cover up the murderers' crimes. There's still an investigative aspect to it as if you were the detective, but instead of collecting evidence, you need to tamper with it. This game seems like a fine example of how much fun it can be playing the bad guy.

Deduction games galore these days, and Death at Fleming Manor by Superthumb puts another spin on the detective genre by having you fill out the death certificates. Who are these corpses, and how did they die? In stylish comic book art, you investigate scenes, question suspects, and fill in the details in Golden Idol fashion. Not sure if this is the game to play in a bustling exhibition hall, but I'll definitely give it a try!

I simply can't omit Less Miserables by College Fun Games in this overview. I played the demo a while back and while that version was still a little rough around the edges, it certainly has the potential to win over adventure gamers' hearts. It's fun to play, has great artwork, and features an adorable sidekick. This satirical take on the novel/musical/film probably won't revolutionize the genre, but should get everything right when it comes to being a traditional point 'n click adventure game.

I love myself a library game! The Restricted Index by Ursa Minus therefore looks right up my aisle. Not only do you have to give people the books they want, there's also a deeper mystery involving the disappearance of the previous librarian, leading to codes to crack and secrets to find, all under a strict government regime you can help topple over. The first part sounds fun, the second part sounds hard, and I'm a bit wary of the violent themes of terrorism and capital punishment, but since I'm married to a librarian, I just have to check out this game.

Stop the Press! by Nebuchadnezzar Games has a Papers, Please vibe, but in a 1930s South-American setting. People walk up to you with stories, you decide what to print and which headline to use. You can earn money trying to sell papers, you can choose a political faction and only write good stuff about them, or become a free press and release dirt on all of them. There’s a business aspect as well: how many copies to print, how many deliveries to make, how many journalists to hire… There’s a lot going on here, many stories, many characters. There’s a lot of strategy involved, but I don’t think it’s necessary to be very good at that aspect to still enjoy the narrative to unfold depending on your choices.

Two Realms - Whispers from the Rift by MOD42 Studio was already on my wishlist. Point 'n click, pixel art, a horror drama in a medieval world; this is a no nonsense, traditional style adventure game with an easy user interface. I'm definitely playing the full game when it comes out, so I didn't bother with the demo before, but AdventureX is the place to finally sit down and check it out!


Other games I might try out if time allows are As Long As You're Here, Dance Dance Detective and From Ruins. 

Check out the complete selection on the AdventureX website. Tickets go on sale on August 12th!