New game: "Chants of Sennaar" playthrough

New game!

I've started playing Chants of Sennaar and I'm 3 hours into it!

Chants of Sennaar came in second last year in Adventure Game Hotspot's Best Games of 2023 list. So of course, I had to play it, even moreso because the review totally appealed to me. A game where you have to translate foreign languages? Give it!

The first three translations are easy, but it sure gets harder!

It's totally mouse-controlled, so definitely point-and-click! 😉 You solve puzzles, talk to people, open doors, and sometimes even use inventory items. So yeah, point-and-click.

Sennaar refers to the region where once stood the fabled tower of Babel. Your unknown main character suddenly shows up at the bottom and needs to make their way to the top, solving puzzles to get past doors but also learning the languages of the different people inhabiting the tower. 

Who am I? And does it matter?

The lower level is inhabited by a people calling themselves "devotees". Basically they're looking for their god, and they believe it recides on the upper levels. However, the gates are barred by the people living on the next level, the "warriors" who seem to want to protect their god (similar god? different god?) from what I guess they consider infidels or even monsters.

Waterway puzzles, with an unintelligble manual... Let me at it!

After three hours I found a backdoor into the warriors' realm, having succesfully translated the entire language of the devotees meanwhile! Looking forward to explore this next level. I have a feeling it's going to be a little bit more dangerous...

New game: "Powers in the basement" playthrough

New game!

I played through Powers in the Basement and finished it in one hour and fifteen minutes!

This game is totally free (I played it on Steam), so if you're a fan of the Lucasfilm/-Arts classics and got some time to spare, do look it up!

You play is Will Phail, who is looking for his heavy metal T-shirt to go to a concert. You'll have to solve plenty of inventory puzzles - after ten minutes I had collected 25 items, and no idea what to do with them!

Pretty orderly compared to my son's room...

It uses the standard SCUMM-like interface with nine verbs on the left and inventory on the right. What I like best are the unique replies. Each hotspot has its own description, and never once does it feel like simple filling. There's so much detail in the backgrounds of both the main character and the place he lives, that it makes for a very believable world.

I miss my own grandparents...

After you've located your precious shirt, you need to get your grandmother to iron it. Problem is, there's no electricity. There's something wrong with the power in the basement, the generator is out, so Will will have to fix it.

I don't trust that cat...

There are only five locations to explore, but I still found myself traipsing back and forth, looking for places to use all my inventory items on. It's not all THAT logical, perhaps, and turns out some places I had to inspect even further, while at first they didn't seem to give any results.

Couple of easter eggs to be found here...

There's also one puzzle requiring some simple mathematics, but turns out you have to solve it in a different way still, with no indication whatsoever that you have to do it that way. You need to make some kind of potion, which needs a set amount of ingredients, and I was looking for a way to cut my ingredients in half so it would fit the recipe, but turns out I had to multiply everything instead, which doesn't make any sense to me to be honest. Then again, I never was much good at math...

Succes!!!

Other than that, it's a fun little game in the style of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Secret of Monkey Island. I'm very curious to see what these developers will do next!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2520280/Powers_in_the_Basement/

New game: "Papers, Please" playthrough

New game!

I've finally started a playthrough of Lucas Pope's Papers, Please! and I'm 1 hour into it! I already loved the guy after playing Return of the Obra Dinn, and I've had this other game in my library for a while but it was Cressup's recent interview with the man that finally pushed me into trying it out.

A neighbor of Krakozhia?

You play as a border controller for the communist state of Arstotzka. Everybody who wants in, has to pass your checkpoint. Each day, you get new instructions on who is allowed in or not. You need to check documents, find discrepancies, interrogate people, allow them in or deny them access with big green and red stamps. You get paid for the amount of people you see, and you need that money to pay for rent, food, heat and medicine for yourself and your family members.  

To deny or to approve, that's the question...

I'm 1 hour into the game, but I must admit I restarted after day 5 because my son died. IN THE GAME I MEAN!!! Not my own son! Jesus... Okay, so he died, but I didn't see it coming, because I interpreted the end-of-day money management system wrong and I thought I had to click the stuff I wanted to buy. Turns out, clicking them makes you NOT buy them, so my house was freezing, everybody was hungry and nobody got cured.

Everybody is OK, so let's save up a little...

So yeah, my bad...

Anyways, I'm playing the game trying to follow all the rules. Oh, and it's so much fun denying people entry! It's actually quite addictive checking their documents for discrepancies. There are also so many elements that can be forged, or that don't fit that day's rules of admission. You're also working against the clock: you want to check as many people as you can so you can earn money, but you don't want to work too fast and miss something.

"Midnight Margo", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot.

Excerpt: Midnight Margo is a tale about mental health, recovering from depression, turning your life back around and pushing your limits. As grim as that might sound, the opposite is actually true as the game is a joy to play. I laughed, and though I didn’t really cry, I did sympathize not only with Margo herself but the other characters as well. It’s a story that feels like it takes place in the real world, and these people could be your friends or neighbors. The role-playing elements are fun to figure out, and sometimes a bit frustrating to get wrong, but that just proves how engaging the story is. I really wanted to fulfill each and every quest, to help those people and help Margo in turn. Because in this world, it isn’t enough to be on your own, closing yourself off. You have to take control of your life and open yourself up to others, using whatever coping mechanisms work best for you. If that means turning it all into a big game that’s as fun as it is here, everyone should play!

 

Finished "Abscission" in 3 hours!

Hope I don't need to get a tattoo myself...

I finished Abscission in 3 hours and I must say, I'm rather sorry it was so short!

Well, there were moments where it felt a bit long. There's a lot of exposition near the end, some long cut-scenes that are certainly beautiful to look at in their graphic novel style, but when you paste a huge block of text over them it does away with that effect a bit.

Is this guy on Tramadol or something?

But when it comes to the story I was certainly intrigued. It also felt like there are multiple ways to get past obstacles. You also have to make some decisions. There's one about 2/3 in, another one a little bit later, and a final decision to get one of four possible endings there. I only played through the game once, so I don't know if the first two decisions lead to a 5th and 6th ending, though I assume it's more of game-over screen then. Truth is, I never go back to do things differently in games with multiple endings, they're just not really my thing.

Sorry, dude, I'm not into bondage...

I was stuck only once, because the hotspot to enter an alleyway was a bit small and I missed it. I liked how clues were added to your inventory, and you had to combine those "items" to make deductions so you would know which location to visit next, though it was a bit unintuitive to do that because other adventure games often make those deductions automatically once you find those clues or items. I also liked how you had to look up some information on your office computer, even though you only had to do that for one instance. I would've liked it if we had to make more use of that, but then again other gamers might find that boring, lol!

Let's call it water under the bridge, a'right?

The game offers some great close-up graphics. You play as a detective, but it truly is a horror game, so be prepared to see plenty of blood and some weird things. I would've wanted to delve even deeper into it all. The story went a little fast in places. I'm definitely curious to see what the developer can come up with next.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2392160/Abscission/

New game: "Abscission" playthrough

New game!

I've started playing Abscission, created by Jacob Lowry of Beyond Booleans, and I'm 1 hour into it! I must admit though, since I'm not a native-English speaker, I had to look up the meaning of the title and it's a word used when an organism sheds its parts, like when a tree loses its leaves, or when an animal sheds a claw.

It's a dark point-and-click detective game with a supernatural edge to it, though I haven't yet uncovered what the deal is exactly. There's been a murder in the town of Ashfield, and detective Luna calls in the help of detective Will Stanhope, whom I'm playing as. Several years ago they worked together on another murder case, but ever since Stanhope has been working in Vice, having turned his back on Homicide. Luna has called him back now because she thinks there are some similarities to that old case.

Cool graphic novel style cutscenes.

From the start, the film noir style drips off this game. The game isn't voiced but there's an excellent soundtrack and good sound effects as well. But it's that first person narrator, Stanhope himself, who performs as the typical dark and brooding P.I. commenting on his own life.

The four approaches during conversations

Abscission is a typical point-and-click: investigate the scenes, pick up interesting objects, talk to other characters to follow up on leads... It's the conversations that get a bit tricky: while talking to people, you can choose four different approaches, and if you pick the wrong one, you probably miss out on an easy solution for a certain puzzle, though I'm not far enough into the game to really tell what kind of consequences this has. Only that I failed to get a piece of information from one source, but of course I don't know what, but I did receive a spare key to an apartment room from someone else, so I don't know how I would've gotten in there otherwise...

I don't think that's all just paint...

So far I haven't encountered any real puzzles other than gathering the necessary information to get new locations on the city map. Currently I'm following up on the ex-boyfriend lead, but I doubt it'll be that simple. There are details to the murder that complicate matters, the coroner is a bit confused by the evidence he finds, so we're definitely dealing with something new here.

Something's rotten in the town of Ashfield...

Now it's time to search the ex-boyfriend's apartment. Who knows what I'll find?!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2392160/Abscission/

I finished my "Police Quest II: The Vengeance" replay in 2,5 hours!

I don't think he's presenting the safety instructions...

SPOILER WARNING!

Last time, I left Sonny and Keith at the Lytton airport right before they boarded the plane to Steelton in an attempt to catch up with escaped convict Jesse Bains, the Death Angel from the first game, working his way down a hit list of people who testified against him. He already kidnapped Sonny's girlfriend Marie, and now he's got his eyes on one Donald Colby (I didn't realize at first, but that's the guy Laura and I arrested at Bert's Park back in the first game, where he was dealing drugs).

Should I cut the red wire, or the blue one?

My last playing session of this replay of Police Quest II: The Vengeance confronts me with something I encountered before in this game, namely having to wait and sit around for something to happen. I'm just sitting in my seat, looking out the window, watching the stewardess, trying to talk to Keith, with nothing useful to do. But when something finally happens, all hell breaks loose. The plane is hijacked, I have to shoot the bad guys and then disarm a bomb. I remember the plane blowing up a couple of times when I first played this game, but for this replay I already knew where to look and how to go about it.

Wouldn't mind spending some time in this park. It looks lovely.

Once the plane lands in Steelton, we're taken to the police station for an update on the Bains situation, and then to a park where he was last sighted. Keith takes off again on his own, as he's wont to do. One of these days I swear I'll catch him taking a nap somewhere while I'm doing all the hard work!

The Sewers of a Thousand Deaths

I find my way into the sewer system and what is easily the hardest part of the replay. You have to walk across small ledges and bridges, I fall in a couple of times of course, and when I pass a pipe a huge gush of water blows me down at that exact moment. I walk into a pocket of methane gas and I'm not fast enough to walk back out of it. And I'm sure if I walk around the wrong corner I'll be eaten by a crocodile or some mutant rats or something. It's a bit of a maze down there...

Kissy, kissy, again!

But everything turns out alright, after being shot by Bains a couple of times when Marie was too loud and alerted him, I didn't have enough cover, or didn't shoot fast enough. I finally free Marie and we get out of there ASAP! I thought this final part would take me longer, and indeed I died several times, but I guess I still remembered enough to make quick work of this replay. I finished the game with a final score of 263 points out of a total 300. I also remember there was a time when someone was allegedly working on a remake of this game, in the similar style of the first game's remake, posting a couple of screenshots of the new background art, but then the project died apparently.

For my next classic playthrough I was going to go with King's Quest V: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, which I once started but quit when I died in a tavern after 30 minutes or so, so I really want to give this another guy, but then someone started encouraging me to play through the Space Quest series as well, of which I only ever played the first game because I'm not that into the sci-fi theme, but yeah, perhaps I should revisit that series as well... I don't know yet!

One year of reviews!!!

Today marks the one year anniversary of my first review being published on the Adventure Game Hotspot website!

(It was Know by heart... if you're interested...)

I'm so happy that after roughly 30 years of playing adventure games, I was able to sneak my way into this community, first by writing about my playthroughs on social media (thank you for inspiring me, Jeremy Hall!), then by testing games often made by solo devs (thank you for those first opportunities, Dionous Games & Tall Story Games!), then by officially reviewing them (thanks for the push in the back, Tom Hardwidge! And of course thank you both, Jack Allin and Joshua Cleveland for opening your door for me!)

I've met loads of great people these past couple of years, learned lots about game development as well, and my editor is still trying to teach me what a good review should encompass. The hardest part of the job is to put down in writing what it is about a game that makes you like or dislike it, because usually that's such a gut feeling. Like falling in love; sometimes it just doesn't make sense...

I'm currently working on my 30th review for AGH, with 28 already published on their site and linked to my very own author page!

In case you missed them, here's the list of games I played and reviewed these past twelve months (in alphabetical order):

Afterdream

Between Horizons

Blue Wednesday

Cats And The Other Lives

Champy The Useless Vampire

Chronique Des Silencieux 

Conrad Stevenson's Paranormal P.I.

Dordogne

Dreams In The Witch House

Enypnion ReDreamed

Incubus: A Ghost-hunter's Tale 

INDIKA 

Killer Frequency

Know By Heart...

The Legend Of Skye

The Mildew Children

Murder On The Orient Express 

Mythargia

The Night Is Grey

Reveil 

The Safe Place

Sanya

This Bed We Made 

Torn Away 

Twilight Oracle 

Verne: The Shape Of Fantasy

Vlad Circus: Descend Into Madness

The Wreck

Two hours into "Police Quest II: The Vengeance" and I'm a bit worried

Kissy, kissy!

I'm two hours into my replay of Police Quest II: The Vengeance and a lot has happened since last time. Remember: SPOILER WARNINGS!!!

Bains lured me to the airport and made me believe he was on a plane to Houston, but he only bought the tickets, he never boarded, that rascal! I did lose lots of time at the airport because I couldn't come up with the right phrasing in the text parser to ask where he went (apparently there's a list...) So back to the office we went, where my girlfriend Marie left me a message to call her. After searching for her phone number along time (I thought her surname was Wilkins but turns out in this game it's Wilkans...) she wanted to have dinner, so of course we went, got me some nice smooching, and the day ended. The next morning we got a report of a dead body found at an industrial site. The poor guy was shot in the head and stuffed in the trunk of a car. Turns out it was someone who testified in the Bains trial, as did Sonny and Marie themselves. I found an envelop with an address in the trunk, together with a death threat aimed at yours truly. So of course we drive to that address to see what's what.

I'm so glad there's no autopsy mini-game or anything like that...

Turns out Bains set up a trap at an inn, with a shotgun firing automatically when someone opened the door. I was lucky and Sonny could fling himself to the side just in time. After searching the room I find his hit list and indeed, but Marie and Sonny are on there, together with some other guys, and I even find the business card of one of them, Donald Colby. I'm starting to get a bit worried about Marie by now, so I head over to her home but the place has been ransacked, there are signs of a struggle, and Marie is nowhere to be found. There's even a fake note on the door that doesn't like anything like her handwriting.

Probably not the kind of action that manager is used to seeing at his place...

We return to the office and I call the number on that business card I found. Colby isn't too worried though, stating he's in the witness protection program in the city of Steelton. Just to make sure, I call the local cops there and they plan to tap his phone, just in case. I'm running around a bit lost, with nothing else to do than worry about Marie, so finally I say to hell with it, and I drive back to the airport to get me a flight to Steelton and talk to Colby personally.

Like I said before, this is replay, so I'm moving through the game a lot faster than a first-timer. I know what's coming next, so one more gaming session should wrap things up...

"The Mildew Children", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot.

Excerpt: Though The Mildew Children won’t pose much challenge for experienced adventure gamers, its lovely visuals and intriguing story did keep me glued to the screen. It deals with interesting themes like social acceptance, life after death, religious doctrine, loyalty to friends and family, and lots more. I wasn’t a big fan of the different dialogue challenges initially, but their utilization during key scenes really does wonders to heighten tension. And tension there definitely is, not only from the world being in jeopardy of having all life sucked out of it, but also between the different characters with opposing belief systems. I didn’t appreciate being punished with a lesser ending for something I didn’t even realize I had done much earlier, but that’s all part of the many choices and branching paths that make the game highly replayable. More variety and an improved balance between story and gameplay elements would have inspired me to go back and pursue a better ending right away, but instead I need a break from tiring walks around the village and exhausting conversations with its inhabitants before I do. Still, I know there’s more left to discover, and it’s that impressive narrative depth and richness that will surely appeal to fans of choice-driven adventures, whether a young adult or not.

Classic time: "Police Quest II: The Vengeance" playthrough

New game!

I've started my replay of Police Quest II: The Vengeance, and I'm 1 hour into it!

It's been a year since officer Sonny Bonds helped take down a notorious drug trafficker and murderer known as The Death Angel. The city of Lytton has returned to its old days of relative peace and quiet. Sonny remains at the job steadfastly, coming in every morning to take on the bad guys, chatting with his colleagues, and keeping his target practice scores up to snuff.

Let me try to aim for that headshot...

One of those mornings, however, the station is in an uproar when the news comes that Jessie Bains, The Death Angel, has escaped from jail. Sonny and his colleague Keith jump into their car to investigate. During this first hour of my playthrough I learned that Bains is holding a jailer hostage and that he took the poor man's car; that he then switched cars at a local mall parking lot; that he got rid of the jailer at Cotton Cove Park; and that he vamoosed to the airport.

Too bad you can't drive yourself in this game...

Police Quest II isn't a point 'n click adventure game but instead uses the text parser the early Sierra games were famous for. If you haven't played a text parser game (in a while), it takes some getting used to (again). You can't simply click and look at something you see; you need to describe the hotspot and hope it fits the programmers' descriptions, like you would in a text adventure (without graphics). My strategy is to first look around in a new environment. Normally you then get a list of all points of interest. Then you can look at those in detail and thus find items or information. Though often the game relies on general knowledge. To give a simple example: the game starts with Sonny sitting in his car in the police station's parking lot. Looking around will only tell you he's in that car, it won't give a description of the interior. So you have to realize the car has a glove box, and that there might be something important in there...

Ooh, a witness!

Walking around can be a bit clunky, especially when you have to maneuver around obstacles. At one point I had to restore my game because I had wandered into a phone booth (do young gamers today still know what that is, a phone booth?), but my partner Keith was following me and effectively blocking the way when I wanted to get back out, and the silly git just didn't move out of the way.

Something seriously spooked that jogger...

It's a pretty fast-paced game. At the start I was wandering around the police station for a while because I didn't have anything to do, just basically waiting for that call to come in about the escape. Then the ball gets rolling at quite the brisk pace. You drive from one location to another, getting call after call through dispatch whenever you try to return to the station thinking you've finished. Then you encounter what I guess could be called an action sequence at the park, where it's very possible to die in more ways than one.

This creepy scene is basically a pixel hunt...

These old Sierra games work with a point system, awarding you when you've done something right. Doing the necessary actions to "win" the game amounts to a huge percentage of the total points, but there are also hidden achievements, so to speak, which don't really matter in the big picture or the further course of the game but awards you those final points you might otherwise be missing in the end. I'm never playing to get a perfect score, anyway, just going through the general story...

A free space so close to the entrance? No way!

I left the game after one hour of playing and being stuck at the airport. I discovered Bains got rid of the gun he took off the jailer, then bought a ticket, but I don't know where to and I'm having some trouble handling the text parser to ask the right questions, it seems. At least I can't get anyone to tell me what ticket he bought exactly, so I'm not really sure what it is I'm missing, or what I have to do next. But so far I feel like this game is more worthy of the subtitle In Pursuit of the Death Angel than the first game was. I feel like I'm always going to be two steps behind this guy for a long time...