2026 Adventure game anticipation!

So, last year I wrote an anticipation post of all the adventure games I was looking forward to in 2025. But aw shucks, that didn't quite turn out so well, with several of the titles I mentioned back then still being in production as I write this. Of course, that's game development for you!

I'm still looking forward to their eventual releases, though I'm not quite sure when those will be. So I've taken a long, hard look at the 2026 release calendar and made a list of entirely new games that we should be able to play some time in the next twelve months.

TR-49 is the new game by Jon Ingold's production company inkle. Not much is known about this title; it's all cloaked in secrecy, since the game itself is about secrecy, hidden codes, spies, etc. (well, most likely, I presume...) But after my two hour "fiasco" overplaying Overboard! I considered it time to finally play and complete an inkle game! I'm not sure I'm quite up to the task, but sometimes you just have to dive in headfirst!

Theropods by Lost Token intrigued me from the start. I mean, DINOSAURS! Gotta play that! Now, I must admit, my enthusiasm has been lowered somewhat after I found out it's a dialogue-free game. Not a requisite to have a good story, but I do enjoy talking to characters when I'm playing a game, discovering information I need to progress, learning about them and the world I'm in. I'm a book reader, what do you expect! But if Dionous Games believes in this game enough to publish it, there must be something good there. So I'll just let myself be surprised!

(Actually, Dionous Games will be publishing more interesting games this year, like Uncle Lee's Cookbook by Relatively Painless Games, Cult Vacui by LBRTY Games, Escape From 8-Bit High by Duck Made Of Wood, and of course Sleepytime Village by Lightfoot Bros Games!)

I got the chance to play The Tragedy at Deer Creek at AdventureX last November and I'm really looking forward to dive in the full game. So naturally, this is one of the games I'm looking forward to the most. The developers of Sparrowland Studios were also very appreciative of my feedback. You travel to an abandoned Alaskan settlement as a photographer, slowly uncovering the secrets of its former residents.

(Of course I played more games at AdventureX that I'm looking forward to; you can read about them on my blogpost about the event!)

I'm not sure what the current status is of The Mystery of Doomsday Valley by True Ascension or if it even will be released this year (it's planned for Q4), but it looks like the kind of traditional point 'n click adventure I truly still enjoy and adore. A remote town, a local mystery, lots of characters, a whimsical style, and a quirky female lead; just let me at it already! I just hope it'll be more of a challenge than their previous title, Champy the Useless Vampire...

After An English Haunting by Postmodern Adventures, I've been looking forward to their next title, The Dark Rites of Arkham. This time I'm going to make sure to play it in the year it's actually released, so it can count for my next top ten! I have high hopes for this one, a detective story about a ritual murder linked to the Salem witch trials, so I expect to get creeped out again!

Finally this list wouldn't be complete without mentioning Shadows of the Afterland by Aruma Studios. Their second game after Intruder in Antiquonia, I hope they've learned from that previous title and have made something more substantial, a story with appealing graphics you can really dig into. And a ghost set to investigate its own death, possessing humans to get the necessary information? That sounds like a blast!
 

I'm also still looking forward to The Adventures of Bryan Scott by Radio Silence Studios, Legends of Castile by Torrezno Entertainment and Whirlight: No Time To Trip by imaginarylab. I also hope that Ghost Haunting by Three Headed Monkey Studios will be released; I didn't play the demo at AdventureX because I was already convinced to play the full game, so fingers crossed for that one, too!

New game: "The Roottrees Are Dead"

New game!

I kept postponing playing The Roottrees Are Dead since I thought it would be a very time-consuming game. In the end, I think it took me about seven hours to complete the main story. I'm still working on the follow-up game, Roottreemania, but I'm not going to write a second blogpost about that since it's basically more of the same.

Investigation HQ

I'm a private investigator being hired by a mysterious woman (voiced by Ivy Dupler, sounding more raspier than you've ever heard her) to fill out the family tree of the Roottrees. There has been an airplane crash in which several family members died, and now the inheritance is up for grabs. There's a bit more to the story than that, but I won't spoil too much.

Still loads to discover...

People recommended me this game because I enjoyed playing Return of the Obra Dinn so much. The goal is indeed very similar: of all the members on the family tree you need to find a photograph, a name, and an occupation. Get all those right for three family members, and they get locked on the tree. You already have a list of possible names and they get crossed out when you've used them, so near the end of the game there are fewer possibilities; but then there are other aspects that complicate your quest. Roottreemania works in the same way, except that here you don't have a list of possible names, and you have to combine the first and last names yourself, which significantly raises the difficulty level.

Oh, I know how to use the internet alright!

Your client will regularly provide you with a helpful document or photograph, but all your other research will have to be done through the in-game's web browser. You will have to follow up on leads, look up names, search a library catalogue and back issues of periodicals to gather the necessary information so you can make the proper deductions on who all these Roottrees are and how they fit on the board. Next to the Obra Dinn, it made me think a bit of Spycraft: The Great Game as well, except without all the action and mini-games.

Wow, a dial-up...

The game has a very layered narrative; each family member has their own part of the story. And the user interface is completely point 'n click. Yet this is far from a traditional point 'n click adventure. There aren't any puzzles to solve (certainly nothing inventory based) except for a couple of images you find online that need to be unscrambled (I guess the game does have some silly mini-games in that regard...) It isn't really a true detective game either; at least on the Obra Dinn you could walk around and explore the scenes. All you have to do in The Roottrees Are Dead is a whole bunch of reading, and then matching up the right pieces of information. 

Some picture-related mini-games near the end of the game...

I didn't like how, near the end of the game, I suddenly had to get four correct matches instead of three, thinking the game was pretty hard enough already. I assume this was done to make it harder to brute-force your way through it. But with some perseverance and thanks to the tiered hint system pointing you to the correct piece of evidence where you are supposed to find the next link, I was able to complete the tree and answer my mysterious client's personal questions (and frankly, I had already figured out her identity at least halfway through).

Boo-yah!

I had a blast playing this game, perhaps not feeling the same level of achievement as I did hearing that piratey jingle in Obra Dinn each time I got three people right, but still very proud of myself and my ability to at least figure something out. I do hope Roottreemania will go as smoothly, though I have already discovered there seems to be a lot more text to read and with that changed system for naming the family members, I think it might take me a good while longer.

Once I've finished that part of the game, I'll go back to the 80s for a classic playthrough, one I never played before, about a nerd traveling across the United States to photograph a rock 'n roll legend.

You can find The Roottrees Are Dead (+ Roottreemania) on Steam!