New playthrough: "The Monitors"

 

New game!

Did you ever watch one of those 80s comedy movies again, and immediately think they would never be able to get away with that type of humor in this day and age? Well, that's the feeling I had with The Monitors. Norwegian developer Old Man Games have released the English version of their five hour point 'n click adventure game Overvåkerne. They were so kind as to offer me a free Steam key, but it felt like a poisoned gift because I ended up playing through a game I doubt very much I would have ever played otherwise... 

Some innocent office flirting...

You play as Henriksen, an office employee sending out quite the Walter White vibe, who has endured years of bullying and being taken advantage of by his co-workers, while his wife Else keeps calling him from home to accuse him of postponing one household task or other. One day, in true Falling Down style (except for the baseball bat and Uzi), Henriksen cracks and plots revenge. When an anonymous person in the restrooms also gives him a set of ear buds with which he can eavesdrop on the three surveillance guards in the security room commenting on everything that goes on in the building, he starts his mission with a lust for blood and a clear disregard for his personal well-being and self-respect.

The handy task list...

A handy notebook always keeps you up to date of your quests. Most of the puzzles are very easy to complete and usually don't take much more than simply clicking on the available hotspots or using the found inventory items. Henriksen will shake his head whenever you try something that won't do anything, limiting the possibilities and making it very easy to figure out what you have to do. There are a couple of more interesting puzzles, though, like figuring out how to get a piano from the third floor to the first floor by using the ventilation system to influence the people present, and to raise the noise level in a room by figuring out how to upset everybody gathered there in a very basic deduction game style.

Fuse box, check. Tool chest, check. Screwed vent grid, check...

So yes, there are some things to love in this game, if the basic graphic style doesn't bother you. There are a couple of other elements about The Monitors that didn't sit well with me, however, even though the game actually warns you of them beforehand. The first isn't all too bad, if you don't have sensitive ears when it comes to the English language: when you start a new game from the main menu, Kato, the main surveillance guard, asks you if you really want to play the game in English. If you persist, he will indulge you but once more with the warning that you'll play the game in English... ish. After all, it's one of the Norwegian developers himself who does all of the voices.

My facial expression throughout most of the game...

I must admit, after a while the voices grow on you. Henriksen himself isn't voiced, but the show stealers are the three security guards. Kato has a singsong lilt befitting his insecure personality. Maybritt sounds like a chainsmoking old lady. Rune's voice is higher-pitched referencing their doubts about their gender identity. There are many extra characters, some of which are voiced, others only mumble a bit. I have to be honest: after the first five minutes of gaming, I went back searching for a way to choose the original Norwegian voices with English subtitling, but I wasn't able to find that option. Neither was there an option to turn off the voices completely. Since I still wanted to play the game with music and sound effects, I endured those heavily accented voices and like I said, after a while it stopped bothering me.

One of the more innocent gags...

The other element that bothered me more, however, has to do with the type of humor but mostly with the adult themes. While much of the humor is of the poop, pee and barf variety, there's a lot of adult tinted "humor" as well; if you can really call it that. There are many gratuitous and explicit visuals, some quite disturbing, and even one scene that totally made me lose my respect for the main character. Thankfully we are fully warned about this on the game's Steam page. (I can't even mention what happens in the game, because doing so actually blocks this post on the socials...) This game is indeed very much intended for an adult audience, so please, keep your children away from this! I won't go too much into detail (and believe me, I could, because there are plenty of disturbing visuals here!) but it's bad, even in this rough, cartoon pixel art style... There are many depictions of certain female body parts, a weird hallucination of a human/animal hybrid, a strange hole in the wall of a toilet booth, sounds of a certain exclusive "group activity" you'd rather not be a part of...  All stuff you normally only encounter if you accidentally google the wrong words... Seriously, why did I actually play this game?

Handy-Harold! Love him!

Thankfully all that explicit material was balanced by in my opinion the funniest character in The Monitors, one that doesn't even have any lines (and perhaps it's even because of that): Handy-Harold! This guy shows up all over the place in all kinds of outfits: a handyman, a waiter, a choir boy, a nursery maid, a butler, perhaps a dozen different versions in total. This guy is great comedy material and my opinion the best part of the game. It was always amazing to see him pop up in a new environment and in a new get-up.

Don't ask...

There's lots of silliness and surreal weirdness in this game. If you like slapstick spoof movies like Hot Shots, Airplane!, The Naked Gun, or movies filled with adult content like Revenge of the Nerds and Animal House, you will definitely like this game as well. And while I could crack a smile at a lot of the jokes, I drew the line when the game kept taking the piss out of a character with a heavily exaggerated form of urinary incontinence. This spiked the meter from cheeky comedy into just plain nasty and gross territory for me. Coupled with all the adult imagery, this makes The Monitors a tough game to like, for me. While I certainly enjoyed the puzzles and some of the humor, I just don't think I was the intended audience for this game. But perhaps you are? 

You can find the The Monitors on Steam (if you still want to, that is)!

"The Incident at Galley House" has been contained!

So posh...

What kind of freaky Jordan Peele movie is The Incident at Galley House turning out to be?! After playing through the first three hours, I slowly started to realise what was going on in this story. I was able to figure out most scenes fairly easily. Sometimes there was some guesswork and trial and error involved, though never so much as to become frustrating. I'm absolutely loving this game, and it has a good chance to stealing the #2 spot in this year's top ten.

Not as complicated as it looks...

Yet there are some things that bother me. The backgrounds, the actual rooms of Galley House, and the character avatars as well, are too static. You hear these people opening doors, rummaging through drawers, moving furniture, handling items... However, you never actually see any of that interaction. The characters just stand there and pop up in different places in the rooms a bit. Also, whenever they sit or lie down, the avatars you chose for them turn back into empty silhouettes, with a little picture of their face in a kind of thought balloon hovering above them. Even when they die, they just keep standing there seemingly without a worry in the world while every one else freaks out. I guess it was too much to have all those different positions for all the possible avatars drawn up. 

Vworp-vworp-vworp...

While there's no rewarding jingle when you get a series of deductions right, as was the case in similar games like Obra Dinn and Roottrees, the reward here is the distortion effect, transporting you to a scene in the past. whenever you get a coordinate correct. That always felt so good after a series of error buzzes from the machine each time you try a combination.

Lots of bedrooms in this house...

I finished the game in a little under 11 hours. But I can't really write a playthrough post without spoiling too much. So I won't and leave it at saying that I thought I would be done after about 9 hours, only for the game to still have some surprises left! Now I'm sad it's over, and - same as with Obra Dinn - I wish the developers would make a new game, a new story, with this same gameplay mechanic because it was so much fun! 

You can find the The Incident at Galley House on Steam!

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!

"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!

Shout out for my least viewed review posts

Once in a while I check the popularity of the games I have reviewed on this blog. Here are a couple of games I feel deserve a bit more attention.

The Legend of Skye (2024 - Point & Pixel Adventures)

The SCUMM-style interface and some poorly clued objectives might not appeal to modern players used to easier games, but for old-school genre fans, The Legend of Skye provides a wonderful dose of nostalgia, transporting you back to the golden days of point-and-click classics. 

Enypnion Redreamed (2023 - Sinking Sheep)

Experienced adventurers can probably cruise through Enypnion ReDreamed in their sleep, though some of the logic puzzles might be responsible for a few nightmares. Overall, though, it’s a short but charming little journey through the subconscious that may just remind you of your own childhood nighttime fantasies.
 

This Bed We Made (2023 - Lowbirth Games)

This Bed We Made sacrifices some snooping freedom and player challenge for a more linear narrative, but there are plenty of thrilling discoveries to unpack in this compelling Hitchcockian mystery.   

INDIKA (2024 - Odd Meter)

INDIKA is an eclectic mix of graphic styles and gameplay about a young nineteenth-century Russian nun that will keep you glued to your seat with its challenging but mature reflection on faith and human morality. 

Sanya (2024 - helpnode) 

Sanya’s very simple gameplay won’t challenge anyone over the age of its young protagonist, but even for adults, this quaint, lovely side-scrolling adventure is like a nostalgic trip back to childhood.  

Twilight Oracle (2024 - Cosmic Void) 

Twilight Oracle is a nostalgic ride through a zany fantasy world, though even its witty banter can’t hide the fact it’s a short story with a simple plot only good for a single afternoon’s fun.

New game: "Swan Song" playthrough!

New game!

Swan Song is a very different game than what I usually play. It's not actually adventurey. It does have a narrative, but its focus lies primarily on the puzzle element. Now, I'm not that big on puzzle games, but there's a very good reason for me playing this one. The developer, Business Goose Studios, are Belgian, and their offices are only a half hour drive from my home. There aren't many game developers I can say that of! Their previous game, the Persian art based 30 Birds, was more of an adventure game, so I should really check that one out as well.

Help the swan cross the box.

In Swan Song, the objective is to help a little swan cross a music box. There are platforms it can jump on, but it's your job to make sure that the platforms are actually there when the cute little birdie makes it move. By placing musical notes on the music sheet, you can move the platforms around in time with the music's beat. Of course, at the start these puzzles are quite simply, though my swan did plummet to its death occassionally when I placed the notes one beat too early or too late on the sheet. Don't know if that says more about my puzzling skills, or about my sense of rhythm... The puzzles do get a lot trickier over time, though!

What's this? A story?

But it's not all puzzling in Swan Song. The gameplay truly limits itself to that, but in between the puzzles, a story unfolds as well, in several different ways. This music box, a gift from a father to a daughter is kind of magic. It already rearranges itself into a new puzzle every time it closes. But sometimes you will also find storytelling items inside. I haven't gotten all that far yet, but so far I discovered a letter from that father to his daughter, a cassette tape of a girl crying in her room when her father finds her, and I'm sure there's lots of other stuff to find.

Tristan has some explaining to do...

Swan Song is fully voiced when it comes to these narrative scenes, but there's where my one note of criticism lies. I didn't like how the text is immediately fully readable, with the voices seemingly having to catch up. This kind of spoils the effect of the scenes, and the emotional performances of the actors. In other games, text might appear in sync with the voices, and I'm missing that here. The devs have assured me they're working on it, though, but since the game supports multiple languages, it's trickier than it sounds...

With lots of levels to go, I better get back to helping my small swan across the box, and further discover the story of Tristan and Edith!

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

"Cult Vacui", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "Cult Vacui is a valiant effort to present a point-and-click survival adventure with a time management system, but I must admit I was expecting more. All the puzzles are very straightforward, it’s obvious what you have to do to prepare yourself for an optimal defense against the attack of the cult, and it’s hard to miss anything important. Hard, but not impossible, because the fairly strict time restriction doesn’t allow for much leeway in your sequence of events. Thanks to the manual save system, though, you can easily go back a few steps and do things differently, resulting in a game that takes less time to finish than I took writing this review. It still lacks some polish, but the pixel art graphics are a joy to behold, the haunting music will keep you on the edge of your seat, and the story is suspenseful enough to keep you going. You’d think that defeating an evil cult might require a little more time and effort, but all in all, it’s a tidy bit of business for a couple hours of work."

Classic playthrough: "Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance"!

Classic time!

Ernie Eaglebeak is back in Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance, a new adventure after he saved the world in his first game. Ernie has returned to Sorcerer's University where professor Otto Tickingclock instructs him to research that mysterious McGuffin Ernie had been chasing in his previous adventure, the Sorcerer's Appliance, and find out about its origins.

Same old Legend Entertainment interface style...

It's basically a text adventure, only with added pictures to show the scenes. You have a list of all possible verbs you can use, a list of all objects both in sight as well as in your inventory, and a description of what's going on. You can click on the verbs and items to select them, but I found it quicker to just type them into the text parser. Once again there's a time element, so you have to make sure to do what needs to be done before time runs out and you reach a dead-end or game-over. So, once again as well, saving and restoring are two of the most used verbs in the Spellcasting series...

The women are still scantily dressed...

Trouble is, there is so much to see and do, and every time you type a command, time progresses five minutes, so in the end it's basically a question of discovering the perfect run. Written by Steve Meretzky, there's truly a comedic fantasy novel's worth of descriptions and dialogues in this game. The sheer amount of information is overwhelming when compared to the modern, more succinct adventure games with more obvious goals and clues.

Crazy students...

Matters are complicated even more by the university's hazing rituals. To be accepted in the fraternity, you need to perform specific tasks each day. Not only that, you also have to attend your classes. As a form of copy protection, your schedule is included in the game's documentation, as well as a blueprint of the sewage system; not looking forward to exploring that one, to be honest...

So, after one hour of playing, now I need to attach a fake moustache on a roof statue, investigate the appliance, and attend three magic classes today... What can go wrong?

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