A rather fast conclusion to "Shadows of the Afterland"...

And that's how we got our multicultural society here...

When playing Shadows of the Afterland last time, I left Carolina in a sticky situation. Having saved the game, I was ready to investigate and figure my way out of it. But when I reloaded and watched the recap of my previous playing session, I thought the game glitched and the recap kept showing, no longer past conversations, but future ones as well! Trapped by the villain, I expected a good puzzle but instead the game kept going from cutscene to cutscene. The recap wasn't glitched, because I loaded an older saved game to test it and the conversations kept coming this time as well. I didn't even have to switch Afterlife locations manually anymore.

The travel map.

Finally I was given control again and I could do a couple of actions, but they didn't amount to much. Half an hour after reloading, I finished the game, bringing my total playing time to just under five hours. It was only partly a satisfying ending, since I was expecting more answers to the mysteries. I was left with the same questions I had at the start of the game. 

This woman looks at least 20 years older than she says she is!

I did discover another handy feature besides the recap system the devs added to Shadows of the Afterland: saving during conversations, and even during cutscenes! You simply pause the game in the middle of talking, click on the menu icon and save! Oh, how long have I wished for this to be implemented! The conversations here aren't that long, but there are games where they can stretch out for a long time and sometimes, when you have to go, you don't have the time to sit through all that, and in many games quitting a conversation early doesn't always guarantee you can continue the conversation later on.
 

Portal hopping to the land of the living...

So, other than the rather hurried and pretty much un-interactive finale, I really enjoyed Shadows of the Afterland with its quirky characters, fun pixel art, and interesting take on the afterlife, mixing the drama of death with humor and adding a very slight whiff of some Grim Fandango crime. And of course that brilliant recap system, and the ability to save during conversations.

Next up I'll be going back in time to a 90s classic. With a trembling heart I'm going to attempt the Les Manley sequel, Lost in L.A. After the disaster of the first game, I'm hoping this one will be a bit more forgiving, though that will probably not be the case since it's I've heard it makes the first game look like Monkey Island 2...

You can find Shadows of the Afterland on Steam and on itch.io.

This time on "Shadows of the Afterland"!

Awesome! A recap system!

Okay, hold up! Why don't more adventure games use this technique? Previously I had simply loaded up my Shadows of the Afterland save file, but then I tried the Continue button on the main menu, and I was suddenly treated to a recap of my previous gaming session! How marvelous is that! It might not seem that way, but I often days pass before I get a chance to continue a game, and often I'll feel lost with no idea what I was supposed to be doing. A recap like this (almost) beats an in-game notebook!

I get a slight Soylent Green vibe from this scene...

Carolina has been giving a task by the former spectral agent to prepare her journey back to the land of the living. This meant exploring the land of the dead even further, solving some easy puzzles, fetching some items for people so they'd help me. It all comes down to remembering the things you saw earlier which might be able to help you, or talking to someone who might know more. Nothing to break your brain over.

Valencia looked more like Westworld's Delos HQ when I was there...

Finally I reached the advertised part of the game I've been looking forward to: possessing people! Because that was such a blast in The Will of Arthur Flabbington by Guga Games. And indeed, it finally adds an extra layer to the puzzles. Though it also feels quite uncomfortable doing so...

A nice little family to use to my advantage...

I've also learned something very important, which has given me an inkling of what exactly happened to Pilar/Carolina. But I'm still very curious to see the motivation behind it all. 

You can find Shadows of the Afterland on Steam and on itch.io.

New game: "Shadows of the Afterland"!

New game!

Here's one I've been looking forward to for a while now! Shadows of the Afterland by Aruma Studios is a perfect fit for everyone who loves classic style pixel art point 'n click adventure games. After their previous title, Intruder in Antiquonia, I was hoping for something with a bit more meat on its bones. Well... It's still kinda missing that, since it's a game about ghosts... But anyway, you know what I mean!

Oh, the bureaucracy...

The premise is a bit difficult to explain... You play as Carolina, a detective from the year 1988, who is somehow transported into the astral body of a maid named Pilar, who for some unknown reason was pulled out of her body in 1960 and watched her rogue vessel get struck by lightning and fall into the polar bear pit at the Madrid zoo. Carolina, in the shape of Pilar's ghost, is now stuck in the afterlife, and it's your job to figure out what exactly happened to her. It's a very strange mystery and I'm really curious how they will explain it all.

That's definitely a book I would read!

The game is fully voiced, with the lovely Ivy Dupler as the main lead Carolina, but the entire cast performs with high quality. The pixel art graphics are slightly cartoonish but not over the top silly. It employs a one-click interface, with an inventory at the bottom of the screen. There are inventory puzzles and you'll have to talk to other characters to figure things out. You can save manually, but there's also an autosave on exit, which is very handy (but I'm old school so I still save manually, anyway...)

This guy is Afterlife-Stan...

So after having played for an hour, I can say I'm enjoying myself. So far it's not too difficult, I'm also not overloaded with inventory items. There are loads of locations and characters already, but there's also an overview map that's hardly been filled so I expect there's a lot more to come. The objectives are very clear, and it's also helpful that Carolina will say so if you don't really have to talk to a certain character anymore (and it's also helpful that she will automatically say the last available dialogue option or quit a conversation).

This guy should be able to help me; if I can convince him!

My primary goal at the moment is convincing a former "spectral agent" to help me get back to the world of the living so I can start investigating my own death. There are a couple of steps I still need to take for that, so let's dive right back into this realm of the dead!

You can find Shadows of the Afterland on Steam and on itch.io.

New game: "Intruder in Antiquonia"

New game!

Amnesia stories are usually good entertainment. Movies like Memento and The Long Kiss Goodnight. I've put off playing Intruder in Antiquonia for so long because the graphic style and character designs weren't really up my alley, but in the end I have to admit it was a really cool conspiracy story, albeit a bit on the cozy side. I finished it in a little under two hours, though I did have to do some digging regarding some puzzle solutions. Eventually I figured it all out and even though I'm still not a big fan of how it is all presented, I definitely had fun with it.

But I didn't do anything wrong, officer, I swear!

I'm Sarah Campillo. Or at least that's the name on the ID I'm carrying. Until the local police figure out it's actually fake. So who am I, and where did I come from, and what exactly am I doing in this small town called Antiquonia where people seem to hate everything that has to do with computers and the internet?

No quaint town without some old guys on a bench...

It's a mystery ready to be unraveled by resourceful adventure gamers. Probably too easy for most, but it will probably challenge newcomers to the genre. There are plenty of inventory puzzles and even one cool mechanical puzzle where you have to redirect wires in a breaker box. 

I'd probably die if I had to do this in real life...

There aren't any voice-overs, but you can click through the dialogue manually if you don't want to wait for it to automatically progress. There's an autosave feature but you can also save manually (yay!). And you can double click on exits for fast travel. There's also a handy, though very basic map if you really want to jump between locations, but not all locations are on the map. For instance, you need to jump to the town centre and then enter the guesthouse or the store the regular way.

Now THAT's a subtle modern reference!

Aruma Studios, developer of Intruder in Antiquonia, is currently working on a more old-school style, pixel art point 'n click adventure, Shadows in the Afterland, which looks amazing and which I hope to play one day, too!

You can find Intruder in Antiquonia on Steam!

You can find Shadows in the Afterland on Steam as well!