My Adventure Game Top Ten of 2024

Here are my top ten adventure games of 2024. This list is based on my personal enjoyment of all 32 games I've played this year - not all point 'n clicks, but one and all great narrative experiences!

10. The Phantom Fellows

If you like pixel art, crazy dialogues, and ghosts, The Phantom Fellows will provide you with some cool puzzles. It might get a bit TOO crazy now and then, but there's a clear love for adventure gaming oozing out of this paranormal detective agency.

9. INDIKA

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.

8. Between Horizons

It may have a few minor malfunctions, but Between Horizons launches players on an exciting and branching interstellar detective journey, looking for clues, questioning suspects, and maybe saving the remnants of humanity in the process.

7. Closer the Distance

Gameplay is limited to choosing specific tasks to maintain character stats, but Closer the Distance features an intriguing concept of applying indirect influence, and is a beautifully written and very detailed simulation of life in a small community after tragedy has struck.

6. The Night Is Grey

With its beautiful scenery, heartfelt characters, and the weirdest wolves you’ve ever seen, The Night Is Grey is as close to a psychological thriller as an adventure game can get, worthy to be called an interactive cinematic experience.

5. Alone in the Dark

Wait a minute, isn't Alone in the Dark more of an action game? Survival horror, at least? Well, perhaps, but the exploration and puzzling aspects, coupled with a lower difficulty level, make this quite the gripping adventure game as well, as much as the original game ever was.

4. Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss

Like a Sherlock Holmes investigation at the bottom of the sea, there are many compelling secrets to be unveiled in the gorgeous underwater scenery of Thalassa’s titular sunken ship. 

3. Farewell North

Farewell North’s beautiful Scottish setting pulls you in with its canine star and cozy gameplay, then immerses you in a touching story about loss and letting go that’s well worth seeing through to the end.

2. The Crimson Diamond

The Crimson Diamond is a joy to play and very addictive; I had a hard time letting go of it, and I would have preferred to play it in one sitting. It's a great location, an interesting set of characters, a cool Agatha Christie style and gathering clues type of story.

1. PRIM

PRIM delves into the underworld and brings back the soul of classic point-and-click adventure games with an endearing creepy-cute story, loveable characters, fantastic production values and plenty of fun puzzling.

"Copycat", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "It’s not just because I’m more of a dog lover that I didn’t enjoy Copycat as much I did, say, Dog’s Life on my old PS2. The game does have a certain charm, and it’s clearly a labor of love for cats, conveyed through a thoughtful, mature story of abandonment and the meaning of family and home. It gets pretty dramatic in places, and you’ll feel pretty angry at some of the humans you encounter, but it’s effective and not overdone. It didn’t immediately make me pull a box of tissues closer, but it certainly has the potential to tug on many an animal lover’s heartstrings. It’s a shame, then, that the cozy but limited gameplay and even more limited choices aren’t really enough for me to enthusiastically recommend that everyone take home a copy for themselves."

Finished "Willy Beamish" in 5 aggravating hours...

I should have received a real cup, finishing this game...

I finished The Adventures of Willy Beamish in five aggravating hours. Don't get me wrong, I like the little guy. But what a game! If this was made today, it might still contain death scenes but I'm sure you would automatically respawn to try again. The final sequence of the game has some timed sequences where it's a matter of clicking fast and correctly. I do appreciate that sense of urgency and danger, but manually saving and restoring every step of the way isn't of our time anymore.

Why exactly did I need to go into this Buttcrack Bar?

So, after escaping from the Humpford mansion, I learn that my dad has been kidnapped and I need to hurry and save him. So I need to find a way into the Sludgeworks. Only, the strikers are blocking the entrance. It took me quite a while to figure out where to go and what to do. Thankfully there were limited possibilities this time, but I still had to look for some outside assistance for this puzzle. And even now I have no idea how you were supposed to figure it out without some inside knowledge.

Looks like my cooking pot when I try to make chocolate mousse...

So I finally found my way inside the factory, only to be confronted with a series of timed action sequences. I had to save in every room I entered, and had to reload every one of them at least five times. Perhaps it's because my previous playthrough had been a while that I couldn't figure out what to do with all the control panels I encountered. Turned out I had all the answers in my inventory...

Not exactly LeChuck's fortress, but still quite impressive...

All in all, I'm glad I played through this game again, but I wouldn't exactly call it fun. The first half is definitely okay. It's easy going, quite cozy even, with obvious things to do. The second half is a lot of work, with trial and error, saving and restoring, quite non-intuitive puzzles even. But it's a decent enough story, quite the adventure that really fits in with all those animated movies I used to watch as a kid (and sometimes still do...) If it had been a bit more forgiving, I'd recommend it more, but as it is I'd only play it if you're really looking for a challenge.

You can find Willy Beamish here!

"Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "A series’ “beach episode” is generally just a whimsical aside where familiar and favorite fictional characters leave their comfort zones to engage in far different activities than their everyday routines, literally by going swimming, surfing and playing tourist. Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode might start off like that, but it soon adds other elements to keep you on your toes: there is more going on here, but the question is, will you find out exactly what? In my view, this elevates the game above a simple yet fun diversion. It is still fun, as the mini-games and some free choices ensure, but the overarching storyline for these characters takes a huge turn as well, making it an important addition to the series. We don’t yet know where this particular story will end, since there is still one more episode to come, but for series fans this is a wonderful day out with the SigCorp team and dramatically sets the stage for what lies ahead."

"Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief", my Adventure Game Hotspot review

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot.

Excerpt: "Although I expected to play only as Arsène Lupin himself, the playful way in which the narrative’s chronology is broken up between Lupin carrying out his heists and Ganimard trying to figure out how he does them is very fun. Some of the puzzles are fairly straightforward and overly forgiving, with unlimited tries and no repercussions when you do something wrong, but the more traditional investigative puzzling is rewarding to solve, and whenever I succeeded in linking evidence correctly, I felt as if I was donning a black cloak and top hat of my own in plotting my latest heist. The music is great, the isometric scenes fun to rotate and explore, and the supporting cast just begs to be fooled by Lupin. Since I’ve read some of the Leblanc books, I recognized some plot elements here and there, like how Lupin escapes his unavoidable arrest, but it’s certainly not necessary to know anything about the character going in. Just like his more famous British and Belgian contemporaries, Lupin is a character straight out of literary fiction who was long overdue a lead role, and I’m sure he will charm his way into the hearts of those who aren’t already familiar with his antics as well."

4 hours into "Willy Beamish" and I ran out of save files...

Yeah, I get it, it's the west side of town...

I'm 4 hours into The Adventures of Willy Beamish and I still can't grasp what happened. The game changed from a cozy, "play as a ten year old"-simulator into a "death around every corner" trial-and-error debacle, up to the point where it's just not fun anymore. I can totally remember now why I never finished this game more than once back in the day... After procuring myself a registration form for the frog jump, I got stuck on the other side of the river because I couldn't get back on the ferry. I explored some without really finding anything, until suddenly a gang showed up and, well, ganged up on me for some reason. Took me a while to figure out how to escape from them...

Jump, Horny, jump!

Then back home it was immediately on to day four and the big event! The frog jump took me several tries as well before Horny was victorious. But it's what happens next that really made me run through all my save slots. Looking for Horny after the competition, I get caught by a security guard. I lost count of the number of times I had to restore, but this sequence is a timed event and you only have precious seconds to perform just the right actions so you can escape.

Turns out the solution to this is found in the game's manual...

Next, I learned that the big villain of the story, Leona Humpford, has taken all the frogs to their mansion for dinner. Well, not to serve them dinner, they ARE dinner. So of course I need to rescue them. I think this mansion alone took me an hour of gaming, with a talking parrot first giving away my presence, then Leona herself and her henchman Louis, and of course the knife-throwing chef in the kitchen catching me time and time again. Once again, there's a set series of actions you have to perform to get past this sequence. Do one thing wrong, and it's game-over. I kept saving (over older save files by now) every step I took. And when I finally succeeded, I didn't believe it and I restored again thinking I still did something wrong, because the final cutscene starts in exactly the same way many of the game-over scenes do, with Willy getting caught by Leona and Louis and thrown into an aquarium as a new treasure ornament.

Still don't know what's so appealing about frog legs...

So finally I escaped the mansion with all the frogs - or, well, they escaped with me, I should say... Now I'm back on the west side of town where I'm supposed to save my dad, but I have absolutely no idea how to go about that, and if the gameplay is anything like the last two hours, I'm sure to be busy for at least another two!

You can find Willy Beamish here!

"PRIM", my Adventure Game Hotspot review

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "While it does have a few creative tricks up its sleeve, PRIM is very much a traditional adventure game that takes what its classic predecessors did well and updates it for modern audiences. The result is a highly polished, entertaining new coming-of-age story about a wonky father-daughter relationship that will make you laugh and maybe even cry, offering plenty of fun but also connecting on an emotional level. PRIM does a masterful job of combining its serious themes with the right amount of humor, and everything about its production, from the artwork and interface to the music and voice-overs, screams excellence, an eye for detail, and a true love for both adventure gaming and storytelling. That would be impressive for any developer, let alone a small team making their very first game. I most enjoy playing games like this, but rarely are they done as well as it is here. Leave it to a game set in the Realm of the Dead to show that there’s still lots of life left in the point-and-click adventure genre."