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!
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.
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!
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!
