Guest Post: Survey of Top Indie Graphic Adventure Games
Note By The Rampant Coyote: Today's post about indie "graphic adventure" games comes from community-member Random Gamer. He mentioned on the forums that he's recently been exploring what's happening in the AGS community, and was kind enough to share some of the highlights of what indies are doing there. Random Gamer, take it away!

I mentioned in passing on the forum that I have just gone on an "old-school" adventure gaming binge. No sooner did the words leave my keyboard then Coyote pressed me into service for some highlights of the games. Sure thing. I'm always happy to ramble at a captive audience - and it was him that inspired me to find the games, with his mention of "Emily Enough" here on this blog.

First, what do I mean by "old-school" adventure games? I'm talking games that bring back the feel of King's Quest, Police Quest, Maniac Mansion, Space Quest and - my favorite of all - Day of the Tentacle. Adventure Games. You could, if you were feeling uncharitable, summarize graphic adventure games as walking from room to room, looking at each pixel, grabbing everything that can be picked up and solving improbable puzzles using even more improbable items. You could. And there's an element of truth to those criticisms. But adventure games offer style and plot.

They tend to be wordy - and I mean that in a good way, there's lots of text to read and reading it is fun - and literate. There's often humor and in-jokes - adventure games rarely take themselves too seriously. They bring you into a world and keep you there with just a background screen and a pixelated character. Most of all, they are fun.

Fortunately for those of you, like me, who remember those old school games and itch to play them again, there's a fabulous website out there. BIG BLUE CUP is the home of Adventure Game Studio, a free adventure game engine written by Chris Jones. And on that site you can find hundreds of adventure games written in that engine. Many are short - bite sized, even - and that's a good thing.

Since I started this kick with Emily Enough a week or so ago, I've downloaded nine of the things - and finished seven. One is in progress and another is waiting for me to get back to (and, unlike the Gothic 3 game I have sitting on my hard drive, both of those games are likely to get finished). The games I picked mostly based on their descriptions and were all 'Picks of the Month' on the bigbluecup.com website - and they all were a lot of fun.


Let's Do The Time Warp Again...
Like many of the games that inspired them, they are mostly 320x200 x 256 colours. Yes, I know most of you young'uns are staring at that paltry resolution in disbelief, but you can make a wonderful adventure game without 3D graphics and lens flares. I remember the first game I ever played that had that resolution - it blew me away with the quality of the graphics, which is probably because the first bunch I played were all CGA with only 8 colours! You quickly forgive the old-school graphics and get swept away in the story.

If you get stuck, there is a great "hints and tips" forum on the bigbluecup.com website that covers all of these games - but do try things before you bail onto those forums. I had to remind myself of some of the conventions of Adventure Games - most particularly that things change when other things happen, even if they seem to have no relationship to each other. So, if you get stuck after accomplishing something, go back and talk to people, look for new things in the rooms - time only tends to pass once things happen that need to. The other thing I needed to be reminded of is the dreadful 'scrubbing' or pixel hunt. The downside of 320x200 is that it is sometimes hard to see what things are - buttons, especially, get lost. Sometimes that means you end up waving your mouse over the screen, looking for the indication that something special is below. This is not my favorite part of adventure games (and I think some of the best avoid it), but it is par for the course.

Nine Free Adventure Games
I won't go in much detail on Emily Enough, since it was detailed on Tales of the Rampant Coyote so recently, but this a great starting point to getting back in the swing of things.

After beating Emily, I downloaded Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! by Alasdair Beckett. A lovely pirates themed game, with tastes of Monkey Island (another adventure game classic), it is wonderfully irreverent and has just a great, distinctive, hand-drawn style in 640x480. The puzzles are pretty clear and clever (the interactions with the Distinguished Ladies Club come particularly to mind) and the game is enjoyable from start to finish. Really, it was this second foray into AGS - two good games in a row - that really convinced me that some seriously good gaming fun could come from this.

Automation, by "Mr Colossal", was a winner of a "One Week, One Room" game contest. It is a short (very short), puzzle-filled, plot-light game that none-the-less manages to have a lot of charm and interest. You play an engineer/scientist who has just managed to drop his experimental robot down onto the maintenance level of a lab. You have to manipulate the environment on your floor to retrieve the robot so that you can continue your experiments. This game is fun and finishes quickly. There are a couple of pixel hunts, so if you are stuck, remember to "scrub" with your mouse to find those hots-pots.

Just Another Point And Click Adventure, by "CMonkey", is the game that I have paused - I haven't finished it yet. It is the story of Andrew and Alistair as they, in the words of the author, "go on a quest... to get a life." Somewhat juvenile in tone, with plenty of bathroom humour, it manages to still bring a real "adventure" flair to rather ordinary tasks - like just getting downstairs for breakfast. I'll be back to finish this one.

A game that has more of a serious subject matter is Sydney Finds Employment, by Ivan Dixon. It is the story of a homeless man, Sydney, and his fight to prevent the "corporations, churches and politians" from sweeping the homeless from the street. However, it definitely takes a comic approach to the subject matter and there are some very memorable moments. It is reasonably short and punchy, and the puzzles are pretty straightforward. A couple of hot-spots stumped me for awhile (one required me to revert to the hints page), but for the most part they make at least some twisted sense.

Trevor Daison in Outer Space - Chapter One, by "Knoodn", really stands out as a highlight for me. It had NO hot-spot puzzles, which is great, and I felt as if everything made sense. There was some head-scratching, but things went together quite smoothly. The tone is humorous and reminds me a great deal of Roger Wilco in Space Quest - the game starts with you waking up after a deep sleep and discovering that the space station you are on will be burning up in the atmosphere within the hour. Oh, and the rest of the crew has already left, taking the only shuttle. I truly hope there's a Chapter Two out there for me to find.

"IceMan" wrote Da New Guys, an adventure game based on, of all things, wrestling. This one is the only one so far to have multiple playable characters - you can switch back and forth. This featured a lot in classics like Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, where characters would have to set things up for each other. This ups the puzzle difficulty, in my experience, but despite being a generally impatient player, I really liked this one - even though I have no interest at all in wrestling.

Winning the most bizarre contest would be Grr! Bearly Sane by "Duzz", a twisted story of a down-on-his-luck guy named Daniel who works at a cruddy carnival under a sadistic boss. Forced to wear a smelly bear suit, piddled on by a dog and abused by children, Daniel snaps and plots revenge on his boss. The game is short and the puzzles are fairly easy, but they are made more interesting by the "anger bar" - you'll only do some things if you are angry enough. This is definitely a violent game, not for children.

Last on my list is the one I'm currently playing - "The Perils of Poom" by Michael Evans. This is a space adventure which again reminds me of Space Quest, though I suppose in fairness that any light hearted space adventure will remind me of Space Quest. You play a rather inept loser, sent off to find "Pure Poom", a very valuable drug, in exchange for lots of money. You explore strange planets, meet strange people and solve strange puzzles. I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. So far, so good, though I'm currently puzzling out how not to get killed by a giant worm. I'll get there.

More Adventure Games, Please!
It is fabulous to see that the adventure game genre is alive and well. I've ranted in the past that I wanted games like "Day of the Tentacle" again and I sighed that I'd have to write my own. I'm glad other people felt the same way, so that I didn't have to. I'm really enjoying playing these - and you can't beat the price. Each is a free download. And if you want to try writing one for me to play, Adventure Game Studio itself is free. If you write it, I'll play it!

--- Random Gamer

Labels: Adventure Games, Indie Evangelism

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