Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
filfre.net
filfre.net
From their 3rd installment they went with the 3d craze but the result was not as captivating. They returned back to 2d in 5th version but I still prefer their old style.
Nowadays, games with a story-line as rich as this is very rare. Please recommend if you know any.
LucasArts games series is too old for me (and I don't fancy their complicated interaction mechanics).
I very much adore 18, 19 and 20th century European adventures with colorful styles. You know? Like Blake and Mortimer series, or The Adventures of Tintin.
Anything published by Wadjet Eye is amazing - Blackwell series, Gemini Rue, Shardlight, Primordia, Technobabylon, Strangeland.
The Book of Unwritten Tales 1, 2 and prequel are my absolute favorites.
Harvey and Edna 1 and 2 are close behind. Deponia is supposed to be good, but I couldnt stand the protagonist :(. The Whispered World and A New Beginning were ok, but very German.
Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle is great. Its a prequel to So Blonde, havent played, made by lead designer of Broken Sword.
A Vampyre Story is hilarious.
The Longest Journey 1 and 2.
Secret Files series.
Syberia, altho it was too French/weird for me.
>Like Blake and Mortimer series, or The Adventures of Tintin.
you can try Jack Orlando: A Cinematic Adventure, except its located in US, but similar art style?
I shall add the legend of monkey island to your awesome list!
Stasis, a creepy sci-fi horror adventure game.
Above list was mostly mainstream games, I missed a lot of indie/obscure/wacky titles:
Tormentum – Dark Sorrow, a dark creepy visual horror point&click.
https://frogdetective.net 2 episodes so far. Hard to describe, but lot of laughs.
The Darkside Detective is super funny.
Hector: Badge of Carnage, another hilarious police detective game.
murdercide 2017 https://powerhoof.itch.io/murdercide-2017 same as above!
powerhoof is a creator of mindblowingly good retry style adventure games, most are free too. I highly recommend
The Inanimate Mr Coatrack https://www.powerhoof.com/the-inanimate-mr-coatrack/
Alluvium https://www.powerhoof.com/alluvium/
Peridium https://www.powerhoof.com/peridium/
ICEBOX https://powerhoof.itch.io/youre-watching-icebox the closest art style to new Monkey Island trailer :-)
Liked Space Quests? Try Snail Trek :) First hit is free https://store.steampowered.com/app/751280/Snail_Trek__Chapte...
https://octavinavarro.itch.io also does great quick adventure/story games:
The Supper https://octavinavarro.itch.io/the-supper
and for fans of The Twilight Zone are two episodes of Midnight Scenes https://octavinavarro.itch.io/midnight-scenes-the-highway https://octavinavarro.itch.io/midnight-scenes-the-goodbye-no...
Another exceptional author is https://theouterzone.itch.io with
Tales From The Outer Zone: Cyborg Seppuku https://theouterzone.itch.io/cyborg-seppuku
Tales From The Outer Zone: The Goat Crone https://theouterzone.itch.io/the-goat-crone
Tales From The Outer Zone: Fleshworms https://theouterzone.itch.io/fleshworms
Tales From The Outer Zone: The Construction https://theouterzone.itch.io/the-construction
Hitchcock Rear Window styled thrillers:
Fire Escape
The Flower Collectors https://store.steampowered.com/app/1034750/The_Flower_Collec... same deal but post Franco Spain full of furries :)
Backbone, good adventure game if you dont mind the furries :). Published by Raw Fury who also does Clifftop Games. Clifftop made two solid games in Adventure Game Studio:
Kathy Rain
Whispers of a Machine
Didnt play but are supposedly good:
Darkestville Castle
Dead Synchronicity
The Dark Eye series
Titles like Grim Fandango or Thimbleweed Park were too obvious to list. Adventure games seem to be doing better than ever despite everyone claiming early nineties as the golden age.
The best story focused game I’ve played recently-ish is Disco Elysium. Great artwork too.
The writing and puzzles are just not as great as monkey island 1-2.
I enjoyed the rusty lake series and the journey down.
Broken Sword was the second peak, when stories became more serious and played more like an interactive novel. There are still jokes, but the game itself isn't one anymore.
The Broken Sword series is actually notable for surviving this trend, by transitioning to 3D and being console-friendly.
Fortunately, "the long tail" also happened, and the market has expanded in scale and improved ease of distribution (Steam, Itch, etc.) to the point that it's no longer true that every game has to be a big-budget "AAA" game; there's plenty of room for tons of niche stuff like adventure games, and it can be profitable.
The non English editions have fantastic voice acting too.
Heck I even travelled across Ireland motivated by what I experienced in the game. The game story was very on point with regards to Ireland :). Paris is factual too.
10/10 would recommend.
I for one am replaying it for the third time in a third language, challenging but not a waste of time for learning, as it is so well done.
The characters in Ireland all have Irish accents. Check.
In Syria, the characters all sound Arabic. Check.
Most of the Parisians have a French accent. Check. But the thugs outside the Ubu have New York accents (OK, clearly an intended joke), the receptionist at the hospital has an American accent (iirc). Come to think of it, no-one in the hospital has a French accent, do they?
And the de Vasconcellos lady (in Spain) has a British accent for some reason.
A group of us had played various TT games over the years and loved video game adaptations but that one in particular was fantastic for an ARPG.
We had for years wondered where a spell was that was listed in the manual.
We tried everything, asked everyone we could think of, when finally we decided to call the Nintendo Power hotline, whatever it was called.
The charges started immediately and as you listened to a recorded spiel.
I think was several selections later we spoke with an agent who looked it up and informed us he could tell us for an additional fee. We agreed and he informed us the spell had been removed either prior to release or in the localization.
We were devasated.
Weeks later my Dad gets a call from my friend's parents. We go over and they explain they had a huge phone bill because apparently my friend had called them back asking all kinds of stuff for games, then it progressed to phone sex lines.
Of course this was all my fault. So not only did I have to do yard work all summer to pay it down, but he got to enjoy his summer scott free.
My question was how did they not know either time it was squeaky-voiced kids.
I guess they didn't have to since all the commercials said something like 'kids must have parents permission to call'.
Guess they got paid either way.
Not at all. What a great review of a beloved sub-genre. Sometimes I think about re-reading Foucault's Pendulum out of sheer joy at the memory. But then I usually get by with just recommending it to someone else who foolishly brings up anything in the Dan Brown/Indiana Jones space.
I recall some article that some small French town where part of the game happened had massive bump in tourism after the game came out. In times where computer gaming was mostly looked on as weird geek hobby for few.
Comments are already full of great recommendations if you like these games, I would just add Runaway which, to me, was such a breath of fresh air at a time where point n clicks were kind of gone.
Even the Monkey Island games turned 3D with the fourth installment. Having played through them all (again!) over lockdown, it's that game, Escape from Monkey Island, which now looks and plays the worst.