Right now, the main site has a comment feature, which now feels superfluous. It has the advantage that it doesn't require signup, but I wonder if it makes sense to eventually have a "AGH News" Subforum that serves as the comment section for each news article/review/etc.?

(No idea how much development effort that would take though, since combining two separate systems is always a challenge)

Hey everyone! I'm busy making a first-person, point & click, puzzle adventure game inspired by classics in the genre, such as the Myst and Nancy Drew games series! 

Just yesterday I realised that the amazing, dungeon synth-inspired soundtrack for The Longing (2020) is finally available for streaming, and while listenening to it again, it got me thinking about how absolutely unique and intriguing the game itself is.

On the surface level, it's a very basic point and click adventure: You control Shade, a dark little figure who lives deep underground in seemlingly endless grottos and catacombs together with the mountain king, who is asleep. Your task is to watch over the king and wake him up in 400 days. You can choose to either honor his request and wait patiently, or try to explore the caves and find out what lies above... Freedom? Death? Or nothing at all? Sound easy enough - but here's the catch: everything in the game is in real time, even when you close the game. So if you want to wake the king up, you have to wait for 400 actual days - or find a way to make time go faster. 



There are elements of both puzzling and exploring in The Longing, but since the real time element is such a big part of the game's core gameplay mechanic, a lot of puzzles can't be solved and a lot of paths can't be explored unless you have a good amount of patience. You might be able to break a rock to pass through a tunnel, but it'll take several real time hours of hacking away with your pickaxe. You might be able to jump down a chasm, but not until a big enough fungus has grown at the bottom. A lot of the time, patience is the puzzle and the solution.

The game rewards taking your time, while at the same time encouraging you to find little things to pass the time: there's different actual full length books all over the caverns that you can read(this will actually speed up time in-game), as well as other trinkets and things that you can use to decorate your home and make the waiting process a bit nicer for Shade. This being said, you don't actually need to do anything to "beat" the game, time will pass regardless of what you do, and you can essentially just start the game and wait for the king to wake up. Whether or not you want to explore or not is ultimately up to you. 



The Longing is not a game for everyone. It's philosophical and experimental in a way that might deter most people: we're so used to being able to speed run things, click to skip dialogue and cutscenes, etc, that the hypnotically slow tempo of The Longing almost feels like a standstill. Here, even the walk speed is at an unsusually leisurely pace, with the clapping of Shades foot soles against the hard rock floors serving as a constant reminder of the slow, relentless marching of time. 

It's a melancholy game too, not just because of the eerie dungeon synth music and empty hallways, but because of how endearing our little protagonist is. Shade is seemingly content with whatever fate befalls him, and would gladly stay down in the caves forever unless we as the player force him to strive upwards and find something new - and yet it's impossible to deny his simmering loneliness as he muses to himself about how he'd love to have someone to talk to sometimes. (It's one of lifes big ironies that the game was released in 2020, during the beginning of the covid pandemic and the lock-downs, making this a particularly relatable game to all of the people isolated in their homes, longing for the world outside, much like Shade)



I personally haven't even managed to finish the game yet. I played it quite far, exploring almost everything, forgot about it, and then picked it up again only to realise that the 400 days had passed in-game, and that I had lost the opportunity to solve certain timed puzzles and get to the surface(luckily, there are ways to rewind time in-game). 

I'm still thinking I will return to it some day to try and finish it for real, but even if I don't, the overall impact of this game has been immense for me. Its sense of scale and atmosphere as you explore the winding tunnels and desolate caves combined with the deliberately slow gameplay makes this one of the most moving and rewarding gaming experiences I've had. I can totally understand that the slow tempo is a dealbreaker for most sane people, but something about this kind of deconstruction of the point and click adventure genre just delighted me and still occupies my mind from time to time.

Sorry for the wall of text, I was just reimmersed into the world of this game and would love to hear if anyone else played it, either when it came out or recently, and what your thoughts are about it? It's truly a one of a kind game, whichever way you look at it.

It wasn't my kind of game.

The plot was weak, barely existent between a strong beginning and a very touching ending. There's hardly any plot anyway; you just run through the forest and solve puzzles. Storylines are not brought to a conclusion, so you don't find out what the vultures are all about, and I would have liked to roam through the healed forest again. Apart from Little Mushroom and, to a lesser extent, the guardians, there are no characters with whom you interact much.

This feeling is reinforced by the lack of voice acting; Tove doesn't utter more than a few sounds.

The puzzles range from very easy to quite difficult. I've never needed a walkthrough to find a way to continue playing. It's also illogical that the father and Tove work towards each other without knowing about each other.

 The graphics were too simple for me; the next level down is pixels.

Herdling is a brand new adventure from Okomotive, the developers of the atmospheric and acclaimed FAR games, and Panic, the publisher of Firewatch.

Embark on a grand mountain expedition with a herd of lovable animals, climbing a high-altitude trail, encountering eerie dangers and surprising obstacles, and making your way to the mystery at the summit. Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/3047750/Herdling/

My heart is heavy, as I had to leave my beloved Calicorns behind. I rescued each and every one of them from a difficult situation, only to find that despite the “can't die” mode, I lost at least one. WhiteBeauty, Belle, Grimmbart, LittleOne, Flauschi, Panic, Eule, Beauty, and many others made it and are now back in their homeland.

Many complain that there is no backstory to the rescue and the boy – and they are right. But that's not the point. The point is the dangerous journey, which becomes really stressful towards the end with the icy winds and collapsing ground.

Take care, my friends – we'll see each other again.

Mundaun is a lovingly hand-drawn horror fairy tale set in a dark and remote valley in the Alps. Explore numerous secrets in various areas, survive dangerous encounters, drive vehicles, fill your inventory, and solve a whole series of handcrafted puzzles. Steam

Language: Romansh, subtitles are available

I'm now quitting Mundaun after spending the whole night awake, pondering the solution.

It's actually a nice game, but the criticisms are severe:

1.) It doesn't save automatically enough, and you can only do so yourself in houses on clocks, which are unavailable for long periods of time.

2.) The controls are clunky; when driving up the mountain, there was a loud bang. And then I hit Q and get out of the car involuntarily.

3.) The fights literally get on my nerves. Especially since you have to fight some of them unarmed and they are illogical – a pitchfork breaks after stabbing the straw four times? And why can you set one haystack on fire and not the other? I also don't feel like being attacked and not even seeing my opponent. If you could skip the fights, I would have liked to continue playing.

The graphics are beautiful, and you can see the attention to detail in the pencil drawings.

After a year, this atmospheric game still has me hooked—it's a masterpiece. The focus is less on puzzles and more on the oppressive atmosphere. Anyone who's willing to get involved in the game won't regret it.

I'll definitely finish it again.

A pulp adventure thriller – A murdered drifter awakens. Seconds before his death, he is back to life. Help him unravel a crazy web of conspiracies in this fast-paced point-and-click adventure. Steam


Language: Australian English with German subtitles

It's not hard to understand why The Drifter is being hailed as an adventure revelation: the game IS good, the puzzle chains are easy to follow, and even I, as a complete puzzle noob, hardly needed a walkthrough.
The story is very good in the first third, but then drifts too far off course in the last chapters 8 and 9, even if the player is spared another “enemy becomes friend” twist – crazy scientists, fine, but at some point it became too unrealistic for me. Even the nature and origin of the monsters can only be guessed at best.

The characters are very stereotypical, especially the unfriendly German Dr. Klein, who was once again very exaggerated.

The many deaths you could die were annoying, and I experienced them all – in the crypt, even in several variations. If you want to achieve the nine lives achievement, you'll have to save frequently. Why I didn't get the achievement “A Cup of Tea for Everyone” – I have no idea.

Conclusion

A fast-paced story that unfortunately drifts too far off course at the end. Given the murder and torture, the age rating of 12 is too low.

Feel like a detective in the 19th century in this retro point-and-click adventure: find clues, interrogate suspects, and draw your own conclusions to find the true culprit among several suspects in four murder cases. Will you find the right ending? 
Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/18411...g_Murders/

Honestly: Casebook is crap.
The graphics are muddy in a gray-brown kind of way, and the stories are lame, so that after a few days I had to force myself to even log in. This is in stark contrast to “The Drifter,” which I played through. If “The Drifter” were Nobel Prize-worthy literature, then Casebook would be the elementary school essay of an untalented student.

The game does have some good ideas, such as using the notebook to ask questions or make deductions. And that brings us to the next topic: I know who the culprit is in games like this – as was the case in the first case – but I can't manage to combine the clues. How many times have I sent people to the gallows in Sherlock Holmes?

After two mini-games followed each other in quick succession in the second case, which I didn't feel like playing at all and skipped, I returned the game. With the honest explanation: “It's no fun.”

(Discontinued) Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile

In Death on the Nile, a peaceful cruise on the Nile is suddenly disrupted by a terrible crime. Fortunately, the famous detective Hercule Poirot is on board. Meanwhile, a private investigator is hunting a murderer—a search that takes her from London to Mallorca, New York, and finally Egypt.
The two investigations converge at Abu Simbel. The dynamic duo must solve a complex case full of puzzles and twists. But the story doesn't end with the book and contains many secrets and surprises, even for fans of Agatha Christie. Steam

I don't know what to like about this game—actually, nothing. Anyone who plays the demo will quickly notice that the 70s don't really fit, even if it works on the ship.

The additional investigator seems completely out of place. The other investigator in Murder on the Orient Express was introduced more skillfully and investigated the Armstrong case, which suited Poirot. In addition, the characters were wonderfully eccentric, which was not the case in Death on the Nile. On top of that, there was a PoC passenger on the ship, which also didn't fit.

The investigator Royce also didn't fit into the Agatha Christie world. I have no problem with playing a lesbian, black detective who fits very well into her world. But she doesn't fit with Christie. As a standalone adventure, sure

The gameplay also annoyed me: right at the beginning, you are tasked with collecting golden mustaches and records, and only when you have collected them all do you get additional content. The jukebox in Chapter 1 is a nightmare, consisting of 4-5 mini-games/logic puzzles that you can't skip if you want to progress. In Chapter 2, you crack locks in the same way over and over again. The new “eavesdropping function” makes sense, especially if you remember the movie with Ustinov, but it's also annoying.

At the end of each chapter, your failures are presented to you: you didn't find xx records and xx mustaches and made xx mistakes (a whopping 17 in the second chapter) – very motivating.

Then there was a bug where subtitles were displayed even though they were turned off. (German version)

Maybe I'll give the game another try in the summer; the whole atmosphere isn't right for fall/winter.

Conclusion

A failure.

If there’s one thing to be said about The Legend of Kyrandia 3, it’s that the musical composition by Frank Klepacki is superb. With this forum full of point & click adventure fans, chances are most of you have played it, and at the very least thought the music was okay.

Both the GOG re-release and the original 1994 version feature heavily compressed mono audio at 22.05 kHz.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it had proper stereo sound at 44.1 kHz?

The good news is that the official website of Frank Klepacki has four songs from the game in high fidelity. Even better news, you can listen to them online for free!

Here is a link for convenience:

https://www.frankklepacki.com/ost/vg/kyrandia-3

Subtle sounds that were previously bitcrushed to oblivion can now be heard at long last, including the tambourine at the beginning of Coral Hipness.

Another fascinating thing I’ve observed with this online rendition is how the Jungle Ruins song doesn’t loop around like it normally does in the game, instead just over halfway through it plays almost an extra 3 minutes of audio never heard before.

Obligatory audiophile recommendation: Use headphones for the best experience.