There's SO MUCH good stuff coming out this Fall and Winter! I don't know if I can choose. I think I'm torn between Pokemon Legends Z-A, Mina the Hollower and Winter Burrow. GHOST TRAVELLER: Adventures in Edo also looks good, and Moves of the Diamond Hand is also supposed to come out before the end of the year (by the same dev who did the Off-Peak adventure game series). 

What's everyone else looking forward to? Best of each genre coming out?

-DC

What's everyone's most anticipated game for the upcoming fall/winter season? 

I'm looking forward to playing Strange Antiquities, but for games not yet released, I'm REALLY looking forward to The Seance of Blake Manor, by the same team who did the Darkside Detective games, which I love. But also, spooky games, Ireland as a setting and a detective with a mystery to solve? Sign me up! 

-DC

I realize that a lot (if not most) adventure games play best on PC, but what is everyone's preferred platform? I love my Switch's dual docked/mobile capabilities, but I think most of my favorite things are all on PS4. I also just had to get a specific Ikea stand to fit my PS5 so I'm not loving on that lately, hence going back a generation. 

-DC

Anyone started playing Hades II yet? Or finished? What are everyone's thoughts?

Also to anyone reading this who has not played the original, highly recommended, even if you do need to play it on God Mode.

-DC

This is sure a weird one. If I'm not logged into the site, when I view a thread, I see all the replies just as I would expect to.


When I'm logged in, it seems like that part of the page simply isn't rendered. I don't get the link to Page 1, Page 2 etc. and after the first post, I just get the footer part (where it says "View printable version", "Send this thread to a friend", and "Users browsing this thread").  



This doesn't change if I try a different browser or turn off Firefox's tracking protection and uBlock (I doubted either of those could be the culprit, but it's usually the first thing I try). Logging in simply seems to mean I can't see the whole thread. It's bizarre.

Are there any adventues with settings in south or latin america? The language should be English or German.

What have we all been reading this year? I've been playing a bit of catch up here in 2025; I read Neuromancer and Burning Chrome from William Gibson and, sticking to the cyberpunk genre, I was gifted a copy Snow Crash that I still have to get to. Enjoyed those a lot! 

I also read the first two Redwall books for a podcast I'm doing that hasn't been released yet. They're cute books, if ultimately children's books. There's two adventure games out based on the series actually: a Telltale style one based around the first book and a text adventure based on the second.  I was planning to get to those with my co-host later on.

In the horror genre, I got around to The Haunting of Hill House. It's probably the best book I've read so far this year- I was crying at the end, and that's very rare for me. It's one I'll definitely be re-reading many times over the years. I'm currently working on Joe Hill's first short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts. It's my first time reading Joe Hill and I'm enjoying the prose. I think I liked the first story in the collection the most so far, fun to read as both a critique and love letter to the horror genre at the time (early aughts).

Oh yeah, I also have been occasionally throwing on some Sherlock Holmes audio books while I'm at work. So far, I've done some of the first stories and The Hound of the Baskervilles. It's surprising how many of the stories still hold up, though of course, there's a few that really, really haven't.

What about you all? What has the AGH community been reading this year? What do you recommend?

do you have any old games you can't remember?

there was an old free adventure game site in the shockwave/early flash days where this guy published his first-person adventure games that i can never remember these days who made an adventure game about waking up on easter island that you had to escape... i daydream about it semi-regularly, because there were a ton of fun ones he made and i wish i could remember and replay em

What better way to start an adventure game forum by having community playthroughs of adventure games? And what better game to get started with than a true modern classic, and the beginning of a wonderful friendship?



We're going to experiment with the format a bit, so for this one I'll document my playthrough over the course of three postings, and encourage everyone to play along, share your memories, ask for help if you're stuck, review what you particularly love or hate, and most important of all: Have a great time (re-)discovering a wonderful game! Note that while this initial post does not contain spoilers, anything else in this thread might.

Our first game is 2006's The Blackwell Legacy, by Dave Gilbert's Wadjet Eye Games, which was a smashing success and highly rated on Metacritic. Indie games were still commercially establishing themselves - Xbox Live Arcade had only launched a year earlier, and the first Humble Indie Bundle wouldn't arrive until nearly 4 years later. And adventure games were in a bit of a slump commercially. There were still some relatively heavy hitters (like Dreamfall: The longest Journey, the Runaway games, or Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy), and there was a pretty large homebrew scene making interesting games in AGS and other engines. But The Blackwell Legacy stood out, as a game that was indie and yet commercial, homebrew and yet professional, interesting and intriguing.

The Blackwell Legacy is a remake of a 2003 game called Bestowers of Eternity - Part One, which never received a Part Two. I have not played Bestowers, but one look at the screenshots shows me that Blackwell Legacy is a massive leap in production values. Sure, both the graphics and the voice acting still had a long way to go, but what's there is actually decent. And the game has not one, but two director's commentary track (the second one was released 5 years after the initial release), plus a voiceover blooper reel. The game is readily available on Steam and GOG, the latter being a bundle of the first four (out of five) games. At the time of writing, GOG's bundle is discounted to $5 from the usual $15.

I can't believe it's going to be 20 years old next year. I do remember excitedly waiting for the later games in the series to be released from 2009 through 2014. So without further ado, let's load up the game and start playing!

Day One



The game begins with our protagonist, Rosangela Blackwell, standing on the brooklin bridge and scattering the ashes of her late aunt (I wonder if that's legal? Also, from personal experience, I was surprised how dense and heavy ashes can be - I assume their depiction in The Big Lebowski was exaggerated for comedic effect). As she is leaving, mysterious smoke rises from the ashes, and the opening credits roll.

Afterwards, we find ourselves in front of our home and are ready to play the game. The interface is very straight forward: The right mouse button is used to look at stuff, the left mouse button is used to interact with stuff. If you move the mouse to the top of the screen, there's the inventory (we are currently holding a Letter). You can look at stuff in the inventory by right-clicking, and combine inventory items by left-clicking and then clicking on other inventory items. You can not use inventory items on stuff in the scene - the mouse pointer reverts to the normal pointer when you move it down. This is not a bug, but I will admit that it's definitely unusual to not have direct "use item on something in the scene" control.

Since we're about to experience our first puzzle, I am going to stop here for now to give you all a chance to load up the game and play along!

2025 was, and still is, one of the best, if not the best, p'n'c year of this decade century millennium.

Many popular and long-awaited games were released this year. However, that means other great games with less publicity were left in the dust.

So here it is, my favorite hidden gem of the year.


The Brilliant Coup - 8/10. Difficulty level: 7/10.

~12h heist game about a British bloke who wants to get rich by robbing a bank.

A little game that could.

I enjoyed it very much, which is strange since it should be a game I wouldn't like. Let's start with the UI. It has old school SCUMM-like verb-based controls, which is fine on its own. But here it feels very clunky, in other similar games you left click on something, the game assumes what action you want to use, e.g. if you click on door you automatically use "open", if you click on NPC it's "talk", item - "pick up" etc. But not here, left-clicking doesn't do anything on its own and you always have to select a verb first, so first click "open" then "door". Same with items, if you want to combine them, first "use", then item, then another item. Luckily, the right-click is always "look at".

Another thing is no VO. Personally I don't mind it. I would rather play a long game without VO than a short one with it. But I guess reading is going out of fashion, so some people might see it as a deal breaker for them.

There is almost no QoL. Pixel hunting is a thing, no map, no fast travel. There are some items that you literaly can throw away in the trash, but there are some that will stay with you for the entire game, cluttering up your inventory. There is no hint system (but the dev has made a walkthrough on the official website).

Despite all this, the game is great. It has the unique promise of planning the heist, gathering information and preparing for the big day. I wish there were more p'n'c games about thieves (especially since almost all p'n'c MCs are kleptomaniacs), there is even a subplot to make sure you have a way out if things go wrong, and the game has 3 different endings.
The puzzles are hard but logical and very satisfying to solve. Some of them have multiple solutions, which is nice, but it means you end up with a few useless items in your inventory.

So for anyone who wants that old school, challenging p'n'c feel, I highly recommend giving it a try.