EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus

Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1991
Platform: DOS

Score: 3

One of several Sierra adventures designed with children in mind, EcoQuest is a very simple and very educational game with above average production values. However, a lackluster story and script make it difficult to recommend.

Hill Agency: PURITYdecay

Publisher: Achimostawinan Games
Developer: Achimostawinan Games
Year: 2023
Platform: Windows

Rating: 1

Achimostawinan Games (translated to “Tell us a story” in Cree) is an Indigenous-owned game studio and hopefully one of many more to come. Hill Agency: PURITY/decay is their first game, a futuristic detective noir mystery in which the colonizers have mostly left Earth and the few major cities remaining are run by Indigenous people. As an illustration of Néhinaw culture and what a future Land Back world could look like, Hill Agency is a beautiful success. Unfortunately, as an adventure game it’s still quite rough around the edges, even with all the effort the developers have put into smoothing them out since launch.

Hugo III: Jungle of Doom

Publisher: Gray Design
Developer: Gray Design
Year: 1992
Platform: DOS

Rating: 1

I wish I could say that the final game in the Hugo shareware trilogy finally put things together. But despite a significant improvement in graphics and playability, this incredibly short game still manages to be dull and offensive.

Hugo II: Whodunit?

Publisher: Gray Design
Developer: Gray Design
Year: 1991
Platform: DOS

Rating: 0

While certainly longer with slightly better production values, the sequel to Hugo’s House of Horrors is a perfect conglomeration of the worst sins in the adventure game genre.

Hugo’s House of Horrors

Publisher: Gray Design
Developer: Gray Design
Year: 1990
Platform: DOS, Windows

Rating: 1

One of the more popular shareware adventure games, Hugo’s House of Horrors, while short and easy, is not horrific in the slightest, unless of course you’re referring to the game design.

Orten Was the Case

Publisher: Woodhill Interactive
Developer: Woodhill Interactive
Year: 2023
Platform: Windows, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Rating: 7

For the second time in three years, we have a game where you begin exactly twelve minutes before your untimely death. But while the game Twelve Minutes takes place entirely inside one apartment room, Woodhill Interactive’s Orten Was the Case spans an entire hand-drawn city from the top of its tallest building to the far depths of its underground. The seemingly random clues and disparate objectives keep the pace rather slow for a while, but it all builds into one of the more devilishly complex and rewarding time loop games to date.

Lamplight City

Publisher: Application Systems Heidelberg
Developer: Grundislav Games
Year: 2018
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Switch

Rating: 5

Take the historical aesthetic of The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes, the general structure (and occasional voodoo angle) of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, and the characterizations of The Blackwell Legacy series, mix them in an anachronistic blender, and you got yourself Lamplight City, an ambitious detective game with superb production values. Sadly, however, the game forgets to accomplish what should have been its primary goal: to give the player actual detective work.

The Case of the Golden Idol

Publisher: Playstack
Developer: Color Gray
Year: 2022
Platform: Windows, Switch

Rating: 7

2018 saw Return of the Obra Dinn become a cult classic thanks to a grisly murder mystery logic puzzle. The Case of the Golden Idol continues in that spirit though in a more whimsical–but also more complex–manner.

Spellbreaker

Publisher: Infocom
Developer: Infocom
Year: 1985
Platform: PC, Commodore, Apple, Mac, Amstrad, Atari ST, TRS

Rating: 4

Considered one of the most difficult games in the Infocom catalogue, Spellbreaker deploys an excellent plot that neatly and satisfyingly wraps up the Enchanter trilogy. Yet, as seems to be in the case in all of his games, Dave Lebling’s puzzle structure maddeningly gets in the way of most of the fun.

Sorcerer

Publisher: Infocom
Developer: Infocom
Year: 1984
Platform: PC, Commodore, Apple, Mac, Amstrad, Atari ST, TRS

Rating: 7

Steve Meretzky took over the reins from Marc Blank and Dave Lebling in his second adventure after the wildly popular Planetfall. His style is quite evident here. While telling perhaps a weaker story with a significantly less serious atmosphere than Enchanter, Sorcerer far exceeds it as a sequel thanks to a more user-friendly design and some truly excellent puzzles.