I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Jan 15, 2023 - Day 15 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 21
Game: Silence
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Nov 15, 2016
Library Date: Nov 4, 2017
Unplayed: 1898 days (5y2m11d)
Playtime: 36m
The process of going into a game with no idea what it's going to be can lead to some terrible experiences, or some wonderful ones.
Silence is both. This is an excellent game (no waiting until the end of the review).
It opens on a stunningly rendered tableau of children in the early evening in a snowy village, building a snowman.
It then proceeded to break my heart with the intro. I'm not going to spoil it, but it was unexpectedly heart-rending. The only game that's affected me more than this recently was Stray, and I still haven't been able to bring myself back and continue beyond the intro level with that little cat.
Silence is a point-and-click adventure, that's unlike any I've played previously. The art is slightly surreal, and utterly gorgeous, and I will definitely go back to play more.
As of 10pm AEDT, Silence is on sale on Steam until January 27th for A$2.99 (90% off), AND there's a free demo available (the below is not a sponsored link).
Jan 20, 2023 - Day 20 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 26
Game: Gamedec - Definitive Edition
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Sept 17, 2021
Library Date: Jul 18, 2022
Unplayed: 186 days (6m2d)
Playtime: 1h45m
Last week @britt mentioned Gamedec in passing, and I said I might move it up my #NewPlay list.
"I'll just play for 15min." Almost 2 hrs later I logged out, late to start work.
Gamedec feels part-RPG, part point-and-click adventure. A gorgeous isometric cyberpunk game, you play a game detective (thus "Gamedec"), investigating crimes inside games.
Much like yesterday's NewPlay, you can choose the gender of the protagonist, as well as a thumbnail history, and an initial skillset.
The game utilises a branching path narrative that closes off particular pathways, based on other choices, which increases its RePlayability (yeah, couldn't resist).
I think the closest I've played to it recently would be Disco Elysium, but I've not progressed as far through DE, so this might be an unfair comparison.
There are a couple of rough edges in-game. In spite of choosing your gender at the start of the game, the NPCs will occasionally misgender you, which can really break your concentration.
There's one NPC in-game that you can team up with, but his auto-follow pathing means he'll sometimes stand on top of the objective.
This just took a bit of the shine off, nevertheless I still rate Gamedec as:
Feb 1, 2023 - Day 32 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 39
Game: Whispers of a Machine
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Apr 17, 2019
Library Date: Jan 10, 2020
Unplayed: 1118 days (3y22d)
Playtime: 31m
Whispers of a Machine is a point-and-click adventure billed as a "Sci-Fi Nordic Noir".
Apparently, part of the unique spin that WoaM puts on the point-and-click genre, is that conversations come with multiple responses, with each response altering the way the game plays and NPCs interact with you, in one of three directions.
You play as Vera, a "cybernetically augmented" Swedish detective, investigating a murder, "in a post-AI world".
I need to be in the mood for a point-and-click, and at the moment, I'm not. So far, it hasn't grabbed me enough to keep me playing beyond the 30 minutes, or make me want to jump back in, but when I'm in the mood, I'll give it another shot.
Right now, I'm giving Whispers of a Machine a rating of:
Feb 12, 2023 - Day 43 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 49
Game: Serena
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Jan 31, 2014
Library Date: Oct 6, 2021
Unplayed: 494 days
Playtime: 41m
Managed to avoid a platformer hat-trick, but I might have preferred a platformer.
This point-and-click whodunit was completed in a single 41 minute playthrough. It was apparently some kind of collaborative effort, and was given away free.
I was marginally invested in trying to unravel the who, but the limited gameplay was quite frustrating. Click on things repeatedly until you get all the dialogue variations, then move onto the next thing. When the clock chimes start over, with the clicking and the dialogue, and there's 41 minutes of my life I won't get back.
Feb 14, 2023 - Day 45 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 51
Game: The Uncertain: Light at the End
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Oct 9, 2020
Library Date: Jul 23, 2021
Unplayed: 571 days
Playtime: 38m
The Uncertain: Light at the End is a point-and-click adventure set in a post-robot-uprising society where the remaining humans are being hunted by the robots, as robots build a new society.
The narrative is interesting, the graphics are great (apart from the way the human characters move, which is... odd).
Feb 16, 2023 - Day 47 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 53
Game: State of Mind
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Aug 16, 2018
Library Date: Sep 7, 2019
Unplayed: 1259 days (3y5m10d)
Playtime: 40m
State of Mind is a point-and-click adventure (apparently a thriller), set in a futuristic Berlin.
I'd like to write something more complicated about it, but after 40mins, I'm still not quite sure what's happening. It's piqued my curiosity, though, so I'm interested in continuing for a while.
Mar 7, 2023 - Day 66 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 72
Game: Norco
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Mar 25, 2022
Library Date: Aug 8, 2022
Unplayed: 211 days (6m27d)
Playtime: 41m
I am, quite vocally, not a fan of pixel art games. As I'm reasonably certain I've said before, I lived through pixel art when it was a necessity, and I have no nostalgic sentimentality towards that era that makes me look back wistfully to a more "simple" time.
Which is why, upon starting Norco, I sighed. It was immediately obvious that I'd overlooked the fact it was a pixel art game when I bought it, and I figured I'd just suffer through it for 15 minutes and get it out of the way.
I was wrong.
Norco is a point-and-click adventure, set in and around a suburb of New Orleans, some time in a run-down future.
The soundtrack is moody & evocative, and the storyline drew me in. The only reason I didn't keep playing is that I'm somewhere south of exhausted and desperately need some sleep.
Apr 9, 2023 - Day 99 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 106
Game: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Jul 15, 2009
Library Date: Mar 13, 2018
Unplayed: 1853d (5y27d)
Playtime: 31m
I went into today's #NewPlay just trying to stay upright, and I slept for a couple of hours afterwards. This may have contributed to my feelings towards TSoMI:SE.
I've said it before in these reviews: I'm not a huge point-and-click adventure fan.
TMI time: for a lot of my life I struggled to admit that I didn't like some things, and it's only in the past few years that I've been able to let myself say "Actually, I don't like this."
Some of my earliest computer gaming experiences were The Colossal Cave on a rebuilt mainframe we had at home (that's a whole other story), and a pirated copy of Zork.
When I started on PC, I played all of the Quests (King's, Police, and Space), and I'd usually get to a point of frustration and abandoning them.
I didn't play any the SCUMM-based adventures, and so I have no nostalgia for them; sadly, for the most part, they just do nothing for me.
TSoMI:SE isn't a bad game. I can see the love that went into rebuilding it, but maybe (in the immortal words of Fozzie Bear) "It's not that it's wrong, it's just wrong for me."
I will try it again when I'm more awake but at best, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is:
Apr 14, 2023 - Day 104 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 111
Game: Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Aug 16, 2017
Library Date: Jun 6, 2018
Unplayed: 1773d (4y10m8d)
Playtime: 25m
I feel like I should tread carefully here; while a voracious reader when younger, I've not encountered the works of Ken Follett, but apparently The Pillars of the Earth (henceforth, "Pillars") was a "worldwide best-seller".
Pillars came in a Humble Bundle, and it's not a game that I would have purchased on its own. I'm not familiar with the source material, or the author, so the branding isn't a hook.
However, if the storytelling and gameplay game can grab me early, this isn't necessarily an issue. Unfortunately, Pillars very much seems to lean into an assumed familiarity with the source material which was strike one.
Strike two was "Oh. It's a point-and-click adventure."
I've made no bones about my feelings towards point-and-click. The Full Throttle remaster hooked me. Deponia was a bit hit and miss.
Strike three was the game pacing. It's... slow. There's a lot of slow moving from place to place, a lot of things to click on that don't seem to do anything.
The thing that tipped me over the edge, though: the game made it almost impossible to quit out. In the end, I alt-tabbed and closed it.
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is a solid:
Apr 17, 2023 - Day 107 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 115
Game: The Darkside Detective
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Jul 27, 2017
Library Date: Jan 7, 2019
Unplayed: 1561d (4y3m10d)
Playtime: 16m
For someone who's not a big fan of point-and-click adventures and retro pixel art, I certainly own a lot of retro pixel art point-and-click adventures; case in point, The Darkside Detective
One of the things I think I don't like about it is that I like to play games fullscreen, and pixel art at fullscreen on a 32" monitor can feel overwhelming.
The gameplay has to overcome that. The Darkside Detective did, at least in the first "chapter".
The puzzles weren't so deeply complicated that I had to spend forever tracking back and forth to multiple locations, and then trying to work out the exact combination of multiple weird objects to make something work.
It also didn't take me two hours to make any progress; I completed the first chapter in 15 minutes. I didn't need to spend interminable amounts of time waiting for a character to walk backwards and forwards across a screen (I'm looking at you, The Secret of Monkey Island).
As far as point-and-click adventures go, The Darkside Detective is: