INKY SQUIGGLES

When I think of the first video games I ever played, my thoughts gravitate towards titles like Zelda: Ocarina of Time (my first experience of an epic 3D quest) and Discworld (my first taste of maddening moon logic). These games had a profound impact on me; they opened me up to exciting new worlds that seemed, at the time, without limit. These worlds were so immersive and engaging that they remain firmly entrenched in my memory over twenty years later. To this day, the mnemonic 'twenty-three is number one' (the order in which you need to beat a series of deku scrubs in Zelda: OoT ) is more stubbornly etched in my memory than my own phone number. But when I think back further, it's not quite true that this was my first exposure to video games. The nineties and early noughties saw the increased affordability and mainstream adoption of personal computers in both homes and – for the first time – schools. This led to an edutainment (or educational video games) boom, and my UK p...

Throughout the pandemic, one international location in particular haunted my imagination : South Germany. While locked down, I took advantage of my daily exercise allowance of a single socially distanced outing in my local area. However, while I'm lucky to have access to abundant pretty, green spaces, my hometown is also a place where noteworthy sheep regularly make the front-page news. Like everyone else in the world, I craved a change of scenery – so I turned to the immersive worlds of books, films and adventure games to transport me from my somewhat fertiliser-seasoned surroundings. And, with its majestic forests, fairytale castles and melding of medieval and modern locales, the setting of FMV adventure game  Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within  gave me the perfect fantasy fuel. Better yet, it was rooted in reality; this was somewhere I might actually go someday – as fellow adventure game fans  AdventureGameGeek and IPKISS4LIFE had before me. So, as soon as internatio...

Whether you're new to gaming or just hankering after something to lose yourself in that isn't weighed down by complicated mechanics or repetitive grindfests, I've got the perfect list of adventure games for you. Crucially, these won't send your blood pressure soaring with jump scares or game over screens (just good old-fashioned emotional trauma). Many can even be – and are compelling enough to be – completed in just a few sittings (or even just one). And, as much as I love the classic adventure games, I've opted for more modern titles where you're unlikely to be stumped for months on end by mind-bending moon logic puzzles involving, say, having to craft a fake moustache disguise using cat hair, maple syrup and the last shreds of your sanity.  Night in the Woods At first glance, I wasn't sure how I felt about this game's quirky art style featuring cartoonish anthropomorphised characters, but as soon as I started playing it, any misgivings quickly dissip...

A journey into darkness. I've played my fair share of retro point-and-click adventure games, so when I peeped moody aesthetic screenshots of this cult classic 2003 horror adventure from Czech developer Future Games, I wondered how it'd slipped past my radar.  One Halloween Steam sale whirlwind later, and I was transported to Black Mirror, the remote ancestral Gordon family manor in Suffolk, 1981. After a 12-year absence, protagonist Samuel Gordon is drawn reluctantly back by his grandfather's mysterious death. Dismissed as suicide by everyone else, Samuel is convinced otherwise and begins his own informal investigation. This leads – naturally, given their sizable wealth and gothic English estate – to the revelation of an ancient family curse. As Samuel confronts the darkness that shrouds his family history, more bizarre, unexplained deaths gather pace around the manor, and he must race to break the curse before Black Mirror claims another victim. The most striking thing a...

With lockdown easing (i.e., becoming rapidly non-existent) here in the UK, the prospect of wider travel is, maybe, hopefully, starting to seem not so dim and distant after all. My Google Maps timeline update for July even cranked up from one visited place to – get this –  two . These are heady times. Meanwhile, in adventure game terms, these past few months have seen me exploring a foreboding ancestral manor in Suffolk, England , the vibrant electronic markets and maid cafés of Akihabara, Japan , and the idyllic mountainside landscape of a fictional  provincial park . I think it's safe to say that, through lockdown and beyond, games like these will continue to fuel my spirit of adventure. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars , Paris, France 'Paris in the fall, the last months of the year, at the end of the millennium. The city holds many memories for me – of music, of cafés, of love... and of death.'  –  George Stobbart Broken Sword's first entry s...