Developed by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (both formerly of LucasArts, with Gilbert heading up Return to Monkey Island), this game combines the sensibilities of The X-Files and Twin Peaks with a wacky, ghost and clown-filled adventure through a haunted hotel, an abandoned circus, and all manner of creepy ‘small town’ weirdness. Thimbleweed Park is as close to a Monkey Island follow-up as you’ll find in modern gaming. The game itself has held up very well in modern times, thanks to some gorgeously grimy pixel art, and a sense of clever humour that keeps the action sharp and funny, even when its story is particularly grim. It’s a tale that still feels relevant today. As a sci-fi story, it also comes with a grim and prescient warning, of a future too reliant on technology. Not only is Beneath a Steel Sky one of very few classic games to be inspired by Australia, it’s also frequently called one of the best video game narratives of all time, with slick humour and a twisting story that keeps you well-hooked throughout Foster’s adventure. Here, he learns skills from a group of Indigenous Australians, and is later captured by violent goons from an ‘advanced’ city where a dark secret is growing at its core. In this dystopian cyberpunk adventure, you play as a man named Robert Foster who is cast into a wasteland known as The Gap, which is essentially a future Australian outback. Beneath A Steel Sky Image: Revolution Softwareīeneath a Steel Sky is one of the icons of the classic point & click genre, and helped it rise to new narrative heights. By the time the conversation is over, your contact is three pints deep, hoeing into some ridiculous ‘loaded fries’ on your dime.’īy dipping into the point & click genre, NORCO tells an incredibly impactful, beautiful modern tale. In one moment, a character in a bar can be plied for more information about the whereabouts of your brother, provided you do something to quench his thirst. ‘ NORCO knows when and how to puncture its darkest moments and depictions with some of the most incisive and word-perfect jokes, relieving it from simply being a slog of desperation. Here’s GamesHub writer Nicholas Kennedy on the game: It’s fantastical and disturbing, and absolutely brilliant. Everyone you meet in NORCO has a story worth hearing – and while the game disguises its social commentary in surrealism and absurdism, it also has a stark message for players. NORCO, from Geography of Robots, features a hyper-local and biographical ‘southern gothic’ narrative that confronts issues of racism, gentrification and urban development head on via a magical realist adventure story. Wadjet Eye Games is doing great things with the genre, and Unavowed is no exception. That’s not to mention the game’s art, which is gorgeous throughout. The balance between difficulty and cleverness is hard to get right, but Unavowed strikes the perfect tone, making for a satisfying and brilliant adventure. While some are obtuse (as is often the case with the genre), they’re typically based on logic, and extremely rewarding for players to work through, one magical locale at a time. The writing in Unavowed is spectacular, as its point & click puzzles. As you go on a pilgrimage to discover exactly what led to this possession, you meet a cast of warlocks and magical creatures, all of whom exist in a strange pseudo reality that aligns closely with the real world. In it, you play as a character who’s been possessed by a demon and later forced to reckon with the chaos they’ve left in their wake. Unavowed is a modern point & click adventure heavily inspired by the urban fantasy genre, as well as hits like The Secret of Monkey Island.
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