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Gemini Rue is another adventure game by Wadjet, the same guys that made the Blackwell series. Since I greatly enjoyed the Blackwell games, and I had Gemini Rue in my library for just as long, I decided to give that one a shot to.

I started playing yesterday, soon after writing my last article, and completed it today. Sadly, I didn’t get all the achievements in my first playthrough, missing Space Cowboy, which requires me to find four cameo characters from Cowboy Bebop at random locations in the game, as well as Memento, which requires finding four hidden notes in one of the game’s areas, Center 7. Since I already knew how to go through the game, and I had fast movement enabled, I decided to go for these two achievements soon after I’ve seen the ending. I finally got these last two achievements in about half an hour after starting a new game. I’m not sure how I even missed these things on my first run.

Gemini Rue Screenshot

I should watch Blade Runner

There are a few annoying puzzles, but for the most part, it’s logical and straightforward, with very little pixel searching needed to complete the main story. There’s plenty of pixel searching for achievements, of course, but that shouldn’t matter, in my opinion. There are issues, though, mostly related to the engine the game uses. Adventure Game Studio is buggy on my system, extremely so. Every time I reload a save, the graphics get messed up, I can’t alt-tab properly and sometimes I get stuck in the escape menu for no apparent reason. I also had a couple of crashes during my sessions.The game is excellent, by the way. The story is deep, interesting and much more developed than in the Blackwell series. Since I already praised the story of Blackwell, this should say something about how good the story of Gemini Rue actually is.

Still, as flawed as the engine is, it’s a great game and one of the better adventure games I’ve played. However, after completing five adventure games in two days, I think I’ve got enough of them for now. My next game will be something different.

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I went through with it, and the second game in the Blackwell series is now cleared of all achievements. It was pretty tough to.

First, I went for the Trying to Cut Down achievement. I thought it would be simple and all I had to do was be careful, but I was wrong. On my second playthrough, I counted all the cigarettes and got 13 on my side, but I didn’t get the achievement. At this point, I thought the game is bugged or something, because I was sure I wasn’t even close to 20. I tried to force the game to detect it in several different ways and nothing worked, so I decided to do a second attempt, with a third playthrough. This time, I decided to work on both cases simultaneously, which helped me save some time and I finally got it.

Blackwell Unbound - Map Screen

This is the map screen in Blackwell Unbound

With that out of the way, I went for the Chain Smoker achievement. This one, unlike the previous one, does have bug issues. The most straightforward way to get the achievement would be to just light a cigarette manually, and then handle the TV, phone or radio to put it off and repeat this. The problem is, it often happens that the lighter and the cigarettes become unusable. On the cases that this doesn’t happen, a second bug occurs, where Lauren is constantly claiming she already has a lit cigarette, even though that obviously wasn’t the case.

What I did in the end was that I loaded a save game from the moment after the second case is done and the balcony scene is over. Then I parked Lauren on the balcony and switched to Joey. I left her idle like this for about 45 minutes and then completed the game for the fourth time. I ended up with 111 cigarettes and finally unlocked the last achievement.

In any case, I’m done with the Blackwell series on Steam now. There are a few other adventure games I haven’t completed yet, though, so I might try those, since most are pretty short if they don’t drag you along with bad puzzles.

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I did it. The final game of the first Blackwell Trilogy is completed. Even better, it’s completed with all the achievements done to, meaning I can add it to my 100% completed list.

Blackwell Convergence brings us back to the present, and you follow Rosangela Blackwell, the character from the first game. Her ghost saving business is advancing and you finally get acquainted with the Countess from Blackwell Unbound. Her story is explained, her spirit set free and everything is fixed, but the game makes it obvious that we’ve only scratched the surface and there’s a lot more to come.

Blackwell Convergence - Start

I love cinematic starts!

You get to switch control between Joey and the Protagonist again, just as it was possible in the second game, but I find the game an improvement overall. The puzzles are a lot more straightforward and clearer, the control switching doesn’t complicate things and makes more sense, and the “you should search for this term on your computer” parts are more heavily hinted, so you don’t have to guess. All in all, it was a more polished adventure experience.

Now that the third game is completed, I have the fourth one left, but I don’t have it on Steam, so it’s probably time to play something else. The thing is, since I got all the achievements in both Blackwell Legacy and Blackwell Convergence, I’m kind of feeling like getting the final two achievements in Blackwell Unbound also, just so I could them all on the 100% done list.

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Well, since I was already on a roll, I decided to do another one.

Blackwell Unbound is the second game of the Blackwell series and it didn’t suffer from the issue of the first game – the bad ending. It’s a prequel of sorts, following Lauren Blackwell, who is, I believe, the aunt of the character from the first game, during two of her cases in the seventies.

Blackwell Unbound - Different Dimension

The area “between the worlds” received an upgrade.

The overall story is expanded in Blackwell Unbound, and I’m actually starting to be interested in what will happen next. In this game, you often have to switch control between Joey and the Protagonist, in order to get by some puzzles, which is an interesting change, but not one I really like. I mean, I don’t mind it, but I prefer to keep adventure games simple.

I didn’t get all the achievements this time. The two I have left are one that asks me to finish the game with less than 20 cigarettes smoked, and one where I have to smoke more than 100. I guess the second one can be done by reloading a save and idling for a while, but the first one will take replaying the game. With the knowledge I have now, I should be able to complete it fast enough not to smoke to much. However, I won’t do that next.The second of four games is done now and, since I also have the third on Steam, I’ll definitely tackle that one next.

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The Blackwell Legacy was another quick one. I started playing it this morning and completed it in a couple of hours. It’s a never adventure game, but with a classic look. The looks seem outdated, but they have a certain charm which I greatly enjoyed. It’s a good, fun adventure game, but there were a few flaws.

Blackwell Legacy Screenshot Bridge

The game is graphically ancient, but it holds a certain charm.

I also managed to get all of the achievements in this one, meaning I can mark it as 100% completed. It can all be done in a single playthrough to. The important part is to enable all commentaries in the options menu before starting and to talk to Joey constantly, but only in your apartment room, not anywhere else. Everything else is easily doable. Once the game was finished, I still didn’t get the Family History achievement, but reloading at the autosave, examining all of my photos and then exhausting all the conversation options with Joey was enough to get it.First of all, while the voice acting was fine, the voice quality could use some work. I guess that’s how it is with lower budget indie games, so I can’t take that as a significant flaw, but still, it takes away from the game a bit. Secondly, the ending was cheesy and not at all in the tone of the rest of the game. I won’t reveal to much about it, but it basically ended too abruptly and with a completely unimaginative twist. It could’ve been done better.

All in all, The Blackwell Legacy is a quality adventure game, which any fan should play. There’s four more games in the series, but I only have the next two on Steam. I’ll probably tackle those next. The next one is Blackwell Unbound.

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Since the last post, I’ve been a bit busy, completing two extremely short games. Well, for the most part, they feel like tech demos more than anything, but they’re in my Steam library, and now I’ve been able to put them in my “Completed” category.

Half Life 2: Lost Coast

This really, literally is a tech demo. To be more precise, it’s a tech demo for using HDR in the source engine. I played through it with commentary on and cleared it in under half an hour. There really is nothing to it. They explain a bit on how they design games, what technology is involved and that’s it. You kill a few enemies, fight a helicopter and get invited to dinner by a fisherman.

Lume Screenshot

Lume is a beautiful game, but it’s much too short.

Lume

This one isn’t a tech demo, calling itself a full-fledged game, but it sure feels like a tech demo. It’s a pretty, but extremely short adventure game. You play as a girl who visits her inventor grandfather. Unfortunately, he had to go to the nearby village to fix their power generator, so while you wait for him, you have to fix the generator at his house. That’s it, nothing else to the game. It was fun, but it was short, taking me about 40 minutes to complete. Still, my backlog is getting smaller. It’s still huge, but it’s getting smaller.

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Devil’s Tuning Fork

I downloaded this free game because I found the concept interesting. Basically, you are blind and you use a tuning fork to navigate around the world from a first person perspective. You use the left mouse button to fire a high frequency sound which then bounces of walls and outlines the area around you, or you can use a slower frequency sound with the right mouse button in order to detect weak floors and stuff like that. You can also use a charged up sound which is then fired to an area you target and then it spreads from there. This is used to outline distant areas or trigger bells and stuff like that.

Anyway, it’s an interesting concept, which looks great, but I’m not really sure how good the game is. It feels more like a novelty than anything else. There is a story somewhere in there to, and it seems to be scary or something, but I didn’t really feel it, as it’s to abstract.

Rogue Survivor

A zombie survival roguelike, of all things. Again, I’ve found this to be an interesting concept, but it’s still really early in development so it feels a bit cumbersome to play. Still, this looks like it could become the next minecraft/dwarf fortress if done well. I haven’t played it to much, but I will definitely follow it along.

Well, as you see, I decided to do something about my lack of playing games lately. I will try to find a cool game every now and then to “review” and even provide a link if the game is free. There are really some gems out there that should be discovered by more people so hopefully, a couple more will discover them thanks to a post here.

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This is as point-and-clicky for an adventure game as It can get. You control a cute little robot and help him escape from danger, deal with some criminals which used to be his high school bullies and maybe get the girl? I’m not sure yet. What I like most about this is that you have a combination of logic based puzzles that appear in other games and actions that actually seem realistic in the situation you find yourself in. At no point in the game did I have to just randomly click around and hope that I will stumble into a solution. The game is small, so I’m in no rush to complete it, but I definitely plan to enjoy it.

 

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I installed this game shortly after finishing Overlord II and played it occasionally until today. Today, I’ve completed it! What can I say about it? If you’ve played the original Secret of Monkey Island, you will know this one. It’s the same game with updated, hand drawn, high resolution beautiful graphics, music and voices. You can even switch to the original version with the push of a button. If you like adventures get this one and play it. It’s packed with witty puzzles, great humor and perfect atmosphere.  There were moments where I was literally laughing out loud.

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I stumbled upon this gem on YouTube. Today I installed and completed it in one sitting. It took me probably about 8 hours, but I did it. It’s a 2D action adventure with RPG elements. The game is similar to Castlevania on the GBA and DS, as well as Super Metroid. There are a few differences though. First of all, the game has levels. You can revisit them as much as you like, and you are encouraged to do it, as there are plenty of items you can’t get in the first run. Second, and more important, the game is beautiful. All of the backgrounds are hand drawn and in high resolution. The level of details is amazing. The characters are nicely animated and everything looks completely smooth. 

In the style of Castlevania, you unlock new abilities as you progress such as dash and double jump, which in turn allow you to revisit all levels and discover paths to new ones, as well as collect some nice items. You also gain experience and levels which further improves your character. There are a couple of spells and various skills in the game, and there is an option to buy potions that increase your stats, so if you like to grind you will feel right at home. I might try grinding later, but right now, I just tried to collect as much items as possible and complete the game. It gets hard at times, but it never became frustrating for me. Most of the times, I died because I got impatient. Anyway, If you like nice 2D games, this is probably one of the best you can get on the PC right now.

Anyway, look at the trailer and see for yourself.