This gem is free in GOG. I’m playing it right now.
Also see https://www.scummvm.org/games/
I had it on my wishlist since reading The Art of Point + Click Adventure Games. “Bought” it together with GRIS, but have yet to actually install and try it out.
There are also more free games on GOG, including some demos:
https://www.gog.com/games?price=free&page=1&sort=popularity
I think TWP should and could have easily been €30 at release. I don’t feel ripped off with Trüberbrook, though it is a little on the pricey side compared to similar offers. I’m pretty sure the devs deserve it, though! (Just hoping the majority of the money does not go to their superstar voice actors)
I actually didn´t think of that. Dirk von Lotzow, wow! Never expected to hear him in a video game.
Finished Tales. That one is a bit of a mixed bag as well, though much cheaper than Trüberbrook . It has pretty decent graphics and some of the character animations went beyond what I would have expected. Unfortunately, puzzles and story seem a bit at odds with each other.
The game establishes the player’s goal pretty early on, but then there’s a lot of backtracking, where to complete task A you need B, but to get B you need to do C, and C involves finding D, and so on, until in the end you hardly remember what you set out to do in the first place.
The result feels a bit like jumping down a well and climbing back up little by little, when all you really needed was going around it. Which is a shame, as the premise of the game is rather intriguing, and there are quite a few interesting and exotic locations to visit along the way.
At least it lets me appreciate how, in a great adventure game, puzzles can carry the story forward in an almost natural way instead of just being obstacles to its progression.
The February Shadow of the Tomb Raider DLC, called The Price of Survival, was a bit of climbing, a boring old stealth/action sequence and a miniature mine cart puzzle that practically solved itself. Passable, but a far cry from the first two DLC tombs were definitely more interesting.
Sounds like The Price of Formula-val to me
Yes, I suppose it was Shadow in a nutshell.
This DLC made me realize why sneaking around (with or without stealth killing) was so much more fun in Rise: by and large the environments are much more restrictive in Shadow. Not necessarily the environments, mind you, but the environments in a “now you must sneak or kill” context. Perhaps they did that because people just want to explore without being bothered by enemies, but what you end up with is a game that’d simply be a lot better without most of the sections that include enemies. NB TR (2013) and Rise would also have been better with a lot fewer (sections with) enemies.
In Rise I genuinely had fun traversing the frozen city, taking out the undead super soldiers. I don’t really know if it belongs in a Tomb Raider game, but nevertheless it was excellent. On occasion, Rise was a terrific action game, even if you play it for the puzzle platforming.
Luckily most of the DLCs focus more on the “optional challenge” tomb aspect of the games. But I wish it went more in the direction of optional action set pieces, instead.
The Serpent’s Heart DLC for Shadow was more interesting with raft platforming, although it wasn’t my favorite.
I’ve actually got to play a bit of Heaven’s Vault already, and while it’s not exactly as I anticipated, I do enjoy it tremendously. Unfortunately, it’s not running as well on Linux as many other Windows games; there are some graphical glitches and a couple of times mouse controls got so messed up that I had to quit and restart. Might have to try with vanilla Wine instead of Proton.
The game itself is not as open (world) as I thought, with new locations only becoming available after collecting enough clues and the layout of those locations being fairly linear. There’s also a conversation mechanic where you chose between Question and Remark (or remaining silent) without actually knowing what your character will say upfront, while other times you get to pick between classic dialogue options. The former caused me to utter things I certainly would not have said if I had known in advance.
These few gripes aside, Heaven’s Vault is just my thing. I love exploration, and I really love how the game tries to lure you away from a spot when there is still much more to discover . You’ll find a few items to pick up, but mostly you’re collecting historical facts and writings in the ancient script that need to be translated. The translation mechanic is quite the unique puzzle design, where you get to guess sentences with a couple of choices for each individual word. Occasionally your choices get affirmed or rejected as more data comes in, and some parts cannot be guessed until more vocabulary has been collected first. At any time those translations can be reviewed and changed, as your own understanding of the language deepens.
The writing itself is excellent in all aspects: the story as it unfolds, the individual characters and conversations, and the background lore.
I’m not far enough in to see where all of this leads to and how the different pieces connect, but the sense of discovery and accomplishment alone are quite satisfactory, in the same vein that solving a more traditional P&C adventure puzzle is.
Someone already knows it, since there’s a dedicated thread in this forum, anyway I’m currently playing The Great Ace Attorney, thanks to the English patch from the Scarlett Study team.
Finished Heaven’s Vault today and I loved every bit of it, even though it’s perhaps not as beautiful as some games, and not as challenging as others. All in all, it’s quite relaxing, actually. That’s not to say that there aren’t a couple pretty sights too:
What makes it really unique though is how it does not simply spoon-feed you a story, but lets you actively puzzle out the bits and pieces and come to your own conclusions. And I’m pretty sure I missed quite some stuff, despite being thorough and observant. Good thing it allows you to replay while retaining your accumulated knowledge of the ancient language (which, after a single pass, is far from complete).
Won’t do that immediately, but definitely at some later point in time. As I read it, they’re still polishing and adding content, so it seems prudent to wait for even more greatness .
Up next: Whispers of a Machine …
You missed combining items in the inventory?interesting. You mean that at some point it made sense to do it but you couldn’t do it, or that it didn’t make sense but you wish it had?
I finished MI4, at least, the difficulty was there for some puzzles (like the swamp and monkey combat…rip) and started Tales of Monkey Island… i have a bad feeling about all this 3D stuff in fact, the beginning doesnt seem to have a lot of interactions with items like in the 3 first games…
What do you think about Tales of Monkey Island? Is it good enough even for a point&click game type or is it the beginning who looks just easy?
Is there some Monkey Island fangames who are close to the quality of the puzzles/egnimas of MI1 & 2?
I took the full list of the fangames/mods, put it in a wordpad, will check it later.
The 3D in Tales of Monkey Island is ok for a cartoon style but the gameplay looks simple…i hope it will get harder with the other chapters.
Usual point&click with mouse and ton of details on screen was so good on mi1 & 2, the simplified really the gameplay after that (give/push/pull ect…not anymore).
MI3 had a lot of stuff to do at least and was well made but i don’t know what to think of MI5 for now, i will continue to play it…
Well, i got Full Throttle and Day of the tentacle (remastered) in case x)
I finished three of the episodes, but I never finished the game. I’m sure it’s adequate.
It’s good (better than MI4 IMHO) but the puzzles are easy.
Ok thanks for the informations, good stuff is coming in the game i suppose! Let’s enjoy it then! ^^
I hope that’s not based on what I said.
I thought MI4 was much better. I finished it, after all! But of course my perspective in 2000/2001ish as a young teen would’ve been a bit different than in 2009/2010ish.