Worst adventure games of all times

As discussed in another thread, I would like to collect the worst adventure games of all times. I start with (links to Wikipedia):

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties

Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X!

Hugo’s House of Horrors

Operation Stealth (Yes, I would include it here, because it consisted mainly of these stupid labyrinths.)

I think that one was rated very bad by some German online adventure site and it is truly bad. But I can’t find the proper transcription and the actual review. :sweat_smile:

Edit:
Official site: http://ru.akella.com/Game.aspx?id=347

German review giving it 15%:
http://www.adventure-treff.de/test/11271-14

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Great find. :slight_smile: You can still buy the German version of the game on Amazon:

I heard Polda 5 is awful. I saw a video-review from an Italian youtuber which does game reviews under “awful games”.

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5€ is still to much for this. Despite the generated preview claiming it’s only 0.01€. Btw, it’s a game made for a film, which is an film version of a book, which is a modern comedy remake of a Soviet fairytale from 1938, which also had a nice film. There is a German DVD of it, which probably has GDR dub: https://www.spondo.de/film/marchen/russische-maerchen/dvd-der-zauberer-aus-der-flasche-sparkauf.html
The trailer of the 2006 film is ok-ish, I didn’t find it too funny. But I still don’t understand how this could be made even worse by the developers.

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You can get it (allegedly) for 0.01 Euros from other dealers:

So this game is/was made by a professional developer? It looks more like a fan adventure…

You mean this one? Doesn’t look that bad. :slight_smile: In fact, there were several parts (six?):

Yep. The review was 46 minutes long and showed some incredibly stupid puzzles and a bad humor. The Italian voiceover is also extremely bad, “the TWP fan dub will be 100 times better” bad.

Considering the amount of casting we’re doing, I think so!!

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I haven’t played that many of the more obscure games, so I’ve probably dodged many terrible ones, but of the “big” games, King’s Quest III is the worst I’ve played by a mile…

The horrible timed thing for the entire first half of the game along with having to do chores and then kind of inputing data for the spells, it’s awful…
It is forgivable for the time though, because they were experimenting and it was just an experiment that didn’t work and they didn’t repeat it once they learned it wasn’t good.

It’s a shame, because if you removed those elements then it’d be a good game and has lots of cool locations and puzzles…

Yes. Hugo might have been the worst adventure game I’ve ever played through. On the other hand, it might not have been out-of-date back then. Also, we have to keep in mind that it was shareware. Hence, the budget might have been much smaller than the budgets for the SCUMM games.

Looks like it. Parus Studios. I’ve found several games listed as developed by them:
http://questzone.ru/enzi/com/570

All but one (a game about prison) of the games listed use some kind of license as they use either films or cartoon names as templates. They didn’t release anything after 2008. They must have invested and paid something for those.
The publisher was definitely a serous one - Akella, though also now gone they had quite a big list of adventures and casual games on Russian market.

Edit: Here are some previews of other games: studiia-parus – лучшие игры компании, информация о новинках и датах выхода
All but the kid games made after cartoons are in that style.

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Have you tried the Redux version? King's Quest III Redux : To Heir is Human, an AGDinteractive Graphic Adventure Game
I didn’t but it might be some kind of better version.

I’ve heard of them back then but never played them. Didn’t know they are that bad.

I remember playing a shareware version of Nitemare-3D and I’ve just learned it’s a sequel to this series! (informal title: Hugo 4)

It’s a matter of opinion whether they are bad. However, in my opinion, the Hugo series is overrated, seeing its degree of popularity.
For example, the first Hugo game was released a few years after MM. The story is quite similar, but the engine, the gameplay, the puzzle design and the graphics are definitely far worse.

According to that page, it’s indexed in Germany - probably because it looks like Doom, which was indexed as well. Though, Doom was removed from the index a few years ago. That’s interesting.

Actually it’s a Wolfenstein 3D clone. Back then I thought it was quite creepy but I never got far. Maybe I should play it again, after all there is a mansion and a microwave so it can’t be that bad of a game:

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Well, vintage 2.5D (ray casting) and 3D technologies do interest me, but I’m not sure if I would enjoy this game. First-person shooters can be funny in multi-player mode, but I rarely played FPS in single-player mode as I find it too repetitive. Maybe I’d rather try an old RPG such as The Elder Scrolls: Arena or Daggerfall, which are now for free as well.