"Lets get naked and take a swim in the lake!"

Oh man its Adventure time! No not the cartoon with the stretchy dog, I'm talking about an actually adventure game. It's called Fable.

No, not this Fable

 In Fable you play as a dude named Quickthorpe, and you need to go find magic gems. Made back in 1996 and developed by a team called Simbiosis Interactive, Fable follows the old formula of adventure games, IE there's plenty of humor and numerous ways to die.

It's going

 Its hard to talk about adventure games without giving things away, but if you've played a point and click adventure game before you should know what to expect. If you're a fan of adventure games in general, like games with humor, or you're trying to learn weird and unexpected ways of getting out of sticky situations then Fable might be what you're looking for.

"An ice covered lake in an adventure game? I'm sure it'll be completely safe"

You can snag Fable here

In an alternate universe, do you think theres a show called "The Y-Files"?

Excuses: I dont got any, have a video game.

They're not here for our cows this time

OK SO. Earth is being invaded by a load of aliens and they're a bunch of dicks, and as the commander of the international organization that was put together to stop them you only got the weekend warrior dregs from the countries your trying to protect. Things look bad, can you still pull it off?

Not likely

The game today is YCOM: Enemy Unlikely. A parody "demake" of X-COM Enemy Unknown, a tactical turn based strategy game with basically the same "repel alien invasion" premise. Research weapons and armor to turn the tables and beat back alien abduction attempts, because if you keep screwing up out in the field the countries that pay you will just pull the plug, and where does that leave you? On a UFO with probes in uncomfortable places.

"We'd rather take our chances with the aliens, pack your stuff and get out"

Lets see the game in action.

If any of that convinced you, or you want to better learn how to defend the Earth from alien incursion, then YCOM is worth checking out. I mean, you're not a dirty alien sympathizer are you? ARE YOU?

OR SOMETHING WORSE?

You can get YCOM Enemy Unlikely here instead of the guys website because its "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" at the time of this post

Dance, puppets! DANCE!

HEY YOU! Yeah, you! You ever want to command legions of little, helpless people and send them off to die, but DONT want to join the army or get into politics? Well then do I have a game for YOU! The name of the game today is Lemmings, I hope you're prepared to get REALLY frustrated trying to figure how to save them all on the harder levels.

Developed back in 1991 by DMA Design, an eight man team, and published by Psygnosis for Amiga, Atari, and PC among others, Lemmings is looked back on as one of the best games to come out at the time, and is considered by some to be THE best Amiga game ever. A numerous amount of expansions and level packs came out for it, making the end result level total fairly absurd. 

"Aw, I ran out of builders"

The internet labels Lemmings as a puzzle-platformer and I'd have to agree, each level is basically an obstacle course you need to guide your lemmings through from start to finish, using skills you can assign individual lemmings to make a path through destructible walls, over pits and around traps to get to the exit. The skills themselves are fairly self explanatory: Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Builder, Basher, Miner, and Digger.

It takes hard training to be able to punch through a wall with your bare hands

This version of Lemmings was remade entirely with Javascript, and is playable from your browser. It doesnt have any multiplayer capability like some versions of the original, but its more than enough to help you kill time, especially with the original difficulty levels in place. If you want to maliciously torment things that cant fight back, or sob at your computer helpless wondering "WHY CANT I SAVE EVERYONE" then Lemmings might be for you!

"What? NO! DONT GO THERE STOP KILLING YOURSELVES"

You can play Lemmings right from the internet here, just dont try it on a toaster

A thousand ways to die horribly: the game

Haha! Time for a game that's so schizophrenic in tone I don't even know what to make of it! The game today is Heart of Darkness. No, not the book about colonial racism and the ivory trade in the Congo by Joesph Conrad, I'm talking about the game about a boy, his dog, and his....thing.

The less said about these the better

 Heart of Darkness is a side scrolling, puzzle solving, platforming adventure game, and on the surface it looks like a kids movie, with really good art, but with a deeper look things get weird. See, the kid you play as can die. Normally this would illicit a "DUH" reaction, but the extend this game goes into animating different ways for this kid to die gets a little excessive. Crushed by rocks, burned by fireballs, eaten by the various nightmarish creatures in the game, falling into lava, drowning, being burned by fireballs underwater, and more. All with their own separate cringe inducing animations and bone snapping sound effects. By all rights, if this game had gore these deaths would be shooting blood and viscera all over the damn place.

We've come a long way since 1998

The plot of the game is that Andy, our protagonist and hero for this game, is out with his dog Whiskey during a surprise eclipse, and Whiskey gets taken away to another world by some horrifying shadow creature. Andy, showing more initiative that YOU ever did when you were a kid grabs a bunch of his inventions and jumps right in his GOD DAMN SPACESHIP and takes off to rescue his dog. His ship crashes into a cliff and thats where Heart of Darkness, and the high lethality adventure really begins.

That kid is so dead

Heart of Darkness came out on PC in August of 1998, having be released on Playstation a week earlier. It has the same feel as Another World, which was made by Eric Chahi over at Delphine Studios before starting Amazing Studios, the studio that developed Heart of Darkness, and the publisher of the game was Interplay Entertainment.

Best animation. Forever. For all time.

If you like ADVENTURE, gruesome death, damn fine art, crazy monsters and landscapes, late 90s CGI, or kids movies, Heart of Darkness might be for you.

Why would that pink thing evolve in such a way? It must hurt to live

You can get it here or here or a bunch of other places.

One year anniversary! (and games)

Got a couple of weird things for you today, something that's actually used to train officers in the Swedish military, and another that's not. "A game that's meant for training army guys?" you say, "So it's like a FPS?" YOU COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG.

Training or screwing around on the clock? You decide

The point of the officer training game is to see how well you and three other guys can solve puzzles and work together under the pressure of a time limit. Obviously the best use for this to see how well you and your three very best can presumably handle whatever apocalyptic/action movie scenarios you can envision. Send you and your friends through the ringer and see who can step up when they need to and who you need to endlessly harass until they get their shit together. If you're trying to pull together a dream time to survive anything that gets thrown at you, you need to go through this ringer at least once.

No, not that kind of Step Up

The other thing I got for you today is a weird little non-typical adventure game that's a a kind of prequel demo for Kentucky Route Zero, an adventure game that ISN'T free, so I'm not going to talk about it. It's called Limit and Demonstrations, its about fifteen minutes long, it's got its own music, and the art is cool, and its free (obviously), so if you're trying to kill time, this might be what you're looking for, it's not like you'll lose much for trying (accept time).

But you lose time when doing anything

So, I've been at this nonsense for a full year now. I had fun with it, and if even one of you found a game you enjoyed here, then it was worth it. I mean, it would be more productive and helpful than blogging about what I ate for lunch.

OH NO, IT'S HAPPENING

You can play that officer training game in your browser here, and you can get Limits and Demonstrations here

The little guy totally jumped like Megaman in earlier versions of the game

Last day before the Mayan sky god Quetzacotal comes down from space and makes everything explode, or something (who knows, weld armor plates to your car just in case there are mutant bandits in the after math). In the mean time, pass the final hours teasing your brain, because you never know, that bit of mental exercise might just save your ass in the future when you need to defuse a makeshift bomb (hopefully not the one you made yourself to fight the mutant bandits).
Perspective is a neat puzzle game that's about just that: your own perspective. Using the combination of the little 2D guy you need to guide to the finish with the 3D environment full of platforms for him to run on and obstacles you need to get him past makes for a neat puzzle game, making a weird side scrolling platformer game that's also played from the first person perspective.

How many triangles? 100% of people who cant count get this wrong!

Perspective came out on 12/12/12, so when everyone else was freaking out because its a "once in a century event" not realizing that the next day and the day before only happen once in a hundred years as well, the developers behind this game, who go by the name "Widdershins" were probably doing last minute bug fixes and having a launch party. Widdershins also comes out of DigiPen, so you know they're not screwing around with this, probably planning on using this game to get a job in THE INDUSTRY, so here's hoping they do if that's their plan.

Orange and Blue color contrast is everywhere: THERE'S NO ESCAPE

 If you like puzzles, Perspective might be what you're looking for, you can snag it here

The guy you control doesnt seem to care that he's trapped in a black and white void

Ok, so. That last game was really out there, lets try to reel things back in, we cant have too many crazy games close together, sets a disturbing trend. So lets dial things back a bit with another platformer, its the elevator music to Space Funeral's two hours long orchestra that was written while on crack. The game today is Vertigo. The reason I'm not giving Vertigo crap over being an INDIE PLATFORMER is because it isn't just a platformer, its also a puzzle game.

You have fun with that

 Vertigo's gimmick is screen wrapping. You know what that is right? Its when you go off one side of the screen and pop up on the other side. Vertigo takes that and just goes completely insane with it. Screen wrapping up and down, left and right, switching between them, switching gravity, going upside down and walking on the walls.

Kind of like this, but without Nolan

The game's simple black and white art doesn't make the obstacles difficult to see while "feeling" fun, if that makes any sense. The music is similarly cheery. Gameplay and platforming itself is simple though, with only two buttons, Z to jump and X to shoot, whats actually difficult are the puzzles, with locked doors, and switches to make you gnash your teeth and pull your hair out. OR you're really good at puzzles and you'll blow through this in little over an hour. If you like platformers, or puzzle games, then Vertigo might be for you.

Not these kinds of puzzles though

You can snag Vertigo for Windows, Mac and Linux with windowed mode versions here

The color purple hasn't been this menacing since Barney

I dont think we've had any games for the SPOOKATHON that have taken place in big spooky mansions, time to change that, because you just gotta have the spooky mansions, man.

You just gotta

The Game Of The Day today is "Ao Oni". Released back in 2009 by a Japanese dev that goes by "noprops" , the game runs on RPG Maker XP despite the game not being an actual RPG. The plot of the game has you going through a mansion on the outskirts of town (that should be a big enough warning sign right there) running and hiding from a purple shape shifting horror with Predator vision and solving puzzles. Despite running on an old engine the game still managed to be spooky enough to get a large following, large enough to warrant an English and Italian translation.

Those eyes, WHY

 Much like Yume Nikki, the game became a run away success, so noprops made multiple updates for Ao Oni to improve the game, and a swath of fan games were made. A bunch of youtube videos are out there showing off how scary the game is, but most of those have annoying commentary with screaming at every jump scare, and they'd also spoil the game, so don't watch them, they're garbage.

You really need to play it yourself to appreciate it

If you like weird monsters, puzzles, and scarey mansions, then this game might be for you. Though even if you don't like those things, you still might want to play it to get in some "running and hiding from monsters" practice

Because, hey: you never know

You can snag Ao Oni here, you'll need to get the RPG maker XP thing first, thats also linked on the page

Its dark, you are likely to be eaten by a Grue

I’ve got a full series for you today. One that shouldn’t really need an introduction, and like Nethack, might actually be older than you. A trilogy filled with puzzles, monsters, traps, treasure, and some jokes along the way. That series is the Zork trilogy.

It could be like this, if you have IMAGINATION~

Released in 1980, 1981, and 1982, the Zork games are puzzle filled text adventures, and the main focus of each game is to find certain items to reach the end of that installment, like in the first Zork game, where you need to find the Twenty Treasures of Zork and stick them in a trophy case, only then will the way to the game’s end will be open to you.

Oh damn, its a GRUE! (holy shit this joke is so over done)

The Zork games are some of the best original text adventures, and they spawned a bunch of knock off clones when the source code got leaked. If you like text adventures, or puzzles, or maybe you’re curious about Zork from hearing about it before, then you should just dive right in to the games.

Doors open what are you waiting for?

You can get Zork one through three here or here

"My head feels like its going to explode!"

Got one more point and click to round things off before we dive into other stuff: this time its Dark Seed! Developed back in 1992 by Cyberdreams, it featured freaky art by H. R. Giger. Yeah, the Alien guy, so you know you’re in for a ride if he‘s involved.

"Giger did stuff besides-" YES. Shut up.

I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t heard of Dark Seed and thinks this is worth checking out, so its rather hard to talk about the game, it being an adventure game and all. I will say that you have a limited time span in the game to get things done or you may get stuck in an unwinnable situation. The game isn’t perfect by any means and it hasn’t aged that well, and there are plenty of people out there on the net who mock the game for it.

OH GOD

Still, if you are able to look past those flaws, you may be able to appreciate the game for what it was when it was released, and you should be able to see why some people call it one of the scariest games out there. Just don’t look up the sequel though, no one needs to see that. (Unless you’re looking for a good laugh).

"Hey ya missed pal"

Ugh

You can snag Dark Seed from here
 But seriously don't bother with the sequel

Pick up everything and use everything on everything else

Got another point and click coming at you, watch your ass! Today it’s the fan made remake of Kings Quest 2: Romancing the Throne. Romancing the Throne came out in 1985, made by Sierra Entertainment who still owns the Kings Quest franchise, and it looked pretty much the same as the original Kings Quest game that came before it, Quest for the Crown which came out the year before.

Old and busted

When a updated re-release of Quest for the Crown fell flat on its face in terms of sales, no remake for Romancing the Throne was ever made by Sierra. So, in 2002 a fan remake of Romancing the Throne came out, called Romancing the Stones. Complete with new music, art, animation, puzzles, and a deeper plot! Basically the whole game was reworked from top to bottom.

New Hotness

The game has been updated multiple times since its original release, the latest being version 3.1 that came out in 2010, and according to the website where you can get Romancing the Stone, it has been downloaded over half a million times. That should be evidence enough that this isn’t something that was slapped together in a short afternoon, it’s a full game, and it has all the things that make point and click adventure games great (like having a thousand different ways to die). If that sounds like something you’re interested in, then go for it.

Was this made in MSPaint?

You can get Kings Quest: Romancing the Stones over here

You wish you had a robot best friend

Pack your bags and head on over to the time machine because were going to Australia, in the FUTURE. The game this time is an adventure game called “Beneath a Steel Sky”, and with a name like what you know shit is going to get real. Made back in 1994 by the British developer Revolution Software, one of the people who worked on the team being Dave Gibbons, who lends his talent to the game’s art.

"He drew other stuff besides Watchmen?" Yes. Shut up.

The main character of this adventure is Foster (who is named that for a humorous reason), who lived with a tribe that adopted him out in “The Gap”, the space between the massive cities that cover the rest of Australia. Things are as fine and dandy as living in a garbage heap can be until some helicopters shoot up the place and take you to the City for reasons you don’t know, but the helicopter crashes and you escape. This is where the game begins.

This cant be Australia, where's all of the deadly wild life?

You got all of the typical staples of adventure games here: inventory, point and click movement and puzzle solving. Thankfully when you hover the mouse over something you can interact with its name pops up next to the cursor, helping to negate the problem of pixel hunting. The game has a dark setting where corporations run everything and most of the planet is irradiated and polluted (like the immediate future), but still manages to slip in jokes. And any game that gives you a ROBOT BEST FRIEND cant be that bleak.

Beneath a Steel Sky was well received by reviewers when it came out, and is still considered to be among the best today. If you’re a fan of classic point and click adventures then this should be right up your alley.

Good game to teach you the ins and outs of living in a concrete and metal hellhole

There are multiple versions of the game out there on the internet, so here's a multitude of places to download from
Here
Here (if you use GOG)
Here
And here! (if you want to use ScummVM to run the game)

You wish you could punch robots

Continuing the Konjak conflagration today we’ve got a bunch of good stuff, I really should have put it all in one big post rather than try to break it up, oh well. Up first is an action beat em up called Noitu Love.

With 8-bit sounds all over the place

Noitu Love is jam packed with side scrolling fighting, from the start of the game you’re punching the crap out of robots until they explode. Not only that, it has some crazy boss fights as well. Featuring several levels, and a weird plot (involving monkeys?), if you like action and want some free fun, you should give Noitu Love a look. It was good enough that Konjak made a sequel that wasn’t free.

Up next is a puzzle game called Tripwire. A fairly simple puzzle game with thirty levels, where the goal is to draw a line through all of the shapes in the grid, going through them in groups of three. If you like puzzles or brain teasers then its worth a download, if only for a quick time waster.

Cant be any harder than this

Up next we got another side scroller arcade style game called Chalk. In Chalk you use chalk (WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT?) to remove obstacles and destroy enemies. Also featuring multiple levels, a ranking system, and boss fights, Chalk should have atleast a couple of hours of game play for you if you can get into it. Not sure? Have a video of the first level.

Aside from those games, and Legend of Princess, Konjak’s site does have multiple unfinished and abandoned projects to pick through. Such as Iconoclasts and Ivory Springs (which is an earlier version of Iconoclasts), and Mina of the Pirates (Konjak’s first big project). Theres also the music from the games available as separate downloads on the site as well, if you’re into that.

Picture: a maker of video games

Konjak has his own style when it comes to making games, and if you come to like it you should like all of his projects, to some extent.

All of these games are available at http://www.konjak.org/
So go nuts.