1. Inсreased Use of AI for Dynamiс Storytelling

One of the most signifiсant trends shaping adventure games in 2024 is the inсreased use of artifiсial intelligenсe (AI) to сreate more dynamiс and personalized storytelling. Traditionally, adventure games followed linear storylines with predetermined сhoiсes. However, with advanсements in AI, developers сan now сraft branсhing narratives that adapt to a player’s aсtions in real-time.

Why is this important?

• Personalized Experienсe: AI сan analyze players’ сhoiсes and сraft unique storylines based on individual deсisions, making eaсh player’s journey feel more personal.
• Replayability: The variability in the narrative ensures that no two playthroughs are the same, signifiсantly inсreasing the replay value of adventure games.
• Immersive Worlds: AI-driven сharaсters that reaсt naturally to players’ сhoiсes сan make game worlds feel more alive and responsive.

2. Immersive Virtual Reality Adventures

Virtual reality (VR) is сontinuing its upward trajeсtory, and in 2024, we сan expeсt adventure games to take full advantage of this immersive teсhnology. While VR has been popular in genres like first-person shooters, adventure games are uniquely suited to benefit from the immersion that VR offers.

Key VR Trends in Adventure Games:

• Full-body interaсtion: Games are starting to inсorporate more sophistiсated motion traсking, allowing players to physiсally interaсt with objeсts and environments in ways that go beyond simple button presses.
• Realistiс Environments: VR allows for the сreation of hyper-realistiс settings, making players feel like they are truly exploring exotiс loсations or anсient ruins.
• Puzzle-solving in VR: Adventure games often rely on puzzle-solving, and VR introduсes new possibilities for interaсtive and taсtile puzzles that require players to physiсally manipulate objeсts.

3. Сross-Platform Play and Сloud Gaming

The growth of сloud gaming and сross-platform play is set to revolutionize how adventure games are experienсed in 2024. No longer are players сonfined to a single deviсe; сloud teсhnology now enables seamless transitions between platforms, allowing for a more flexible gaming experienсe.

Advantages of Сross-Platform and Сloud Gaming:

• Aссessibility: Players сan start a game on their home сonsole and сontinue playing on a mobile deviсe or laptop without losing progress.
• Soсial Integration: Сross-platform play allows players from different systems to team up or сompete in adventure games, сreating a broader сommunity.
• Reduсed Hardware Сosts: With сloud gaming, players no longer need to invest in expensive hardware, as games are streamed direсtly from high-performanсe servers.

4. Deeper Integration of Environmental Storytelling

Environmental storytelling has always been a hallmark of great adventure games, and in 2024, this teсhnique is being taken to new heights. Developers are moving away from traditional dialogue-heavy exposition and foсusing more on using the game environment to tell stories.

How Environmental Storytelling is Evolving:

• Interaсtive Environments: Players сan interaсt with objeсts, notes, and artifaсts in the game world that reveal details about the story and сharaсters without overt explanations.
• Subtle Details: More games are using small environmental сues, suсh as сhanges in lighting or baсkground sounds, to сonvey emotional shifts or foreshadow plot developments.
• Non-linear Storytelling: Instead of following a straightforward narrative, players might need to pieсe together fragments of the story found in different loсations, leading to more engaging and thoughtful gameplay.

5. Сollaborative Adventure Games

Another trend to look out for in 2024 is the rise of сollaborative adventure games. Traditionally, adventure games have been single-player experienсes, but developers are beginning to experiment with multiplayer and сooperative modes, allowing players to work together to solve puzzles and progress through the story.

Features of Сollaborative Adventure Games:

• Сooperative Puzzle-solving: Players сan team up to solve сomplex puzzles that require сoordination and teamwork.
• Shared Storylines: Multiple players сan experienсe the same story but from different perspeсtives, adding layers of сomplexity to the narrative.
• Online Сommunities: Сollaborative adventure games enсourage the formation of online сommunities where players сan share tips, solve mysteries together, and even сreate fan сontent.

6. Retro Aesthetiс with Modern Meсhaniсs

In reсent years, there has been a resurgenсe of interest in retro-style games, and this trend is сontinuing into 2024. Many adventure games are adopting pixel art or hand-drawn art styles reminisсent of сlassiс titles, but with the added benefit of modern game meсhaniсs and teсhnology.

The Appeal of Retro Adventure Games:

• Nostalgia: Older gamers who grew up with early adventure titles are drawn to the familiar aesthetiсs, while newer players appreсiate the сharm and simpliсity of the art style.
• Modern Enhanсements: While the graphiсs may be retro, the gameplay often inсorporates modern features like autosaving, fast travel, and more fluid сontrols.
• Blending Old and New: Developers are finding ways to merge the best elements of сlassiс adventure games with сutting-edge storytelling teсhniques, сreating a unique hybrid experienсe.

7. Foсus on Aссessibility

In 2024, aссessibility is no longer an afterthought but a сore сonsideration in the development of adventure games. Developers are working to ensure that their games are playable by a wider audienсe, inсluding people with disabilities.

Key Aссessibility Features:

• Сustomizable Сontrols: Allowing players to remap сontrols or use speсialized сontrollers ensures that more people сan enjoy the game.
• Visual and Audio Adjustments: Options for сolorblind modes, subtitles, and adjustable sound levels help players tailor the game to their needs.
• Diffiсulty Settings: More adventure games are inсluding flexible diffiсulty settings, making it easier for players to enjoy the story without getting stuсk on сomplex puzzles.

8. Blurring the Line Between Indie and AAA Titles

The distinсtion between indie games and AAA titles is beсoming inсreasingly blurred in 2024. Many indie developers are produсing adventure games with high produсtion values that rival those of major studios. At the same time, AAA developers are borrowing ideas from indie games, suсh as unique art styles and unсonventional storytelling methods.

What This Means for Adventure Games:

• More Diversity: Players сan expeсt a greater variety of adventure games, from smaller, intimate indie titles to expansive, high-budget AAA experienсes.
• Innovation: Indie developers are often more willing to take сreative risks, leading to more innovative game meсhaniсs and storylines.
• Better Quality Aсross the Board: As indie games improve in quality, AAA developers are being pushed to raise their standards, benefiting players with higher-quality games aсross the speсtrum.

9. Interaсtive Fiсtion and Narrative-driven Games

The rise of narrative-driven games and interaсtive fiсtion is a trend that сontinues to gain traсtion in 2024. These games foсus heavily on storytelling, often at the expense of traditional gameplay meсhaniсs, allowing players to engage with riсh narratives in a more passive way.

Popular Features of Narrative-driven Games:

• Branсhing Dialogues: Players сan сhoose from multiple dialogue options that shape the direсtion of the story.
• Emotional Engagement: These games often explore deep emotional themes, allowing players to сonneсt with сharaсters on a personal level.
• Simplified Gameplay: The foсus is more on the story and сharaсter development than on сomplex meсhaniсs, making these games aссessible to a wider audienсe.

Сonсlusion

As we move into 2024, adventure games are poised for another transformative year. With advanсements in AI, VR, and сloud gaming, along with a renewed foсus on aссessibility, personalization, and сollaboration, the future of the genre looks inсredibly bright. Whether you’re a fan of deep narrative experienсes or enjoy solving puzzles in immersive worlds, the trends disсussed above suggest that 2024 will offer something exсiting for every adventure game enthusiast. Keep an eye on these developments as the next generation of adventure games сontinues to push the boundaries of storytelling and gameplay.

The post Adventure Game Trends: What to Look Out For in 2024 appeared first on Diggy.Games.

The developer has carefully transferred even such a trifle as a whisper – in Beholder, characters sometimes switch to it when they talk about something illegal. The influence of the famous dystopia is felt everywhere: from the eternal war of superpowers to episodic characters based on the images of O’Brien and Parsons.

The game’s writers did not miss the opportunity to leave a whole mountain of funny references and even parody the writer’s sense of humor in passing. In both 1984 and Beholder, society is presented as caricaturedly patriotic. The double standards and lies in which people in both works live are subtly played up. The only difference is that the protagonists of both games in the series do not necessarily believe that “2 + 2 = 5”

The plot of “Beholder 2”

We play as Evan Redgrave, who receives a letter from James Cunningham with sad news – Evan’s father has died. Evan goes to the capital of the state, the city of Helmer. The main character is tormented by doubts, because his father held a high position and died under very strange circumstances – he fell out of a skyscraper window. Evan hasn’t spoken to his father in years, but he’s never noticed any suicidal tendencies.

With the help of his father’s friends, Evan gets a job at the Ministry. He intends to find out what really happened and who is to blame for the tragedy, as well as to solve the mystery of the mysterious Heimdall project that his father was working on.

The hierarchy in the Ministry is clear: the higher the floor, the higher the position. Our hero starts from the ground floor, learning to perform routine work duties and getting to know his colleagues along the way. People in Beholder 2 may not be what they seem at first glance. But we still have to find out in the future…

Unlike the first part, Beholder 2 has completely switched to 3D format. Now the main character moves not only in four directions. The picture is no longer flat and even more gloomy. There are more large objects and small things on the locations.

The background of the world is well drawn, for example: crowds worship the Wise Leader, and slow airships cut through leaden clouds. The scale of the locations has increased significantly, now the game is not limited to the slums of the house, but takes the player to the square; we will be let inside a skyscraper, where party workers are rushing around in a hurry and even forced to stand in rather realistic queues.

At times, the game becomes painfully similar to the movie of the same name “Sin City” and its visual receiver – the game “The Saboteur”

Interesting for fans of indie games: A warm melancholic story called Old Man’s Journey. A review of a touching game.

Beholder 2 gameplay and dilemmas of moral choice

“Beholder 2 is primarily about moral choices: lend a helping hand, turn away or finish off an already injured person, drive a colleague to psychosis or help in their personal life, set up a person or warn them of an impending threat. At the same time, the game seems to push the player to commit heinous acts and sometimes penalizes altruism and kindness.

The whole plot is divided into days. This or that action takes precious time, which is a full-fledged resource here. Your task is to climb the career ladder and get to the next floor, and there are four of them in total: 1,12,25,37.

To do this, you will need to earn a certain amount of reputation and choose from 2 ways to get promoted: find indisputable dirt on the floor manager, inform James Kennings about him, then he will help to fire the manager and then arrest him. In Orwellian terms, the boss will become a non-face.

Or declare your desire to join the Competitive Environment 1.0.1 program. Then you will need to bleed your nose voluntarily or force your colleagues to leave their posts.

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I’ve encountered monsters that scream and launch huge balls of crackling energy; I’ve sacrificed crew members to gods that exist outside the game map; I’ve eaten a lot of men. After my first trip back to the tainted space gardens of the Ultimate, I wanted to explore everything I could get my hands on. Now there are areas I no longer dare venture into. Although I travel for the stories, some are better left untold.

Declaring my life as a keen traveler unfortunately does not exempt me from the classic attack of Victorian capitalism. My little steam locomotive accommodates a large crew, and even a mere poet needs money from time to time. Following the previous, all I need to do is get back to the precious safe zone that is the big port. Then I can dock my train, write down stories of my travels, and hopefully gather a few supplies so I don’t go hungry. After all, if I stay hungry, my crew will go to the pot.

Like everything in life, my plans don’t really go my way. I get pretty close, but my idiocy overtakes common sense. Turning a corner, I notice a high-octane gunfight. Two against one? That’s not fair! Well, now it’s three against one! Despite my vessel’s incredibly low life force count, I join in.

Slowly circling around the oncoming fire, I respond to the shots as quickly as they ring out in my direction. As a shot approaches me, I try to dodge to the right, but the heat of my train is too high. Not only do I take damage for putting too much strain on the engine, but a second shot crashes headfirst into me. My hull is destroyed, and the cold corners of space suck my corpse from its home.

Throughout this short journey, I could have taken many other paths that would have led to a much more favorable outcome. Maybe if I hadn’t decided to enter the fray, I could have swirled around the outskirts and avoided it altogether. Amazingly, the opportunity to loot supplies, fuel, and perhaps even scraps to repair my ship was too tempting to pass up. A smarter man than me would have done it.

Such is the nature of the Sunless Skies. It is a journey you make for yourself. You can spend your entire journey among its mesmerizing ethereal landscapes as a space cab driver, taking passengers where they need to go. You can mine resources, kill as much as you like, become a journalist – though why you would even want to do that is unclear to me. The possibilities aren’t endless, everything is pre-scripted, but there are so many options that you’ll never be without content.

It’s no small feat for developer Failbetter Games to create such a detailed and immersive experience. Most of the time you may not even be wandering through the beautiful but dangerous locations of Fallen London, but instead wandering through well-written fiction. It’s one of the most well-written experiences in gaming, which again makes reading fun. While I enjoy reading endless nonsense about NPCs in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, it can be tedious. Sunless knows exactly what to tell you and when exactly to tell you. Many of the game’s great moments can range from foreboding and anxious to downright hilarious. You can chase a dog around your train, which can lead to your death, or you can spend your time chatting up the literal Devil. If there’s one thing Sunless Skies has going for it, it’s variety.

As a game that you could easily spend hundreds of hours exploring, Skies is surprisingly unsparing of your time. You don’t lose much after you die – even in the more difficult, roguelike Legacy mode. You’ll start with less than before, storylines will have to be re-traveled, but you won’t immediately go back to zero. The Mercy campaign is even less strict about the consequences of death, allowing you to enjoy treacherous possessions without losing much progress.

On top of everything else, Sunless Skies is a unique experience. It may be similar to its predecessor, Sunless Seas, but it is a completely separate game. It feels surprisingly fluid in controls, and it reads like a more adult Pratchett novel, albeit brought to a level of literary strength. While I have yet to spend as much time with the game as I had hoped, the quality oozes from every corner of this strange, beautiful, and anxiety-filled world.

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But it finally happened! It had happened! What seemed almost miraculous has finally come to fruition. On the defense of the genre came old Ron Gilbert, the author of genre icons – famous LucasArts games such as “Maniac Mansion”, “Day of the Tentacle”, “Monkey Island” – literally a legend of the quest world, who still pulls this thankless load to the best of his ability. And this is a man who released his first game almost 25 years ago. Think about that number! An entire era has passed in that time. Several, in fact. And while Ron Gilbert has never left the industry, creating other games, and even made his mark recently with the rather original “The Cave” – nothing seemed to herald a return.

But at the end of 2014 Ron Gilbert decided to shake the old days and went on Kickstarter with a promise to create a quest in the style of LucasArts with a proper amount of 365 thousand dollars. Not that much, by the way. Charles Sessile for the fifth Broken Sword seemed to ask for a million, and the game ended up costing two. Tim Schafer made “Broken Age” for three and a half. The success exceeded all expectations: instead of the requested 375 thousand dollars fans gave almost twice as much – 626 thousand. After that Ron Gilbert worked on the game for almost two years, releasing it instead of summer 2016 only on March 30, 2017, but it grew in size and became more complex and beautiful.

Let’s say at once that the team’s ideas were realized to the fullest! You can dance with joy. This game is a gift for any fan of LucasArts quests and fans of quests in general (except for fans of Mystoids, they can be free). It’s a giant gaming monument to Ron Gilbert’s quests. Just the destruction of the fourth wall, pass-halts, quotes and self-citations, declarations of love for quests from the heroes I counted forty pieces during the game. And there are much more! What is worth the constant talk about quests, the mentioned company with the transparent name MMucasFlem or the incessant references to other games of the authors. Some quotes are inserted straight into the forehead. If you try, you’ll catch a glimpse of a legendary scene from “Monkey Island” – a pirate treasure hiding place, which in the original was impossible to dig up unless the player had time to get a shovel. At the beginning of the game, though, you’ll get a chainsaw that’s easy to find gasoline for – and you can use it; the same chainsaw will hang on the wall in the finale. It’s a more obscure reference to Maniac Mansion, where the chainsaw was impossible to refuel. That damn chainsaw was later recalled in “Zak McKracken”, “Monkey Island 2”, “Day of the Tentacle”, and “Full Throttle” – without it now!

The same spirit of the original quests is at the heart of the entire game design. “Thimbleweed Park” is drawn in 16-bit pixel 2D with its straight frames and inactive items brought to the foreground, as was the custom then. The game also has command-verb controls in a special panel next to the inventory and a Commodore 64-like font. And by the way, we should thank Ron Gilbert for greatly expanding the game’s capabilities and allowing to play on a wide monitor, because at first it looked even more like 80’s quests with their meager animation and 16 colors.

The game begins with a certain man being murdered in the town of Timblyweed Park. Two federal agents arrive to investigate: junior agent Antonio Reyes and senior agent Angela Ray. Reyes is more naive and stupid, Angela is smarter and more cynical. As it should be in the quests “in the spirit of LucasArts”, almost from the beginning you need to get a certain set of items – in this case, to collect evidence for the arrest of the guilty. But from the middle you will forget about the murder, because you will have to deal with much more important matters connected with the town’s past. The thing is that it developed around the PillowTronics company – the pillow factory of local millionaire Chuck Edmund, a cybernetics genius who stuffed the town with automatons on light bulbs no worse than Hans Foralberg stuffed Vladlen with automatons.

And this, as it was said before, is the main goal of the game and everything here works for it. Like other Ron Gilbert games, namely “Maniac Mansion” and “The Cave”, here again you will have to control a lot of characters. Besides the agents they are also Ransom the clown from the local abandoned circus, Chuck’s niece Dolores and Chuck’s brother Fran, who quickly dies and further becomes a ghost. These characters are mostly needed to expand the story and mine additional items. The most impressive of this trio is, of course, Ransom the Clown, a boor, a cad and an ardent swearer, who thickly intersperses his speech with carefully spelled mate – on which the lion’s share of humor is based. You can’t help but laugh when watching him ragefully screaming at the whole neighborhood in case of failure – I personally cried like a baby. The rest of the characters aren’t as special, but they too have a part of their own story…. After all, it was Dolores who inherited the factory after breaking her uncle’s inhibitions and taking the most despicable job in the 80s – a developer of computer games, those “murder simulators” (s)!

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Everything starts with the fact that cartoonist Drew Blank gets a task from his boss, Mr. Schultz, to draw new characters for the Fluffy-Fluffy Bun-Bun Show. Alas, but the greedy boss demands to finish the work in a tight deadline, so Drew has to stay up late. No new ideas come to him, and he falls asleep. He wakes up to the TV on. In an attempt to turn it off, Drew is drawn into the world he has drawn.

Meeting the king

Waking up, Drew tries to make sense of his surroundings. Suddenly he is attacked by a strange flying saucer, but is saved by Zippy, Drew’s creation. Drew is literally stunned, but he asks Zhivchik for help.Zhivchik himself can’t help Drew, so he takes him to King Hugh, King of Kutopia. He agrees to help the artist if he can help solve the country’s problems. And the matter is the following – there are three countries in this world: Kutopia – the country of good cartoons, full of cute bunnies and bears (everything that, according to adults, children should like); Zlovenia – the country of evil cartoons (reminiscent of the movie “Parallel World”); and Shutland – the country of idiots, where the Warners would like. And so Count Nefarius, ruler of Zlovenia, created the Evilbolt, a machine that turns everything good into bad. And now he’s vilifying Cthopia. King Hugh has managed to get the blueprint of the machine and intends to create the Dobrobolyot – a machine with the opposite effect. And in creating this machine, Drew must help the king. Drew gets the blueprint from the king’s engineer, Brikabrak. He also gets advice that he should look for “contrary” items – items that could be the opposite of the items from the Dobroplane.

Assembling the Dobroplane

When he goes into town, he finds out that a lot of people are in trouble. For example, the baker brothers have a missing brother. And they can’t make butter anymore, so they can’t make dough. And the local bartender is being harassed by a mad mouse. Having solved the “mouse” problem, as well as winning a chain in the arcade, the heroes go on. On the way they meet Fluffy Tail, who complains that he has no popcorn, as well as a scarecrow, who dreams of being fashionable. In the stable, they find out why they’re out of oil – it’s because the Churnetron oil machine is missing an important part. To pass in Zlovenia friends also do not manage – some wolf demands wine from them. So Drew has to fix the express, and he gets to Schutlandia. Although he can’t get through to the Outhouse in Schutlandia, he memorizes a phone number. After making a call from the bar, Drew participates in a quiz. After winning the beans, Drew goes to the PomordamCo store. There, he wins prizes in a vending machine. Using a magnet, he fixes the Churnetron and restarts the butter supply. He uses one block to make dough, giving it to the cook frogs, and uses the other to eliminate the arrogant Jim, the owner of the sports club. After taking him out, Drew pumps up his muscles with the Kachkotron. But while the heroes were in Shutland, Count Nefarius learned about Drew’s appearance, and also ruined the stable. In the stable, the heroes see how things have changed – Marge has become masochistic, Polly is sadistic, and the machine now produces glue.

King Hugh is pleased, and Drew prepares to go home. But the king immediately puts forward new conditions – Drew must make good absolutely all lands, including Zlovenia and Shutland. But Dru refuses these plans. The king is outraged and reveals his true identity – Fluffy Tail. Fluffy Tail calls for the guards, then gets into the Dobroplane himself. He shoots at the heroes, but Drew remains normal, as he is not a cartoon. Zippy, on the other hand, becomes too cute. Meanwhile, Nefarius’ servants infiltrate the castle. Tails taunts Drew with the guards, so he has to escape. As a result, he runs into Nefarius’ servants and they drag him away. And Tails, unable to find Drew, orders Zippy to “approve” the world.

Meanwhile, Drew comes to his senses in Nefarius’ prison. With the help of Miss Fortune, Nefarius learns about Dobrolet. He then leaves Drew, saying that he injected him with a special serum that will turn him into a cartoon. After that, he leaves. Drew is left guarding Piglet the boar. By stealth, Drew incapacitates him. He neutralizes the castle guards and also frees Rey. In gratitude, Rey tells Drew that Nefarius has a special machine that can transport Drew to his world. After getting rid of the guards, Drew makes his way to the top floor. He manages to hypnotize Miss Fortuna with his glasses, and then he forces her to open Nefarius’ office door. Using the crystals he found, Drew manages to get a device to travel between worlds. He then opens the door to Evilbolt. He manages to get into it, but it turns out Nefarius knew of his actions. He offers Drew his cooperation, but he informs him that he has found a traveling machine. Nefarius tries to stop him, and as a result he encounters Hugh (or Fluffy Tail). Drew manages to take down the rulers, after which he shoots the Dobroplane. Zippy becomes normal again, but Dobroplane loses control. As a result, they collide, and Drew and Zippy go down.

He runs to Mr. Schultz and offers to insert his character (Zhivchik) into the show, as he has not had time to fulfill the order. But the director is adamant and literally forces him to draw rabbits. A saddened Drew returns and doesn’t know what to do. Suddenly he hears a strange beeping sound – it turns out to be the device that gave Drew Zhivchik. He makes contact and reports that Nefarius and Tails have survived. He asks for Drew’s help, and Drew agrees. Drew becomes a cartoon and is transported into a cartoon!

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Historical part

In 2010, Bioshock 2 appeared on the shelves of game stores – a sequel to the original Bioshock, released in 2007. The sequel was based on the original, and the developers focused on tweaking some of its elements. As a result, the gameplay was better than the original. By the time Bioshock 2 was released, publishers and developers began to realize the prospect of distributing additional downloadable content for games. For some, this prospect promised more money for less money, for others – the opportunity to tell stories in worlds familiar to players, unrelated to the main plot of the games.

In August 2010, the only single-player add-on for Bioshock 2, Minerva’s Den, was released, focusing on telling the story of one family, and what one family member is willing to do for the sake of another. Not long after the release of the DLC, Steve Gaynor, Carla Zimonja, and Jonneman Nordhagen split off from the development team and started their own studio, Fullbright.

After 17 months of development, during which the developers had to abandon the original concept of the game, otherwise – they could not have developed it on their own, Fullbright studio revealed to the world its first project – Gone Home.

Reaction of the press and community

After the release, the game raised serious controversy in the gaming community. Some of the reviewers noted the good immersion of the player in the story, as well as the display of LGBT themes.

Another part complained that Gone Home cannot be considered a game, because in it the player just walks around and reads notes and interacts with objects. There is no opponent in the game, no challenge. Gone Home was pejoratively (*at the time) labeled a “walking simulator”.

The game was also at the center of an event called gamergate, which occurred in August 2014. Proponents of this movement criticized Gone Home for not having the qualities of a “traditional game”, and various awards and high ratings received solely because of its LGBT-themed content.

However, time has put everything in its place. The term “walking simulator” was no longer a pejorative. The gamergate movement died down. Gone Home itself became an object of emulation for game developers emphasizing “narrative at the expense of environment.”

The game

Gameplay-wise, the game is a “walking simulator”. We move around the game space and interact with various objects. We turn on lights, open doors. We pick up and twirl cans, pencils, felt-tip pens, books, read notes and examine our surroundings. On the last two aspects the developers made the main emphasis when creating the game.

Reading the notes, we build a picture of past events, get the facts. But the environment gives the facts a certain coloring, thanks to which we are better immersed in the atmosphere of the game. The immersion is also positively affected by the fact that the heroine and the player are in equal positions. They both know nothing about the house in which the action takes place.

An empty mansion, with lights off in the rooms, makes an oppressive impression. Instinctively, you start to turn on the lights wherever you can to make it “alive”. At the same time, you create a map of the mansion, in which the lights are a marker that the player has already been in that room. Each room of the mansion has a specific function and is furnished accordingly. You won’t mistake the dining room for a study, or the parents’ bedroom for their daughter’s room. Each room bears the imprint of life. In one there are the writer’s manuscripts and his business correspondence with publishers, in another – a shelter of pillows, the third is the secret place of a couple of teenagers.

The environment in the game refers us back to the times of the 1990s. No, not to bros and crimson jackets, but to CRT TVs, VCRs and video cassettes, NES cartridges and various TV series and magazines.

The game also mentions the feminist movement Riot Grrrl, which emerged in the punk rock of the 90s, and for a while turned rock into an influential subculture. Moreover, the developers do not just mention the performers of this movement, but make their creativity an object of interest for the main heroines of the game. In the game you can find various audio recordings of Bratmobile, Heavens To Betsy, The Youngins – representatives of this movement.

The game is very authentic, which positively affects the immersion in it and the perception of the story. This immersion is also positively affected by the initial inaccessibility of the entire mansion. We gradually open new rooms, find keys to locked doors, combinations to locked safe locks and open secret passages and rooms. Thanks to this approach, there is a sense of mystery in the game. When you find the next page of the diary you realize: “this information is not meant for everyone”, otherwise you wouldn’t have to search for the locker code in different parts of the house for the sake of it. With each note you find, you learn more and more about the Greenbriar family. We gradually discover the story that happened during the absence of the protagonist.

The story is about the breakdown of a family and centers on Sam, the protagonist’s younger sister, who moves to a new school, faces bullying, and subsequently meets her love, Lonnie, her classmate.

The LGBT theme is the core of the entire game. Importantly, while changing the orientation of the heroines in other games (*e.g. Life is Strange or The Last of Us Part 2) wouldn’t change anything, in Gone Home the story would cease to exist. Through notes, we are told about Sam’s experiences, her actions, and the attitudes of others towards her. But the game doesn’t stop there. Along the way, it touches on topics that are relevant at all times: the search for self, creative crisis, the relationship between spouses after years of marriage, the desire for the unknown and misunderstanding on the part of loved ones.

Importantly, the developers don’t shove these issues in your face. They don’t show you a character and say, “Empathize! Her father was killed and he rescued a zebra from the barbed wire! Empathize, man!”. It’s done in moderation. A few photos, notes, and Sam’s voice narrating the events of days gone by. The rest is left to the player and the music, which immerses you in the atmosphere of the game.

However, while touching on a lot of topics, the authors do not reveal a significant part of them. The central thread of the game finds its logical conclusion in the finale, but everything else hangs in the air. Moreover, other themes do not intersect with the central theme in any way, and there is very little interaction between the older generation of the Greenbriar family and the younger. There is only one moment in the game that deals with the generational difference in views on the LGBT – theme.

What’s most disappointing is that the game doesn’t reveal itself as a game. Life is Strange, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter had interactive elements and the story was shown to us. The various notes that are present in these games work to immerse us more in the world of the game, rather than telling the entire story as it is in Gone Home.

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The game’s protagonist, Henry, flees his family life that has turned into chaos into the forests of Wyoming. He takes a seasonal job as a forest ranger to get away from his problems, hide from people, get his thoughts in order, and perhaps decide what he wants to do next. A bit of cowardly behavior, but personally, I can’t imagine how I would behave in his shoes or how I would handle a situation like this, which really has no right solution at all.

Wyoming, where Firewatch takes place, is the most sparsely populated state in the United States, with only 580,000 people living in an area the size of Great Britain. The state’s forests are even more desolate. So Henry is left to himself and during the whole game will not meet face to face with a single living soul. His only contact with the outside world is his boss Delilah, who lives a dozen kilometers away from Henry on another observation tower. They communicate exclusively by radio.

The forests of Wyoming in Campo Santo’s rendition are a fantastically beautiful place. The authors deliberately refused from photorealism in favor of low-poly graphics, and for good reason. Every frame of Firewatch would like to print it as a picture and hang it on the wall. And, by the way, this possibility exists, you can order photos made with the help of the game camera as paintings on the official website of the game. A forest in the morning haze, a midday meadow, a grove permeated with sun rays, a stream jumping on the stones of a fanciful canyon, distant misty mountains. The landscapes are mesmerizing and set the mood. The forest changes as the plot develops and is also a certain allegory of the fire raging in the soul of the protagonist. The magnificent soundtrack emphasizing the general mood and setting the plot accents.

But the world of Firewatch truly comes to life thanks to the excellent performance of two actors: Cassie Jones, who voiced six (!) characters in both parts of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, and Richie Sommer, who played Garr Crane in Mad Men. Impressive voice work, not unlike what we heard in the recent Oxenfree. Dialogues of Henry and Delilah turned out unusually lively, natural, filled with internal chemistry, humor, emotions. However, a great deal of credit for this goes to the scriptwriters as well. And by the way, the warning of the creators on Steam is absolutely accurate: Firewatch is a video game about adults having adult conversations about adult things. And it’s not about sexual innuendo at all, just many of the topics touched upon during the conversations between Henry and Delilah will be uninteresting and incomprehensible not only to teenagers, but also to many players under 25 years old.

Firewatch’s leisurely developing story is not so simple. Strange things start happening in the woods around Henry and Delilah’s towers, either in the style of The X-Files or a horror movie. The characters try to make sense of what’s going on, connect the scraps of different stories and figure out who is trying to drive them crazy or turn them against each other. At a certain point it may even seem that everything that is happening is just a figment of the main character’s imagination, or that his interlocutor is playing a game of her own, incomprehensible to Henry.

The ending of the story has caused a lot of controversy among players. Some people think that they were deceived almost like in Mass Effect 3, but it’s not like that at all. The authors deliberately led us to such a finale. After all, Firewatch is a game about responsibility for your own actions, about the ability to take the burden of a decision and bear its consequences. In this respect, the ending does its job as well as possible and makes us think about the fate of Henry and the people who were affected by the story told in the game.

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• Spycraft: The Great Game is one of the first interactive entertainment titles to blend 35mm film, digital video footage, still photographs and actual stock footage from the CIA with intricate 3-D puzzles based on real-life covert tactics and operations. Do you want to be the first to play the “big game”?
• William Colby (a major CIA director) and Oleg Kalugin (a retired Major General of the KGB) show the secrets of the “great game” of espionage.
• Master the tools of CIA operatives, surveil double agents, and intercept radio transmissions to infiltrate a web of rogue spies.
• Actual CIA footage along with Hollywood actors portray intrigue and skulduggery.

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It seems that the events of BioShock Infinite are not connected with the previous parts of the game, they take place in a completely different place, 50 years earlier, and the flying city of Columbia does not resemble the underwater Delight at all. But it’s just an illusion. By and large, the story of BioShock Infinite repeats the story of BioShock 2. In both there’s a girl to find, in both you have to save yourself, not her. These references are intentional here. Ken Levine looped the entire series, just as he looped the third series of the game.

That’s why at times it feels like you’re playing BioShock 2, but in a new setting. The sense of deja vu is so strong that somewhere in the middle of the game, Columbia will seem somewhat lifeless and sterile. And that’s exactly what the authors wanted. The whole world of the game is nothing more than a setting for a human tragedy, a scaffolding for a carefully constructed story.

Hints, half-hints, illusions. Diary entries, which in the last part have shrunk to the size of SMS. Overheard conversations, insignificant details. After a couple of jumps between dimensions, you, like the main character, will no longer understand who you are and why you are here. And then there are a couple of physicists, either brother and sister or lovers, smeared across the space-time continuum. They speak in riddles and are themselves a paradox. The logic of actions breaks down. The cat is neither alive nor dead. Until you open the box, you won’t know.

Booker DeWitt is not afraid to open that box. An old broken soldier with a questionable past, he’s generally used to straightforward decisions, almost like Big Daddy from last week’s series. The appearance of a hero in not at all shiny armor traditionally throws the city into chaos. Columbia knows DeWitt is coming – he’s the False Prophet, warned about by Columbia’s creator, Elizabeth’s father and jailer, the Prophet Zachariah Comstock. The two men are about to meet, and nothing good will come of the encounter. Air City appeared doomed as soon as DeWitt set foot on its soil.

BioShock Infinite seems to be a game about social issues. The year is 1912, no racial equality and workers’ rights are out of the question – it’s a time of revolutions. But in Infinite social conflict is nothing more than a usual background, necessary to show the fall of the system built on lies. Except that the lies here are ordinary, human, despite the dreams of world domination and confidence in his own exclusivity, Comstock is just a father taking care of his daughter in his own way. This is a story of relationships, the eternal problem of fathers and children. Responsibility. The limits of freedom. The right to choose for another.

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Whatever the case, welcome to Kirat, a small state lost somewhere in the middle of the Himalayan ranges. For Ajay Gale, the protagonist of Far Cry 4, Kirat is as much Terra Nova as it is for the player. When he was very young, his mother took Ajay to the distant America, trying to protect him from the horrors of the armed confrontation in the country. On one side of the barricades here was created by Ajay’s father rebel organization Golden Road, on the other – usurping power dictator Peigan Min.

The protagonist would never have returned home if not for his mother’s dying wish – she wanted her ashes to be scattered in her native land. However, Ishwari also had ulterior motives, which the boy learned about only when he was on the spot. The return of Mohan Gale, the son of the revered Mohan Gale, to Kirat had rekindled the flames of revolution, which Ajay had unwillingly been drawn into.

And it would be all right if all the troubles consisted in constant firefights with Min’s army, but no, the poor guy has to run through the mountains from overly aggressive representatives of local fauna, fight for life in the arena of improvised Coliseum and periodically choose between two leaders of the Golden Path, and this choice is not easy. Like most of the “first persons” of Kirat, Amita and Sabal are, to put it mildly, ambiguous personalities, and it is not possible to consider them positive characters even with a big stretch.

The cute young lady suddenly turns out to be a rather cruel and cold-blooded person who values human lives too low and is ready to turn Kirat into a drug empire without the slightest thought. Progressive, at first glance, Sabal protects cultural heritage and strives to build a democratic society in the country. Except that his “democracy” involves the leveling of certain individual rights and freedoms in favor of tradition.

And these are the “good guys”. The negative characters in the game are deliberately, cartoonishly bloodthirsty. Peigan is what Vaas from Far Cry 3 would have turned into if he had a little more power. It’s easier for a dictator to kill a man than it is to swat a fly. A poser, sadist and outright madman, Min nevertheless shows a warm, kindred feeling for the younger Gale. Right after once again trying to kill him, of course. Paul Harmon, one of Peigan’s cronies, chatting sweetly with his daughter on the phone, while concurrently torturing some unfortunate man in the dark basement of his own fortress. “Hostage of Circumstances” Nut is very worried about the fate of her family being held captive, which, however, does not prevent her from sending another poor man to be fed to the tigers.

Ajay, faced with these not quite adequate people, gets a bit lost, and it seems that he helps the rebels through force. On the other hand, it is not surprising – if Jason Brody in the third part had an understandable incentive to resist Vaas, Gale has no such incentive. The first time for Ajay, it’s a foreign country and a foreign war.

Kirat itself is just like its inhabitants – it is a harsh and deadly, but very beautiful land. Palm trees and sun-drenched beaches of Ruk Island have been replaced by pine forests and endless serpentine mountain roads. Really endless, because Kirat is huge and the way to the destination often takes about ten minutes. By car. There are, of course, faster ways of traveling – hang-glider or wingsuit from the third part come in handy here. And if you stumbled upon a single-seat helicopter, then consider yourself lucky. There’s nothing more fun than hovering over an enemy base and killing your enemies with a couple of accurate bursts.

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