Adventure game adventures
Sep. 13th, 2025 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allekhaI recently played a couple of new adventure games, both of which I enjoyed a lot! The first was The Beekeeper's Picnic, which is a Sherlock Holmes adventure set after Holmes has retired to keep bees in the countryside. When Watson arrives for a visit (or to stay?) after WWI, Holmes decides that he needs to surprise him with a picnic. Of course, Holmes can't even try to scrounge up a full picnic basket without solving some minor mysteries.
One thing I really enjoyed is that all the dialogue is voice-acted by professionals, and on top of the solid writing for the main quest lines, there are many comments you can trigger by trying things out, like having Holmes play his violin for everyone. There is also a built-in hint system that you can access by picking up the phone and dialing Mycroft, which I thought was a very cute idea, but the puzzles were pretty straightforward, so I didn't end up needing it. It's cozy overall, with nice side characters in the various villagers, although it occasionally touches on more serious topics like Watson being deeply affected by what he saw during the war. The controls are a little janky, but my impression was that it may have come from the engine that was used, and it didn't stop me from playing the whole game through in one sitting.
While it's a very shippy game if you're into Holmes/Watson, at the end, at least if you put together a good picnic, you can direct their ending conversation depending on how you would like them to understand their relationship - as very good friends, found family, lovers, or no words needed.
The one thing I would say is that it's a very short game, so the full price might be a bit much if you're on a budget. (I picked it up on sale.) The quality is definitely high, though.
The second was The Crimson Diamond, a parser-based mystery EGA adventure game (especially inspired by the Colonel's Bequest) with some modernized features. The main character is Nancy, a new geologist at the Royal Canadian Museum in 1914 who wants to formally study mineralogy, and after a red diamond is discovered in an old mining town, she gets sent to investigate. The only building that remains in town is a single lodge with its own drama going on.
As an EGA game, the color palette is very restricted, but the graphics are done well despite that, and it's one area where you can see the Colonel's Bequest influence. The central mystery also builds nicely from 'I'm a mineralogist :) I want to find some cool rocks to test :)' to murder investigation, the characters were distinct and varied and fit well into the, and Nancy was a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing the bits where she geeks out intensely over minerals, which is also useful for the plot, and also having her immediately act like an adventure game protagonist and start barrelling into every room and stealing stuff out of drawers with no compunctions. The puzzles were mostly not too bad, save for a couple of obtuse ones that made me reach for the dev's hintbook, and I mostly enjoyed the 'good' ending.
Did have a few complaints: there is a meaningful distinction between 'look' and 'examine' that I missed for the first few hours (not sure if the game just skips over that entirely or if I missed/forgot one text box that tells you). One of the other features inspired by the Colonel's Bequest is that certain events are missable, as characters move around the game world. I think this is an interesting idea, and it does help the game feel like the world doesn't revolve around the protagonist. However, some of those conversations are weirdly particular about what order they can be seen in for no discernible reason, so I ended up reloading one chapter a bunch because A and B will wait forever to have a conversation you can eavesdrop on, but C and D have to have theirs overheard first or you've missed it. There is a built-in skip button, at least.
You also can't get the best ending if you don't grab a missable object earlier on - I probably could have replayed in about five minutes, but I was tired of typing commands at that point, and it's dumb in any case and also not clear why Nancy couldn't take one of several other obvious solutions instead, which she refuses to do. (You need to immobilize the last villain, who is an elderly woman, and the ONLY solution you can use is using a padlock to restrain her to a heavy item. You can't have Nancy tackle her, it would just take too long to undo some rope tied up in the scene, etc, it felt very BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY for some reason.) And lastly, the main switch between ending types comes before you have to type a bunch of commands in as well, and honestly the endings are SO neatly divided into Bad and Good that the game might as well have asked, 'do you want to ruin the lives of yourself and your new friends for fame and fortune that you find unfulfilling because you never pursue your true dream for Reasons?' which was too pat for me.
But overall quite liked it, and it had me hooked! There's a lot of great flavor dialogue for trying different things in this one as well, there are multiple ways to draw some of the conclusions the PC needs, and it's a rare game where someone looking at the wrong type of rock for what they're supposedly investigating and comparing minerals on the Mohs scale are important to the plot. Pretty impressive effort from a single dev. Apparently a sequel is in the works, which I'll be looking out for.
One thing I really enjoyed is that all the dialogue is voice-acted by professionals, and on top of the solid writing for the main quest lines, there are many comments you can trigger by trying things out, like having Holmes play his violin for everyone. There is also a built-in hint system that you can access by picking up the phone and dialing Mycroft, which I thought was a very cute idea, but the puzzles were pretty straightforward, so I didn't end up needing it. It's cozy overall, with nice side characters in the various villagers, although it occasionally touches on more serious topics like Watson being deeply affected by what he saw during the war. The controls are a little janky, but my impression was that it may have come from the engine that was used, and it didn't stop me from playing the whole game through in one sitting.
While it's a very shippy game if you're into Holmes/Watson, at the end, at least if you put together a good picnic, you can direct their ending conversation depending on how you would like them to understand their relationship - as very good friends, found family, lovers, or no words needed.
The one thing I would say is that it's a very short game, so the full price might be a bit much if you're on a budget. (I picked it up on sale.) The quality is definitely high, though.
The second was The Crimson Diamond, a parser-based mystery EGA adventure game (especially inspired by the Colonel's Bequest) with some modernized features. The main character is Nancy, a new geologist at the Royal Canadian Museum in 1914 who wants to formally study mineralogy, and after a red diamond is discovered in an old mining town, she gets sent to investigate. The only building that remains in town is a single lodge with its own drama going on.
As an EGA game, the color palette is very restricted, but the graphics are done well despite that, and it's one area where you can see the Colonel's Bequest influence. The central mystery also builds nicely from 'I'm a mineralogist :) I want to find some cool rocks to test :)' to murder investigation, the characters were distinct and varied and fit well into the, and Nancy was a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing the bits where she geeks out intensely over minerals, which is also useful for the plot, and also having her immediately act like an adventure game protagonist and start barrelling into every room and stealing stuff out of drawers with no compunctions. The puzzles were mostly not too bad, save for a couple of obtuse ones that made me reach for the dev's hintbook, and I mostly enjoyed the 'good' ending.
Did have a few complaints: there is a meaningful distinction between 'look' and 'examine' that I missed for the first few hours (not sure if the game just skips over that entirely or if I missed/forgot one text box that tells you). One of the other features inspired by the Colonel's Bequest is that certain events are missable, as characters move around the game world. I think this is an interesting idea, and it does help the game feel like the world doesn't revolve around the protagonist. However, some of those conversations are weirdly particular about what order they can be seen in for no discernible reason, so I ended up reloading one chapter a bunch because A and B will wait forever to have a conversation you can eavesdrop on, but C and D have to have theirs overheard first or you've missed it. There is a built-in skip button, at least.
You also can't get the best ending if you don't grab a missable object earlier on - I probably could have replayed in about five minutes, but I was tired of typing commands at that point, and it's dumb in any case and also not clear why Nancy couldn't take one of several other obvious solutions instead, which she refuses to do. (You need to immobilize the last villain, who is an elderly woman, and the ONLY solution you can use is using a padlock to restrain her to a heavy item. You can't have Nancy tackle her, it would just take too long to undo some rope tied up in the scene, etc, it felt very BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY for some reason.) And lastly, the main switch between ending types comes before you have to type a bunch of commands in as well, and honestly the endings are SO neatly divided into Bad and Good that the game might as well have asked, 'do you want to ruin the lives of yourself and your new friends for fame and fortune that you find unfulfilling because you never pursue your true dream for Reasons?' which was too pat for me.
But overall quite liked it, and it had me hooked! There's a lot of great flavor dialogue for trying different things in this one as well, there are multiple ways to draw some of the conclusions the PC needs, and it's a rare game where someone looking at the wrong type of rock for what they're supposedly investigating and comparing minerals on the Mohs scale are important to the plot. Pretty impressive effort from a single dev. Apparently a sequel is in the works, which I'll be looking out for.
