While Portal is absolutely worth $10, if you have any friends on Steam, I’d ask them first. They were giving away free copies of Portal like candy a few years ago, so it’s quite likely that anyone who’s been on Steam for any length of time has at least one free gift copy they’d be willing to give you.
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One of the many games I have unfinished, but one of the few I go back to every so often. I plan tol finish it, eventually. The problem is I have to re-learn how to play it every time I go back.
I see that as a length problem. There’s only enough game to fill a certain number of hours, but the designers felt the pressure to pad those out into a longer game. I’m a bit of a completist - it pains me to leave games unfinished, so I’ll keep playing in that situation until I hit enough of a difficulty spike that I set it aside (and the less interested I am in the game at that point, the smaller the spike has to be for me to do this). I still don’t finish most games. I’m not sure if that’s more an indicator of the problems with the games or how bad/bored I was with them.
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Now I have the theme song stuck in my head, so thanks for that. I’ll advocate that it was an excellent game, though. One of my partners is a bit of a (safe) pyromaniac, and I introduced her to that one on one of our visits. Apparently after I fell asleep for the night, she stayed up most of the night finishing it.
Oh, OK, fine … since I had to look it up anyway …
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Psychonauts is an incredibly good game. There’s not much i can say that hasn’t already been said by more qualified and eloquent people. If you get the PC version i hear that the release for that has a fix for making one of the last levels a bit easier, the original console version had some platforming nuances in it that could be frustrating. But beyond that it’s possibly one of the finest games i’ve ever played.
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They’ve since patched the Meat Circus level on the Stream version to not be awful.
On the other hand with Pyschonauts 2 in development it might be wise to wait for any more updates at this point.
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Thirty Three Flights of Loving! Unabashedly cinematic and pared down, it’s an inspiration for a lot of the games listed (mostly the idea that you can stylishly jump cut to the next important scene without making the player grind filler) . Virginia even does so explicitly.
I would add:
Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist
Certainly if you like douglas adams style humour which is particularly true of the first one. The narrator is very much like the guide as well.
Let me also add:
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Oh man, let’s not forget Pony Island. That is one fucked up little game… in a good way.
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Huh, I’ve played everything listed. If I had to rank them (which is next-to-meaningless given the massive variety in narrative, mechanics, intention etc) I’d say:
- Portal - in pretty much every aspect
- Papers, Please - for excellence in mechanics-as-narrative (or, to be glib, non-browbeating storytelling)
- Firewatch - for the fluidity of movement, the sense of place, and the voice acting (I already admired Olly Moss’ work and listened to Idle Thumbs for years so I was mega-primed to like this game)
- Hotline Miami - for the violent fever-dream aesthetics and music (best soundtrack of the list, synthwave & new retro)
- Inside - for minimalism, the effectiveness of the ambiance, and the mysterious environmental story hints (far better than their previous effort)
- To the Moon - for the story, which is the best of the list by a country mile
- Undertale - for the remarkable variety and whimsical creative earnestness on display, and tbh, for spawning a multitude of great LPs
A few recommendations:
- Frictional Games’ Amnesia: The Dark Descent & SOMA if you like non-carnival horror. Probably a bit more than six hours, but definitely two or three long sessions. Also The Chinese Room’s Amnesia game, A Machine for Pigs.
- Dropsy - get over your weird clown aversion (or don’t) and play this variably joyous and woebegone point-and-clicker.
- It’s been mentioned already, but The Stanley Parable, especially if you have any interest at all in ruminating on the mechanics and limitations of interactive fiction, linear & branching narratives, etc.
- Portal 2’s co-op - it’s really quite great, in the same vein as the original game with the bounce/accelerate gel mechanic added. SP is probably ~12 hours, but the co-op’s half that.
- Dave Gilbert’s five Blackwell games are all considerably under 6 hours to play and each is compelling in and of itself, to say nothing of how well-integrated everything seems once you’ve completed the series. Afterlife navigation tale is about all I’ll say about the story… The Shivah is good, too, and features characters from Blackwell. IMO this series is the apotheosis of the P&C adventure game: compelling stories without the tedious “try all the things on all the other things” nonsense that tends to cripple the genre. His company, Wadjet Eye, also publishes other devs’ adventure games, most recently Shardlight.
I have such a mental backlog rushing forth for some reason (these seem in memory to be ~6h experiences):
- Ori & the Blind Forest (because, if nothing else, it’s utterly beautiful)
- Jotun (also beautiful, with a neat hand-drawn look)
- Supergiant’s two games, Bastion and Transistor (these can be significantly longer if completionism beckons)
- Toren (only if you’re OK with super-wonky low-budget stuff that nonetheless has redeeming pacing & story)
- Shelter and its sequel (if you like tonal & meandering experiences, i.e. minimally-guided ones)
- The Wolf Among Us (all of Telltale’s stuff, being rather straightforward IF-type fare, is great to play through w/close friends, sharing a controller from time to time if they’re interested)
- The Sorcery! series from Steve Jackson as beautifully translated to vidyagaim by Inkle in a hand-drawn & papercut aesthetic (they made 80 Days, which was listed in the OP article, but I might like these a touch better)
This is all weighted to relatively recent stuff, unfortunately… long-term memory of these things tends to trail into wispy ether. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a good P&C adventure from the mid-nineties that’s worth a playthrough even if you’ve read the book, and it fits in our time constraints. Oi! Quite an extended brainfart, this post.
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80 Days was excellent. I played it through about 6 times, and still haven’t deleted it from my phone.
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