Night call

This is a detective game like no other. Or it’s got to be – I don’t play a lot of them. I guess it’s better marketing than calling it a taxi driver simulator (in a not perfect, philosophical world). Once I got over that it wasn’t really the game that was sold to me, all […]

HYPNOSPACE OUTLAW

The year is 1999 in an ever-so-slightly alternate history where the internet, called Hypnospace, is corporately owned and accessed through a headband while you sleep. All good. You play a low-level internet enforcer tasked with trawling the HypnOS pages for petty infarctions, like reporting any likeness of copyright-protected cartoon fish Gumshoe Gooper. You get all […]

Wide Ocean Big Jacket

Rarely am I so moved by an interactive narrative, but this one is just too sweet (and short). Part walking sim, part camping sim, all relationship-building. It’s already a curious dynamic; childless couple Brad and Cloanne take their precocious 12-year-old niece, Mord, and her awkward “boyfriend”, Ben, on a weekend camping trip. You can tell […]

Signs of the Sojourner

Yo, I played this 12 hours straight INCLUDING through a fight with my spouse. Here’s the setup: Your mom just died which means you have to take over the shop, which is entirely dependent on the traveling caravan – and they will take it off their route if it’s not well stocked. To gather supplies, […]

A Mortician’s Tale

This is one of the better-known titles of the package, but I’m including it here because it is very this blog (too short and sweet) not to play. You are a mortician and your tale is one of dignity. You learn the ins-and-outs and the whys and hows about end-of-death practices and procedures like embalming […]

Astrologaster

In this highly niche musical narrative choose-your-own adventure, you play (the real!) Simon Forman, the last “doctor” (of astrology) to not flee from the plague who must win enough letters of recommendations to obtain a medical license by the time the real doctors return and demand the integrity of their profession back. Gotta love it. […]

Sagebrush

In Sagebrush, you explore the abandoned compound of a religious cult, putting together the story of Father James and his flock; how it came to be and how it ended in the “1993 Perfect Heaven Suicide”. It’s a great little exploration game, both of the environment and the nature of cults themselves. The narrative material […]

One Night Stand

In this elegantly rotoscoped morning-after-the-one-night-stand simulator, you are tasked with trying to connect the hard way. Before you can sneak out undetected (the game will not give you the option to be too much of a scumbag about it), your lay wakes up only slightly less confused than you and seeming like she probably doesn’t […]

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist

You begin in the green room of a what seems to be some sort terribly mismanaged theater production, as evidenced by the strike signs and letters of resignation lying around. We find out through the disembodied voice of the frazzled director that the production is in fact the game you are supposed to be playing […]

Fortune-499

Set in a nondescript office building of an unnamed company, you play an underappreciated and overworked witch, Cassie, who suddenly becomes its most valued employee when monsters invade and she is the only one who has the power to stop them. She is assigned to “spearhead” the “project” by her boss, Derek, who briefs her […]