More Steam Link Adventures
Two years ago I blogged about playing adventure games with Kaddi on the Steam Link. In the recent weeks we played a few more. So here's a quick summary of how we liked them.
All of these games are indie adventures and cost less than 10 bucks and are often available for significantly less during sales.
Demetrios - The BIG Cynical Adventure
This game is about an antiques dealer who accidentally is drawn into an ancient mystery. Sounds good, except that the protagonist is an immature idiot…
The actual premise of the story is good and the technical realization is okay, though the graphical style is rather MS Painty. Unfortunately the humor falls flat. The game has its moments but mostly it's too predictable and too forced to be funny.
Some puzzles are fun, others are somewhat obscure. We liked the builtin hint system which lets you use hidden cookies to request a hint. Similar to what Professor Layton did with coins.
It's not a terrible game, but it's also not a great game.
A Golden Wake
An adventure game set in the 20ies and 30ies of America? Published by Wadjeteye Games? Of course I had to buy that.
The game follows a real estate agent in Miami of the 20ies. It is loosely based on the real history around Coral Gables, Florida and later the Mafia during Prohibition.
The game has some beautiful screens (for a low-res AGS game). Unfortunately, Kaddi and I weren't super gripped by the story. I think it's mostly because the main protagonist isn't very likable. The game also ends rather suddenly.
Verdict: Better than Demetrios but no Laura Bow 2 (play that if you want a really good 20ies adventure).
Tales
This was the game we enjoyed the most. In the story, the main protagonist starts a new job as a librarian and accidentally frees a demon which threatens to destroy all of humanities stories. Of course he needs to be stopped.
To do so the librarian needs to muster the help of various characters of mankind's oldest stories from around the world. The game uses a pretty unique mechanism. You need to travel inside different books in the library. A magic bag lets you take one item between books. For example to climb Mount Olymp you need to use Jack's magic beans to grow a beanstalk.
Unfortunately, the limit of one thing only gets a bit tiresome when you get stuck and start to do the adventure thing of “try everything with everything”. Lots of walking back and forth between books, taking things in and out of the magic bag…
And we did got stuck quite a few times — and quickly learned that googling for “Tales Magic Beans” is not really helpful 
. You can ask Merlin the Wizard for help, but those hints often are too cryptic. In the end we found some hints in the Steam Forums and there is at least a German walkthrough.
Despite the difficulties, we enjoyed this game a lot.