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International Games
0 Playsin 12 hours
Ben and Jess fulfill an request quest to discuss games made outside of the United States, and realize that its a bigger subject than one podcast.
Ben and Jess discuss games to recommend someone whose never played an adventure game, if such a thing exists.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
Give us a review, they help people find this show! Unless you hated it, in which case, don't.
Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Social Handles
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello. Hello. We should, i mean, when we get, if we have Grayson back or someone else, I guess we're going to have to do like the three stooges.
00:00:44
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Hello. Hello. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We nailed it. Absolutely. no Perfect. We didn't even need Grayson for that.
00:00:56
Speaker
That's true. You find that more and more often. Yeah. Yeah.
The Watermelon Debate
00:01:00
Speaker
yeah ah Hey everybody, it's Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. I'm Jess. I'm Ben, PS underscore Garrick on Twitch and also on YouTube.
00:01:09
Speaker
And I'm Decaf Jedi on those places. How you doing, Jess? Ben, I'm doing terrific. I just ate half a watermelon, I think.
00:01:20
Speaker
Like, i maybe not quite half a watermelon, but man, I was in that watermelon just a few minutes ago. You know, all right, I'm going reveal something potentially shocking.
00:01:33
Speaker
Okay. Which is, I don't think, well, no, I know. I've i've never had a good watermelon experience, and now I'm starting to wonder, like, I've started to to wonder at this at this age, at nearly 39 years of life, is it just that I haven't had a good watermelon? and uh is it is it this whole time have i been anti-watermelon and it's just that because you know fruit is so temperamental it is it is and i mean bad watermelon is like as bad as cantaloupe or honeydew right ah i mean it just blends in as like a filler yes fruit salad if it's not ripe that's so i like
00:02:20
Speaker
artificial watermelon flavor but my connection with watermelon is what you're saying where it's like just that like that melon texture with like kind of a light sugar taste and and i like a like boldly flavored fruit So have I just been led astray? Have I just not had a good watermelon?
00:02:52
Speaker
I feel like that could be the case. I mean, a good watermelon is hard to beat. Like this was as sweet as candy. I'm going to tell you, Ben. If it's as sweet as candy, ill all all ah I'll beat that. It's as sweet as a watermelon Jolly Rancher.
00:03:09
Speaker
actually it's not nothing's that sweet until they walk that back but no i then doctored it up baby i'm talking salt and tajin seasoning a little bit of that chili lime little less than tea little bit of that and it was ah so good it was absolutely delicious ben you've got to go out and get a good watermelon now i know you must have like weekend farmers markets i have I have blueberries ah from last week's farmer's market in my fridge.
Baking and Pie Discussions
00:03:41
Speaker
As we speak, I'm going to, and I made a pike i made pie crust ah yesterday that's been in sitting in the fridge. And tomorrow I'm going to make a blueberry lime pie.
00:03:53
Speaker
Ooh, that sounds amazing. I've never had a blueberry lime pie. I have never made it either. I was going through my pie cookbook and it looked intriguing. um we're we're coming up i mean i guess it it's it's peach season but i haven't started to see peaches at my farmer's market so i assume probably not peach season in like michigan um it's cherry season you're around it mission it is it is cherry it is cherry there's so many cherries and i got to traverse city
00:04:28
Speaker
i'm I'm intimidated by the prospect of making a cherry pie because I know that the cherry pie is excellent and everybody loves a cherry pie and except for Jess because you're making a face.
00:04:42
Speaker
I don't think I've ever had cherry pie I liked. If you've ever had a watermelon you've liked, and Now, Grant, I think I've only had bad cherry pies. I've always had like your Kroger Deli cherry pie, which is just like a bunch of high fructose corn syrup, cherry pie topping, whatever. That Hostess fruit pie style fruit. Yeah.
00:05:01
Speaker
And honestly, the canned fruit flavor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever yeah. I don't know if I've ever had a good fresh cherry pie. The thing I'm thinking is just, I'm just thinking about all of the work to pit them.
00:05:17
Speaker
like because you get like you know however many you know however many cherries and then you have to like you know do all that shit to you know get them prepared to be in the pie and i'm a lazy man that's why they say it's the pits yeah that's right the pits now on fox remember the pits yeah wasn't that an eddie murphy claymation no you're thinking of that number one so was not up on fox I think that was on.
00:05:52
Speaker
It was what came after youp It wasn't UPN and it wasn't the CW. It was the other one. Yes. There was something else. It was on. But maybe what you know what? Maybe now I'm doubting myself and I'm not going to look this up.
00:06:06
Speaker
No, we don't need to look this up. and I don't want any of our listeners looking this up. yeah No one look this up. This will remain a great mystery. Even if you know it, you don't know it.
Podcast Listening Habits
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah. Put your phone in airplane mode right now. Yeah. Except, well, download this podcast. Yes. yeah but If you're streaming this. Yeah. Put this in.
00:06:24
Speaker
Do you download your podcast? I only, i only stream them, baby. i download mine, baby. It's all download. I stream them. They're all streamed. i They're all up in the clouds.
00:06:35
Speaker
You know, all my friends. See, I want my my podcast that listen to to know that I love them right away with that ins instant download as soon as it goes live. It does. I mean, like listen, when... ah Like looking at our stats, like our biggest pop is always at midnight when it goes up. And I'm just assuming it's everybody like, you know, in their pajamas and like a nightcap, like shooting up like a don't wake daddy and going like, I have to listen to the new quest quest.
00:07:06
Speaker
Absolutely. I can't go to sleep on Tuesdays without my quest quest. Um, well, you or late Monday. But anyway, I mean, my favorite. Okay. So I love to make an apple pie and I love an apple pie. Apple pie is is ah like, I make a caramel apple pie. I like, um, uh, but, uh, I do, I have this, uh, peach custard, uh, pie that I make.
00:07:31
Speaker
And we usually, say yeah, we usually start to see, I think we're we're going to start to see those those, you know, Michigan and like Midwestern peaches pretty soon.
00:07:45
Speaker
The trick with those is that they turn very quickly. So you buy those peaches and you're making that pie that night you're going to have a big soggy paper bag of peaches that have turned quickly.
00:08:02
Speaker
I was imagining paper bag also. like that I don't think you can carry peaches in any other kind of container. I guess a basket. You could have a basket of peaches. Yeah, you could have a basket of peaches.
00:08:12
Speaker
You can't put them in a plastic bag. The presidents of the United States, they could sing about peaches. Millions of peaches. Yeah. ah um Yeah, listen, i but the My new place actually is very close to a farmer's market, like ah the weekly farmer's market. And so I've been, this says i made a strawberry rhubarb pie.
00:08:36
Speaker
That's one my favorites. Which actually, no ah was it strawberry? I think I just made, I forget. Was it just a straight rhubarb pie? think I might have. Oh, ah you know what? No, it was. It was ah a rhubarb custard because, you know, listen, I love the custard. I love that and that heavy cream in there.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah. Um, well, Ben, you need to get down to your farmer's market and you need to like find someone in a pair of denim overalls with a little straw hat on and say, help me pick the right watermelon. And what you're going want to do is you're going to thump those watermelons.
00:09:10
Speaker
You're going walk up to them. You're going thump them. And what you're wanting to hear is you want it to sound hollow, but not so hollow that it's actually a scam where they are trying to sell you just an empty watermelon. Is that a common thing? yeah getting Farmers will do that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they can just hollow that out and make melon balls and sell those separately and just give you a big grind.
00:09:33
Speaker
You got look for a little seam where it's been glued back together. I see. I see. yeah Yeah. So if it's too hollow, it's a problem. But if it just sounds like a solid thud, that baby's not wrap. That one's not good to go. Yeah. You know, all right. I, I, I guess I'm just going to, I don't know if watermelons show up in a Chicago farmer's market. I think I have to, to just get that at the, at the grocery, because I don't know if there's like those grow in the Midwest.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah. You could also just go to a Gallagher 2 show and sit in the front row with your mouth open. Yeah, you know, listen, I do that at most comedy shows. Well, you're wrapped by the comedy. You're just like, yeah.
Dentist Visits and Comedy
00:10:15
Speaker
Also, I'm a a major mouth breather, so I just sit in the front row. at like you know I was seeing Mike Birbiglia, and you know he was telling a droll a true life story about... No, no.
00:10:28
Speaker
so no What? He wasn't doing his normal prop comedy. He didn't have a slapstick out.
00:10:42
Speaker
He didn't, uh, he didn't, uh, uh, turn around and, uh, make his butt cheeks talk. he He didn't do the little roll up tie thing. and
00:10:55
Speaker
he didn't, uh, do his, uh, Nixon impression. Oh, hello
00:11:02
Speaker
it's me mike all right well that's it uh i just came from the dentist me too really yeah actually actually actually have our dental cleanings today I was having a root canal finished. I just had a normal cleaning. It's probably technically cleaner than it was before. But yeah, i just came from the dentist too.
00:11:28
Speaker
Ben, we have so much in common. We should do a podcast. Yeah, we should. It's called Talking Teeth. um Now... yeah I bet that exists. I bet there's some sort of dental history podcast out there. it's got be There's like 40 and they're all the worst. I could not imagine something. i would less, maybe just a podcast. It's just the sound of a dentist drill, uh, that high pitched wine.
00:11:51
Speaker
but don't know. Do you still have, uh, your wisdom teeth? Yes. Three. One of them never came in. Well, I, I, I got
Classic Gaming Nostalgia
00:12:00
Speaker
them all. I got all. don't even have it my head. like can maray it There's just not one in there.
00:12:05
Speaker
um I bet it's hiding in there. Maybe it's hidden like elsewhere in your body. Like, have they checked your hand? Like, do you have like just a tooth popping out of your thumb? That does explain my thumb tooth.
00:12:19
Speaker
All right. We're speaking of thumb teeth. Jess, what have you been playing?
00:12:29
Speaker
Dan, I've been playing a few different things. I've been playing around. What's that? No, I'm bad. Oh, I'm sorry. good I've been playing.
00:12:41
Speaker
i been like I've been emulating a bunch of NES games lately and pulling around those on my phone. But the thing I want talk about really is a game we've mentioned a few times here on the podcast, just because I want to throw its name out there one more time. Ben, you know this. I've been playing Rosewater, yeah the fantastic Western point-and-click adventure Is this the third time it's come up in what I've been playing? I mentioned it twice, and now you're mentioning
Game Purchases and Recommendations
00:13:07
Speaker
it?
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, and then we had, of course, the developer. The guy who made it on the podcast? Listen, this is officially. Told you you'd like it. A Rosewater fan. Because, yeah, you told me you I'd like it. And I was like, no way, Ben. I'm going to hate this. if You're like, I don't know, Jess.
00:13:25
Speaker
No, it is. yeah and we've talked about this a little bit off the podcast. What I love about Rosewater, and everybody go out and get it, terrific game, available on Steam, everywhere else, it is just a good hang.
00:13:40
Speaker
And that is something that I love in a game. It is nice group of characters that you enjoy sitting down and spending a little bit of time with. And the puzzles are great.
00:13:55
Speaker
you know, nice and breezy. You can just like relax and play a little rosewater. And at my advanced age, that's increasingly what I'm looking for in an adventure game.
00:14:06
Speaker
But this appeals to kids too. All those, I know we've looked at our demographics and yeah you wouldn't believe this people. yeah Roughly 70% of our audience is actually under the age of 20, which shocked us when we sat down with our numbers guy and he was like putting the charts up and everything. I said, that seems unlikely. yeah And he said we were just so hip and youthful that we're reaching that market.
00:14:29
Speaker
I don't know. But kids, adults, senior citizens, pets, I think you'd all enjoy Rosewater. It's a terrific game. It's just a chill hang. I was saying this on the Discord, which the link to it may or may not be in the the description.
00:14:46
Speaker
Probably not. We did that last week. don't think we'll do it again. We'll see how that goes. But, like, yeah, I was saying that on the Discord. It's just a very pleasant... It's way what you said, what I've already said. It's like, it's just a chill-ass hang. Like, yeah it's just... I think I said this on there. i was like, it kind of gives me...
00:15:11
Speaker
TNG vibe, Star Trek The Next Generation. like, here's a cast of genial people in a series of little scrapes. Yeah. and And it's nice because, you know, it's using that sort of design of you are an adventure game protagonist with a party of of friends around you who can help you solve puzzles, and advance the narrative and all those sorts of good things.
00:15:37
Speaker
So, yeah, you get to know these people, and I'm still early in the game. You get to know them as it goes on. i haven't even gotten to the my favorite part of the game. Yeah, no, i'm I'm having a blast with it. i highly recommend Rosewater. And we'll probably talk about it again sooner or later on this podcast, because apparently we just do that every few episodes now. And that's good, because it deserves the hot.
00:16:02
Speaker
All right, well, Jess... Why have you been playing Ben? You know, all right, well, so i went, i went a bit ham. Oh no. On the steam sale.
00:16:13
Speaker
Oh no. So, because I had a, had a wishlist backlog, but also it's like, it's like, wow, Ben, you've got all of these games. But,
00:16:26
Speaker
to be clear, know, the majority of them were between the price of like $10 to $5. Like a lot of these are, like, like um'm very arc like short arcadey game and stuff like that. There are only a couple of games of all my purchases that are like, I would say, you know, kind of larger and more substantive games.
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, for me, I just bought roughly eight to 10 broken sword games.
00:16:59
Speaker
Anyway, so I've played a little bit of, and I am already fascinated and thrilled to play it and and having a great time.
00:17:11
Speaker
I purchased the brand new, as of this year, came out in April, Jeff Minter's iRobot. Oh.
00:17:23
Speaker
Jeff Minter's...
00:17:45
Speaker
Um... I don't even know how... right. Like, if you are unfamiliar with Jeff Minter, I would recommend get the the Digital Eclipse Jeff Minter Collection, because it's really cool and provides a ton of history and has a ton of his games.
00:18:03
Speaker
Um, Jeff Minter is this, uh, uh, British, uh, arcade game, uh, developer or like not arcade games specifically. Like, uh, you know, he made a lot of games on the Commodore 64 and,
00:18:18
Speaker
so on and so forth. But they're all arcade-ish games, very inspired by
00:18:28
Speaker
classics. Like he he made some games that are very similar Defender, defender games that are very similar to Centipede. so on and so forth.
00:18:38
Speaker
ah And so recently, it seems like he's got some some sort of ah deal with Atari, who he had worked with in the past, famously made Tempest 2000, which kicks ass for the for the Jaguar, which is in that Jeff Minter collection.
00:18:59
Speaker
Uh, but, uh, so this is a version uh, a robot, uh, done in that style. I don't even know how to fucking explain it.
00:19:13
Speaker
Like, I mean, I don't know. Take a look at some screenshots. It's just very bright and it's playing like crazy retro sounds. And there's an enormous eye that is staring at you.
00:19:26
Speaker
and there's a lot of colors and somehow... I really love what I love about Jeff Minter's games, especially now that I've played a ton of like his games from that that digital eclipse collection is that Uh, like his newer stuff is all modern.
00:19:49
Speaker
Like it it is all, uh, yeah, this game came out, you know, in 2025, but it is unmistakably, there is a continuity from like, you could see, look at the games that he made in the eighties. And then you could look at this and go like, yes, the same person made this.
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking at this and I'm looking at his, uh, his gamography and you can see a through line. For instance, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Sheep in Space, Lama Lama, Yak's Progress.
00:20:23
Speaker
Llamatron 2112 Llamazap mean yeah this is a this guy has point of view and I appreciate that he has a point of view i mean he he lives but can you be surprised to know that he he lives on a farm and if you follow him on social media he posts photos of his sheep every day like Would you be shocked if I told you that? No, looking at this list, not particularly.
00:20:52
Speaker
I bet this is a man who appreciates a goat. A goat is the best barnyard animal.
00:20:59
Speaker
Have you ever played a Jeffery game? Have you ever played? looking through these. I was looking at this and I mean, this will come as a big surprise to anyone who's ever listened to the YB been playing segment before, I don't think I have.
00:21:16
Speaker
His, his games are so fucking cool. Especially like I, yeah you, you, you love a good eighties arcade them up. Yeah. So I, I think, I think you like, yeah, just,
00:21:31
Speaker
I love Jeff Minter. I love his bizarre, like, I love that he makes these psychedelic games. I'm a little, I held off on buying iRobot for a little bit because you have a PSVR, it's in VR. And I was like, oh are they, come on. I'm going to wait until it ports to SteamVR if it ever does.
00:21:54
Speaker
Uh, but I, I, I didn't want to hold off. Um, you know, I, I want to give Jeff Minter money. Um, and, uh, but I will say that the couple of VR Jeff Minter games that I have played are the coolest fucking thing.
00:22:13
Speaker
Like some of the coolest shit I've ever played in vr Just psychedelic and wild and assault. Yeah, but now there's shit flying at you.
00:22:24
Speaker
Oh, man. It is so awesome. I'm speaking of, it's like, all right, well, Moose Life is in VR, and that game's pretty cool.
00:22:35
Speaker
But where's the one? i know that our friend Michael is screaming right now. They're screaming. It's like, oh, it's this one. ah Polybius.
00:22:47
Speaker
Ah, I've heard of Polybius. In VR, Polybius is, like, and you can play it on a flat screen. In, in, on a, like, in But in VR, Polybius is one of the most incredible VR experiences that you will have.
00:23:04
Speaker
It is so amazing. And so I was just kind of hoping a little bit that, uh, uh, SteamVR would get, uh, iRobot. And then I couldn't hold out. I had to play it.
00:23:16
Speaker
I had to, I had to reach out for my, uh, friend Jeff. Hi, Jeff.
00:23:24
Speaker
Anyway, so that's what I've been playing. I wrote it and a bunch of other. I bought I bought a ah ah modern Jeff Minter pack. So I might talk about the other ones in other weeks or all the other shit I bought.
00:23:38
Speaker
us i you know, I just bought several podcasts worth. of you have such an edge over me i should start thinking ahead like that yeah like i've just started playing games for like 30 seconds just so i can honestly come on and say i've been playing something other than whatever i'm streaming and overwatch yeah now now i would say we're gonna read emails which we will but that a lot of the emails uh that uh i'm going to read and i'm not gonna here i'll play the tune for a little bit
00:24:13
Speaker
so we can just enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty sad. Let's quietly reflect. Yeah, you were really, like, feeling it when you recorded this one. Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker
You were in the studio. I was on snare, but, like, I mean, it's your piano that carries this piece. Yeah. But, you know, the snare provides the snub line.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. um But yeah, a lot of our emails have to do with ah today's theme. And also, what have I been playing?
International Adventure Games Introduction
00:24:52
Speaker
Jess, would you be surprised to know that ah ah Jeff Minter is from ah jolly old England? Actually, he's Welsh. So, ah wow well, he's from the United Kingdom. Wow, Ben. Yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker
is he wait is he welsh now i'm mixing it all up it says he's english all right i was wrong was wrong everyone okay yeah we'll have an apology issued uh on social media by the time you hear this don't worry it's time for me to uh start listening and whatever else.
00:25:25
Speaker
ah Yes, all those sorts of things. No, we are talking about international adventures today. And this is, I suppose at some level, this is a big request quest because this is something we've been kicking around as an episode for a few weeks and soliciting some ideas from from listeners to get a sense of adventure games outside of the US. Because i have to admit,
00:25:51
Speaker
And Ben, I think probably you are a little bit ah more cosmopolitan than I am in this regard. But my background. i have a subscription to Cosmo.
00:26:02
Speaker
That's true. That's why I said that. yeah You're constantly reading it whenever I'm talking during the podcast. You very performatively pull it up in front of the camera. i'm I'm learning about the I could please Well, I mean, that's going to be useful knowledge. um But I mean, I grew up very much like my adventure game experiences. Long time listeners know is largely a Sierra and Lucas arts centric kind of thing. In fact, I was thinking about this earlier today, Ben, and I think this will tell both sides of that story.
00:26:34
Speaker
i don't think I fully appreciated that video games were being created anywhere other than the United States until Sierra, uh, got the rights to distribute Dexter, um, here in the U S it's transforming robot plane platformer. that was, that was a Japanese.
00:26:57
Speaker
That's right. And and they, Yeah, and they very much advertised it as like the hottest game from Japan. And I was like, Japan has video games. ah Do you have an NES?
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah, I've been playing NES. Yeah, I mean, like I said, Ben, I was a sheltered child. So how would you know? I was Italian. Luigi's Italian. We don't know about the princess. It's hard to say. i mean, Bowser is a turtle dragon.
00:27:23
Speaker
Peach from. I guess from the mushroom kingdom. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, we know that. Yeah, that's, uh, but yeah, it's, um, I think for me, these sorts of international titles are something that I didn't, didn't get exposed to a lot as a kid.
00:27:39
Speaker
Uh, but Ben, I think that certainly whether you saw them as a kid, i get the feeling you've played a few more international adventures than I have, uh, as an adult. Yeah, I mean, I've played them as ah an adult, but then also like Sierra, i I mean, they did own Cocktail Vision, which was a French studio.
00:28:03
Speaker
And so probably I would say that the first ah like non-American ah adventure game that I played was ah had to be Goblins.
00:28:18
Speaker
Ah, uh, did you play goblins? I have never played goblins. You've never played a goblins. I've only played cocktail visions, erotic titles.
00:28:31
Speaker
And I don't think Goblins is one of those. Don't they have an Emmanuel? They have a geisha, which I'm sure is not problematic.
00:28:44
Speaker
Well, of course, they have ink. No, it's a children's game. It's okay. No, it says a children's game for adults due to mature themes. I take it back. Oh, wait, here we go. I've got a review of the cocktail hit Geisha.
00:28:56
Speaker
um User friendly and sexy as a rotten anchovy, ah says Amiga Power.
00:29:03
Speaker
ah Like, ah you know, there's... Like, was it... Yeah, Cocktail Vision also made ah the the Inca.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yes. The Inca games. Yeah, they did some really interesting stuff in those later years under Sierra's control. And I have to admit, i have played none of it.
00:29:27
Speaker
um They did Lost in Time. Hold on. i I... So... would I just did a ah very quick download. Hopefully I didn't ah just lose virus on my computer. But, you know, the coolest thing about ah Cocktail Vision's Inca game, right?
00:29:50
Speaker
What's that?
00:29:53
Speaker
planned it. We'll make it our destination.
00:30:02
Speaker
Where we could live one million years and even more.
00:30:18
Speaker
It's good. It's good. It's good stuff. We are the acres, kings and knights. We are lost.
00:30:29
Speaker
Where we go, we don't know. We keep on flying into the night. We've got people looking for a place to go.
00:30:40
Speaker
Then we get the pan flute. The problem is, is that always just about to turn this off. And then it just has something else incredible happens. mean, the pan flute's pretty good.
00:30:55
Speaker
I mean, I'm back. Yeah, I was out, and now I'm in. And if you saw the visuals that was going on during this, because it's a pan flute flying through space.
00:31:07
Speaker
Why wasn't Chris Williams writing about this in his Interaction Magazine column?
00:31:15
Speaker
All right. All right. i Listen, this is, it's a three minute song and I could just play it because i love the title track Cocktail Visions Inca.
00:31:30
Speaker
Inca people. Yeah. Which I i ran to ah like of a video game music website to download very quickly because I was just like,
00:31:43
Speaker
you know i gotta i gotta share i gotta share my love of inca people i gotta hear it yeah like if if it's evoked it must be it it must be played man um is that good game have you played the game oh it's terrible uh
00:32:09
Speaker
I have played it. I have played Inca. It's bad. All right. So, but it does tie. All right. First,
00:32:20
Speaker
fucking do
00:32:25
Speaker
i have played it i have playedde inca ah it's bad um
00:32:33
Speaker
right so but it does ti our first So here, I'm going to read the the original request quest that we got ah ah from ah Yum Yum Podcast.
00:32:46
Speaker
Hello, quest quest
00:32:51
Speaker
quest I like that. Here, I'll play the listen. I'll make this legitimate. Hello, quest quest quest I hear you two often talk about your experiences and takes about American-made adventure games, but I'm curious to know more about foreign games.
00:33:07
Speaker
I just thought this would make an interesting episode discussion because I'm sure there's a lot of fun stuff to dig in into without with thinking about how other countries and cultures approach video games.
00:33:18
Speaker
Like, you guys play many adventure games made elsewhere? What are some key differences to these games from other countries? Is there any country in particular that really nails a specific aspect of adventure games and so on?
00:33:30
Speaker
Kind regards, Yum Yum Podcast. Um... so So here, I'm talking about Inca. Let's talk about French games for a bit. Let's talk about French games. In a truncated way.
00:33:45
Speaker
Like Emmanuel. Yeah, like Emmanuel. So... I mean, your your question was, have I played that many games from out, or adventure games from outside the United States?
00:33:56
Speaker
The answer is ah yes. i But all what's I'll talk a little bit about French ones ah first. So i French, and I think this is like to Yum Yum Podcast question, to to Ryan's question,
00:34:20
Speaker
and I know his name. yeah We doxed you. actually use every that That'll happen to you if you send a letter questquestpodcasts at gmail.com. We'll hunt you down. ah But I, you know, I think the interesting thing when you think about a lot of like international adventure games, ah like outside of the United States, is that ah games that that kind of come out of i kind of...
00:34:51
Speaker
ah video game making ah cultures that were kind of insular to there i that like they might be inspired in some ways by like imports and stuff that came in either from the United States or from Japan or or other like large ah like big selling games.
00:35:15
Speaker
ah But like often i in this is, I mean, arguably it's lessened. I'm not, I'm obviously I'm not an expert here. They're not going to make the claim to be one, but like before you have widespread internet and before you have a widespread standardization of the type of ah computers that everybody had.
00:35:39
Speaker
Because it's like in Europe, you're going to find a lot more people using different types of personal computers than you would find in the United States. And that's the same for Japan. And that's the same for in South like ah ah America.
00:35:55
Speaker
And I'm sure like, same all over. I'm sure like everybody has a Tandy. Yeah, Tandy's. Everybody has a Tandy ah in in Portugal. um But like, so so for French games, there's ah like kind of the a stereotype of at least the games have made their way over here.
00:36:20
Speaker
uh of of being like very ah like kind of beautiful and absolutely strange you played that james bond or uh game james bond but and i didn't play a james bond game i played a john glames game um Yes, that's ah Operation Stealth, or as it was known here in the US, 007, The Stealth Affair. So here in the US, this point click adventure game, this espionage adventure game starred James Bond. And I mean, it's the least James Bond version James Bond beyond it's just a spy in a suit from the UK.
00:36:57
Speaker
But yeah, elsewhere around the world, they didn't have the rights. So it was just Operation Stealth. And it is... I mean, it has some pretty art.
00:37:08
Speaker
It's a somewhat traditional adventure game, but... But it does have some arcade sequences. It has some arcade sequences and some other odd bits like that um that that make it stand out. Yeah, I can't necessarily recommend that one, but i think in terms like, it's probably one of the...
00:37:32
Speaker
French adventure games I'm familiar with that comes closest to really trying to lean into the North American kind of, you know adventure game design principles. I mean, it's still very much a point and click style affair.
00:37:48
Speaker
I, felt it there I, I think a lot about, um you know, ah like the the ah hi ah Cairo games, Cairo, I'm mispronouncing, but they like their Dune game that they put out, um which...
00:38:10
Speaker
ah it's an adventure game, but it's also like it has like ah this this kind of strategy. Like it's it's this mishmash of a bunch of different genres.
00:38:22
Speaker
And I think like part of my interest in that, like it kind of ties in with my overall thought here, which is it's like if if this is uh like they're if you're thinking in the the united states and american uh made games they're like a lot of them are kind of iterating on like you know it's like the people at sierra were looking at lucas arts games and lucas arts were looking sierra and so on and so forth um whereas it's like they might not necessarily have that like that tradition
00:39:01
Speaker
ah I mean, Sierra games were fucking everywhere.
Listener Emails and Connections
00:39:06
Speaker
ah So oh yeah they might they might be like, you know, ah but but like it it has like a bit of everything.
00:39:14
Speaker
um And I also think like, so Inca is kind of similar in that it is a ah a game that mashes together a not very fun flight simulator with adventure game ah sequences.
00:39:33
Speaker
Kind like Tex Murphy. Kind of like the original. Yeah, you know what? Honestly, it is kind of like Gene Streets. As you pilot Tex Murphy around. I was thinking even in under a Killing Moon, you kind glide him around the world like you're playing. Well, yeah. But yeah.
00:39:52
Speaker
Like, you know, like, uh, I'm trying to like, and then goblins is these, like these, these very like beautiful little like cartoon puzzle games, uh, where you control like the first goblins game, you control three little goblins that each has one ability and you move them around the screen and manipulate like this one screen. and ah with it's like, okay, well, this one goblin does this. So you put him here and while he's doing this other thing, you're using but the goblin that does this other thing and sending him off to do whatever that thing is.
00:40:35
Speaker
Classic formula. Yeah. A classic formula. ah But yeah, I mean, you know, like, and, you know, I was talking to you about this, like kind of off the,
00:40:48
Speaker
like ah off the mic where um I guess it was on the mic just off the record because we're always talking to each other through microphones other than yeah but two times we've met in person.
00:41:01
Speaker
ah That's right. we We did bring microphones then too. We also did bring microphones. Because we're both very loud and we don't want to be drowned out by the other one. So it's important that we're even louder.
00:41:11
Speaker
That's true. Yeah. But also it's like, you know, I think about ah games like ah the little Little Big Adventure, um or as it was in the United States, Relentless and Twinsons Odyssey, which those are kind of ah like kind of three d platformers, but they also have like inventory and puzzles and and stuff like in characters and dialogue and a lot of stuff that you would associate games
00:41:43
Speaker
ah like an adventure game. is it an adventure game? i don't think so. you know, that's one that actually did play as a kid. um Which one did you play? i played Adventure. That's the first, right? Little Big Adventure is the first yeah one.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah, I played a little big adventure. I'd read, i think, a very positive review of it in PC Gamer that described it as an adventure game. And that was like an electronics boutique. And I'm like, I got to get my hands on this wild new French sensation.
00:42:11
Speaker
And I brought it home and booted up and like died immediately. I was just like, what the hell is this? What am i There's this isn't what I expected. Why why are there little bouncy like, you know, three d floaty guys? And i mean, i know they they recently remade that. And I need I had been meaning to pick it up and I didn't pick it up the the sale. Maybe I'll get it.
00:42:39
Speaker
I Twinsons Odyssey a Little Big Adventure 2 was the one that I got. And that got like a rave review in computer gaming world.
00:42:50
Speaker
And we enjoyed it like I played it with my little brother, it was but it was like fucking hard like it was it was also tank controls which like yeah you have like this precise aiming and then like enemies that are coming at you from various directions i don't know if that's really a international game thing or just a 3d game of you know from the mid uh problem uh like
00:43:23
Speaker
Because that was a problem, you know, that games from many different countries, including games from the United States, the games from Japan and games like pretty much no one, no one quite figured out how to ah make a ah third person action a game in that way without using the most unpleasant aiming controls possible.
00:43:48
Speaker
You know, I'm thinking back, I still have nearly all of my discs from childhood, like three and a half, five and a quarter CD ROMs. I've lost all the boxes and mails everything. But for some reason, i still have the media and don't have little big adventure anymore, which makes me wonder if I may have actually returned that.
00:44:09
Speaker
play that be like i'm driving an hour and 15 minutes back to uh back to software etc and i am i'm dropping this baby back off yeah harsh words for a little big adventure i'm sorry it it starts with like a jail break which for me was extremely difficult at the time anyway ah you know want to look at some of the other emails because we we got a couple emails ah from from folks ah about ah ah the game like international adventure games.
00:44:47
Speaker
um ah here's Here's one from ah Ruben, who I believe has emailed us in the past. ah Ruben says, ah Quest Questers,
00:44:59
Speaker
um I'm going to i ah cut to when Ruben discusses ah this adventure game. ah There is one game I wanted to submit for the foreign games that you were asking for. This one is from the Netherlands.
00:45:14
Speaker
It's called Last in Amsterdam. were you play a farm boy ah named, ah and apologize ah for my pronunciation, ah Gert, G-E-U-R-T, was to find his brother and sister in Amsterdam.
00:45:33
Speaker
Unfortunately, as I was typing this mail, I quickly looked up some screenshots and the game is entirely in Dutch. So I doubt it's playable for you guys. But there's a full playthrough that you can find on ah YouTube. If you're curious as to what a game from Holland would look like,
00:45:51
Speaker
And i'm I'm looking at it, I'm kind of, it it has what it it looks like is that it is ah monochrome.
00:46:02
Speaker
And ah so, it's a DOS game that has some real Mac Venture vibes too. yes, yes. Yes, that's exactly there why is there a DOS game that looks like a game that came out for the Macintosh computer and then it it appears like it looks kind of like ah like a legend game like it's a text game that has like images up at the top you know.
00:46:31
Speaker
Very interesting. Yeah. Uh, the, the only other noteworthy game I can mention is called coffee, which may have been the first adventure game. I finished by myself only had about three or four areas and the goal was to make coffee.
00:46:46
Speaker
I tried searching for it. Couldn't find anything about it. And I'm starting to wonder if I made it up. I played the mini game version of that in grand theft auto. And, uh, it was pretty good.
00:46:58
Speaker
but One last thing I'm going to read from this email. and this is very important. Speaking of the Netherlands, I knew a Yop once who is actively into adventure games as well.
00:47:10
Speaker
And his wedding may have even had a sketch where he he had to perform insult sword fighting. So I'm kind of wondering if the Yop that mailed you earlier is him.
00:47:20
Speaker
If it is, tell him I said hi. Wow. Wow. are Are we facilitating? Misconnections? Like a a friendship?
00:47:31
Speaker
Yop? Ruben? we're was Reuben at your wedding? Yes. Because Ben will find out. but i I mean, no way yeah, no, we, that this is, this is, we're building bridges, Ben.
00:47:49
Speaker
Um, so, uh, uh, uh, Jess, you've played a ah couple, uh, games recently. Um, uh, what, what is, uh, one? Oh, uh, you just mentioned this, uh, uh, one to me. You just chatted this and I am fascinated by this. I was actually thinking of, uh, like, the, uh, uh, a similar game to this. So, so please go ahead.
00:48:17
Speaker
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. i mean, The one that i just texted you that I was to talk about, just wanted you to have the spelling in case you wanted to Google it because I'm about to butcher the pronunciation. It's ah Ivan Lohskine Price of Freedom, which is a Russian Space Quest knockoff. I mean, like very much a we create a protagonist who looks a lot like Roger Wilco and the style of our game looks like Space Quest 1 BGA.
00:48:46
Speaker
and i mean, i I'm watching ah like a YouTube playthrough, which DOS Nostalgia ah posted. And it looks pretty interesting.
00:48:59
Speaker
Like it's a pretty, like, it is it it is very obviously inspired. Oh, yeah. It's not just this is a space comedy space adventure. This is... This is definitely a straight up straight up space quest rip off.
00:49:15
Speaker
But no, this this is one that's always fascinating. me I learned about i actually haven't played. It's only available in Russian. ah But DOS nostalgic.
00:49:26
Speaker
um you know, famed, uh, MS DOS gaming enthusiast. You might, uh, might know them from over on, uh, social media, um, has talked about this one a few times and I find it fascinating. Like this idea. and he says it's absolute trash.
00:49:41
Speaker
Uh, just, uh, uh, an awful game. Um, but, uh, I love the idea that at some level, maybe space quest was popular enough in Russia to merit a 1998,
00:49:57
Speaker
space quest ripoff game that alone is fascinating to me do you think uh do you think either of the two guys have ever seen this oh that's a great question that is a really good question really fascinated to know what the designers of space quest would would think to know that there's this uh like 1998
00:50:21
Speaker
so This looks like a game from 1993. Yeah. yeah ah It's interesting also because like the art style is kind of all over the place. Like it in places it looks like one VGA, but it also kind of looks like ah Space Quest 4 a bit. Like the kind of the handre like the hand scanned in. Yeah.
00:50:42
Speaker
it has the color palette of yes it has the color one vga and then more of the design sensibility maybe be a space quest four but it is there's a couple scenes that look like uh xenon at the start of um space quest four uh later on um space quest 12.
00:51:05
Speaker
Anyway, it looks neat. is I was thinking of this is a Czech game that I think DOS Nostalgic posted about.
Parody and Classic Adventure Games
00:51:18
Speaker
i mean You've ever looked up ah The Secret of Donkey Island? Secret of Donkey Island. Yeah, recently translated to English. Recently translated. You can play it online. Yes. No, this is an interesting one. Yeah, Secret of Donkey Island, which was a Czech, let's say, tribute to Mikey Island. It says it's a parody, which I think this is a very kind of loose story.
00:51:47
Speaker
But you can play it online if you go to donkeyisland.zip, translate into English. Yeah, and some folks that I think that are kind of in our our circles on Twitch and and elsewhere were responsible for the English translation.
00:52:04
Speaker
M. Zizzy and Sonneveld were the ones who made the made the English version available. But I mean, it's very much a... Guybrush from Monkey Island blue blue coat sort of point and click adventure.
00:52:22
Speaker
I haven't played it yet, but it's one that I'm fascinated by. You know, in terms ones we i have played, though, ah one that sprung to mind when we were thinking about this ah recently was um Hollywood monsters, which I was going to you about that. Yeah. Where was that?
00:52:41
Speaker
That was from Spain. Yeah. Pendulo studios um in 1997 releases Hollywood monsters, which is a ah really great looking um point click adventure game built around the premise of a world where basically the universal horror monsters are,
00:53:02
Speaker
are real and they are the actors who perform in horror films so there's there's a real dracula and his job is he's an actor who performs as dracula in horror films when When you played that on your stream, wasn't it that like a translation of it like had been recently made available?
00:53:24
Speaker
Was that the story? It was. It was an English translation with that with still the Spanish ah voice acting. But someone had translated all of the captions in the game.
00:53:36
Speaker
to English. So it was a nice combo. yeah You got to appreciate the original Spanish voice acting. ah But for me, someone who doesn't speak Spanish, ah read along with the with the English subtitles. And that one is pretty impressive. I mean, it's again, one that I feel like very much is going with the American style. It is inspired by LucasArts. It's inspired by Sierra.
00:54:03
Speaker
It's telling a story that I, suppose I suppose, mean, it's set in Hollywood. It's a, it's an American story, uh, at its core, but, um, it's spectacular art.
00:54:15
Speaker
Like it they really does. It really does. It sounds great. I mean, where this one falters a little bit is where so many adventure games falter is that the, uh, The puzzles get little tedious. actually finally hit a weird puzzle that involved a ton of process of elimination. You were mine cart rolling through a mine and you had to figure out which passages to go down and there was tons of backtracking. essentially became maze of sorts that spat you back out to the beginning anytime you took a wrong turn. We would never make a game like that in the good old USA.
00:54:53
Speaker
yeah that's right that yeah yeah well Spanish mazes as they call them in game design classic classic stereotype of the Spanish that's right um yeah famously uh inventors of the you've never been to Madrid it's it's just it's so confusing you pull a map out you're just like where am I going that's right no it's very much that and i got frustrated enough that was like you know what i think i've played enough of this uh terrific game but it's uh it's really good looking adventure and again one that i feel like you know kind of comes close to that american style i was uh uh you know i'm going to i'm going to bring up um and another email here
00:55:39
Speaker
ah This is from ah ah your ah former collaborator. ah Former. um Former? Mm-hmm. From No More ah For Today.
00:55:52
Speaker
is that the was that the name correct? Yes. No More For Today. Gareth. i gareth Um, who, uh, I believe, uh, Gareth is is not from the United States. Is that correct?
00:56:08
Speaker
Yes. He's from Denmark now. He's from Denmark now. Okay. Uh, and, uh, Gareth in, uh, Denmark says to whom it may concern.
00:56:20
Speaker
could be either. class Yeah. Uh, for a foreign adventure game, I would suggest stair quest granted.
00:56:32
Speaker
Granted, Americans were involved in its creation, but given the number of Europeans that know more for today, i would suggest i would suggest we're transatlantic, the Fleetwood Mac of adventure gaming, if you will.
00:56:47
Speaker
This is doubly true because every level is actually about the really brutal breakup between me and Jess and how we hate each other. Yours, Gareth. See, I told you, former collaborator. Uh,
00:57:02
Speaker
That's true. I think when people think international adventure, probably StairQuest is the first one that's going to sleep to anyone's mind. First of all, definitely an adventure game. ah Second of all, not deeply steeped in American adventure game history in any way. So that that checks out. Thank you, Gareth, for writing in.
00:57:21
Speaker
i I agree on that one. Ben, at some point... h We have to discuss on this podcast, the longest journey.
00:57:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:40
Speaker
So, okay. I feel that that's eventually going to have to be its own ah episode. It will. Yeah. Yes. Which means I will have to finish it. Now, I did start it. I also have not finished it. That was in the late 90s.
00:57:52
Speaker
but I also haven't finished it. I got really fucking far in it. Yeah. I stepped away like 26 years ago, and I may have lost my safe. you You stepped away to to get a pack of cigarettes?
00:58:04
Speaker
but That's right. That's exactly right. ah The longest journey ah that's... What country? what's the Norway. Norway. That's right. um and i mean And that's a series.
00:58:25
Speaker
Because there's the longest journey, Dreamfall, and then Dreamfall chapters. um And, i yeah, I mean, The Longest Journey is, ah so that's from 1999, is ah developed in Norway ah by Funcom, ah which ah made that fucking Dune game that Grayson won't shut up about.
00:58:51
Speaker
ah Exhausting. ah But, I mean, you know, like, The longest journey from 1999, that is one of the, like, one of the, I think it's largely considered as one of those seminal, ah like, goodbye to that era of adventure games, right?
00:59:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, i don't know what the appraisal of the game is here in 2025. I think it's still pretty beloved. Yeah, I mean, it's still a a very beloved game.
00:59:27
Speaker
Yeah, like I think a lot of people if you're asking like, top 10 essential adventures, there's a good chance that Long's Journey might fall onto that list for a lot of folks. Yeah, and I'm not even going to say that I don't like it because I do like it. It's just a game that is, i i find frustrating in some ways.
00:59:47
Speaker
um But, like, the the longest journey is this, and it is indeed long. um a I've been doing it for over 25 years. A grand ah adventure game ah like that about, like,
01:00:08
Speaker
the end of like, I don't even know where to fucking start with it. Uh, Like, it's a science fiction fantasy hybrid with two, like, parallel worlds that, ah like, are starting to collide. And, like, in this near, like, the the game starts in a near future ah kind of dystopian,
01:00:36
Speaker
i like, modern world that our protagonist April, April Ryan lives in. and then she starts to first see, and then eventually crosses over, ah like intrusions from uh, parallel world that is like fantasy and has like dragons and shit in it.
01:00:59
Speaker
And, um, It is so unbelievably imaginative and what is really great, like...
01:01:11
Speaker
I mean, I think what is, what's great about, ah like, ah ah about The Longest Journey, and this is true Dreamfall, and I didn't play that much of ah the Dreamfall chapters, but I assume ah continues to be, is that it always kind of has an eye, even though it's this enormous, grand, like, fantasy science fiction story. It always has this eye on character,
01:01:37
Speaker
ah like April as like the protagonist is such a well fleshed out a character um and all the other characters in it ah like there's so much ah like I mean and that's one of my complaints about is there's so much additional dialogue including a lot of dialogue that you don't even need to like just flavor a dialogue in it um me up all of the characters like have like a pretty well developed That's what I remember. And my problem as an adventure gamer, Ben, don't if we've ever talked about this before.
01:02:13
Speaker
I cannot play an adventure game without exhausting every dialogue tree. Oh, that's a problem. I simply can't do it. I mean, I just don't know a way to like, I'm going to talk to characters until they stop saying new things and that can get exhausting in a certain game. But what I do remember playing of it, like I did find this premise incredibly like charming and fanciful and, and really engage you in that regard.
01:02:43
Speaker
I think it's another one that i bounced off of a puzzle and just never came back to and I was, know, in college at the time I didn't. I wasn't willing to just say it's like, well, I'll just spend 60 hours this week cracking this puzzle and probably moved on to to play golden eye in 64 instead.
01:03:03
Speaker
Um, yeah. Uh, I mean, I, I recommend it. It's a, the, the thing I make fun of, uh, uh, all, all of those, uh, longest journey games is that, uh, they are, um, like,
01:03:22
Speaker
they They're very tell and not show. ah They have so much so reams and reams and reams of dialogue and um in in kind of a heavy ah exposition way that like that kind of bumps me a bit.
01:03:39
Speaker
night yeah uh yeah the longest journey great game i mean we're just listing games from other country like adventure games from other countries i i i like uh paradigm paradigm paradigm from australia unbelievable it's just tomato in the salad kingdom uh uh like paradigm which came out a couple years ago ah by solo developer ah Jacob Janurka is really funny. It's a point and click adventure game. It's very funny. It's funny. It's very funny. strange. Yes. i ah Like very strange.
01:04:24
Speaker
like Complimentary. Yeah, very like very strange complimentary. Like it just has a very it manages to to to thread the needle on like kind of a like kind of kooky and non sequitur and oddball sense of humor.
01:04:42
Speaker
Which I think in some cases can feel a little cliche or like, as some would say, like monkey cheese, you know, it's like he he random. It isn't like that. There's, there's a cohesiveness to its strangeness.
01:04:59
Speaker
ah even though I don't even know what it is. It's just it's just so well thought out and put together in the art. It's spectacular. yeah It has the vibe of something that you're playing and you're like, this has to be inspired by like some genre of something. But it's like, no, this is just original. This is just popping out of ah of some dude's brain. It feels like it has to almost be referential.
01:05:25
Speaker
It is so... just sure of what it is itself I don't know um you know a game that I really enjoyed from a few years back ah is Gibbous Ben you didn't play Gibbous did you? I've not played Gibbous and they they just released a new Near Mage Yeah, that's ah Stuck in Attic, which is a Romanian developer. I think they i didn't know they were Romanian. that's they are well they They really sell themselves on the idea they of being a Transylvanian development fun development studio. But yeah, they are they're straight out of Romania. And Gibbous is kind of a classic point-and-click comedy adventure with with a real Cthulhu twist.
01:06:09
Speaker
And it's super charming. It was a really... funny game with some great puzzles and just looks gorgeous both of their games look fantastic just like really rich art lots of saturated colors very moody sort of comedy horror spaces uh it's uh i haven't played near mage yet it looks fantastic uh terms of the visuals but yeah gibbous is uh is one that i would uh i would definitely recommend there here's a here's here's a
01:06:44
Speaker
So, and this is when we were discussing ah before the the the podcast, like you you brought up, um like during, so like I invoked it earlier, like the longest journey is kind of a last like big budget journey.
01:07:04
Speaker
90s adventure game like it's big budget it has this incredible music a full voice cast it's a very long has a marketing budget behind me it had a marketing budget like it was it was it had all the like It and like Grim Fandango, you know, I guess Escape from Monkey Island
European Adventure Games Era
01:07:24
Speaker
came out.
01:07:24
Speaker
um But like we're, you know, kind of, i you know, I often, I remember at a certain point, like Longest Journey and Grim Fandango were ah often kind of paired together as it's like, these are the two last great adventure games.
01:07:40
Speaker
um And so In that like kind of interim, it does seem like, and I mean, you kind of have, I would think more perspective on this as, as somebody that, you know, moderated a forum and have a ton of friends internationally. Yeah. It seems like ah adventure games, like, you know, in that period where they were starting to fall off in interest in,
01:08:13
Speaker
And, you know, we're we're you know we're we're just two guys. This is not an empirical thing. But this is, you know. ah But it does seem like a lot of the torch and the interest and the excitement ah ah around adventure games, with ah when it kind of died off and ah went away a bit in the United States, was very much carried on in Europe.
01:08:37
Speaker
we Would you say that's correct? That's my impression, too. And that's about the time that, like, I drifted away a little bit from adventure games too. I wasn't playing nearly as many games at all as I was like, that's right around the time I'm wrapping up my undergrad years at college. Right.
01:08:54
Speaker
I'm just not playing a ton of games at the time. And then when I do get back into games, it's like, I'm playing more like, stealth stuff and first person shooters and rts is not i just sort of drift into other genres for a while but this is definitely the time like i think of at some level know i think longest journey closes that chapter on big budget games uh in the adventure genre here in uh here in north america but Absolutely. I think of like the two thousands as being an era where this genre was really being kept alive by European developers, you know, in Germany and France ah and elsewhere that are continuing to produce, you know, things like the Siberia series. was just about to say Siberia, you've got, ah like, you know Siberia, which, um, what year did like, uh, Siberia come out?
01:09:55
Speaker
oh that's a good question what the first Siberia game came out in 2002 that sounds perfect yeah and ah it is ah like ah the designer was from ah ah Belgium
01:10:14
Speaker
ah just I don't know yeah what developers microids which oh which is based in France Yeah, and Siberia ends up being, yeah I think, a well-selling game, certainly in Europe. But even here, I know that like I can speak anecdotally.
01:10:30
Speaker
You could buy Siberia at Walmart still when it came out. like they They had like little jewel case versions of it as discount software. So you know it had...
01:10:42
Speaker
it had ah presence here in uh in north america but yeah again it's a series that really manages to take all i mean there's even what a nintendo ds version of siberia i think they're still like didn't they just make a new siberia game or aren't they like it looks like yeah it was like there's a place they're doing a remaster this year yeah um And I've never played Siberia. Like at the time, what I knew of adventure games is I wasn't playing them as much.
01:11:14
Speaker
I spent a lot of time hanging out on, ah guess, justadventure.com, which may not be a website that exists anymore or could be a gambling site now, or it's hard to say. And, you know, they kept up with all the news and and latest releases and stuff. And yeah, what it was definitely a period where these European developers were keeping things alive.
01:11:36
Speaker
you also have like in 2007 datalic uh opens up in germany yeah and uh and i've heard some mixed things on their picture games yeah uh a lot of them look great uh from what i've seen i haven't played i don't think anything about datalic Yeah, and now Data Lake is essentially kind of yeah like their development division was smashed by that. i the wondering yeah ah By by Gollum.
01:12:12
Speaker
ah They jumped into Mount Doom. um But I think it was also kind of a result of ah like you know that massive company that bought up all think anyway i' but um here's the thing gang the video game industry is horrible it doesn't make sense I hate to break it to you here on Quest Quest but even even outside of the United States yeah
01:12:39
Speaker
ah But um like, yeah, like you had, i you know, there was so like microids, like there were just a bunch of ah developers outside of the United States that just continued making adventure games.
01:12:59
Speaker
And also like, it just seemed like whenever I was going on to like forums and and groups like that. ah It was like there was a often a very large ah European ah contingent, right?
01:13:17
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, i mean, there's a lot of enthusiasm around these, these titles as well. I mean, there are plenty of people out there playing adventure games that this era is for them.
01:13:29
Speaker
What, you know, maybe earlier Sierra and LucasArts eras might be for us. And... So we haven't touched on it. Like we've been kind of country to country.
01:13:41
Speaker
We haven't touched on it, but there is also like, you know, a country that has produced an enormous amount of of adventure games and continues to produce an enormous amount of adventure games. That would be the United Kingdom. ah Yes, I have heard of this place. yeah Have you heard of it?
01:13:58
Speaker
yeah yeah there's i mean yeah like and they're obvious ones this goes back world yeah this goes back to magnetic scrolls like yeah um magnetic scrolls which was their like major text adventure uh company which their infocom yeah yeah which according to uh wikipedia uh It was one of the largest and most acclaimed interactive fiction developers of the 1980s and one of the, quote, big two with Infocom, according to some.
01:14:34
Speaker
Then I look at the citation on it, and the citation is, Game Development with Renpy, Introduction to Visual Novel Games using Renpy, Tyranno Builder, and Twine.
01:14:46
Speaker
Well, it checks out to me. Like, I don't know. Should we get our Wikipedia on that? I mean, that doesn't really seem like a ah particularly empirical. It's like, according to this developing manual, uh...
01:15:02
Speaker
it's ah it's It's roughly the equivalent of Infocom. Satation needed. but ah But yeah, like, I mean, yeah, the Discworld games, the ah ah like Magnetic Scrolls, um...
01:15:17
Speaker
like i mean what else everything they they like they're uh a ton of them um revolution software that was what i was on the top uh the tip of my tongue that was what i was trying to think of yeah and to think of beneath the still sky broken sword lure of the temptress um all of those uh all of those games and again you know, Broken Sword especially. I mean, I think that is ah massive series in terms of its impact on adventure gaming, right? Yeah, I think, like, you know, i ah Broken Sword such a...
01:15:54
Speaker
such a like a seminal game that I would say it's even more like, I think it's even more of a big deal game than the longest journey.
01:16:05
Speaker
And, you know, I think we could point to the evidence of that. There are more broken sword games. that's right that's absolutely right uh and we know the quantity the first one now twice they read it and then they remastered it um and uh it's gotten progressively worse each time right uh the the first remake was not very like was one of those like kind of it looked kind of ugly and they they did one of those things where like we added ah new uh puzzles and they're all like sliding tight not all but like i remember playing and and like getting thrown a sliding tiles puzzle and like see um and then like it kind of killed the pacing a bit the the remaster which came out
01:16:57
Speaker
uh like last year two years ago that is more just a straightforward like it's a like a special edition version like the the secret monkey island uh day of the tentacle uh ones and uh like and i think if i recall correctly you should you are able to like swap between ah yeah like that gimmick i like that gimmick and uh i played it and i was like right it's broken sword i think You heard here first folks.
01:17:30
Speaker
It's broken sword, but yeah, I mean, broken sword, which is kind of this, this fun kind of, you know, American in Paris, uh, uh, globe trotting Indiana Jones type.
01:17:44
Speaker
uh, like mystical adventure is, i like, I think it's often in the same breath. I think of, uh, like if people say like monkey Island or something, people will say, Oh, it's like broken sword.
01:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and, uh, it's really good. i don't know what to say. Like, it's a really good game. There's a reason why they've remade it twice and made like, i don't know what I were up to broken sword six. Um,
01:18:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I guess I just bought a bushel of them during the Steam sale. So let's see here. Give me all your broken swords. They're making, they're working on so ah the sixth broken sword game.
01:18:27
Speaker
Pars of all stone was announced during the Xbox games. Com conference in 2023. Oh, wow. So I guess it'll be available first on the Xbox gaming service, which will certainly be around by the time it comes out.
01:18:44
Speaker
um But ah but but yeah, and then also like Simon the Sorcerer, which yeah, ah like those. And then also and this is kind of what I was getting at, like to to tie all the way back to the the start.
01:18:57
Speaker
Of its, like, also, like, so you know, you have ah ah those games, and then you also have, like, a ah like a its own kind of ah tradition out of the 80s, like, out of ah like, you know, kind of Commodore 64 scene stuff. Mm-hmm.
01:19:16
Speaker
see okay ah um of ah kind of similar how I was talking about with like French and Inca of like
01:19:30
Speaker
of like these games out of the UK made for the spectrum and so forth that are like these large open world games that like kind of mosh together a whole bunch of different genres ah kind of similar to the the French ones where it's like, oh, it's this big isometric world and you have like an inventory and you have a puzzle like ah and like puzzles, but also at the same time, like there's action sequences and there's this and that like it's it's like
01:20:03
Speaker
uh like the the dizzy games uh like treasure island dizzy ah has like inventory puzzles ah you know or did he ever play a whiz kid no i haven't played whiz kid whiz kid which was like this ah like kind of arcade-y game that when you completed the arcade segments, then you had kind of similar to Inka, guess, where then you had like these little adventure game sequences.
01:20:39
Speaker
i And that game was a mess. I got that game. ah I bought it at KB Toys as a kid and was just baffled by it.
01:20:53
Speaker
ah It was ah a port from the Amiga. Oh, man, miss KB Toys. Yeah. I bought so many good games out of the bargain bin at KB Toys. They had all of these remaindered Sierra games for $20 there. Oh, I remember. I bought all that shit.
01:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, I bought Lost Treasures of Infocom yeah um out of there. That's how i played Infocom games for the first time. We're talking. yeah Hold on. We're talking about games not from the United States.
01:21:20
Speaker
I have one more email. You're more of a magnetic scrolls kind guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lost Treasures of the Magnetic Scrolls. That's where you played the pawn for the first time. um
01:21:32
Speaker
uh uh it feels like we're sprinting this might be we're we might have to revisit some of these things we're definitely gonna have to revisit the longest journey we're definitely gonna have to revisit like <unk>ur a bunch of these um but there's one shout out one more game yeah go go ahead shout it now you go for it you go no no no you go okay I was going say, I constantly talk about how good Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games are. And people look at those and they think for themselves. Ukraine, right?
01:22:01
Speaker
Ukraine. And they think themselves, that's that's not an adventure game for me. i'm I'm a traditionalist. And I'm telling you, if you love adventure games, you'll love Sherlock Holmes Chapter One. You'll love Sherlock Holmes The Awakened. Just get out there. but I plug those constantly. When I'm not plugging Rosewater, I'm plugging...
01:22:19
Speaker
frog where sherlock holmes games go play them gang but ben please you continue all right so uh this is a email from uh bartek uh from the podcast spitting polish or uh and um uh he has a a lot of uh suggestions and this is a longer email and bartek i apologize and i'm i'm i'm just gonna i'm just gonna blurb you You're getting blurbed.
01:22:48
Speaker
But, uh, so he says, hi there, this is Bartek from Spin Polish Presents. Ryan told me, see, you're Ryan. I mentioned him earlier. Uh, you're going to do an episode about foreign adventure games, which I have some of familiarity with.
01:23:00
Speaker
Granted, a lot of the ones I, I've played follow a visual novel format. Some of them contain similar elements, which might make the discussion of mechanics a bit samey, but, uh,
01:23:12
Speaker
any mention in this email will have something special to them. Most are from Japan, but there's two that aren't. Uh, and we didn't even talk about Japan. Uh, yeah. Like Phoenix, right. And like, you know, like all those console, uh, uh, adventures, um, hotel dusk.
01:23:29
Speaker
Yeah. There were so many good, like like, it was when I had my Grey Clamshell release DS and there were, like, adventure games on it.
01:23:43
Speaker
I was so shocked because I was like, I thought adventure games were dead, instead they're still alive and they're just not being, largely they're not being made here.
01:23:54
Speaker
And now they're on dual screens. And now I could tap and blow. that's anyway
01:24:07
Speaker
that' sorry it's just i just can never get over the fact that the ds had that feature um it had this terrible fucking microphone awful and then they're like oh yeah you could use it to to yell uh objection
01:24:26
Speaker
fit really is that really you could you could do that
01:24:34
Speaker
i'd love to see someone on the bus just like busting out ah a really like serious uh objection as they play phoenix right on their ds This, uh, so this first one, uh, Bartek lists AI, the, uh, Somnium, uh, files, uh, which I am. oh So you're familiar. am utterly unfamiliar with this. I've seen ads for it. Um, uh, it, uh, it,
01:24:57
Speaker
um i i it ah Like it is a ah like, and I'm i'm skimming ah because we're we're we're running up towards art at the end here.
01:25:11
Speaker
um But it is ah like a ah like a science fiction adventure game. ah bold twists oh and this is the guy who made it also so ah he also made the 3D model for Pepsi Man the ah weird Japanese PS1 game Pepsi Man but that's not relevant here you ever see Pepsi Man? and yeah yeah it's pretty cool i played pepsi man i mean i'm mr video game soda guy uh you know i love that of course the adventure game comes in two specific gameplay types the real world investigating and diving into dreams the real world sections are familiar territory you go from location to location talk to people and so on uh uh
01:25:57
Speaker
And ah the dream sections are the puzzle ah sections of the game. You're in a time limit. You'll be walking through strange versions of various environments from the real world. We can interact with objects, which will ah leads to nonsensical results that follow dream logic in an attempt to trigger the dreamer into revealing new key information.
01:26:16
Speaker
This actually sounds really fucking cool. I was to say, that sounds pretty great. This sounds pretty cool. Yeah, no, the more you describe of this, the more I'm feeling it. ah And that's Scenarium.
01:26:29
Speaker
ahs Somnium. Oops. Somnium. Somnium. Hey, Paul. Hey, Paul. Paul, you heard of this? AI. The Somnium. Somnium files. Somnium.
01:26:43
Speaker
Uh, uh, uh, uh, no, see ya. ah which I have you heard of this no no see ya this isn't a really interesting world is like way out of mind yeah this is also 2019 uh it a Vita
01:27:02
Speaker
o it was ported to the switch though according to this okay oh and then it why why does it say platforms I'm looking on oh it only shows it's it's on it's on everything Why did it just show Vita? And then you have to click to show more and it shows everything. yeah I'm so pissed off at Wikipedia.
01:27:24
Speaker
ah The basic idea of Nasea is mixing a social deduction game like Werewolf or Among Us with a time loop narrative. That's interesting. I'm going have to check this out.
01:27:43
Speaker
all right bar tech's getting some good suggestions here uh all right uh definitely never heard of this one uh 428 uh shibuya scramble i think i have heard of this this one is very very very special That's how this begins.
01:28:05
Speaker
This was a Japanese downloadable game on the Wii in 2008 that was not translated into English at the time because it was frankly considered impossible to localize due to everything it had going on. So that's a bummer.
01:28:18
Speaker
Anyway, 10 years later, it got localized.
01:28:24
Speaker
so This is one somehow that did cross my radar. How did this cross your your radar? Well, what I'm wondering is um the obvious question. there's There's one of two answers. If I know about this game, it either has a soda machine in it.
01:28:46
Speaker
Oh. Or I watched a long play of it to see if there was a soda machine in it. Oh, it looks like it is the latter because I'm now at my video game Soda Machine Project website and and it is not in my list of games. So I must have watched this one, assuming since it was a game set in Japan in the contemporary era, that there might be soda machine hanging out in the background somewhere.
01:29:14
Speaker
And there wasn't that was time well spent. uh no regards no regards the game has this is according to wikipedia the game has over 100 alternate story pathways and uh 87 different possible endings that's too many yeah i'd top out at like 60 like you think it past 60 and i'm like i don't know This a little show-offy.
01:29:41
Speaker
i mean, yeah. um But this this is interesting also because, like, you know, again, ah like, this this is a genre mashup.
01:29:55
Speaker
It has, like ah like, it has all sorts of, like, different gameplay aspects in it. This sounds fascinating. um And we need to get into visual novels.
01:30:07
Speaker
Yeah. Let's get into visual novels. Here's one from Spain.
01:30:14
Speaker
Have you heard of this? I have also not heard of this. The Sexy Brutale. No, I don't think I have. um It is a gameplay revolves around a time loop.
01:30:31
Speaker
Okay. Another time loop game. All right. He plays Preacher, who together with a handful of other wealthy guests are attending the annual Masquerade Ball at a famous casino mansion.
01:30:44
Speaker
However, during the 12 hours of the ball ah ball's duration, the other guests who scattered around the mansion naturally are killed off by the staff of the venue in a variety of elaborate and complicated ways.
01:30:56
Speaker
a mysterious entity grants the preacher the ability to repeat these 12 hours in order to save each of the other guests and learn the truth behind the event. So it comes in. So it's a Majora's mask. I'm up. It's a Majora's mask. I'm up.
01:31:08
Speaker
Also. The moon is going to crash into them. Oh man. Yeah. yeah That's the worst.
01:31:14
Speaker
This reminds me. I was all this, uh, all this, uh, uh, UK, uh, adventure game talk. And I didn't talk about how much I love ankle ankle rules. Um, you know,
01:31:26
Speaker
uh, we're going to have to talk. Inkle also has, is, is, is, is own full episode or even like its own games. Uh, Inkle is incredible. Uh, uh, the, the, the studio the United Kingdom, uh, there, I haven't played but a game from them. I didn't like, um, this, it reminded me of that, uh, because this kind of, uh, reminded me of, um, Overboard, ah where you're, it's a, uh,
01:31:56
Speaker
cover it up um
01:32:00
Speaker
cover them up cover them up um cover them up you you kill them um uh all right here's one i have here here's one i have heard of this is the only game on this list i've heard of uh from bartek uh you've heard of this one too Shenmue!
01:32:21
Speaker
Shenmue! Shenmue! We all know about Shenmue. I've never played it. Have you ever played Shenmue?
01:32:30
Speaker
Very briefly, like not very long. But this, of course, is a Dreamcast ah big title. This is like one that ah that Sega really got people hyped up for ah for the Dreamcast. It is.
01:32:48
Speaker
um I think it's a beloved game. Maybe one of the most beloved games of that entire platform. Safe to say, right? Like what else do people play on the Dreamcast? Like Sonic Adventure? I've never played a Sonic game.
01:33:01
Speaker
You've never played ah Sonic? No, not yet. Not one? Sonic Racing All-Stars Transformed or whatever that one is. here's Here's the thing about Sonic though.
01:33:13
Speaker
Batting average is fucking dog shit. yeah Like there are there are considerably more bad Sonic games than there are good Sonic games by a mile.
01:33:28
Speaker
Like not even anyway. Shenmue. Let me tell you, Ben, I remember vividly I was at Sears. And they had set up a Sega Genesis kiosk to demo ah this hot new console. I'd never seen a Genesis before. I didn't even know that I knew that it existed.
01:33:49
Speaker
And the demo title was Sonic the Hedgehog. I walked up to it and played about five minutes and said, this is too fast.
Sonic vs. Mario Debate
01:33:58
Speaker
And just walked away. that true?
01:34:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's absolutely true. I like, not for me, too fast.
01:34:06
Speaker
yeah You know what I say? Gotta not go fast is my my classic catchphrase. And I was like, no, it's too chaotic. i don't feel like I was controlling it. Like when goes in like he got pinballs through it, I was just like, nah, this isn't for me. I need the tight controls of a Mario.
01:34:22
Speaker
You were like the the only only ah like teenager in the 90s that was like, I want things to be less extreme. Yeah. That's right. Can you manage attitude? I don't like how this guy like crosses his arms and taps his toes when I'm not playing his stupid game. It's like, who are you to tell me what to do with my you a sip of surge and go, this is a little too sugary. And I don't want to be over caffeinated.
01:34:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:50
Speaker
I need to keep an even keel. You go up, like, people are like, you know, this is XXL, and you're like, um let's knock off a couple of those X's, please. At this point, anyone who's listened to this podcast knows that I am quick to set very firm contrary opinions and that is absolutely where I landed on Sonic wasn't even popular yet i was probably the first kid in America to play Sonic yeah you're probably like nope at that probably yeah then probably the Sears in Bristol Tennessee was the first one to get Sonic ah and I breezed in there and was like this isn't going i hit here in the United States I'm sorry I don't know what this is supposed to be but mean is he even a plumber
01:35:37
Speaker
It's not clear.
Shenmue and Realism in Gaming
01:35:39
Speaker
He's just like a guy in tennis shoes. Like, I don't know. All right. to shanu He bounces around too much. Shenmue. Yeah. shin Yeah. Which is to say Shenmue is a game that came out in the Dreamcast.
01:35:52
Speaker
ah It was in 1999. This was the most expensive game ever developed. ah ah It is a 3D adventure game famous for its realistic ah depiction of Yokosuka, Japan in 1986. The hero was born.
01:36:08
Speaker
um And specifically, a shopping district ah name, and I'm probably mangling all these names, I apologize. Dabudia Street. um And...
01:36:20
Speaker
i say
01:36:25
Speaker
i I've never played this I've always heard like a very like a variety of of of different like ah like I know people that love Shenmue and I know people are like come on but it has an infamous reputation nowadays for it's so bad it's good English dub I'm listening And rigid dedication to realism that can lead to frustration, like needing to wait until a specific time on the next day in a game where you cannot make time pass faster since the game wants you to pass the time by looking around, playing mini games at the arcade, buying figurines at the gachapon machine, training your fight skills or other miscellaneous activities.
01:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, yeah, the I get the impression, like, and I don't know enough about ah the history of these games. But i mean, to me, it feels like at some level, like a lower key forerunner of like a Yakuza game a little bit in terms of these very, like, fully realized spaces.
01:37:24
Speaker
I know, ah you know, again, this immersive world that you're supposed to, you know, get hooked up in originally in the Japanese release they had actual Coca-Cola machines scattered around around the city ah for America they had to drop those ah but you know if you like a good soda machine product placement Shenmue is is hard to beat which makes it all the more shame that Shenmue 3 they just went with some default like unity models for their soda machines but I digress
01:37:57
Speaker
finally ah Will A Wonderful World.
Unique Visual Novel Games
01:38:02
Speaker
Never heard of this. Have you heard of this? are you're sending me No. This one is Chinese. What?
01:38:10
Speaker
Chinese adventure game. um I've heard of, ah like, I'm really curious. I want to play. This is not, this is a visual novel. I really want to play and maybe I've said this on a past podcast.
01:38:23
Speaker
I like um I've seen them on Steam. I'm very curious. I know there's like this world of like Chinese FMV games. yes i've seen these as well very curious about them like i uh so if you if you're if you're listening to podcast and you know about uh chinese fmv games with either good like subs or doves uh let me know uh let us know at uh quest quest podcast at gmail.com uh because that that would be fascinating because that's something i've absolutely know
01:38:59
Speaker
i zero exposure to other than and we here on on quest quest love a good fmv game there's one flying around out there and this is gonna be super useful for listeners uh that uh stars the woman from letter kenny so i can only assume that's a canadian game so shout out to the great white north All right. Well, Will the wonderful of Wonderful World, its visual novel, has an interesting gimmick to it that the game takes seriously.
01:39:27
Speaker
You play as one of two gods that people pray to when they need help with something immediately happening in their life, which comes to the gods in the form of written letters. While there's an overarching story about these two gods, you mainly follow the stories of various people who pray to them as they send more letters.
01:39:44
Speaker
This is... You know, Bartek? I was originally ah little a little, little cross that you sent us such a ah long email, but I'm going to say, going to say, these are some solid recommendations.
01:39:59
Speaker
You're i'm reading the description this. You're making some, some pretty good sales pitches. These are good swings on, uh, five games that I've never heard of. And, uh, was it wait one, two, uh,
01:40:16
Speaker
Or yeah, like a group of games that I've never heard of and and one that I have. ah This sounds really interesting. Where does the game in? tell you how it's described in the eShop. Listen to this. Yeah.
01:40:28
Speaker
So just like similar summary, but i just love this wording. This is the official the official description. A young girl wakes up groggy and in unknown room. A talking dog appears before her and she becomes startled by his revelation.
01:40:42
Speaker
They are gods and it their duty to change the fate of any human that asks for their help. Letters appear in the mail and with pen in hand, she begins her job. That sounds amazing. ah Yeah.
01:40:56
Speaker
I'm fascinated by these. Bartek, cheers to you for some fascinating recommendations. This is. Yeah.
Variety in Game Recommendations and Listener Interaction
01:41:08
Speaker
These are great. These are great recommendations. i am ah i as a And and they're they're really interesting ah to me, and I'm going to assume to you as well, is that these are all like extremely different from what we've been talking about. Yes.
01:41:23
Speaker
Yeah. It's like always tell you, Ben, there's more to adventure games than just the Police Quest series. I don't believe that.
01:41:58
Speaker
Yeah, thank you for joining us for Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. You can watch us on Twitch. I'm PS underscore Garak. I'm Decap Jedi.
01:42:09
Speaker
You can send us an email.
01:42:17
Speaker
at questquestpodcast at gmail.com you can also leave us a comment on spotify we also read all of our comments on the youtube as well there was a really good comment on uh the youtube uh uh pan flute oh man listen to it There was a really great comment that suggested there is no game as a good first time adventure game. I got to say, that's a another good recommendation.
01:42:47
Speaker
That's what that's from old pal data dog. Also a no more for today collaborator. Oh,
01:42:55
Speaker
Collaborator makes it sound sinister. Yeah. Now, you can please give us a five-star review wherever it is that you listen to this on Spotify or Apple or, you know, or just, you know, grab someone by the lapels walking down the street. Tell them, listen to Quest Quest.
01:43:13
Speaker
That's right. They enjoy the song Inca People from Inca. Yes. Unless this has been copyright striked out of the episode. No. It's a game.
01:43:26
Speaker
It's like, no, actually, you know what? You can have that one. I don't need to. Yeah, I don't need songwriter. I'm good.
01:43:35
Speaker
into the night we can't just sit here and listen to a song can we yeah i guess that's what radio basically is founded on is the idea of just playing some music and passively enjoying it well join us next week when we listen to the rest of this song
01:44:13
Speaker
You're the biggest kings and knights.
01:45:05
Speaker
Ha ha ha ha
01:45:27
Speaker
Oh.