8/10Developer: Starward Industries | Released: 2023 | Genre: Adventure, Facile

Take the excellent Firewatch, throw it in a blender together with Lifeless Moon, maintain the first person perspective, hit the blender button – and you’ll end up with something much like The Invincible.

The game is based on a science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem.

As Yasna, a female astronaut originally party of a small team landing on a barren planet, you wake up in the sand much like Matt Damon did in The Martian – albeit with amnesia. Thankfully the amnesia part is not a significant part of the game. Soon she remembers most of what she needs to remember, except for the main purpose of the game – where to find the other astronaut team members.

It doesn’t take long until she has another person on the radio that she talks to throughout most of the game. Commander Novik is in orbit and can only hear what she is doing – she has to describe the things she finds. Often this evolves into interesting discussions, and sometimes they even get mad at each other. If you have played Firewatch, this is the part that reminded me so much of that game.

8/10Developer: The Brotherhood | Released: 2023 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click

I loved the original STASIS from 2015. The free expansion CAYNE from 2017 was okay, but not amazing. But it still entertained me and in the end it felt like a decent DLC. So when I learned that The Brotherhood had released a sequel to the first game, I was quite excited. It had received overwhelmingly positive reviews from most users on Steam. I was sure to be pleased with this one.

But not at first. There were problems. In fact, there were a lot of problems.

A lot of features from the previous games were there. It was an isometric point-and-click adventure game taking placed in dilapidated surroundings, sometimes with macabre human corpses to be found. Again, the abundance of PDA and their immense walls of text were there too, but that was also a problem with the other two games. Each PDA found had many tabs and the entries were not always that interesting.

Taking a cue from games such as e.g. Trine and Day of the Tentacle, there were two and very soon three characters to switch between at any point. It didn’t take long before they were separated for the majority of the game, but the quantum inventory still made it possible to share everything they found. At first I was happy to see a lot of banter and comments across the characters. It spiced up the game and the voice acting was terrific. For some reason, they could see what their companions could see.

9/10Developer: Terrible Toybox | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, Point & Click

Ron Gilbert, the creator of the two first Monkey Island adventure games, was back with his own take on a continuation of the bizarre ending of the second game. I had played the original games in the 90’s and then the two sequels in 2000 and 2001. So it was a Return to Monkey Island after more than 20 years.

At first, the game felt a little light on puzzles and the dialog didn’t seem quite up to par in the beginning, but it felt like both the puzzles and the dialog got better as the game went on. Or maybe I just warmed up to it. After the full five parts of the game, I must say that the story ideas and the dialog is right up there with the original games. Lots of twists and many chuckles to be had. Ron Gilbert certainly still got it.

I had my worries about the stylized 2D graphics and even didn’t like them in the images I saw in reviews before playing the game. But when I actually played the game, I immediately accepted it. There’s something to be said about how the animation worked together with the art style. That being said, it’s very much an acquired taste. All I’m saying is you should see it move before you decide.