Adventure Gamers Rejoice

With adventure games abandoned by the majors, and high-profile indie projects few and far between, fans of the genre find the pickings meager. But here's reason for celebration: a big, well-executed game that feels like a cross between Monkey Island and Leisure Suit Larry, with the sort of humor adventure gamers learned to love from Infocom and Lucasarts but is now almost entirely lacking on the gaming landscape.

Dave Gilbert Keeps Going Strong

Dave Gilbert, creator of The Shivah and The Blackwell Legacy returns with another graphic adventure every bit as charming as the first two.

Blackwell Unbound is a prequel to The Blackwell Legacy, following the career of Lauren Blackwell, the aunt of Rosangela, who was the protagonist of Legacy. We met Lauren only as an urn of ashes in that game, but learned that she'd been kept sedated in an insane asylum for decades before she died. We also learned that Joey, the family ghost, had haunted the Blackwell women for at least three generations.

Eerily Evocative Adventure/RPG Hybrid

In Daemonica, you take the role of Nicholas Fayrepoint, a sort of demon hunter-cum-private eye in a small town in a fantasy world that's subject to a curse. Your job, naturally, is to figure out what's going wrong, and set things right.

The game is in essence built as 3D RPG, with a simple point-and-click combat system, inventory, character advancement, and the like; but the gameplay is much more like a classic graphic adventure, with puzzles to be solved and characters from whom you must extract information. This is something of a happy hybrid, more free-form than a classic click-and-combine adventure but with much of the same feel--but those looking for the combat intensity of a Diablo are better off looking elsewhere.

Ghosts and Mysteries with Myst-like UI

The Delaware St. John series, of which this is the first chapter, has three great strengths: beautifully painted visuals, characters you come to care about--and stories that get creepier the deeper you get into the game. Fans of adventure games and gentle horror will find a lot to like here.

Del Returns

...In another mystery/horror graphic adventure featuring beautifully painted art, enjoyable badinage between the two main characters, and a story that's likely to evoke a shiver or three. While the game can be played without knowledge of the first, you may want to start with the first episode--though The Town with No Name is a little bigger and longer playing.

Adventure Games: Not Dead Yet!

Perhaps better known as the producer of massively multiplayer games like Anarchy Online and Conan, Funcom, which is based in Norway, began as a developer of beautiful adventure games like The Longest Journey, which fans of the genre will remember as one of the few good high-budget adventures of recent years. With Dreamfall, Funcom has, if anything, outdone themselves with a vast enthralling game set in the same universe as its predecessor, with gorgeous visuals and (thankfully and all too rarely) excellent voice acting.

Interactive Novel with Puzzles

Georgina Okerson, creator of Cute Knight returns with Fatal Hearts, a charmingly quirky adventure game, of a sort, featuring a teen girl protagonist and a chilling set of murders. Featuring anime-inspired art and teenage angst in a horror story, Fatal Hearts has several different endings -- different enough that you'll want to play more than once to explore the different outcomes -- along with puzzle mini-games and a well-written story.

It's not a point-and-click adventure game in the usual style; indeed, it's more of an interactive graphic novel with puzzle-game aspects. As such, it's very accessible even to adventure game novices.

Horror, Humor, and Well-Conceived Puzzles

Inherent Evil was the first graphic adventure developed by Bryan Wiegele and the crew at Big Time Games, and was originally developed in an unusual way: It was supposed to be released episodically, one chapter per week, with a $10,000 cash prize to the first person to 'solve' the game. This structure led to some interesting design decisions; originally, each chapter dropped you to the desk-top on conclusion, and there was no way to save games during a level.

Game Tunnel's 2005 Independent RPG Game of the Year

You're an orphan girl, you've just turned 18, and the orphanage is turning you out to find your own destiny. Before you turn 21, you must find it--although there are many routes you can follow. You can learn magic, become a fighter, cultivate excellence in cooking or housework. You can find romance, or riches, or simply learn to make your own independent way in the world. There are, in fact, more than 50 possible endings, which means there's a lot of replay value here--you can always play again, and try for a different one.

Lovecraftian Chills

The torch of adventure gaming, fumbled by the mainstream industry, has been neatly saved from extinction in the last couple of years by independent developers--but oddly enough, most independent adventures tend either to be humorous (like Al Emmo and Dave Gilbert's work)--or horrific in nature (like the Delaware St. John games). Penumbra falls into the latter category--but with some clear differences, both in terms of technology and approach.