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.

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.

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.

Make New Friends and Learn Their Secrets

Georgina Okerson specializes in light adventure games with anime-style graphics that are designed to appeal primarily to a young adult female audience (but that are perfectly enjoyable by those of us with a Y chromosome). In Summer Schoolgirls, you play a recent high school graduate going to an orientation program at an women's college, where you meet your roommate and the other girls in your dorm.

Psychic Detective Graphic Adventure
From the Creator of The Shivah

Dave Gilbert continues his career as the auteur of a new school of old school graphic adventures with The Blackwell Legacy, the first of a series of planned games featuring freelance writer Rosangela Blackwell.

In this first outing, Rosangela comes to grips with her powers--or affliction, as it may be--and is forced to deal with a haunted dog run in Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. Helping her out is the mysterious Joey Mallone, a fedora-wearing ghost whose dialog is straight out of Raymond Chandler and who has apparently been haunting her family since the 1940s.

Rabbi Stone Has a Crisis of Faith

Before we go any farther, please notice the headline. When was the last time you heard a game described in remotely similar terms?

Shivah is the Jewish mourning ritual. For a week after a family member's death, the family stays at home, receiving visitors, and mourning the deceased.

Rabbi Stone, this game's protagonist, leads a small and declining congregation on the Lower East Side. He receives word that a somewhat disreputable former congregant has died, and left his small estate to the synagogue. Though he himself is close to losing faith in God, he views it as his duty to investigate, and perhaps to comfort whatever family members this man may have as they sit Shivah.