The last couple of years I treated myself to a small Christmas present from Steam or GOG. That’s how I got Anchorhead Illustrated, Samorost 2, and Hadean Lands.
I’m in a bit of a pickle this year. I’m not sure what to choose.
I know from this forum that Disco Elysium is great. I’ve had my eye on Inkle’s Heaven’s Vault or 80 Days for a while too. And there must be many more high quality narrative games out there.
So, dear Intfiction, what are your suggestions for relatively low-priced (15 euros max), high quality IF or IF-adjacent** predominantly text-based games I could buy myself for Christmas?
There is one game I found when browsing last year and almost chose instead of Hadean Lands. Of course I forgot its title…
It was a long text game with beautiful hand drawn pictures (no animations). I remember drawings of wide nature landscapes.
It must be quite old because the descriptive text said that it was mostly overlooked when it came out, but might now find its way to the new text-based gaming community.
I also have a feeling that it’s about either prehistoric people or native american people (or their fantasy counterpart). This could be my mind filling in some blanks with wishful stuff though.
Curious about your thoughts and recommendations.
**By which I mean games that you would confidently post about here, without feeling the need to preface your post with “Yo guys, this is actually not IF at all. I’m not even sure why I’m talking about it here instead of on DOOMDUDESFORLIFE.COM.”
King of Dragon Pass smells very similar, but I’m not having the * -click- *. It does look great though!
I’m really impressed by all Overboard's prizes. In fact, the entire Inkle catalogue looks great.
But Heaven’s Vault is the only one described as “archeological science fiction”! !
I mean, how does one top that?
Pentiment has been getting great reviews and seems very IF-adjacent, but I haven’t played it yet. (And it’s been released very recently, so there might be price drops in the future.)
Disco Elysium actually fits my probably controversial definition of Interactive Fiction (though let’s not sidetrack Rovarsson’s nice thread debating that), so I can recommend it in good faith.
All the games mentioned so far are well regarded. You may well play them all eventually, which could alleviate any pressure associated with the choice at hand.
I don’t think you can go wrong with an Inkle game.
What Remains of Edith Finch looks like I would enjoy it. (If one can use such a word for a game like that…)
While we’re on IF-(-far-)adjacent narrative games with emotional impact, I haven’t finished Life is Strange yet, but it’s touching and immersive. With time-manipulation mechanics to boot!
My favorite IF that I bought recently was Night Road (ChoiceScript), but it’s a Vampire the Masquerade licensed game, so if you’re not into VtM it may be less interesting. I enjoyed it a lot, though.
I would also recommend What Remains of Edith Finch and Life is Strange (first original season and before the storm anyway, not played later releases), though neither are text games.