It is Sunday and today we got Dominica to join us for a second day of video game marathons!
Dominica and I hung out together for a bit this morning. Then, after we had finished up our coffee and had a quiet morning we fired up Dear Esther and did a straight play through of it. I did all of the game play and she just watched. Actually she just listened. After about five minutes of the game she was acutely aware that the first person perspective of the game made her not feel well to her stomach and so she had to just listen and when we came upon a new scene I would stop moving and tell her to look while it was motionless.
I really liked Dear Esther as an experiment in story telling and literature. It is an amazing work of art and well worth experiencing. So sad, but incredibly well done. We are very glad that we took the time to go through it again. The girls joined us too to nearly the entire thing, so the four of us were all camped out on the bed together. It prompted good discussions about loss, sadness, suicide, etc. A very tough game, indeed. There is no doubt why it is considered so seminal.
We finished up Robin’s Quest today. All four of us played it together. That’s a great game, one of my favourite hidden object games ever as it doesn’t deal with anything creepy, nothing dead or undead, no occult, no adult themes… none of the things that so often plague hidden object games. It’s a totally “normal” adventure game taking place in England. It’s goofy and shallow and the title character has been, true to hidden object form, turned into a woman but besides that the themes and topics and gameplay are one hundred percent family friendly and great for kids. The girls were even introduced to scrolls and sun dials from the game. So after another hour or two on this one we managed to wrap up yet another full game this weekend! That’s at least three, already!
Next up was Bookworm Adventures which Dominica and I played for just a little while. It’s good and we are making good progress on book two but I was just not into it that much, today.
Next up was Puzzle Agent which is pretty awesome. It is made by Telltale Games, from whom we have loved pretty much everything that we have tried. This one really makes us feel like we are playing a 1960s cartoon (like Rocky and Bullwinkle) but filled with puzzles. The story is ridiculous and totally entertaining. The puzzles are mostly good but do suffer from ambiguity and I’m pretty sure accuracy problems that make them not nearly as good as they could be if they were more polished. The same kinds of issues that my dad found with many of the puzzles in the Blue Toad Murder Files. But we had a good time and we can tell that this game is going to be a winner.
The girls had enough of video games and did a bit of playing on their own in the living room this evening. They would come in from time to time to check on us.
Our final game for the night was Dominica and I playing Lost Horizons which is an adventure mystery game with strong Indiana Jones overtones (including era, themeing, location, flying map style, and more.) where you play a pilot from Hong Kong (cough… Temple of Doom) who has to fly in an old junker to Tibet (cough… Raiders) with the daughter of his old partner (cough… Raiders) to stop the Nazis (cough… Raiders) from getting some ancient artefact and take over the world in 1936. The game is incredibly polished and has a little feel of Casablanca about it as well. We only played a little bit, but what we have seen is excellent and a lot of fun. I am really looking forward to getting some time to really get into this game. The characters, story and locations are very fun and I can see why people clamoured so much for a sequel (which we also have in our library.)
The girls insisted in sleeping in the bed again tonight, so I am on the floor yet again. We were all in bed rather early, though, for us, which was good. Before falling asleep, Liesl climbed down onto the floor with me, she was very sad that I was sleeping alone. She fell asleep seconds after snuggling with me on the floor with her head on my arm. So while I had no space, was unable to move and was sleeping on a hard floor, at least I had snuggles.