Rock, Paper, Shotgun

More adventure gaming news now, following John’s tearful account of the beautiful To The Moon. Sunday sees the release of the fourth episode of Pheonix Online’s unofficial King’s Quest game, The Silver Lining. As with the others, it’s absolutely free but they are after money for something else. While working away on The Silver Lining, they’ve announced a new project, Cognition, in collaboration with Gabriel Knight designer Jane Jensen. It looks like a darker affair than King’s Quest, which admittedly isn’t a stretch, and there’s a short promotional video for that as well. Two videos in one post – it’s like a multiplex down there!

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For a wonderful second I was convinced this was the fourth episode of the unofficial King’s Quest fan-game The Silver Lining, and was all braced to use the headline “Four Ever Cloud.” Imagine how clever and funny that would have been. Just. Imagine. Instead, you’re stuck with whatever the heck I’ve written up there instead. I haven’t even decided what it is yet, I’m just hoping inspiration will somehow strike as I’m typing this.

So, The Silver Lining – a free game made by devout enthusiasts of the old Sierra adventure series (the ones that some people keep complaining we didn’t cover in The List, which spans the last two decades; as I said in comments somewhere, an 80s appendix strikes me as a good idea for the near-future). Episode 3 here now, and its trailer is below.
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After much to-and-fro, King’s Quest tribute game The Silver Lining from Phoenix Online Studios has not only been granted a release by IP holders Activision, but the first episode is out now. A completely fan-made project, and completely free, it’s been eight years in creation. I’ve finished the first chapter, so here’s Wot I Think.

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I’m stuck at this point. The problem is this: for years and years we had to suffer every mention of an adventure game being accompanied by a phrase somehow relating to adventure games being dead. I mean, I wrote them myself when I was young and stupid. They would go, “The adventure game may be dead, but here’s one last gasp,” or more optimistically, “The adventure game’s not dead, but in a coma,” or whatever. The idiocy of these comments was the frequency. Here’s what happened: adventure games, in their abundance, weren’t very good any more. Apart from the good ones. The point of all this is to say how much I want to respond to the news, that following LucasArts’ releasing classic adventure games on Steam, Activision-Blizzard are putting some classic Sierra adventure games on the download service, by writing, “Adventure games may be dead, but their ghosts are coming back to haunt us.” But I cannot, because I’d be One Of Them. So I won’t.

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