Have You Played... Kathy Rain?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

For a moment there, it looked like we might be seeing a resurgence in the traditional point and click adventure. All the big names from the 90s heyday leapt into action, but unfortunately (in hindsight) they all did it via Kickstarter. So we either didn't see a final game at all, or mostly saw low-budget, under-realised mediocrity, and everyone refocused their attentions on RPGs again. Meanwhile, with minimal fuss, Clifftop Games release an absolute corker that reminds everyone how it should be done: Kathy Rain.

Kathy is a journalism student, who when visiting her recently widowed, previously estranged grandmother, discovers a whole pile of peculiarities in her family's past. This is a tale of small town secrets and peculiar, potentially supernatural goingson.

The toughest part of reviewing the game was not being able to mention how disappointing I found the ending without giving way too much away. I feel safe saying it here, more detached, as I haven't given the same build-up. But suffice to say, I think it could have picked a much more interesting fork in the narrative road. But not liking an ending isn't the same as the ending being bad, and this is one of those interesting cases where preferring it would have taken a different direction is not a detraction.

It's currently a third off in the Halloween sale, and what better day to pick up a spooksome tale, and a truly fine example of the pnc adventure genre?