Then Take Off Your Sunglasses: Dark Visions

It's not fair to damn a game for being competent. But it's an unfortunate position that lies between interestingly good, and interestingly bad. That's where I'd put Dark Visions - a Flash-based point and click adventure that probably deserves a lot more credit than I'm going to give it.

Perhaps its biggest problem for me is the incredibly unoriginal plot and setting. A turn-of-the-last-century spooky old house to which you're invited, then trapped, and you soon discover unpleasant goings on. And those goings on are experimentations on psychiatric patients. I think this may be the 1,000,000th game to feature this plot, and thus wins a special imaginary prize.

You play a girl, because you must play a girl in all point and click adventures now, who attempts to find out just what the dickens is going on, and some keys.

But here's why I'm being unfair. This is a very old-school point and click, containing three ways to interact - look, use and walk - which means it's already three times more involved than anything coming out from the professional developers. Being Flash you unfortunately have no right click, so changing icons requires a click or a number key. But being Flash, they've managed to get all of a trad adventure into Flash!

It plays like one of the seventy kerbillion Euro adventures of the early noughties, complete with a few pages of books to read, a concoction to make from various chemicals, and an opening voice actor who sounds like David Rakoff coming around from an anaesthetic.

It's relatively short, and it doesn't have a satisfying ending, but it's also free, and logical. That's logical if you spent your life playing adventures, but it's very true to that tradition.

But then it's also that same story yet again. Although I think the developers may know that. During the closing credits appears:

"(Un)original Concept
Rob Kreuzer"

Anyway, it's free, and it's pretty competent, so why not?