Recent reviews by mcquigan

You play as a young child stuck in your bedroom; you need to escape the house.

This game is so dark that I had to depend on the green cursor dot to find some items; some of which I never found because pixel hunting with a green dot is not my idea of entertainment.

In two of the three times I started the game there is something that should trigger that does not. I'm looking in the same places so can only think "bug".

There is no gamma adjustment, no manual save option, and no volume control.

I do not know where the check points are; I did not reach any.

Lastly, there is a voice over that would have been better left out.

What a beautiful student project this is!
The language spoken is as foreign as the delightful characters in the game - you just have to figure it out! That's not too tough though.
Spend 30 minutes poking around this little world and relaxing in it. You can call it your yoga activity of the day.
FYI: The "A" was supposed to start the game. I used the spacebar
Bit more optimization and game play options would only improve this little gem.

Gameplay:
You can invert X or Y axis. adjust audio and video quality.
There is no mouse sensitivity or camera speed you can adjust.
I saw one reviewer stating the character was "so slow" . My character was zipping right along; I would have liked to slow him down.

This is a delightful game. Willy Morgan is fair to the player; no walk through is needed for experienced players, and it will make a great game for new players due to an optional help feature.

This is the devs first game and they really did an excellent job of looking at it from a player’s point of view. There are no puzzles that you’ve not been given the information to solve.

+Art and Animation – Very nice!
+Atmosphere – Fun, light, but still engaging
+Voice overs – Great!
+Story – Pirates, a mysterious disappearance, what else do we need…
+Manual saves – ten slots available. Thank you.
+Music and sounds

Game Play:
Mostly Traditional Point and Click.
Left click to select something.
Right click for information on an object.
Spacebar highlights items you can interact with or there is an orange dot in the upper left corner that will highlight items for players.
Inventory is located at the bottom, access with the letter “I” or click the mouse wheel.
Drop items together in inventory to combine
ESC Open/close main menu
Double click to zoom to next scene, you can click the speed through the text.

it’s a lot more fun to walk around and look at the town and appreciate the art of the game.

There are ten manual save slots. Thank you so much.

Amazingly, I purchased this the day it was released and had no crashes, no wonky mouse, no stuttering etc; the game ran seamlessly in spite of me alt+tabbing a lot and there was no accumulated memory drag on my machine from doing so.

My actual play time, exhausting all dialogues and looking around the town quite a bit was about seven hours.

Well done to the team at Imaginarylab!

Update on play time:
We have a group play with 17 players; nine have completed the game.
All had seven to eight hours play time.
We have all played Day of the Tentacle, the Monkey Island series, the Lucas and Sierra games this game pays homage to in sneaky ways :-)
When you are in a museum do you rush from exhibit to exhibit or leisurely stroll taking it all in?
We tend to exhaust all dialogue trees, look at everything, maybe twice

Update Two: Now has controller support! Thank you!

This revealed my personality quite well, showing both my strengths and weaknesses; these are things I already knew, but there was a suggestion to a problem I have that was actually pretty clever and I had not considered.

Some of the questions were really fun, some quite serious, some make you want to peek around the room just to make sure you are alone.

In this you are asked a series of question, that is the only gameplay there is.

Play time, about 30 minutes, I read and answered most questions quickly.

I'll bet you play it more than once!

I feel kind of "Gifted" to have played this game.

I love student projects like this.
Nice graphics, good story, Free!
Game play:
Traditional point and click. Someone obviously knows how traditional point n click games traditionally work, and they stuck to it.
If it's not broken. don't fix it.
Double click to quick move to next screen
Intuitive puzzles
A manual save system! Thank you!
Kudos to this team.

Updated July 16th - latest patch enables removing items from your inventory.
This is an escape room game meant to be played in one sitting. There is no save system.
So, set aside a time to just play uninterrupted.

This looks and plays like an adventure game; you are being held captive in a basement and by following a trail of clues and solving the puzzles you can escape, well, maybe you can…. I have not yet, but on this play, I realized something new and am hopeful.

Since I am still playing, I’m just going to mention a few things:

You can examine things you pick up and look at the back with the left mouse button; there may be valuable information on some items.
There are little clues scattered around that tell you a story. You will need to write them down or take pictures.

You can enable hints (use the esc key for setup) that will show up in the journal in the first room you awaken in, so do revisit it if you need one. The hints are not open spoilers; they are more of a nudge.

The puzzles are not easy; many were unique and require a bit of searching and thought.

You have room for four items in your inventory – not everything you can pick up should be kept because there is no way to remove something once you put it in your inventory.
Playing the game will teach you what to keep.

You access settings via the escape key and adjust video quality and can see keyboard controls and what they do. This is where you can enable hints.

You navigate with the usual WASD keys in addition to others. There is no controller support.
E to add the item to your inventory
R to read text of the note or journal you found
Z Open a journal
T Next page
G Previous page

Again: There is no manual save option, buy it and commit to playing it.

The dev estimates four to six hours of play time; I suspect mine will be more 😊 since I keep getting caught!
I will update this review later. Wanted to come up for air and say that I am enjoying it, and have learned a little more each time I play.

The game has adventure and point and click tags assigned; it isn’t either of those. It’s a side-scrolling narrative game. Had I read Killmonday’s description I would have known that :-)

You can’t wander off the chosen path(s), you are a spectator here. There is no inventory you access. If you need something you will be taken to the item and it will be used automatically. Items are easy to attain. There is one part where you need to whack something with a large hammer (like Whack a Mole). I purposefully missed a few times and think the game dumbed it down for me to attain a ticket.

You are along for the ride in this game; the ride will depend (a bit) on your actions.
There are different endings; I only played one thus far. I had about three hours of play into it upon completion.
The artwork in this game is fabulous, but for me, the voice actors made this game; they were just outstanding.
As spoiler free as possible

+Artwork - Very nice
+Atmosphere – Also very nice, sets the tone of ‘what’s really going on here?”
+Voice overs – The best!
+Story – What is going on here? Who do you trust?
+Manual saves – Thank you.
+Replay value
+Music and sounds

This has been on my Wishlist quite a while, so I finally purchased it on the Steam Summer sale for $13.00 usd and change. That is (comparatively) more than I will usually spend on a three-hour game, but it is choice driven so I will get more gaming hours out of it. Hopefully they are not repetitive game hours; I’ll let you know.
That is what I wrote yesterday; today, the game is still on my mind. It is a powerful and complex story. It did make me cry.

Part of the game is this cute little girl who has a very colorful vocabulary when it comes to cussing. Be aware if you are offended by language that is not family friendly. What she says is so unexpected I found it pretty funny. They did not go overboard on this; it just happens enough to make you laugh.

You can access settings via the escape key and adjust video quality, volume, and keyboard controls.
You navigate with keyboard and mouse or a controller. Comparing the two, I much preferred the controller instead of continually clicking to get to the next scene.

There are there are three manual save slots plus a checkpoint auto save function. Thank you for a manual save option, but I wish there had been more save slots available so I could replay from certain chapters…

I will update this on how the replay works out.

Updated Dec 22, 2020
Your son has terminal cancer; you can cure him, but first you have to kill him.

The Sorrowvirus is an adventure game meant to be played in one sitting. . There is no save system, The devs have issued several updates to the game addressing bugs and are moving on to their next game: Faceless

This game hooked me the minute I saw it. I wanted something I could play relatively quickly due to time constraints. In the notes the dev has estimated that gameplay is 45-60 minutes.

I have about three hours into it, and have no idea how far in the game I am. I am a Point and Click/Adventure player; I look at everything twice, maybe three times. I look for hidden clues where there are none at times.

There is so much to see in this game it would be a shame to finish it that quickly. I am not a “run through a museum” person, I casually stroll and appreciate art.

+Artwork/Graphics
+Atmosphere. So spooky
+Music and sounds
+Voice Actors
+Story, though I cannot comment on the ending yet.
+Replay that is not repetitive.

The game begins by plopping you directly into it; your nightmare journey begins now and it is a spooky one!

I refuse to give away the game lore, but it is there.

There are a couple of jump-scares that are easy on the brain; I actually enjoyed them

You access settings via the escape key and adjust video quality, volume, and keyboard controls.

You navigate with the usual WASD keys, or a controller if you have one. You are given instructions along the way that teach you what you need to know, no guessing required.

Yes, you can die. You will come back....

The game does have higher system requirements so watch that. I have a friend testing on a lower spec machine.

I have had no glitches thus far and it runs fine.

Again: There is no manual save option, buy it and commit to playing it.

For the $5.00 and change it cost I’m pleased with it. When I have a free day I will sit down and finish it!

A Lost Story is a family friendly jigsaw game that takes place in a world/dimension that you enter in order to discover the reason for a series of nightmares you’ve been having.

This is a beautiful game! This game is very polished with fabulous hand drawn art; the scenery and puzzles are gorgeous.

Music was quite good too, fitting of the scene it was in.

With each puzzle you play more of the story is unlocked. The locations are interesting and different. Each jigsaw is tailored to the part of the story you are in.

Not every game needs to be “bang you head difficult” to be enjoyable, but, You can make this as easy or difficult as you like: Timed or un-timed challenges, you can vary the background, the number of pieces you play with (28-1000), even the shape of the pieces! If you really want a challenge go into mosaic mode!

This game has great options, including:

Puzzle shape can be traditional, mosaic, or arrow
Timed or un-timed
Windowed/Fullscreen
Music: on/off
28, 112, 220. 500, 1000 pieces!
Zooming! You can zoom with the mouse wheel, very handy in the bigger puzzle modes.
35 puzzles (20 story + 15 unique special)
36 with the hidden puzzle
The game auto-saves, you can exit mid-puzzle and when you restart your pieces will be as you left them.

This review is based on playing a mix of the puzzles and challenges. I have about three hours into it, I am just a bit more than half, and have selected mostly 28-piece puzzles. If you are looking for a game that gives you a great return on hours played per dollar, this is it!

Yesterday my daughter and I wanted to play something. We chose this even though I had already started the game. I found I was able to go back and read the story without having to replay the puzzle; that is a nice touch! We had a lot of fun taking turns and challenging each other.

This is a side-scrolling narrative, puzzle game with platforming. The platforming has been easy and doable (coming from a non-platformer player).

Update: This releases April 6th, 2021
This demo was so much fun and so unique.


+Artwork- Just amazing
+Unique fun gameplay
+Music
+Story

The Auto-save feature does not work in the demo, start and end the demo in one sitting.
Use the shift and arrow keys to drag things around. Use the F1 key to access main menu.

This is different in the full game, you will use the escape key

You an aspiring writer. You open your diary and the journey begins. You will alternate between your diary and the fantasy world you are creating. You do amazing and unique things with…..words.
Words are how you solve the puzzles.

Demo play time was about an hour I would say.
I would call this family friendly. There is one swear word, four letters, dam_