Dirty Land
Dirty Land is a game about real estate, crime, and desperation, inspired by classic sales movies of the 80s and 90s.
Step into the shoes of Frank Marsh, a newly hired salesman for Pure Sky Properties, a real estate office where coffee is for closers and the status quo is hawking swamp land to unsuspecting buyers for a tidy profit. Will you cast aside your ethics for a quick buck, or will you take the high road and find a way to scrape by honestly?
Something New Every Day
Welcome to your new job. At the start of every day, you begin out front of an unassuming, drab strip mall, where Pure Sky Properties is tucked away. Every day brings new characters to meet, new events to experience, and new stories to be told. What will it be tomorrow?
Choose a Lead, Go on a Sit, and Close ‘em!
These are the new leads. You’ll probably close one of your leads today, but can you close two leads a day? You’re gonna need some caffeine for that. But you know what salesmen say about coffee… you better prove your worth if you want that cup of joe!
Every day you’ll have chances to make a sale. Learn what they like, study their habits, memorize what you can about them, and get them to sign on the line which is dotted!
The Birth of a Salesman
You are Frank Marsh. You’ve made a mistake that has ruined your family. You can’t change your past, but you can change your future!
Will you take the high road and stick to your principles, or take the low road and chase the easy money? Whichever path you take, you’ll discover multiple endings based on the choices you’ve made and whether you succeed or fail in those choices.
On top of those choices, you’ll need to balance your family life with your work life. Will you be a model father and go home and play with your kids? Or will you go out on another sit and close that elusive buyer? Go too far down one path and there will be consequences… your choice will change Frank’s story - at work and at home.
Make Friends First, Sales Second
An office is a place where dreams come true. A place to meet lively new people. A sociopathic manager. An elusive owner. An opportunistic coworker out to steal your money. A flamboyant salesman with no concept of failure. A seductive hairdresser. An intrepid drycleaner. A neglected wife. A pair of dumb mob thugs. A ripped-off customer. A brutal detective. A homeless derelict with clues to a mystery. A rival firm across the street. And many more…
Always Be Closing
The money is out there. All you gotta do is reach out and grab it! How many leads can you pitch and sell? Can you bag the top leads? Will you take advantage of easy prey, or tackle deals with honor?
Play the Sleuth
Do I have your attention? Good. Because it’s not just sales numbers that you need to keep your eye on. You need to keep your wits about you, because in an office full of backstabbers, anything can and will happen. Including the surreal!
Clearly you’ve been framed. But by who?
Solve Murder Mysteries
In a desperate world you’ll meet desperate people. Dangerous people. People who will do anything to make rent. To not get fired. To make that promotion. To secure those juicy leads. From unsavory characters to hilarious charmers, they all have secret motives to uncover… you’ll need to gather clues and piece together the truth to gain the upper hand in this double-crossing world!
Everyone is a suspect! Especially you!
And this murder won’t be the only one…
Read More: Best 1980s Noir Games.
Vicewave 1984
There’s potential, but it’s not yet realised.
-Overview-
Vicewave is an open-world action game clearly inspired by Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. With a great synthwave soundtrack and vibrant 80’s style neons, the atmosphere is set. Unfortunately, the gameplay experience is lacking in several areas, and the optimisation needs work. Frankly, making any progress in this game is a constant uphill struggle against poor game mechanics.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best 1980s Open World Games.
A wild review appears.
Conclusion: if you’re expecting a fun retro style GTA game. Sadly, this is not it (List is down below). I have given this game several tries over the span of a few months. I cannot recommend it.
The Bad
1: Lockpicking is extremely tedious. The (Sweet Spot) needs to be configurable via difficulty.
2: Player dies far too easy, and body armor is behind a XP wall.
3: Difficulty is too high (for casual players of this genre).
4: Cars hand like their on something, and bottom out if bridge is too steep.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Beat Cop
In Beat Cop’s trailer we see Kojak, Columbo, Magnum & Miami Vice… We’re in the 80’s!
But none of that, nor Sledge Hammer himself, you are Jack Kelly, a NYPD detective who has been demoted to street police after a confusing robbery of a senator’s house…
You have 3 weeks to solve the case while you fulfill your role as a street cop.
From where I start? For God’s sake, what a 3 weeks! What a street!
This game is a rare mixture, gameplay is very original. We are talking about an adventure with retro graphics where decisions matter, with a main story and daily secondary missions every day of the 3 weeks that at most will last the game (21 days) full of jokes, very funny! But it’s also a time and resource management game. As if that weren’t enough, there is also a reputation system with different factions and many different endings. All at rhythm of small (only 4 tracks) but exquisite soundtrack set in the 80’s. An explosive cocktail!
– Real player with 35.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best 1980s Retro Games.
Warning: You cannot be a “good cop” throughout the whole game
Beat Cop is somewhere in the middle for me, but below the margin. I think I actually enjoyed the gameplay and visual/audio style the most, while the main storyline, the dialogue, and your “freedom” with choices are not that great.
The game focuses way too much on over-the-top dark humor to a point where it gets annoying, especially at the beginning of each day where you listen to fellow cops repeat the same cliche, one-dimensional, arrogant personality rants.
– Real player with 15.5 hrs in game
Night Cascades
Diane Carter never expected her folklore degree to get her a job offer from the local police department, but when a rash of occult-themed fires sets the city on edge, she is called in as a special consultant on esoteric religion to help find the culprit.
There’s just one problem: the woman she’s assigned to work with. She’s cocky, beautiful, and far too familiar.
Can Diane and Jackie overcome the obstacles of their past and find the truth?
Features:
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The 1980s, but not as you know them - This is the Dark New Age, a time when belief in paranormal powers was mainstream and parents feared that their children would be kidnapped by Satanic cults
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Interactive mystery - Play minigames to search crime scenes for clues or interrogate suspects for insights, accessible either through mouse or keyboard/controller.
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Lesbian romance - Develop the relationship between two adult female characters
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High-Detail Art - Explore the world and its varied cast in a dark painted style
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Linear Visual Novel - All choices lead inevitably to the one true solution
Bloodwash
What are they tryin’ to do? Trick me into gettin' scared?
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
This is a decent horror game.
It gets even better if you are into 80’s horror and slasher movies. All the small details, and nice references are there. The game has haunting music, pretty good voice acting and the typical horror story(In no way original but scary enough). Jumpscares are limited, and I like it that way.
graphics are PS1 style, personally I liked it for this game.
Only negative I can say is that I did not know when the game would save, so I just guessed when a new chapter started. Not that the game seems that long anyway, but still sometimes people take breaks.
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Brawler
A classic-style beat em up made by a small team. Impressive! I enjoyed the three heroes and great variety of enemies. They looked realistic; almost like digitized actors. The music was catchy, and stages were fun. The cutscenes with the reporter, hero, and the ending were a nice touch. I felt it could use voices for landing hits, continue, difficulty setting, and maybe free lives, But well done on this indie game.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
American Theft 80s
It’s the 80s, so put on your nostalgia glasses (even if you weren’t there)!
From the creators of Thief Simulator.
Every house, bank, shop and museum can be robbed with the right tools, you just have to know how to do it.
Earn your way up in a county full of corruption and crime while discovering what the residents are hiding.
That’s right, if you see a house, bank or a shop you can get inside, but learn about the tenants first. You don’t want to get caught.
Remember VHS, cassette players and CRT TVs? No? Well now you can get to know them. Tenants will surely share them with you, albeit not knowingly.
Earn cash and reputation in the underground world filled with corruption and crime.
Sometimes the only thing you can do is get in the car and drive as fast as possible. But be careful, the cops are not playing around and will chase after you.
Make sure to bribe the police to avoid being wanted.
There are many classic styled minigames available. Beat the highscores and get achievements for it!
Use tools like crowbar, bolt cutters or lockpicks to help you in your jobs.
KEY FEATURES:
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steal from houses, trailers, banks, shops, mansions and more
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use lockpicks, crowbars and other tools to break in
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finish shady jobs for cash and reputation
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drive around seamless sandbox
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buy and steal cars
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buy houses and decorate them
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disguise yourself as an electrician or a policeman to fool tenants
Déjà Vu: MacVenture Series
A very limited and simple quasi-real life simulator that has troll gameplay which makes you die unpredictably just because the game wanted you to die because of a particular choice you made, so, while playing this game, make your peace with death and prepare to die, LOL. At least the game has a great sense of witty, sarcastic and dark humour and a sense of showing the rope about life 101 to help players free from their own naivety and ignorance.
It’s very admirable that, as an adventure game, players ain’t tasked with most of the adventure games' usual boring errand-runner tasks that require them to solve a moon logic puzzle. What this game mostly ask from you is finding a key to open particular doors. As simple as it may sounds, the actual complexity of the game is figuring out who you are, what happened to you, where to go and how you can make things right for you.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Deja Vu was the first of the MacVenture entries that was released in 1985. It places you in the role of Ace Harding, a retired boxer now detective gumshoe set in the 1940s.The only problem is, you’ve woken up in a bathroom stall and worst of all - you don’t remember a single thing of who you are!
This leaves you in the challenging role to solve the problem before you become a vegetable. That’s not the only worry because it just so happens that a band of criminals have framed you for a murder and a kidnapping. This is requiring you, the player, to think out of the box and think like a detective to help Ace.
– Real player with 6.6 hrs in game
Killer Ricky
very fun but need more levels and the gunplay might need a rework as its seems a bit delayed
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
A cool action game which has a lot of potential it reminds me of hotline miami only that it is a bit slower which is not bad the blood physics are best and pretty good the art style is also very good I’m looking forward to the other levels in the game to play and maybe a level editor comes into the game or a workshop for maps or mods that would be cool in any case, but otherwise it is absolutely worth the 4.99 good job
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Retro City Rampage™ DX
I think the concept of this game is great. The idea is that it’s an open world crime game like GTA, but it’s set in video game land filled with parodies of almost any video game character you can imagine. It’s a brilliant idea, and fortunately the game mostly lives up to this great concept even if it falls short in some areas.
The game plays as you’d expect out of an open world crime game. However, the game tries to have a much better variety of mission styles. It doesn’t try to be only standard A to B shooting. The game tries to mix it up by including missions that are arcade-like or based on old NES games. Thanks to this the variety is incredible and every other mission mixes up the gameplay in some way, so you’ll rarely get bored. The quality of the missions do vary however. A good amount of the missions are fun and challenging, but others tend to be a little shallow and funnled, not leaving a lot of room for experimentation. On the whole though, the biggest problem with the missions in this game is that they’re all a bit short.
– Real player with 31.9 hrs in game
Retro City Rampage.
What can I say? I love this game. I can’t even write from an objective standpoint here to make an honest and fair review with this one. I’ve spent over 20 hours with this game here on steam, gotten every achievement- and even then- I didn’t quit. I took the time to Gold Medal all the optional missions too. I seriously can’t get enough. I tried for hours to put my name up on the leaderboards. I’m in the top 20 for lots of the missions and I’m quite proud of that. But enough about me.
– Real player with 28.7 hrs in game