Sketchy Fables
Sketchy Fables is a first-person exploration adventure and can be described as a comic-book that has broken up over a landscape. The story begins with the search for an mysterious child who influences Your reality. Can You still find the child in You?
Features:
*** Fully Hand-drawn & animated game world consisting of about 8000 unique artworks, designed by award-winning artist Alle Jong.**
*** Plays like an interactive cartoon slash artgame/comicbook/Interactive Visual-novel. Sketchy Fables is an personal artistic expression full of poetry & art**
*** There is an Main storyline, but nothing is what it seems..**
*** 3 open save slots**
*** An diverse game environment to explore full of villages and rural landscapes.**
*** Focused on personal exploration with many random encounters & discoveries**
Read More: Best Cartoony Comic Book Games.
Lost and Hound
Epic Games MegaGrant recipient and lauded for its innovation in gameplay and blind accessibility, Lost and Hound is a game like no other that follows the extraordinary Corgi, Biscuit. In Lost and Hound, your empowered canine senses make you a superhero. Heightened hearing and sense of smell will guide your paws as you work towards your goals, saving lives and averting tragedies.
As Biscuit your hearing will allow you to access information that’s inaccessible to humans. You will be able to hear through walls and use the information your audio senses gather to help track people and match up items such as those left at a crime scene with their owners.
Using your superior sense of smell you’ll be able to scent track your way to becoming a dog mercenary. Scent in Lost and Hound is represented by a low, pleasant humming sound. Similar to making your way through a maze where the way out would be invisible under normal circumstances, subtle sound or scent cues will guide you to your query.
As Biscuit you’ll travel around the world taking on many of the roles of real-world working dogs. From working in a hospital to assist with seizure detection and detecting cancer to herding sheep in the rough, Australian outback. Your work as a K9 tracker will take you to Japan, the Swiss Alps, the American wilderness, and many other locales. In between each mission, you’ll have the option to complete mini levels to earn extra money and travel to more exotic locations.
Features:
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Travel around the world working as the strong-willed Corgi Biscuit.
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Solve crimes, track down missing people, and assist those in need.
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Use your superior hearing to listen for accelerated heartbeats, hear through walls, and more to piece together clues.
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Follow subtle scent clues with your heightened sense of smell represented by sound queues to track leads.
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Take on the roles of real-world working dogs; assist with seizure detection, be an emotional support for zoo animals, and more.
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Complete mini levels to earn extra money to fund your K9 travels.
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Meet new animal friends throughout your travels.
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Fully blind-accessible.
Read More: Best Cartoony Adventure Games.
Methods: The Detective Competition
This game is so charming and wonderful, it’s quickly become one of my favourite games ever! If you like mystery stories and fun characters, I highly recommend you pick it up. And if anything seems interesting, don’t be afraid to try out the demo!
On to the (spoiler free) review! (I’ve never written a review before, so apologies if it reads oddly at all.)
The gist of the story is that, 100 of America’s greatest detectives and 100 of its worst criminals are pit in a battle royale against each other to win a million dollars. (And parole, if they’re a criminal.) You play through the stories of several participants as they advance through the competition, meeting new faces at every turn. The game is split into 100 chapters, and it took me personally about 7.5 hours to play through them all on my first playthrough.
– Real player with 51.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cartoony Visual Novel Games.
This is probably one of my top ten games I have ever played, in part because I love solving locked room mysteries so much. I do realize it will not be everyone’s cup of tea, however. Here are (in my opinion) the main downsides of this game: 1. character art is a little lackluster, but you can see that for yourself on the steam page. You do get used to it though, and the character designs do have a lot of personality. 2. The pacing is a little weird. Sometimes you will go through long-ish periods of cutscenes back to back or mysteries back to back. 3. Finally, the ending does leave some loose ends, which could maybe have been intended to pave the way for a sequel (or maybe the game designers just couldn’t decide how to wrap them up, I don’t know). With those downsides out of the way, here are the things I love: 1. mysteries upon mysteries upon mysteries. Both little murder scenes you have to solve and some big over-arching mysteries within the game. 2. The characters are really fun. Both detectives and criminals all have a special method they use to do what they do, and it is very fun to see all of the varieties of detectives and murderers they came up with. You also get to play as different detectives and use their methods of solving mysteries, which is cool. You also get to briefly step into playing as a criminal as well. Again, I’ve never met a game with so many mysteries to solve, so this game was lots of fun for me. To me this game is very worth the $20 it normally costs (so I’d say to definitely get it if it sounds interesting, especially if it goes on sale).
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
Broken Minds
Truly a hidden gem :)
The store page makes it look a bit bland and cheap, but it’s actually a quality VN.
It’s not just a “Click Next”-VN, but you have to focus on what’s happening.
The story is pretty good and I would recommend to play it on “Master Detective”-Mode to get all the interesting mini-games wich are well done :)
The VN also has multiple endings, depending on your choices and after unlocking them you can get the true ending(s?).
Unfortunately I have to say that I felt that the VN could have been better with less endings, since you are forced to do them to unlock the final ones. Even with the skip function it takes a bit of time for a playthrough since you still have to navigate through the rooms, etc. So it felt kind of tedious after a while and it didn’t feel like the endings offered something surprisingly new for me.
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
Note: not for all! It’s not an easy reading nextnextskipskip VN, you should have a sense of logic, pay attention to details and words.
I’m not sure about a genre, but it’s mostly Visual Novel. But you should pay attention for all (that’s what for 3 big arrows on the screen — for a little bit exploring and for deeper immersion); otherwise you’ll get stuck with logic minigames, delete the game in frustration and will never know how great the game is. So, the phrase “the gameplay consists of logic and reading comprehension puzzles” is completely true, and you can’t go on to the next part by pressing “skip”.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Detective Boiled-Hard / Case File - Death of the Space Dino Hunter
when I started uploading screenshots of this game, I realized there’ll be screenshots of every f****** minute of it. And I want more, honestly. Buy, giggle & enjoy!
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
I really enjoyed Trials and Traces: The Tomb of Thomas Tew, an earlier game by this developer, Because Because. It’s not available on Steam as of the writing of this review, but it is available over on itch.io. It was a nice little gem within a collection of other independent adventure games, with turned out to be a great purchase, because it put games like Death Has a Million Stomping Boots and Beard in the Mirror on my radar.
When Because Because released Detective Boiled-Hard, I jumped on it right away. This game is a bit on the shorter side, clocking in at about 90 minutes of play – but it’s a solid and enjoyable (and fully voice-acted!) 90 minutes. Detective Boiled-Hard never once pretends to be a serious game of any sort. It fully embraces bad jokes, self-referential humor, so-bad-they’re-amazing celebrity impersonations, and insane situations.
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
Mister Burnhouse
I loved it! The graphics are great, and the puzzles are original. I can’t wait for more chapters! :)
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
No. Even at less than a one dollar. No. Just random clicking.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Mutropolis
Mutropolis
An array of interesting characters, some fiendish but entertaining puzzles and a bright and amusing story means Mutropolis should be up the top of your list for fans of the genre.
– Real player with 18.9 hrs in game
Mutropolis is a lovely point & click adventure that stands out through its top-notch graphics, voice acting and humour. It’s a fantastic love letter to the old-school titles of this genre, while keeping things fresh through a unique, modern and gripping story.
After a cataclysm that happened 3000 years ago, humanity fled to Mars. Now, in year 5000, a team of archeologists and scientists came back to Earth to find the legendary Mutropolis - a lost city believed to be a source of many treasures, similar to El Dorado or what was once believed to be the Atlantis continent. You play as Henry Dijon - the head of expeditions for team Sigma - a nerdy archeologist with a detective nose. When the team’s boss disappears, and when the police abruptly closes the case, Henry and his colleagues take upon themselves to find their missing boss and the lost city. Together with the quirky and charismatic characters that comprise Henry’s ragtag team, you’re in for an adventure in which new meets old, and where ancient Egyptian myths are brought to life. Literally.
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
Occult Crime Police
Personally I don’t know the “Phoenix Wright” game(s) that many reviewers are referring to.
I just think that this game was fun. It has amusing animations, some good dialogue and funny moments.
This game’s basically a visual novel-type with a few “puzzles” that involve presenting evidence to contradict vitness statements.
Playing time’s around 5 hours.
It’s a free game, try it!
Thanks devs!
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
It’s criminal that this game is free. It’s basically an indie take on Phoenix Wright, done really well. It took me 5 hours to play (and I was streaming and reading the dialogue aloud, so a normal play would probably be shorter), but it was a memorable experience. Great writing, interesting characters, notable plot twists, and great animation and sound.
It’s clearly the setup for a full-length series, so I am eager to see that manifest. I’ll happily toss a few dollars to the devs via their optional cosmetic DLC too; they earned it with this.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Hank’s Voyage
Join Hank on an adventure to rescue his friend and uncover the secrets of ancient Egypt!
Use your hat as a multi-purpose gadget, hide from your enemies, solve puzzles and prove that you’re a world-class spy every step of the way!
In the year of 1948, a group of talented jazz musicians formed the Jazz Association of Secret Spies, also known as JASS.
Their main directive: maintain world peace at all costs.
As one of their agents goes missing in Egypt they send Hank, their most recent hire, to investigate what they believe to be a routine mission.
Join Hank in his journey to Giza as he unravels secret conspiracies and sheds light on ancient mysteries while making the most out of his high-tech hat gadget.
Help him to sneak past his enemies, use his hat gadget to solve different puzzles, and gain powers that will help him make his way through 5 distinct locations.
Use your hat as a multi-purpose gadget: Attack, Activate, Distract and use it as a platform to solve different puzzles.
Collect hats to unlock unique powers.
Sneak past and outwit your enemies: Fighting is not always an option. Sometimes you have to blend in the environment and go unnoticed.
Fight your way through 5 distinct worlds featuring hand-drawn characters and environments: Encounter unique enemies and gameplay challenges.
Test your skills in several different mini-games and challenges
Endure an offbeat story with colorful characters and a comic book style.
Explore the levels to discover all their secrets: The levels are loaded with hidden treasures and great rewards, waiting to be found.
The Low Road
I really wanted to like The Low Road and I wish Steam had a ‘meh’ button.
Pros: Choices matter and dialogue decisions really impact how things go. The opening puzzle is all about using social engineering to get a target to willingly give up secret information and the game does a good job of hinting at where people’s buttons are which is great. Puzzles are mostly contained to a few screen so there isn’t a lot of backtracking filler anbd loading times as you scour the environment for clues and items. Finally, the voice acting/writing on the two main characters is well done and I actually liked the main character which is very important when you’re following them on an adventure like this.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Going into this game, I didn’t know what to expect. I finished it in about 4 hours. That’s with leaving the game running while taking short breaks every once in a while.
Story
The beginning of the game starts off very enticing and intriguing. You get to talk to all the characters and learn little unique aspects about them. However about halfway through, the plot seemed to take a turn I wasn’t expecting. The missions began losing their sense of seriousness to me. This happened to the characters as well, particularly Turn. I understand his character goes through an internal conflict, but his conflict seemed pretty humorous to me.
– Real player with 7.4 hrs in game