Loom may not exactly be obscure by any standard, but I don’t see it being mentioned nearly as much as, say, Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island. But it was a truly revolutionary way of reimagining the adventure game genre, and in a very early age of point-and-click. No inventory, single mouse click interaction, using spells to interact with the environment…
Of course, you’ll want to play the original floppy version to get the full story; the CD-ROM version had its dialogue heavily truncated to fit onto the CD.
What’s your pick?
I’m going to say Hokus Pokus Pink. It’s not the greatest adventure game ever made, and its puzzles are fairly simplistic if I recall, being aimed at a younger audience. But it’s got a certain weird charm to it. It’s compellingly bizarre!
The writing is surprisingly good too, and the Pink Panther and his utter cluelessness about what’s going on makes for a fun protagonist.How about “The Dig” I have fond memories of this game, I suppose it’s not terribly obscure.
<bites tongue, swallows blood>
Discworld…the game is hard, confusing, and sprawling, but so much enthusiasm went into the animations, voicework, and design.
Also: Gobliiins series. In a class of its own, highly inventive and sui generis French design that is often overlooked for being so oddball.
It’d be Loom as well for me. I loved Brian Moriarty’s earlier game Wishbringer, and his Loom felt somewhat similar, just with graphics and music instead of a text parser. The audio tape in the box with the prologue was pretty unique as well. Sadly, the sequel Forge was never finished.
Wadjet Eye Games’s The Shivah (old enough to be a classic at this point! But still pretty obscure and underrated.)
I have recently played the Blackwell series after thoroughly enjoying Unavowed but The Shivah didn’t seem interesting. Will give it a try thanks!
In response to the OP: I love Loom in principle but I’ve barely played it. Really need time to get into it. Hopefully the SteamDeck will let me do that at some point.
But yeah, memorized tunes functioning as the verb interface, and physical looms that weave existential magic? I’m into that.
- YU-NO (has some lapses in taste, but is overall truly epic and impressive, and still way better written than most other VNs/VN-style games)
- Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (among the best implementations of story branching and multiple solutions)
- Death Gate (strong in all areas, the 2D artwork in particular is amazing)
- Frederik Pohl’s Gateway (perhaps the best parser-driven game I’ve played)
I think a lot of adventure game fans have heard of it but Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon is pretty great and it’s my favorite game designed by Josh Mandel. I really wish it could get a digital rerelease.
A lot of people really hold this one in very high regard. Unfortunately, with regards to a rerelease, the rights situation is a tangled spiderweb of immense proportions.
