The Last Door

This is a free, crowd-funded point & click adventure with a spooky theme and a reduced visual style. The first three chapters are free, but to continue beyond you need to be a supporter. 5 parts have been programmed so far.

I’ve finished the first 2 chapters and I guess I’ll donate because “The Last Door” has a gripping story. It relies heavily on the eerie atmosphere created by its sound track and the makers of this game suggest headphones and a dark environment.

Give it a try! (free account necessary)

But don’t watch the trailer on their website. It contains spoilers.

Bastion

It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a real computer game. Usually I just spend some pennies on cheap iPhone games. But the reviews on this one convinced me: Bastion is a great hack & slash game.

I absolutely dig its style, which reminds you of Anime titles like “Castle in the Sky” or Nausicaä, where the world is heavily influenced by the presence of giant animals or monsters as well as fantasy technology that mixes swords and gunpowder.

The game’s story is pretty straight forward, and although it gives you the illusion of choice by deciding which weapon or skill to upgrade, it basically doesn’t matter to the plot and the order in which you have to fight through all the different levels. This, however, is no demerit! The game offers you about a dozen weapons to discover which can be upgraded in different ways. You can equip two at a time and are free to choose your combination. Each weapon has two modes of attack (usually a melee and a ranged one) and you have a shield that can also be used to attack.

The best thing about Bastion, however, is its voice acting. The game feels like an audio book. You learn about the plot and its back story piece by piece through narration which comments on your actions, sometimes foreshadows, but never gets repetitive. Check out this gameplay video to get an idea of how that works:

The voice actor they hired is seriously cool and he reminds me of something I’ve heard a couple of years ago on the album “Rough and Rare” by Yonderboi: