There are a ton of game jams happening online during the entire year. Many of these jams follow a theme and a timeframe, giving developers the challenge of creating a game with the restrictions around a specific jam. I am able to record many of these games for each and almost every game jam. As I record them all, I pick out games that stand out to me and games that I love from each individual jam. This article contains the games that I love from the Adventure Jam!
The Adventure Jam 2017 was a game jam that challenged developers to make an adventure game in just 14 days! There were many games entered in this jam, I recorded all of them in my video compilation series. Below are some of my favorites, in a random order.
KLAUS
by Kate
KLAUS is a challenging puzzle based adventure game where you play a very forgetful robot! This robot works at a science lab as a loading assistant – an easy job for someone who forgets things all the time. He just needs to move things around to where they belong. One day though, he wakes up to go work, but all of the scientists are gone. His memory is worse than normal, and he needs to purge his logs every so often just to keep operating. He needs to get out of the lab and figure out what happened to all of the scientists.
KLAUS has a variety of different puzzles to solve in this laboratory. You have to find keycards, remember how the lab is laid out, recycle rubbish, move boxes, and more as you try to get out of this strange lab. There are posters around that tell you more about your robot self, but the goal is to get out of here!
Chook & Sosig: Hit The Club
by TookiPalooki
Chook & Sosig: Hit the Club is a super charming point and click adventure that sees you on another outing with the wonderful Chook and Sosig! Sosig, the character you are playing, is a cat who is trying to prove he is good enough to join the goblin role playing club. The club has some strict rules; you must be funny, destructive, and stealthy enough to join. You feel that you could be all of those things and make one of the best goblins of the bunch!
You have decided to travel to the local pub to enquire about the goblin role playing club and found that you must complete three trials before you will be considered for membership. All of these trials are aimed at testing each of the requirements to be in the club. You must find a way to pass all of the tests with what you have around you, just so you can be a goblin. Chook & Sosig: Hit the Club is a quirky, charming point and click adventure that does require some trial and error to solve puzzles and figure things out. This is full of humor, great writing, and some loveable characters.
A Friendly Venture
A Friendly Venture is an adorable yet funny Undertale inspired game that puts you into a seriously strange yet magical world. You play as a masked person who is exploring this world – almost as if you are exploring a dream, looking for something but unsure what it is. Your guide in this world is a rainbow unicorn called ‘Druggy’ – though this mythical beast is far from helpful at times. He doesn’t have the answers you are looking for or the ability to do different tasks.
You will also meet a character called ‘Phlooph’ – a cat-cloud hybrid that is watching over the gates in the land you are in. He has a quest for you – to find and battle his children so that they will come home. Until you have helped him out, he will not let you cross over into a new part of the world. Battles are quite straight forward, the children will attack you and you must avoid them and listen to them until you give up. Fighting back is not an option when their all-powerful father is who you are trying to win over. A Friendly Venture is a short experience – full of some weird twists and unexpected turns in the game. Its definitely worth taking a look at!
Queen of Vesparians
Queen of Vesparians is a very outlandish, charming game where you are playing an alien bear, looking to provide for his family. As alien bears, you and your family need honey to survive – even alien versions of bears appreciate the sweet goodness that is honey. This hasn’t been much of a problem, but as time has gone on, the forest has had less honey in it. There are a few hives here and there, but none of them are big enough to feed your hungry family. This has forced you to venture deeper into the forest – and today you stumbled upon a hive bigger than you could have ever dreamed of!
This hive is full of honey, but the inside is not how you remembered hives being. You quickly find yourself stuck on this huge object in the middle of nowhere! All of the bees inside the hive don’t want to help you – instead they are continuing about their business, and don’t even seem bothered by your presence. You must find a way to get back to your family and hopefully grab a spot of honey. This hive is quite strange, just like the bees who live on it. They even have strange inventions that you can use if you figure out how!
Void Quest
Void Quest, a command driven game, where you are simply living your life, in the middle of nowhere, on your own small piece of land. You have a small list of things that you must do with your day – which starts with pulling the stump of a tree out of the ground in your backyard. This may seem like a straightforward task, but the game doesn’t seem to agree with the most obvious way to do things. Instead, you are encouraged to interact with objects and figure out a specific way to solve tasks.
In order to interact with objects in the environment you will need to type out commands like ‘read the note’ or ‘use the fireplace’ and then your character will instantly do what you have told them to. You will need to spend some time thinking about different ways to interact with the environment. Void Quest, like many of the older typing command games, will try to kill you in mysterious ways. Its up to you to avoid death and get your tasks done!
Dinner with an Owl
Dinner with an Owl is a super creepy horror game where you are trying to figure out how to escape a cursed home. You are a very important lawyer who is working on some contracts at the house of one of your customers. This seems like a normal case – just a few contracts that need writing for a rich man who doesn’t have the time to visit your office. He has a fancy home, and even has a butler – clearly he can afford to pay you to come to him. However, soon after arriving, you meet the man who’s looking for your service.
He’s not really a man – but instead is a half-human half-owl creature. Everything continues to go strange from here forward. This creature seems to be trapping people in his home and you are the latest of the humans he has tricked. Dinner with an Owl is full of different ways you can try to escape, but it will not be an easy task. This house is cursed and you must break the curse completely before you will be able to get out of here. The game is complete with lovely voice acting, to really bring it to life.
Sidekick High
by CMMN_CLRS
Sidekick High, a game full of creative characters looking to become superheroes, sees you all trying to work together in an attempt to escape from some rooms in your high school! You and your twin brother, as well as loads of other amateur super heros have been trapped in different rooms for a final test. You have all been through hundreds of other trials to just become a student at this school – some of which were extremely dangerous – but now you are at the final test. The two groups left in the final test are attempting to be the first to escape – whichever group is slower will be terminated.
You are in one room, and your twin is in the other room, but you are able to switch between the two characters and control their movements. Each room also contains a variety of objects and two other super heroes each with their own not-so-amazing superpowers. Their powers include things like producing coffee, sweating too much, turning into a slug, and saying everything backwards – not really the world saving powers you’d expect. You need to interact with these characters and your surroundings to figure out a way to escape – along with your beloved twin. Sidekick High is a very unique adventure game – all of the superheroes you meet are amazing in their own way.
The Temple of ADVENTURE
The Temple of ADVENTURE is a game that’s more about the journey and not about the actual thing that you are traveling to. You are looking to play an adventure game – an epic adventure game at that, but there are some bits that need to be taken care of before you can start the game. You are exploring the developer’s office on your way to play the game, but it seems like there is a lot of build up. The developers are very interested in showing you the game, but you need to explore and get to the game in order to play it.
The Temple of ADVENTURE is an experience – beautifully voice acted by the developers, on a quest to play the wonderful game they keep talking about. It’s an incredibly funny and sometimes frustrating game that keeps you guessing as to what might happen next.
Cash on Delivery
by Victor Lee, Chenpn, & Mala Yang
Cash on Delivery is a narrative package delivery game that has you looking to earn cash. You are the local delivery boy, delivering packages quickly around a small town. You are doing this to earn money for a surgery you need – so you must deliver things efficiently! In order to deliver packages, you must go to the houses that are calling for you. Once there, you will talk to the person inside and they will give you a package. You can then open up the drawer-like-basket on your bike and see if you have room for it. The different packages fit in like a puzzle with only enough space to hold a few. Once you have the package fit in, turn on your bike and go to the house it needs to be delivered too. Clicking on the package once again will give you a reminder.
Over time, you will build relationships with different people in the community. These relationships will lead to higher tips, but also to the passing of information about the town. There is a lot more going on in this small, quiet town. Some of the packages you start to deliver have more story behind them. Learning more about the community may be a good thing – or you may want to keep your head down and work hard until you have taken care of your own needs… Whatever you decide, make sure the packages do get delivered on time!
Peridium
by Powerhoof
Peridium is a super creepy point and click adventure game that takes you to a stranded lab, out in the middle of a snowstorm. Your lab has been trying to research a fungus that grows deep underground, in this icy terrain. The research was going quite well, until a strange illness broke out. People turned into glazed over, animalistic humans that then attacked each other, spreading the illness further. Unsure of who to trust, and with a gaping hole in the side of your body, you are on your own looking for a way to escape.
There is a lot of different items that you can find around the room you are trapped in, but the first concern you have is healing up your torso so that you can stay alive yourself. Exploring around is an easy task, but watching out for different ways to die and staying alive will be more challenging. Peridium is a wonderfully polished game, complete with some amazing voice acting that really puts it over the top.
Stuck in a Pig
by Cinic Games
Stuck in a Pig is a stylish game about a small pig who longs to become a bull! You have always dreamed of becoming a bull – big and strong, with horns coming out of your head. So you made a helmet to help you achieve your dreams. You live on a large farm, full of all sorts of animals and people who think you are a pig. You still feel like a bull – a bull that doesn’t belong on this farm. This way of thinking gets you into trouble, however, as the owners of the farm and other animals do not take your feelings seriously.
So you have decided to leave this farm! Someone stole your bull helmet, forcing you to make a new one before you escape. You need to explore the farm – speak to various animals and characters, and see what goes on in this huge bit of land. You can find various items that can help you make your helmet (and soon your escape) if you keep your eyes open wide enough. Stuck in a Pig is a wonderful game, both visually and in content.
There was a bunch of other wonderful games made for this jam. These were just the games that stood out in my mind, my own favorites. The Adventure Jam is always a fun jam to cover, with loads of little stories and adventure made for it. If you’d like to check out the game jam as a whole, take a look at the jam page here.
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