Enclosure 3-D (2022)
Following in the wake of Leisure Suit Larry, I was reminded of the 2004 graphical text adventure Enclosure, which uses the same Sierra AGI engine as the original Larry 1. In 2022, Enclosure received an update where the pixels were turned into voxels — resulting in a kind of retro 3D. The change isn’t dramatic but clearly noticeable. The graphics seem to lift off the screen, less flat than before; to my eyes, the characters now look more like LEGO figures than pixel sprites. Enclosure is a lovingly made fan project, available for free. What originally drew me to it was the premise: a pair of fraudulent mediums invited to a haunted Arctic station.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (1987)
Sierra On-Line's legendary Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is one of the first graphic adventure games where you can move your character in real time while other commands are still written into the text parser. The game is also interesting because of its remakes. The 1991 VGA version raises the graphics and sound from archaic to ’90s level, and the 2013 version brings them to modern HD level. I played all three versions back-to-back and intended to explore the game’s background and versions on Samooja, even though practically everything has likely been said about it and its reputation is great.
The Curse of Rabenstein (2020)
Released in 2020, the text adventure The Curse of Rabenstein caught my attention when a point-and-click version for the Commodore 64 appeared a couple of weeks ago. I did not, however, play that C64 version. Instead, I launched the original game in its modern browser form, which runs effortlessly on a contemporary computer without the need for an emulator. The game is available on a wide range of platforms, from 8- and 16-bit Commodore machines to the ZX Spectrum, Atari, MSX, and DOS, so it can be experienced in a fairly authentic retro form. In practice, however, the browser version is essentially the same game. For me, The Curse of Rabenstein was a pleasant and light experience. The parser felt friendly and straightforward, and I never found myself banging my head against a wall. It felt like a warm-up before heavier parser-based encounters. The Curse of Rabenstein offers a classic horror story that lasts under an hour.