If you have been looking for a great game that combines humour, a great story, appealing graphics, and long game play with a reasonable price, then Grim Fandango is what you seek. Quality has never been so much fun.

Insane, mutant tentacles. A frozen hamster. Three distinct playable characters. Time travel. Fake barf. Truly, this game has it all. One other thing Day of the Tentacle has in no short supply is charm. It's got that in spades. Everything about this game just comes together beautifully.

An ethereal, innovative, emotional cooperative experience, thatgamecompany’s Journey is one that any PlayStation 3 owner should take.

If you’re looking for some absurdly fun puzzles and a truly unique storytelling experience, you’ll want to check out DEVICE 6 on iOS, but you’ll wish for a gameplay integration upgrade.

Kentucky Route Zero’s excellent third act is no less weird than its predecessors, but hints at something unexpected: a coherent narrative.

Who would expect a previously unknown Norwegian developer to create such an absorbing and compelling adventure game? The Longest Journey is, quite simply, one of the best adventures ever made.

A murder mystery set in a rich, fictional setting, Disco Elysium is told with sweeping profundity and hilarious absurdity. With no combat to impede story progression, this is a choice-driven role-playing adventure that deftly raises the bar of quality for the medium.

For anyone with even a modicum of action gaming ability, then, deciding to pick the game up should be a no-brainer.

The Talos Principle 2: Road to Elysium successfully expands upon its puzzle elements and provides some of the most challenging puzzles that, for better or worse, push the definition of unorthodox. While the philosophical elements and player agency that made the main game great are mostly missing, the plots and characters make up for the absence of these components. So, if you enjoyed The Talos Principle 2 on launch, you will definitely admire this expansion.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an exquisitely told story set in a world overflowing with personality. It’s an immersive, emotional gem that’s not to be missed.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale is like a warm hug from a wise old aunt, simultaneously bursting with creativity and offering an unblinking but hopeful look at humanity.

Act IV is a slow, meandering episode that continues Kentucky Route Zero’s streak of quiet, introspective, blue collar beauty.

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension takes the rulebook for what a game can and should do and sets it on fire, practically reinventing the entire medium in the process. Unceasingly hilarious, ludicrously entertaining, and utterly unique, it will remind you why you play games while forcing you to reconsider every aspect of what that means.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a quirky British adventure with a Benny Hill flair—its simple mechanics, offbeat puzzles, and charming dialogue make for a fun, if occasionally frustrating, romp.

It's extraordinarily rare for a game to possess scenes of such powerful emotion, but Telltale have managed something special with The Walking Dead finale, and it'd be a tragedy to miss it.

Whatever you call it, L.A. Noire is a monumental achievement that every console-owning adventure fan needs to experience.

Lone Echo has left me wanting more, but not just because of the loose ends left in the story. In the days since finishing the game, I can’t seem to shake it – like a memory I keep turning to whenever my mind wanders. Immersive mechanics; an intimate, character-driven story; and a detailed, believable world all come together to create an experience I could genuinely lose myself in. Hopefully we won’t have to wait for a sequel before another game gets VR this right.

However good the game is, it must be said that it is far too short, and the ending is a little rushed. Two days of gameplay is simply not enough for a modern adventure game.

NORCO is a one-of-a-kind adventure, expertly written with (almost) perfect artistic direction. The lack of frequent puzzles is made up for by their unusual quality and variety. A must-play for narrative adventure fans.

An intellectual and aesthetic delight, Return of the Obra Dinn is a morbidly fascinating logic puzzle disguised as a minimalist nautical adventure.

Whatever you call it, L.A. Noire is a monumental achievement that every console-owning adventure fan needs to experience.

Cabernet is an exceedingly creative adventure, introducing role-playing elements that suit its phantasmal themes. The lovely, stylized graphics, engaging story, choice-based gameplay, and terrific voice acting all combine to produce an experience for gamers (especially vampire enthusiasts) that shouldn’t be missed.

If you like seeing stories from various personal angles, Virtue's Last Reward offers many hours of value, but you might feel betrayed by the storytelling grind of this longwinded horror adventure.

Overall, Pentiment is a fantastic game with minor flaws that still impresses, even if the twist at the end of the second act is very difficult to accept. Despite being developed by a small team, Obsidian has demonstrated its ability to create an immersive and demanding game that blurs the line between art and gameplay.

The Crimson Diamond is a gem of a 2024 release – a convincingly vintage, but also refreshingly modern take on the text parser game. The overall package is a modest but fulfilling mystery that doesn’t overstay its welcome and leaves a fantastic impression of what adventure gaming was like in its golden era.

The Talos Principle 2 is a complex puzzle game with an equally multifaceted but engaging narrative featuring rational and religious undertones. There are a couple of control issues, and the unorthodoxy of certain puzzles may be too challenging for some players. This point may also be compounded by the game’s length, which can take 35 hours if only dealing with the main content, with side content adding several additional hours. Still, this is a gorgeous game well worth experiencing and an invigorating treat for puzzle game enthusiasts or philosophy majors.

Year Walk is beautiful meditation on darkness, love, time, and space that goes beyond traditional point-and-click and into a more immersive iOS interface.

So whether you're a newcomer or a LeChuck's Revenge veteran, it's definitely worth taking the trip back to the world of Monkey Island.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a story that fits superbly into the Indiana Jones mythos. The slower exploration and puzzle-based gameplay may not be for everyone, especially given MachineGames’ previous endeavors. Still, it kept me hooked until the end. This game should be played at least once, but I would happily play it again.

IMMORTALITY is a complex and fascinating story that draws inspiration from many different film genres. It’s a fantastic game with a lot to offer, even if the limited influence over the story and the random order in which the game’s events are experienced could reduce the story’s impact.

The Witness is highly unconventional but will enchant players who come ready to surrender their imagination to its unusual charms and challenging puzzles.

While not spectacular as a game in and of itself, the gameplay innovations it presents to the adventure genre might make it worth a try.

Explore the enchanting world of Lucy Dreaming; with an impressive storyline, beautiful graphics, and excellent voice acting, it’s a game worth checking out!

With a great cast of characters, Unavowed is a stylish urban supernatural fantasy that is touching, funny, endearing, replayable and above all, fun.

Return to Monkey Island is a fantastic addition to the series and a great game in its own right. If you’re a Guybrush Threepwood fan or want to revisit the high point of adventures past and present, you owe it to yourself to come back to Monkey Island.

Gone Home does only one thing but does it superbly, telling a touching story solely through exploration that makes it well worth experiencing.

Lacuna is a wonderfully tense hard-boiled story set in a gorgeous jazzpunk future. Its mysteries will make you work for the answers, and will even let you fail, but either way the payoff is a sense of accomplishment that few other narrative puzzlers provide.

Her Story’s searchable video database is a unique and compelling way of telling its interactive story, making it worth the fairly short trip to the police station.

This Bed We Made is an enthralling mystery with an unusual protagonist, brought to life by convincingly detailed graphics and excellent voice acting.

Riven is a remake that stays true to the original. While the breathtaking world and visuals adeptly draw you in, the initial obscurity of the story and puzzle complexity may eventually push you away from full engagement. Still, for those who have played and enjoyed the original, this is an excellent dive back into a spectacular world, and an opportunity to see how Cyan Worlds has enriched the original vision.

This isn’t a situation where one forces oneself to slog through Moby Dick because it’s a “classic”; The Secret of Monkey Island is still as fun as any other game you’ll play this year, and probably significantly more so, and everyone who loves adventure games should experience it at least once.

It may not be quite as good as the others, but it's still required gaming for the Layton-obsessed, and a high recommendation for anyone who loves puzzles.

Devotion’s tale of fractured memories and buried secrets provides a dark, compelling look into the depths of human frailty and desperation. It doesn’t quite reach the heights its developer achieved with Detention, but it’s a well-crafted first-person journey to a strange and unexpected place.

Although the quality of immersion is excellent, it is somewhat transient, no doubt leaving many feeling short-changed. In the end, though, the intrigue and originality of the story make it a very important adventure game for all fans of the genre.

Chants of Sennaar meets the highest standards due to its finely crafted, original and addictive language-learning gameplay, and also its beautifully honed graphics and sonics. It’s a distinctively French feast for the eyes, ears and brain.

A quality adventure game even though the restyling of the old locations on Mêlée Island and Monkey Island is a bit of a mixed bag. The ending is long, satisfying and almost as disturbingly weird.

A masterly remastering of the LucasArts classic. If you haven’t yet contended with Earth’s vilest extremity, it’s time to finally embrace the Day of the Tentacle.

Bursting at the seams with challenging puzzles and thought-provoking science fiction, The Talos Principle is a philosophically-minded first-person puzzler that’s well worth your time.

Ultimately, What's New Beelzebub? is an overwhelmingly ambitious game that never stops for a breath, and by the end of the strange journey it nearly collapses under its own comedic weight and the strain of throwing every bizarre scenario and creative re-use of supporting characters at the wall.

Paradigm is a uniquely creative blend of art, music and consistently humorous gameplay. It’s an absurdist adventure like no other, and one that’s earned its place among the classics.

Uniformly excellent writing, acting, and audio-visual presentation of an ancient Roman city and its imminently doomed citizens make The Forgotten City a mystery well worth solving—and the clever time-looping mechanics make your investigation a lot of fun.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys the rush of simulated terror, follow the developer's advice: wait until sundown, put on some headphones, and start up Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Though the inclusion of repetitive mini-games is anything but evolutionary, this game is well worth a look for those who can handle some reflex action in their adventures.

Chariots of the Dogs sucked me in and completely immersed me with the joy that comes from playing a special adventure game.

That aside, this is the best time I've had with an adventure game – 2D or 3D, big or small budget – this year. With an original charm all its own, Machinarium is a real winner and an instant classic.

Hats off to Telltale for not resting on their laurels with The Wolf Among Us, but stepping out and creating a new adventure series that is shaping up to be brilliantly bleak and gritty but joyously fun.

A Space for the Unbound is an example of an adventure story that will have the surprising and far-reaching power to move most people, whether or not they enjoy the ride the gameplay presents. It will particularly appeal to those players who have a fondness for the 16-bit console era, and those who like cats!

While I'm prepared to recommend Professor Layton and the Curious Village wholeheartedly, it does come with a serious caution about expectations. If you're looking for a well-rounded adventure with plenty of exploration and a fully-integrated storyline, you simply won't find it here.

The freedom of choice is more illusory this time around, but Long Road Ahead still delivers tremendous emotional blows throughout its increasingly compelling story.

Torn Away is the harrowing story of a child’s journey home from a labor camp during World War II, and every aspect of the game combines to present a bold and affecting narrative.

STASIS: BONE TOTEM is a frightfully entertaining adventure with a story that carefully blends sacred elements with a dreadful atmosphere while drawing the player into challenges that are not overly difficult. If you are a horror fan or an open-minded gamer curious about the game’s unusual themes, this is an easy recommendation.

The Last Door opens up another suspenseful, extremely retro-styled exploration of Victorian England and the occult with a second season even better than the first.

The game box touts 20+ hours of gameplay; for their target audience of preteen girls, I am sure this is true, but experienced gamers will finish it in significantly less time. Aside from that though, this game was still very enjoyable to play.

Embracelet doesn’t offer much challenge, it’s a welcome change of pace from the norm, and the simplicity of its gameplay and beautiful low-poly presentation nicely serve an elegantly told, astoundingly good story.

For those who won’t be deterred by the endless deaths and time-looped backtracking in Outer Wilds, its intriguing mystery and non-linear exploration of an entire solar system will be a novel and deeply engaging experience.

Papers, Please is anything but a standard adventure, but beneath the seemingly unappealing premise of bureaucratic drudgery and human misery lies a fascinating game of choices, surprises, and intrigue.

A slightly above average sci-fi adventure; recommended for those who don't mind slideshow adventures.

Starved for Help more than fulfills the high expectations set for it, maintaining the tense immersion and bold story development of its predecessor.

Without question, Rakuen is an ambitious indie endeavor and I admired many aspects of it—the Boy’s authentic child-like wonder in the face of real human tragedy, the funny and endearing inhabitants of Morizora Forest, and the mystery surrounding the Boy’s hospital stay, to name a few. But my dissatisfaction with the puzzles and ending make the game difficult to wholeheartedly recommend. It really comes down to what kind of game you’re in the mood for. If you want a game that’s mostly story, then the number and type of puzzles in Rakuen will likely turn you off. If you’re looking for more of a story-puzzle balance regardless of how well the two are integrated, you’ll probably have a better time with Rakuen than I did. And if you’re in the mood for a game to make you cry—well, this one will, I guarantee it. I just can’t promise it’ll be the catharsis you’re looking for.

In The Case of the Golden Idol, the mystery-solving is quite engaging up to a point. But overall, the narrative is frustratingly executed and the presentation is unremarkable.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 is a beautiful story with characters who are easy to care for. It’s a promising start to an adventure that already feels unique, yet unfortunately isn’t willing to challenge the emotions of its players.

Gorogoa is a clever, well-balanced tile-based puzzler that shines through its visual illusions. If you’re seeking an innovative game with unique brain-teasers and gorgeous graphics, this game is for you.

Its limitations still show, but with a longer, funnier, and even wackier story, Time Gentlemen, Please! is an admirable follow-up to its freeware predecessor and well worth the small fee for people who've played the first game.

Stacking mixes inventive gameplay with a charming visual style to produce an outstanding puzzle-adventure.

Either way, for puzzle fans it’s a brilliant way to spend your time, and so long as you’re playing, that’s really all that matters.

The Bulb Boy’s brief but brilliant battle to reclaim his home from the hideous monsters of the night underscores the proverbial victory of light over darkness, and quality over quantity.

Gerda: A Flame in Winter is an unforgettable adventure. Its compelling graphics and evocative music provide a backdrop for a powerful World War II narrative, which builds to an unusually suspenseful finale.

Lair of Clockwork God blends adventure and platforming to mixed effect, but it’s a very accomplished game overall, bursting with enough variety, style and humour to keep you surprised and entertained throughout its surprisingly generous play time.

SOMA is both great horror and great science fiction that stands above the competition in a crowded genre.

An engrossing tale rooted in superb writing, The Night is Grey brings thrills and chills to life with plausible, well-integrated puzzles, evocative music and ominously compelling visuals.

Whilst Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is a great visual improvement on the original, an unequivocal recommendation for what is essentially a graphical update doesn’t really fit our rating system – especially not when certain other areas of the game could have been improved upon.

With the same charming aesthetic and just as many laughs and quirky paranormal phenomena as the first season, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark is definitely worth playing for the comedically inclined.

Though the inclusion of repetitive mini-games is anything but evolutionary, this game is well worth a look for those who can handle some reflex action in their adventures.

In Grim Fandango Remastered, one of the best games of all time has been resurrected for modern audiences. It’s still a classic, and it absolutely belongs on every gamer’s (digital) shelf.

An incredible game that takes all the best parts of how classic adventures used to be made and then adds so much more to ensure it stands up to today’s standards. Thimbleweed Park is a gem that will be remembered for at least another 30 years.

With classic zaniness and puzzle solving and updated production values, Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space marries the best of the old with the new in this modern remaster.

A grander take on Her Story‘s FMV database search idea, Telling Lies proves Sam Barlow is still the master of the carefully crafted reveal, even if at times this particular web of deceit unravels a little too slowly.

It’s been a crazy up-and-down season, but the conclusion of The Wolf Among Us is a visceral, stylishly violent adventure in Bill Willingham’s brilliant Fabletown at heart, with some great storytelling aptitude to close things out.

Detective Grimoire breathes some new life into the investigation/visual novel sub-genre with its compelling setting, characters and humour, undermined only by puzzles that are nowhere as enjoyable as the rest of the game.

Detention is a marvel of sight, sound, gameplay and storytelling; a highly atmospheric horror adventure that manages to accomplish more in its short playtime than some games twice its length.

Having come up with an intriguing premise, it would have been all too easy for Capcom to cut corners beyond that, relying on the gimmick alone to garner sales. Thankfully, that is definitely not the case with Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, which is a quality piece of work at every level.

Sometimes awkward but sometimes brilliant, Life Is Strange brings a fresh new perspective to episodic, choice-driven storytelling.

This Monty Python-inspired puzzler has a great sense of humor, generally fun puzzles, and a clever collage presentation. If you’re a fan of absurdist send-ups of religion, Four Last Things should be number one on your list of games to play next.

The time, thought and care put into bringing Papetura to life is obvious on every screen of this short but very sweet journey through a vibrant papercrafted world.

The Blackwell Epiphany is very polished and at times packs a real emotional punch, sending the series out on a high.

An English Haunting is a memorable experience, revealing an intricate, gripping story, elaborate and varied locations, plus stimulating puzzles that are not mind-bogglingly difficult.

Danganronpa 2 is a sequel adhering to the motto, Don’t change, just improve. Some of the same problem areas are still present, but much has been smoothed out or enhanced for a superior entry over what was already a good first effort.

This game is so good that if I taught a class on interactive fiction I would use it as my example of how to create a great quality game.