u/Interesting_Bowl_238

Servant of the Lake, the new Rusty Lake game, is out, and I got to play it ahead of release. I put together a full spoiler-free video review. 

The setup: you take a servant job at the Vanderboom mansion and have to make it through three days of household chores. Laundry, setting the table... and the odd alchemical experiment. It works as a prequel set decades before Rusty Lake: Roots, so there's plenty here for anyone who's been piecing the universe together for years. 

The review covers structure, characters, puzzles, art direction and soundtrack, plus where I'd rank it within the series. 

Video is in Spanish with subtitles in several languages. 

Anyone played it yet? Where would you rank it?

SCUMM usually gets mentioned in passing around here — the thing that put the verb list at the bottom of the screen. But the engine had a whole life of its own.

LucasFilm Games built it in 1987 for Maniac Mansion, and almost every game after that pushed it somewhere new: the interface shrinking release by release, Loom dropping verbs altogether, Monkey Island 2 and Fate of Atlantis stretching how much it could hold, Full Throttle and The Dig moving toward context-sensitive cursors, and Curse closing out the LucasArts era in 1997. Humongous Entertainment then kept it running quietly for years in a completely different corner of the market.

I spent a good while pulling all of that into a single documentary: what SCUMM actually was, how it worked, and why it's still a reference more than thirty years later. It runs about half an hour, it's in Spanish, but there are subtitles in several languages.

https://youtu.be/Fy1bAqHskzQ

Curious what this sub thinks — do you miss the verb interface, or were the games better off once it started disappearing?

At Mysterium 2026, Cyan Worlds confirmed they're developing a new game set in the Myst universe, codenamed "Mudfish". Very early stage, but it would be the first original story in the series since Myst V: End of Ages in 2005.

They also released the trailer for Project Anglerfish, an Unreal Engine 5 prototype built solely to show publishers. It didn't move forward, and they've put it out anyway.

Plus: physical editions of the remakes, hardcover reissues of the novels, and Mysterium 2027 in Spokane for the studio's 40th anniversary.

What are you hoping for from a new Age?

I cover all of it here, including what happened at Cyan back in 2005. In Spanish, with subtitles in several languages: https://youtu.be/4Z_wz8jPi1Q

August brings 19 adventure game releases, so much for the quiet month.

The highlights for me: Creepshow finally gets a playable adaptation, Rusty Lake returns with Servant of the Lake, and on the 31st Dark Dome Studios drops nine games at once.

I went through all of them with dates, platforms and language support.

Video's in Spanish with multilingual subtitles.

Anything here catching your eye?

I got to play The Silver Crow ahead of its July 30th release and put together a full spoiler-free video review.

The premise really caught my attention: it's a point & click set in Franconia in 1582, but instead of playing the usual detective, you're the town executioner. An outcast everyone fears, and precisely for that reason he gets into places nobody else could. It's made entirely by one person, Uwe Sittig, who hadn't released anything since Dirty Split back in 2008.

The review covers narrative, characters, puzzles and art direction, where I'm fairly critical: the backgrounds are AI-generated and the clash with the sprites is very noticeable.

Video is in Spanish with subtitles in several languages.

Anyone planning to pick it up? And what do you make of AI-generated backgrounds in one-person indie projects?

With Sony's announcement that they'll stop producing discs in 2028, I started thinking about a corner of this hobby almost nobody talks about: there are graphic and narrative adventures whose only physical release ever was a PlayStation disc. No boxed PC copy, no Switch cart, no Xbox case. If that disc goes, the only physical version that ever existed goes with it.

And the deeper I dug, the more the list surprised me: from well-known interactive dramas to Japanese gems that never even left Japan.

So before anything else, let's talk: are you mostly a PC adventure player, or do you collect physical too? Can you think of any adventure that only ever got a physical edition on PlayStation and nowhere else? Curious how many slipped past me.

I ended up putting together a video essay with everything I found (I'll drop it in the comments in case anyone's interested), but I'm more here for your takes on this.

(English subtitles included, by the way.)

The Steam Summer Sale is here, so I combed through the catalogue with five strict filters: point & click only, well-rated, and at least 80% off. Sixteen made the cut, and most of them fly way under the radar.

There's a twist this time: I'm buying all of them, and you decide which one I play first on the channel. There's an anonymous poll to vote.

From the rowdiest comedy to the most unsettling horror, with some art and mystery along the way.

Subtitles available in several languages.

Which one would you have grabbed?

Si junio fue el mes de los grandes nombres, julio es el del misterio en estado puro. Detectives, forenses, escape rooms espaciales, brujería, un submarino imposible y hasta dinosaurios.

Y como plato fuerte, vuelve una secuela de culto que llevábamos 11 años esperando: terror surrealista, pesadillas hechas arte, de esas que se te quedan dentro.

He hecho la criba con la docena de lanzamientos del mes, varios de ellos de estudios muy queridos por la afición.

¿Cuál se va directo a vuestra lista de deseados?

Back in 1989, at the height of Japan's economic boom, a Japanese studio (Wolf Team, the folks who'd later kick off the Tales of series) decided to pay tribute to Barcelona and Gaudí with a text-based adventure. A noir thriller set in the city during the '92 Olympics, with the Sagrada Familia, Casa Batlló and Park Güell all digitized.

It never left Japan. And now Shinyuden is rescuing it: reverse-engineering the original code and translating it into Spanish, Catalan and English.

I sat down with Luis García Navarro, the studio's CEO, to talk about how you bring a lost gem like this back to life.

Subtitles available in several languages.

Did you even know it existed?

Phonopolis just came out a few weeks ago — the new one from Amanita Design (the Machinarium and Samorost folks), and it's their first 3D adventure: a dystopian city built entirely out of hand-painted cardboard.

The premise is pure Orwell with a Czech accent: a city ruled by a Leader who controls its citizens through loudspeakers, and a humble garbage collector who, almost by accident, becomes the only one who realizes what's coming.

The art direction alone makes it worth a look.

Subtitles available in several languages.

Got it on your radar?

The final video in the Summer Game Fest series, wrapping up the events I still had left: Wholesome Direct, Frosty Games Fest, Ñ3, PC Gaming Show and a few more.

As always, I sat through hours of trailers to leave you only our kind of thing: point & click, visual novels, narrative games and the odd charming oddity.

In total, 64 games and one DLC pulled from hundreds upon hundreds of announcements.

Which was your favorite from the whole special?

Subtitles available in several languages.

El No E3 2026 entra en su recta fuerte con el Summer Game Fest. Como siempre, me he tragado los tráilers de cuatro eventos para que tú no tengas que hacerlo.

He filtrado 18 aventuras y juegos narrativos que merecen un hueco en el radar: point & click, novelas visuales, terror de investigación y alguna rareza de las encantadoras.

Y me guardo para el final un anuncio del Summer Game Fest que muchos llevábamos años esperando. Ese no lo destripo aquí.

¿Cuál cae el día de salida?

No E3 2026 keeps rolling. Covered three more events and, out of the avalanche of announcements, pulled out the 17 indie narrative games worth keeping on your radar.

All condensed into one no-fluff cut, just our thing (point & click, visual novels and narrative adventures).

Subtitles available in several languages.

Any of these catching your eye?

El Midsummer Night's Scream pasó hace unos días con más de cien juegos en algo más de dos horas. Imposible verlo entero con un mínimo de atención.

He hecho la criba y me he quedado con los doce que encajan con lo nuestro: point & click, novelas visuales y aventuras narrativas. Hay para todos los gustos: terror cósmico, distopía surrealista, cuentos clásicos pasados por la batidora más sangrienta, Japón feudal y hasta el Infierno dantesco en primera persona.

¿Alguno os llama ya la atención?

Después del mayo más cargado del año, junio cambia el tono: menos cantidad, pero nombres con muchísimo peso. Y uno de los grandes clásicos del género vuelve de entre los muertos, reconstruido desde cero.

He repasado diez lanzamientos del mes: terror psicológico, FMV con factura de cine, un point & click con un giro de jugabilidad muy curioso, y alguna joya pequeñita escondida.

¿Cuál tenéis ya en la lista de deseados?

One cover painted in oil. Another by an Oscar winner. Another that looks signed by the man behind the Star Wars posters. And two more I'm not going to spoil.

Put together a personal top 5 with five adventure game covers signed by illustrators who are absolute legends of their craft — not just inside the videogame medium. Worth noting: cover quality and game quality don't always go hand in hand.

There are masterpieces with bland covers, and forgettable games with museum-grade artwork.

Subtitles available in several languages.

What's yours? The one that made you walk into a store and walk out with the game tucked under your arm without thinking twice.

Vuelvo de Retro Barcelona 2026 con la mochila bastante más cargada de lo que tenía pensado. Hubo big boxes de los noventa que pensaba que no vería en la vida y alguna joya que llevaba años persiguiendo.

He recopilado el recorrido por los stands más interesantes en un vídeo, con un bonus que merece la pena si os van las aventuras gráficas clásicas.

¿Os pasasteis por la feria? ¿Algún pillaje del que estéis orgullosos?

Luna's Room releases on May 14 — a Spanish indie point & click by DonutDroid that runs about an hour.

What starts as the story of a young girl locked in a room with her cat (who suddenly starts talking) ends up somewhere much darker than you'd expect.

Put together a review covering everything worth knowing without spoiling it. Small game, sure, but it stays with you.

Subtitles available in several languages.

Toonstruck turns thirty this very year, and few adventure games have a backstory as fascinating as this one. And sadder than it looks at first glance.

Put together an in-depth analysis: what the game is, what it was supposed to be, and why it lands better in 2026 than it did in 1996.

Subtitles available in several languages.

Did anyone play it back in the day?