Adventure Game

It does what It says on the tin

Nick loves the obscure, so he was always going to enjoy this quirky Net Yaroze game

» Playstation » 1999 » Robert Swan it’s no secret that for most readers, the highlight of the Official UK Playstation Magazine was its monthly demo disc. Not only was it a great way to sample upcoming releases, in later issues it began to carry memory card saves for popular games and even ‘goal of the month’ videos, giving a nice community feel in the days before widespread internet access. However, I always loved the Net Yaroze games the most. These were amateur games made by bedroom coders, and although they usually weren’t as graphically polished as retail games they were often quite interesting – and some games like Total Soccer and Time Slip were really very good.

My favourite of the lot was Adventure Game. With a full 3D world and multiple scenes, it was certainly one of the most ambitious Yaroze games, and there was an actual quest to complete (although I’d wager few people did, as it was bloody hard). But it was also a bit crap, in the best kind of way. The enemy birds had two frames of animation, the characters are completely untextured and combat system consists of a single sword thrust attack. Robert Swan clearly knew this and decided to lean into it, as his hero poked fun at the game’s technical shortcomings, as well as dreadful RPG tropes and even the dodgy translation of Terra Incognita, another Yaroze game.

Of course, the last laugh went to Robert Swan – he ended up with a job at Sony, working on games like This Is Football.