For me, the last few years really turned out to be the years of computer games. Previously, I simply didn’t have enough time or motivation to play a lot, but in Autumn 2022 I was finally able to upgrade the big computer with a “new” graphics card, prompted of course by the release of Return to Monkey Island. Two-ish years and one fried and replaced graphics card later I still only managed to write a short post about Guybrush’s newest outing – but all I can say for now is that I absolutely loved it and it was one of the best new adventures I’ve played in a long time.

The new Monkey Island was not the only game I played in the last few years by far, though! I went through a mix of old and new(er) games, especially after I was able to try out a lot of games which had been pillng up. Since Epic, Amazon and even GOG have been giving away free games like crazy and even the Humble Bundle is sometimes great for discounts, there has been no shortage and while the majority are not very interesting to me, there were still some good ones. Most of the games mentioned in this article were actually new purchases, though!

The first surprise of the last few years was No Man’s Sky. I originally got it when it was on sale a long time ago but I had only been able to run it with the new graphics card. This particular space exploration game was much criticized when it was first released but the open-world concept always fascinated me and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Less complicated than Elite Dangerous or even Astroneer (which I’ve been playing on and off for a while now too) and with more instructions for the player, No Man’s Sky turned out to be the perfect relaxing planet and space exploration game for me.

The Humble Bundle had a WadjetEye collection on offer a while ago with more than a dozen point & click adventures of the studio which I’ve never played before and of course I coudn’t resist. Story-wise those are not really my usual taste, going somewhat into the supernatural and horror genre, but I found the Blackwell series very interesting and I’ve already played well into the fourth game. Together with the same bundle I also got the new The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow which I had heard about a lot. It’s also an amazing if very moody pixel-art adventure with wonderful graphics, sound and voice acting. 

The sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky, the 1994 post-modern dystopian adventure by Charles Cecil’s Revolution Games who later created the Broken Sword series, also finally appeared on my radar four years after its release. I wasn’t really sure about Beyond a Steel Sky but when I got it in a Humble Bundle I couldn’t really resist giving it a try and was surprised. The story may be rather dystopian but has the same quirkyness as the original and the jump from pixel art to cel-shaded 3D graphics is nothing short of amazing. I still haven’t finished it but I enjoyed it a lot. 

I’ve also played the remastered Broken Sword Reforged after waiting for it to go on sale and I was not disappointed. Very wisely Charles Cecil have refrained from completely remaking it in 3D and have instead “only” remastered the graphics in the same way Lucasarts had done with some of their classic adventures. The already wonderful background graphics, formerly in 640×400 VGA resolution, were re-scanned or re-created, but not simply upscaled. The result is magnificent – the game has never looked better and even the original animations and movies were completely redone in high definition. Under the hood it’s still the original – the previous “Director’s Cut” with some added superfluous sequences containing weaker puzzles was thankfully discarded. Barrington Pheloung’s magnificent music was also re-recorded in much better quality. This ‘reforged’ edition could not have been better done and the overwhelmingly positive response and good sales have led to a remastered version of the second entry too – which I have not yet played because of its high price, but once it’s on sale I’ll get it too, of course! 

Around Christmas a couple of years ago, I found another nice adventure on Mastodon I never heard about: Zniw Adventure, a lovely funny retro-adventure with Dinosaurs and hand-painted cartoon graphics! A sequel called Zid Journey from the Polish creators is also in development with a demo already available. I ended up playing the original game a lot around Christmas and I really fell in love with the wonderful graphics and while it doesn’t have any voices, the humour is wonderful and the music is amazing.

I also played the pixel-art adventure Lucy Dreaming, which was recommended a lot for fans of Lucasarts games. I was skeptical but the recommendations were absolutely right – the british Tall Story Games wife-and-husband team successfully mixed the quirky humour of the classics with a British stiff upper lip and created one of the most unique and memorable new adventures. They are also working on a full version of Heir of the Dog, which was originally made as a short game for a competition but now will be a full-length adventure with a demo already available.

Another new adventure I actually bought quite recently is Loco Motive, a train murder mystery in the style of Monkey Island meets Murder on the Orient Express. It’s a lot of fun to play with its wonderfully designed pixel graphcics, a funny story with great characters and even fantastic voices and music. It’s all what a LucasArts adventure once was thirty years ago, a continuation of a wonderful tradition. It was an absolute joy from beginning to end and I think sooner or later I will play it again. This game especially got me through a hard year!

The Great Lucasfilm Adventure Rerun also continued! I made my way from Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken all the way to the last Monkey Island and while I left some out, I caught up with them early this year. I even finished The Dig again but it was a bit of a slog – the only epic science-fiction adventure from LucasArts has a great atmosphere, but suffers from its troubled development history. Lazy and annpying puzzles and a somewhat annoying story make this one maybe the only LucasArts adventure that is hard to get through. As a palate cleanser, I’ve replayed the remastered versions of Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango and maybe I’ll even get to finish Full Throttle someday, the only one I’ve never completed.

And yes, I’ve even played the new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a little bit courtesy of Amazon Luna, where it’s available when you have Prime. I would never have been able to run it on my own computers, but Amazon’s game streaming service actually works very well and you can even run it on a Fire Stick! The game itself is visually amazing, almost a little too good, but since it was made by Bethesda it has the uncanny feeling that it’s basically Fallout with an Indiana Jones mod. Becuase I have some motion sickness related problems with 3D games like this, I haven’t progressed too far into the game yet and it already got somewhat boring running around and always fighting NPCs while the story does not seem to be too important. At least they managed to get good voice actors and the beginning with its recreation of the Raiders of the Lost Ark opener is very impressive. The 3D-ness is a bit too much for me though and I’m wondering how great this game could have been as a traditional point and click adventure.  

Except the Adventures, I always play a game of Civilization now and then. The seventh entry has now also been released and while I have played the fifth and sixth versions, I always seem to go back to Civilization V or even IV because there is just too much micro-managing and other unnecessary complicated stuff in VI. The fifth incarnation also has the advantage of still running even on my smallest laptop comfortably. Once in a while, I even love to fire up the MS-DOS version of the original 1991 Civilization, which is, of course, much more primitive than the later versions but still plays wonderfully even today. Considering that I even originally played it on my Commodore Amiga with 1 Megabytes of RAM and an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor, it’s pretty impressive. Next to the original Sim City and some of its slightly newer versions it’s still my favourite strategy simulation.

Last but not least, the only other non-adventure of my recent gaming exploits is, even to my big surprise, Minecraft. I’ve tried it several times before but always had to stop because I was suffering from really bad motion sickness after playing only for a few minutes. That problem still hasn’t completely gone away, but thanks to a few settings like reducing the field of view and decreasing the mouse sensitivity, I can now play a bit longer and for the first time I’m trying to find my way around the blocky world. I probably would never have started again if it wasn’t for Cosmoquest – our group of citizen scientists has its own Minecraft server and when the regulars started building a whole university completely from scratch, I requested access to the server for the first time and at least had a little look around. I haven’t built anything yet because I feel like I still need to practice a bit locally, but once I figure out everything beyond the basics, I will probably create myself a little space in a nice corner of the server.

I’ve had this article in my drafts for almost three years and maybe it shows – but now it’s time to finally publish it. I actually took a few parts out for other articles like simulation games and other ideas, so there might be new articles coming in 2026. For now I hope you’ve enjoyed the little journey through my own personal gaming world! – Guido, Berlin, December 2025.