2006 Quest / Adventure / Platform Game of the Year

While there are those who stick to a single strict definition of adventure games, Game Tunnel groups classic adventure games with Platform games as well as action titles that devote a lot of time to the story and adventure.

As in years past, this category serves up some great games that go beyond your typical non-stop action and provide an experience unlike any other. These games stand out as some of the top games of the year.

5th Place - Dirk Dashing

Developer: My Game Company		Players: 1
Website
System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP -or- Linux

Dirk Dashing is a very cool hero. He most certainly owes some of his inspiration to James Bond, as does this game, which has the cool music and feel of the old spy movies of the 60s.

Hand-painted backgrounds set on a multi-plane scroll make for gorgeous backdrops as player's guide Dirk throughout villages, mines and the outdoors.

Dirk Dashing is a classic platformer at heart and has more secrets hidden in its walls than any player will ever have time to discover.

Armed with grenades that put guards, dogs and other enemies to sleep, Dirk is completely devoid of blood, which may make the game appealing to a wider audience. Cool gadgets and the retro joy of perfectly timed jumps through perilous quarters create an adventure that is both memorable and fun.

4th Place - Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso

Developer: 720 Games/Juniper Games		Players: 1
Website
System Requirements: Windows 2000/ME/XP, 1.8 GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 32 MB video card, DirectX 8+

The whacked out story here is about an invasive alien race called the Goragons. They’re bent on controlling Earth, ruining reality as we know it, and capturing everything that could pose a threat to their despotic rule. During this process Mr. Smoozles is turned into a crazy nut-job by the Goragons Mind-ray. Reluctantly, and questionably, a gray cat named Ed must avoid being killed by Mr. Smoozles while attempting to save him (Smoozles) and also rescue his friends. ...Oh yeah, and Ed also has to stop reality from being over-turned into a disastrous dimension and prevent the aliens from ruling Earth. Big job for a small cat, eh?

Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso is a game that is adequately self-absorbed enough to be funny. The characters are colorful and the plot is witty; the game doesn’t take itself too seriously, and this allows for players to care and become more immersed. Each character is also riddled with an unmistakable personality that does shine through during the visual comic-strips and in-game interaction scenes.

Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso is the kind of game that should satisfy the waking hours of any gamer who enjoys the strategy and scavenging from classic point-and-click titles, but wants something with a bit more interactivity and driven action. The witty dialogue and near-random chasing from Mr. Smoozles just might be what gamers are looking for in an alternative adventure title.

3rd Place - The Shivah

Developer: Wadjet Eye Games		Players: 1
Website
System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP

The Shivah stands out as an experience totally unlike anything you've played in a game before. Playing as a Rabbi having a crisis of faith, players unravel a mystery regarding the death of a former member of the Rabbi's synagogue.

The storyline itself is very compelling, but the game play and the sound in the game are the real reasons this game gets such high marks and has been mentioned all over the internet.

All the dialogue in the game has been voice acted. It hasn't been casually done either. The quality of the acting brings players in the door and keeps them on the edge of their seats as each piece of the story unfolds before them.

Game play occurs in typical point-and-click adventure game style with the player clicking, often randomly, to interact with objects. However, interactions with characters in the game are successful only if they follow rabbinical conversation methods, which in and of itself makes the game both original and unique. At $5 it is cheaper than seeing a movie (or even renting one in most places) and it is far more gripping than any of this year's so-called summer blockbusters.

2nd Place - Dawnspire: Prelude

Developer: Silent Grove Studios		Players: 16
Website
System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP, 2 GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c+, 128MB Video Card with Pixel Shader 2.0

Dawnspire: Prelude is unfortunately often mis-categorized as a MMORPG. Clearly the people who label the game as such need to start playing games before they try to categorize them.

If they did they would find that not only is Dawnspire NOT a MMORPG, it's not even an RPG. What is Dawnspire? Well it is fun, really fun, and maybe that should just be the rating as well as the category.

If you had to categorize it you would probably put it somewhere in the Action/Strategy/Adventure department depending on what part of the game you focused on.

Dawnspire plays a bit like Counter-strike. It is a team-based game of capture and keep the relics set in a fantasy world. Each player creates a character, choosing from one of the five character classes, and then divides skill points out among the various skills, giving their character special abilities. The abilities available vary based on the character class and include offensive and defensive abilities similar to those you'd find in an RPG, with abilities such as healing and resurrection thrown in for good measure.

Ah, you say. Sounds like an RPG. However, in this game you never level up. Your character never gains more points or becomes more powerful. You can reassign your skill points to try different combinations of skills, but you can't ever create a character more powerful than the one you first started with. In essence, Dawnspire is an multiplayer PvP action game with very customizable character selection.

Once players have the slightly quirky player movement down they'll be amazed at how intense and fun team combat is. Players can infinitely respawn, after a short waiting period, which puts the focus of the confrontations on more strategic play.

Team play is absolutely crucial to winning. Small groups of 3 or more can be quite effective, but players who try to go it alone will quickly find that they are dieing all the time. The required team interplay makes the game rather social in a frantic "can't stop and chat for a minute or you'll lose the game" sort of way. It's a mix that works extremely well and makes for fun short games that are exciting and eventful.

Dawnspire is an interesting mix of its own ideas about character creation in a fantasy world and intense moments of battle that are similar to those that so many people look forward to in MMORPGs, without the character leveling that creates a barrier between veterans and newbies. With 5 free hours to test it out before having to dish out the low one-time fee of $14.95 it's an experience everyone can appreciate.

2006 Adventure/Quest Game of the Year - Gumboy Crazy Adventures

Developer: Cinemax		Players: 1
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP, DirectX 8.0+, 1 GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB Video Card

Gumboy Crazy Adventures is, as the name would seem to imply, very quirky. In Gumboy, the gamer takes control of a small creature that, frankly, is hard to categorize.

He's a ball, and he's smooshy and resilient like a ball of gum, but is drawn so it looks as if he has a scaled and armored top. Suffice it to say, he's unique. The gamer rolls Gumboy around each level using the arrow keys or gamepad and uses momentum and the angles of the level to propel Gumboy through various obstacles. There is the occasional power-up to help move things along, but the basic principle is the use of speed and the environment to propel the action.

Gumboy isn't always a ball of gum, though. In some levels (and with some power-ups), he can begin as a square or a star, changing the way he moves through the environment. In each of these forms, Gumboy can also become an air or a water version of himself. With each variant, Gumboy moves through those spaces as well as he used to do along the ground, but he must now avoid sharp outcroppings, lest he be popped.

Playing Gumboy is like playing through a work of beautiful fantasy art. All of the levels have a wonderfully intricate look that feels hand-drawn. Leaves are drawn with detailing that includes their creases and cracks. Each level is simply a joy to behold and must have taken an artist a very long time to render into the game. The graphics are a huge highlight of Gumboy Crazy Adventures. The art is intricate and vibrant. The lighting and particle effects in the game are top notch as well. All the graphical effects are a joy to look at. Pushing fairy dust around in the early levels is an especially fun effect, taking good advantage of both the game's physics and its lighting.

The objectives in Gumboy are as nebulous, vague and intriguing as the game itself. The game as a whole has the feel of being a foreign product ported to the states. There's no real explanation as to what Gumboy is or why we guide him around, but part of the spirit of the game is that we shouldn't care.

Mostly, Gumboy rolls through levels activating events by rolling into and over items and checkpoints. He seems to be doing all this as the agent of mystical creatures that dwell in the environments he travels through. A forest elf needs fairy dust collected and brought to him, a tree spirit is missing his little bean pet, etc. Gumboy, without arms or legs, transports these objects around levels by, essentially, becoming repellent. Gumboy picks up a power-up that creates a repulsing field around him. Using this field, Gumboy pushes objects around a level, and returns them to their caretakers.

Which brings us to the physics and controls in the game. Everything has a lot of bounce in Gumboy, including the protagonist himself. When Gumboy is rolling, the way he speeds through the levels and careens off the environment is reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog. Where Gumboy runs (rolls) into problems is that it requires a fair degree of precision inside of a control scheme made to be loose. Nailing down the exact speed and angle that Gumboy needs to hit an object or bounce off a ledge can, at times, be frustrating. Thankfully, the game is very forgiving and the gamer will get as much time as they need to finish a task.

Gumboy is a stellar title, with great visuals, quirky sound and an endearing premise. It is a game that is equally unique and innovative as the oft-compared Gish. Gumboy is the kind of game that really shows what independent games are all about, it's a game that every gamer should spend hours getting to know better. Those who do will be rewarded with a unique experience that rolled away with our award for Adventure Game of the Year.

Adventure Game of the Year Award History

History:
2006 - Gumboy Crazy Adventures
2005 - Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space
2004 - Gish
2003 - Starscape

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By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Tuesday December 19, 2006