You may think that when I say "Adventure Game" I'm talking about something like Zelda but I'm not, game overs in those games when you run out of HP or whatever make total and perfect sense. When I say adventure I'm talking of mainly the point and click variety when referring to western games or alternatively what the Japanese refer to as "adventure games" which is what us filthy gaijin would call "Visual novels", for the most part
This is the google image result for googling "adventure game" in Japanese, just so you know I'm not talking completely out of my arse.
The point and click adventure, Monkey Island for example, is a mostly dead genre in 2022 but is an often fondly remembered genre from people who grew up playing PC games on Windows 98 and earlier. For example a while ago I played Beneath a Steel Sky on Good Old Games and while it was a charming little game that I enjoyed playing overall, you can be hit with a game over screen if you move into the wrong place or click the wrong thing.
Probably implemented to stop the usual point and click strategy of "rub everything on everything" but annoying nonetheless when you haven't saved for a while and your curiosity decides to screw you over. Usually in these games though you can save whenever you want so its more of a mild annoyance than anything else.
What I'm mainly talking about, and what prompted this post, are game overs in Japanese style adventure games, mainly the one at the top of the article called Twilight Syndrome: Investigations. In this game you play as a group of 3 school girls investigating various rumors and spooky happenings and for the first 2 chapters its fairly basic stuff. But when you get to the third chapter, there are a number of points where you can make an incorrect decision and be hit with a big fat game over. This, at first, seems fine, but then you realize that the game has no dialogue skip, no mid-chapter select, no way to speed anything up. If you game over you have to start the ENTIRE THING from the start and sometime the bad decision can be made right at the end of a chapter so if you fall upon that you have to watch the WHOLE THING play out again.
For example, in the third chapter, there is a bit where one of the girls gets possessed by a ghost and you get the decision to run away or try and help her. If you run away, you game over and if you help her the story continues. I picked the run away option when I was streaming the game to see what happens and wasn't really surprised when the game punished me for just abandoning members of the main cast. But later on you are hit with a similar decision after making a phone call but if you fuck up the phone call, a murderous teacher comes along and ends you. The problem is that there's no real way to know HOW you fucked up the call when you do. There are multiple, 3 choice questions at multiple points in the conversation and its not obvious which one leads to death and which one leads to the story continuing. This call is also at the end of the chapter so fucking it up means you have to slowly watch the entire thing play out all over again and its tedious as all fuck.
Its not like this in all adventure games thankfully. Kamaitachi no Yoru (on PS1 and 2 at least) as a "story branch" thing where you can select specific scenes and text boxes to jump around the game. So if you picked an option that you think lead to your death, then you can quickly go back to that exact choice and try the other path. Why Human Entertainment decided that I have to re-read the entire fucking game for a single bad choice is absolutely baffling.
Basically, Twilight Syndrome pissed me off and I wanted to have a cry about it. Despite these annoyances the Syndrome games, Beneath a Steel Sky and most other games that fall under the umbrella of this genre are actually really good so go play them.
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