Today has brought some saddening news: QuandaryLand is no more!
QuandaryLand was an Adventure and RPG games site full�of reviews and walkthroughs of adventure games. It also had a lot of really good articles on adventure games on things like games design and where the adventure games market is headed etc. It seems to have been a bit of a legend in its own right – getting interviews with developers etc, in a time where traditional adventure games are suffering with the rise of FPS and games that don’t require such logical thinking.
Personally, I’ve never really gotten into�Adventure games,�except�for trying�the�odd text adventure and more recently Myst. But more modern�games�that QuandaryLand called ‘action adventures’ have blurred the lines between a traditional adventure (ie, one that doesn’t rely on twitch gameplay) and one that is more action-oriented, so chances are I have played some form of adventure game (I think in some ways, Tombraider dips a toe in the Adventure genre). The modern Broken Sword games are a good example of these crossover games, involving puzzles and logical�deduction but with the action elements of a platformer. It should be noted that I (sadly) have only played a demo of The sleeping Dragon and still have The Shadow of The Templars and The Smoking Mirror waiting patiently on my shelf.
So why all the fuss then, if I don’t really play Adventure games? Well, see, I’m starting to find them quite intriguing. I’m still flailing around in Myst of course, but i’ve also discovered the Legend of Kyrandia games, thanks to Twin Pistols’ recommendation, and I also played the rather humorous demo of Sam and Max Hit the Road. Oh and I got really into Syberia which involves clockwork people, lol. There’s really quite a few I want to try, to be honest!
I found QuandaryLand a very informative resource on adventure games and it actually really helped me for last semesters coursework (We had to design an adventure game for the Nintendo DS). There were a lot of really good articles on there for games designers – like Mouse Control vs Keyboard Control – and just generally a good read for anyone interested in Adventure/RPG games. But it seems that as of June (It’s been awhile since I checked=S) the site is now no more.
So, we’re too late then?
Well, no, as it turns out. This post by the authors explains what happened (It may not be up for long as it’s Google’s cached copy) and also points us towards http://www.metzomagic.com/ where some of the files from the site have been moved to (Hooray!).
So, for those interested, be sure to check out all the Adventure game reviews, Role Playing Game reviews, and Editorials.
