Chants of Sennaar was great! Had an absolute blast trying to work my way through it. I probably sounded like I was playing Baba Is You when trying to wrap my head around the glyphs (?) and the messages they try to convey.

Figuring out the symbols, their meaning and then using them properly to translate between different people was surprisingly rewarding and fun. I wouldn’t have minded if the game had a bit more gameplay, but at least it didn’t overstay it’s welcome.

portal 3

well, if we’re sticking to scummvm, they offer some free games on their site: https://scummvm.org/games/#games

the freebies are in general fairly old (like early-to-mid 90’s dos stuff), but work fine on scummvm, hence they’re offering them there. AFAIK all of them are controlled by mouse only.

Not all of them are suitable for all ages though.

Flight of the Amazon Queen is a story set in 40’s, about a pilot for hire and his small plane crashing into the amazons while transporting a movie star. Overall theme is cartoony/goofy/comedy, with a bit of juvenile humour ( by modern standards). There are some things some could find unsuitable for children, I guess.

• rubber breasts, used in non-sexual way to build a costume to fool gangsters
• the “bad guys” are essentially ww2 germans (but not referred as such, iirc their faction isn’t even given a name, I think)
• some alcohol & tobacco references
• very mild innuendos.

Beneath a steel sky - postapocalyptic oppressive world, although a bit cartoony/comical and oddly british considering the story takes place in australia. Banger adventure game but does contain few violent deaths. I played this during my early teens, but I wouldn’t suggest letting very young kids have a go at this.

The rest of the games on there I either haven’t played or can’t recommend.

But, since you asked for games for kids to learn to use mouse, I suspect the kids in question are like 5-7? These 2 games aren’t probably for them yet.

If you want to just, remove steam from the equation, eg. for no-internet kids’ computer:

basically: buy them from steam, then just install them. Then, just copy the game files somewhere else, install scummvm & add the games to scummvm to play them.

Scummvm is just an app which runs these older adventure games on wide variety of systems, incl modern windows (the games are occasionally so old, windows doesn’t support them natively at all). Scummvm is fairly straightforward to set up, basically just click “add game” -> browse to where the game is -> ok -> it is now in scummvm, click “Play” to play it.

If you’re asking about “yar har har, me mateys, and a bottle of rhum” -methods, that’s an excercise left for the reader.

ye. ended up checking some of the games’ store pages. There’s a note about scummvm.

Dunno if they keep the scummvm updated though, not that it matters much unless there’s an issue with a specific game. IIRC Indy Atlantis is bundles with decade+ old scummvm, though it’s been a while since I checked.

depends on the age of your kids, buuuut: if they’re fairly young, maybe spyfox/putt-putt/pajama-sam/freddi-fish games? those can be found on eg. steam, and should run fairly painlessly from there. (and if you want to make them steam-free/offline, you can just copy the files from those games elsewhere and use eg. scummvm (https://scummvm.org/) to run them. But that’s entirely optional & up to you. afaik steam bundles them with scummvm anyway).

Basically they are point & click adventure games aimed for younger kids. I’m in my 40’s and kinda do enjoy spyfox as well x)

The games are fairly old (afaik mid-to-late 90’s, or so), so graphics are fairly low res by today’s standards, but they’re essentially just playable cartoons with mild puzzles, all dialogue is spoken (subtitles are an option) and no real fail states.

Been chipping away with Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (the 2023 remake).

For those not in the know, it’s Holmes vs Cthulhu puzzle/adventure game.

I played the original and the remaster ages ago, tried the remaster few weeks back and… apparently it’s the kind of jank I just don’t want to deal with in current day.

A week or two forwarnd and the remake popped up on my promotional emails and instantly picked it up. Gotta say, it feels good to me. Modernized controls, a lot more modern visuals, content has been changed quite a bit, and a DISTINCT LACK OF CREEPY WATSON - HOW DARE THEY!!! (/s)

Among the modern comfort features it seems the game is fairly easy, it allows the player clumsily dummy through the puzzles - though missing some points while doing so (points unlock essentially just clothes/glasses/hats/beards for Holmes and Watson - non-critical but neat stuff). Essentially you can just bruteforce solutions because wrong options get removed from the pool of options when used, until only correct options remain. I guess the higher difficulty levels would fix this, but… eh, sometimes I’m dense. Occasionally you can come to a solution too quickly, which then closes doors to some side-puzzles, eg.

But I guess I just dummied my way through. OH WELL, not like I’m aiming for 100% completion.

tech-babble about tech:

Overall, it’s been a nice ride, with maybe some nostalgia-goggles. The vibes & visuals the game have are cool & spoopy. Voice acting in general is (imo) fine, though I must admit I do feel like I miss the original voice acting. Puzzless are idiot-passable, as proven by yours truly.

Can’t wait to finish the game :)

man, the mention of printed-faq’s opened a core memory. I had One Must Fall 2097 and Mortal Kombat move-lists printed out

I absolutely love the no-nonsense approach of gamefaqs (and the likes). <3

if I’m stuck in a game (usually some 90’s point&click adventure), more often than not I just want an easily ctrl+f searchable walkthrough, and does the site ever provide.

Windows: repeated acts of footgun

Linux: …oooookay?

I used archinstall archsockbuy

damnit, ordered the wrong color socks AGAIN. Wish the arch wiki would have this documented.

I loved this game, up until the difficulty ramped up quite hard and I just couldn’t proceed. Could be a classic issue of gidgud, but the shift was quite sudden, iirc. It’s been quite a while since I last played (early 2021, around ~13 hours, according to steam).

The game looks absolutely lovely, that style is absolute peak.

a bit later Sierra adventure game “Leisure Suit Larry 7” has both: mouse point & click AND text-parser. Though it is only really required in few places where you either need to ask about something not offered in the dialogue options, or figure out a clever verb for doing something (some are easter eggs and funnies, can’t really remember what else needed custom verbs typed in, fairly sure there was some).

In any case, the game isn’t for everyone’s tastes, it is goofy/juvenile/immature/naughty/“adult”, but overall more on the side of comical/cartoony and not really a “sex game”, even if getting laid is the goal for Larry.

“Pick-Up Group” - basically the group is just random people

Still no launch date but there’s a demo! I know what I’m doing tonight.

heh, still using bunch of stupidly old rss-feeds for webcomics. Admittedly some of them have turned into just links to their websites, but most of them still work fine! My list of comic rss’ date way back to early google reader -times, if not older.

not op, but the last panel has the signature “catana comics” https://catanacomics.com/

the website seems to be just links to their shop and instagram - where they post their comics.

You are entirely responsible for me wasting this weekend grinding DRG:S.

This one is pretty darn slick, thank you / [some degatory slur of your choice here] for giving me the push to get it.

I have played Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous, and ran out of motivation with both. I don’t remember either that well, it’s been quite a while since I played them, but I feel like Rogue Trader does share similarities with them. Overall… I do like the game, but man if it doesn’t require me to force myself to play it occasionally. 40k vibes are great, dunno if I’d care about the game if it wasn’t 40k.

I got to admit the warping between systems and exploring planets does get a bit old. I’m sure not all of it nescessary, but if it’s there, I gotta explore it, damnit. Most planets are just there to be scanned and they might have a spot where you plant a moneymaker. Some planets have some small area to walk around and do some skillchecks and most likely have some skirmish for small-ish rewards.

Plot areas are pretty big and have (usually) several moral compass tests, which are basically: “nah, let’s not kill everyone, everyone has good in them”, “I’m gonna burn you alive because religious reasons”, “give me your possessions and you might live”.

One that really makes my head explode is when your group spots a floor trap. If you don’t carefully walk each member around it, literally everyone will step into it otherwise. And there’s A LOT of these traps, though admittedly vast majority of them can be directly defused.