The Samaritan Paradox

Don't even bother trying to play this without a walkthrough. This game's problems are many: barely any direction, nonsensical puzzles and interactions, requiring you to click items in specific order or they just do not work, designating parts of the same item on screen as different clickable areas, multiple timing based puzzles, a complete clustertruck of a "plot", absurd and unbelievable characters, UI straight out of the MS-DOS days, dodgy voiceover on half the characters, some extreme pixel hunting, unlikable main character, author's barely disguised political soapbox - just to name a few. There's tons of much better point and click games out there, don't waste your time with this.

Much older point and-click game, it's not bad, the puzzles are pretty fun and worth a play if you can get it on sale.

I'm a little dense and the relationship between father and daughter exposed as what it was late game left me wanting a brain cleanser. maybe it could have been more obvious sooner if i was more observant. the option to rewrite the ending doesn't un-write the implications it shoves at the player.

Recommended if you like point and click. There's a few pixel hunts and puzzles where you're like "I didn't know I could do that" due to lack of signposting, but I liked the story.

Jammed pencil award

So this was an interesting experience. I will say, it's not without flaws: the overreliance on left AND right clicking everything, examining things over and over, certain puzzles being too fiddly or slow, can be annoying. And the pacing isn't smooth, it goes: short intro, decent intrigue, cripplingly slow annoyance, mild intrigue, all wrapped up. As you work towards "finding Chapter 2" and working through it, the puzzles change and become improperly designed (with the sundial puzzle relying on completely random info rather than clues you can find or the crossword puzzle needing you to do something illogical to get the answer or, as I did, find the correct name but with an incorrect spelling). However, while I did start to lose interest during that dip, while it did irk me, after that section it actually picked up again. In fact, I dare say it accelerated rapidly, it feels like the ending hit almost immediately after that section. But it actually wrapped up fairly well, with a decent twist, all the loose ends tied up, and somewhat realistic dramatic flair. Plus, as I was aiming for the "I got your back" achievement, it really gave that last twist a nice moment of humanity to it all…