Bent Oak Island

The bad. This game is overpriced and unpolished. No walking, you just teleport around between the screens. Lots of spelling mistakes. Awkward dialogue box placement (why in the middle of the screen?). No interactable object markers, and the pixel hunt can be nasty at times (I'm looking at you, coffee mug). Manual save only. This game released in 2024, but I feel like it belongs in the 90s. That last sentence could also be a compliment. The good. The pixel works and the writing. THE WRITING. Imho it has the same vibe as Day of the Tentacle and Legend of Kyrandia 2—wacky, witty, and so much life in them. Checking the commentary for every object was fun. The NPCs are memorable. I especially love the sibling dynamics. And of course, what is not to love about the old pop culture references. I didn't always get all of them, but when I did, you bet I giggled like a kindergartener, then had an existential crisis after. When I got to the endings, I got the third ending last, and I was howling and clapping like mad. I see you, Archer. I'm also thinking about the same thing at any point on a normal day. What a way to end the playthrough. Thank you for making this game.

Pros - Great pixel art-style - Brilliant dialog and banter between characters, really immersive, gives a lot of dept to the characters. - Lots of humor, lots of great pop culture references. - Interesting story but its more about the journey. - Solid UI, entirely playable with mouse including saving and exiting the game, nice inventory system, simple right click to change context cursor. - Great puzzle design, fairly logical just the right level of difficultly in my opinion, game flows along nicely with some hints given in the dialog. Game is split into chapters with medium sized hubs to explore, collect items, talk to characters and solve puzzles. Mostly inventory based. Classic point and click really. - Decent soundtrack, there is a different track for each chapter/area. It might get a tad repetitive at times if you spend too long in an area. Cons - A couple of times starting the game from saves I had issues where the sound wouldn't play. I had to go back to even older saves to fix the issue. So I started making multiple saves every time I wanted to exit the game. The issue seemed to disappear after a few chapters in. - There are a few endings and the game just bizarrely exits c…

Bent Oak Island is a retro-style point-and-click game where you play as twins visiting their Uncle on an island with a mysterious past. I had a few issues with this game but overall I really enjoyed it and had a great time playing! That said, I would probably wait for a sale because I can't justify spending as much on this as on other point-and-click games that are far more fleshed out. Pros - Cute graphics - Amusing dialog and '90s references - The story was basic but fun - No moon logic for the puzzles so you could figure it out without a guide Cons - When the game ends it just closes the whole app, which is weirdly jarring - Quite a few typos still in the script - Some dropped plot threads, or maybe it's just me missing a reference to something and therefore thinking it's dropped? Which leads to... - If you don't understand the references, some of the jokes can feel like someone saying weird stuff for no reason Wishlist - The ability to rename saves - Achievements :)

In Bent Oak Island you play as a pair of twins that get sent to a remote town to have summer break with their uncle. They expect it to be a boring summer but they ends up having a giant mystery to solve. Things only get stranger from there. The presentation of the game is very inline with the "Darkside Detective" games. Your characters don't move around on screen. They just stand there well you click on things and will fade out and in to the next screen. There is pretty much no animation, with maybe people moving there heads side to side. I wasn't a big fan of it is Darkside Detective, but that game is one of the more popular new PnCs, so what do I know. The actual pixel art I do like. It is very colorful, I don't have a problem with that way this game looks in a screen shots, just in motion. Again to be fair this is a style choice that they made. The inventory items however, looks like they were make in MS paint by someone that isn't very good at MS paint. I feel like I am missing some kind of joke here. They can clearly do nice pixel art so why wouldn't they just put nice pixel art for the inventory items? Lastly you have the text. It is this weird plain rounded text that I hate…

Fun and classic point and click! Thank you for your hard work.

Fun witty adventure game