Once upon a time, the point and click adventure was deemed more dead than Justin Bieber’s career. But the onset of portable devices brought a resurgence of 2D games, in which you prod a goat with a plastic chicken in order to uncover a treasure chest (and other random puzzles).
Broken Sword, which first appeared on PlayStation One in 1996, was amongst the best of these interactive novels. Almost 20 years on, American George Stobbart and brassy French journalist Nico Collard have returned and, my, how little has changed.
This adventure is in a fairy-land Paris, where waiters are frustrated revolutionaries and gendarmes are plucked from the pages of Tintin. The puzzles are more obscure than a Bo Diddly B-side, but the story and characters have their own quaint charm.
In a tale worthy of Dan Brown, George and Nico investigate a murder, a cursed painting, and uncover a conspiracy so big it would boggle the Internet.