Adam’s Venture Origins – Xbox One

Adam’s Venture: Origins: a game you’ve probably never heard of. If you have, it’s because you’ve seen it cheap. Maybe you were intrigued, as I was, by the title.

Origins is a reimagining of the original three games that were released episodically. New features were added but most elements were stripped from the game. The game is shorter and simpler than its predecessor, Adam’s Venture: Chronicles, the game whose story it is based on. The mistakes in this game are almost endless, but I’m not going to dwell on those because there’s more to Adam’s Venture than that.

The Clothing Of Adventure

The game begins as every adventure story should: in an opulent library whose mahogany paneled walls reflect the warmth of the amber light dripping through a network of elaborate shades. Green glass lampshades: the type that adorn many an accountant’s desk. The library evokes the aura of knowledge, especially knowledge that could prompt the beginning of an adventure.

There’s an obvious incongruity between the assets that have been used to create the environments. The story is supposed to be set during the 1920s, but I wonder how much environmental research was conducted prior to developing the game. Strangely, this lack of harmony and attention to detail helps create an idealised version of a turn of the century setting. The hotchpotch environments are an amalgamation of what we expect an adventure game to look like. Sometimes, immersive doesn’t have to mean graphically stunning or aesthetically correct.

Adam is equally as lavish as the ostentatious surroundings. He sports a newsboy cap, which doesn’t quite match his profession as adventurer, though does contribute to his personal style. A canteen hangs from his waist, along with a spool of wire and a leather belt with a shoulder strap. I wonder why he’d want to wear such complicated garb at home. Wouldn’t you pack that up until the next trip?

Inside this library, ordinary lives are irrelevant. The setting is a romanticised vision of an idyllic escape: having the time to pour over knowledge and learn about past civilisations, all whilst not having to be concerned by a career, money and broken guttering. Adam is living the easy life.

Before the game begins, we see Adam sleeping in what appears to be a Chesterfield tub – an iconic comfort enabler. It’s a comfortable existence for Adam, who seems to have nothing else to do and so waits for his father to finish his scholarly pursuits.

To The Temple

The learned Professor Venture, a dusty myopic Englishman asks his son to retrieve a book from the library and to find his new assistant, the ever-comical Evelyn Appleby. Professor Venture is onto something and knows the exact book that contains the answer he’s looking for. Judging by the less than convincing voice acting thus far, it wouldn’t be unfair to consider that it may have been done by one person. This quirk, however, does lend the game some charm.

This first quest is a great example of the discord between all aspects of the game. Adam must go to the library to search for a book his father can’t be bothered to fetch. After looking through all the bookcases you will find a ladder puzzle, which once solved allows you to climb to the top of a bookcase and retrieve a lone book that someone must have thrown up there…

At the top of the bookcase there’s a fanciful duct that can be used to escape, that is until you fall through the ceiling. Evelyn rightly asks, why didn’t you just walk out the way we came in? This is the kind of ironic, trope-laden humour that is present during the game. Games were, I’m sure of it, more like this. They were irreverent and the purest form of fun. They were always games first.

Upon being introduced to Evelyn and returning to his father with the book, Adam falls through another floor after uncovering a secret passageway. Falling through floors seems to be Adam’s occupation; so frequently does it occur, I’m surprised he hadn’t, when he was younger, already fallen to his death down some pit.

Ambition Or Mockery

Repeated instances like these highlight the tropes of the adventure genre, and the desire of the game to communicate these repetitions to the player. Throughout the story – whether it be Adam’s stereotypical adventurer spiels, blocked passageways, dynamited hidden temples, or the presence of a powerful company intent on finding treasure – the tropes are repeated for comedic effect.

The game doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It bathes in its own simplicity and mocks the foundations of its inspiration. Although the writing will be considered terrible by most people, and I suppose it is quite bad, there’s an element of, we knew what we were doing. So, even though the writing is commonplace and cliché in almost every sentence, its humour and self-awareness reinforce the genre. Scary Movie is to Scream as Adam’s Venture: Origins is to Uncharted.

Adam’s Venture plays like a satire. It’s not a distasteful satire either; quite the opposite. This was developed by a team who likes adventure games, specifically those with puzzles that are more reminiscent of an older brand of adventuring.

L’Puzzle Pour L’Puzzle

Puzzling is the predominant pastime in Adam’s Venture. The puzzles are often quite tricky and yet I found the struggle with them to be refreshing. This is because in most games, unless it’s a dedicated puzzler, the puzzles are either too easy or are not proper puzzles to begin with.

Here, the puzzles don’t synchronise with the environment and that reminded me of how games used to play when I was a child: developers weren’t afraid to meld mechanics and gameplay with a seemingly irrelevant setting.

Modern video games implement their gameplay more subtly: the mechanics, narrative and world merge together in a uniformed vision. The tombs in Tomb Raider for instance, don’t feel like a separate puzzle, they’re interwoven into the story and setting, so they appear seamless. They’re embedded in a predefined reality; one that makes puzzling and platforming appear real and part of the world. In Adam’s Venture, puzzles are merely entertainment.

A Game O Fun

Having completed Adam’s Venture, I asked myself the question: why do I derive more fun from a game that is quite poor, as opposed to the honed experience of a AAA title? What I can say is, there’s a mixture of feelings at play.

Nostalgia dictates what aspects of our past remain credible in our minds. Adam’s Venture plays like a game from the late 90s and its sharp textures make it look older than it is. The cost of games can also change our perception of their quality. If a game costs a lot of money, we expect more value and so we’re let down when we find the game is half finished. Lastly, a fun game is often one that is the least complicated, the least cluttered and the game most focused on creating an addictively fun environment for the player to exist in.

In response to a question about gameplay in Adam’s Venture, Tristan Lambert (cofounder of Vertigo) said, “Adam’s Venture leans towards the old-school adventure games I used to play as a child. Shooting, for us, was not an option. We wanted to make a game with non-violent gameplay: partly because I feel like it distracts from the strong points of an adventure game: puzzles, story and atmosphere”.

The Hero’s Joke

Adam is the quintessential adventurer; highly satirized of course. He knows everything there is to know, doesn’t set a foot wrong, is there to help those in need and uncontrollably, though inadvertently, patronizes those around him with a cheesier than Indiana Jones personality. There’s also some Nathan Drake in there, but Adam is less cerebral. He is a simpleton who loves adventure. It’s almost as though he’s aware that he’s a protagonist in an adventure game and is proud to have been cast.

Sometimes he can be self-deprecating, but most of the time he speaks without thinking. Evelyn, his father’s assistant, is an assured woman and a willing observer of Adam’s ridiculousness; she’s the counterbalance to his personality. Whilst Adam is messing up or trying to solve a conundrum, Evelyn is one step ahead.

A Discovery Nonetheless

Adam’s Venture: Origins suffers so much in so many areas. Regardless of its obvious faults, it manages to tap into the formula of fun. The game can be whittled down to a character progressing through a series of linear environments, which are occasionally barred by a gatekeeping puzzle. An overarching narrative adds impetus to the player’s straightforward journey and situates the environments the player inhabits.

By recreating the notion of going on an adventure, of escaping to somewhere else, however unreal, Adam’s Venture successfully doles out fun and amusement as though it isn’t even trying.

There is a lot of value in this game, otherwise I wouldn’t have been compelled to finish it. It might not be as refined as an Uncharted or as action-packed as a Tomb Raider, but Adam’s Venture: Origins captures the essence of the adventure genre and distils it into its own moonshine. It’s not going to wow anyone and it won’t appeal to the majority of people. If, however, you’re a fan of the genre, can appreciate parody and prefer an authentic puzzler experience, albeit a shoehorned one, I’m certain you will find something to enjoy here.