Bent Oak Island

Bent Oak Island is a nice and simple adventure game. The gameplay is mainly based on inventory puzzles. There are many dialogs with NPCs but no dialog puzzles. There are no logic puzzles or alternate-interface puzzles either. The game has a pretty decent length, especially considering that there are no animations for walking or using items, so no playtime is spent on that. It's fun to watch the story unfold, follow the interactions between the characters and learn more about the twins and their family. However, the story gets a bit incoherent at times, and I'm not sure I liked the [spoiler]time travel[/spoiler] part and the ending (any of the endings). Some objects and NPCs end up having no purpose at all, even though the game gives some indications that they should be relevant to the story. Like so many other indie titles, the game is rather unpolished. There are quite a few minor glitches and text issues. Doing things not in the expected order can get confusing because the game doesn't have all the necessary dependency checks, so the characters can start talking about something that we're not supposed to know yet. The game is not challenging at all, and examining objects can provide hints, but if Use doesn't work, there's never any indication of whether or not we're on the right track -- we just get one standard response or no response at all. The native resolution of the game is 160x90, and despite that, there are a couple of places where it's easy to miss a hotspot. There is no hotspot highlighting. Also there is no click-to-advance mode for dialogs.

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 completely to desktop after each one. In fairness it does warn you to save but still its very jarring. Overall highly recommended.

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.

Fun witty adventure game

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 :)

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

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. This may seem kind of petty but I am going to be honest with you, it bugged me the whole game. When you hover over items in game it has the blocky pixel text, their names in the text boxes have the blocky pixel text, just the text itself have the other font. I feel like I have been kind of negative with the way this game looks, so I do what to stress I like the pixel art in this game. The thing you will be looking at for most of the game is something I give high marks. I am not a fan of the lack of animation but again Darkside Detective has legitimize this as a way to make PnCs, it just happens to be a style I don't particularly like. The plot feels like it is there just to give you reasons to do things. It does become interesting in the last 2 chapters, but up until then there isn't much going in the story. The actual dialog I think is very good. Genuinely made me laugh several time. The one critique I would have here is most of the time when you examine something it will become a comedy bit for the 2 twins. Again I really like the dialog, but when you have a bunch of items in a room it can get a little exhausting. Overall I think they could have paced out the story better but the dialog will keep you going. For puzzles lean a little too hard on "I need to give this person item X so they give me item Y". I know every PnC adventure does that, but this game seems to lean HARD on it. That is a shame because my favorite chapter is one where you are suck in a building and there is no one to talk to. It proves they are good at doing environmental puzzles, and I would have liked to see a little more of that outside of that one chapter. Even with that critique I think these are solid puzzles. They are on the easy side for my taste, but that is something I would say about most newer PnC games. I have my complains but over all I enjoyed with this game. Archer and Sam are fun characters. It made me laugh a few times. I would like the puzzles harder, but they are not boring either. $15 does feel a little high to me. I always feel weird talk about the price for games under $20 because we are talking about the difference of the cost of cup of coffee. It is just that there are a lot of other good indie PnCs that you can get for $10, even less. If this game looks interesting to you I don't want to push you away at $15. I don't regret buying this game at all. It just feels a little bit on the high side.

Great fun, such funny, how adventure!>?