The Hotspot Highlights – The Best Adventure Games of 2024

• Features by Adventure Game Hotspot staff
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The past year may have been a white-knuckle, hold-on-for-dear-life roller coaster ride for the videogame industry as a whole, but when it comes to the quality of the games themselves, there were so many more highs than lows. Indeed, there was no shortage of new releases, period, with over 370 adventure games alone! Granted, most of them are smaller indie productions, but being independent just frees up creators to follow their imaginations in ways a bottom-line publisher would never allow.

As a result, the games came in all shapes, sizes and colors, for tastes of every kind: first-person and third, side-scrolling and straight ahead, puzzle games and story games, retro, modern, fast, slow, short, long, easy, hard, funny and spooky and serious and sad – you name it, we got them in abundance.

With the calendar winding down, that means it’s time once again for our annual list of Hotspot Highlights, counting down only the very best adventure games of 2024!

Plenty more were nominated and painfully left off, but we had to draw the line somewhere (even if we proceeded to color outside the lines a little anyway). There are no snubs, only incredible competition between many games worthy of celebration. So we offer our heartfelt thanks and congratulations not only to those on this list, but to ALL developers who contributed such wonderful moments of enjoyment throughout the year.

And now, on with our top fifteen-PLUS adventure games of 2024!

Honorable Mentions

Best Adventure-Adjacent Game: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 

Okay, we’re stretching definitions right off the bat, but as the rest of our list is dedicated to full-blooded adventure games, it’s only right that we give a nod to the most adventurous genre-benders as well. Especially because 2024 was such a great year for impressive action-adventures, survival horrors, puzzle-platformers and more, including big names like Star Wars Outlaws, Alone in the Dark and Silent Hill 2, as well as humble little ones like the wonderful Animal Well. But our winner for best sorta-kinda adventure goes to a character who’s no stranger to the genre, as Indiana Jones is back for a rousing original new expedition in pursuit of the "Great Circle." Expect plenty of archeological globetrotting, whip swinging, knuckle chucking, grave exploring, stealthy infiltrating and satisfying puzzle solving as Indy chases down a variety of precious cultural artifacts around the world. Along the way, he must foil the Vatican and Nazis alike to uncover ancient secrets and prevent their powers from being misused, with help from a feisty female newcomer who serves as a welcome foil. Its several dozen hours of gameplay may be a little padded in places, but can there really be too much of good thing? Even if you tend to avoid action games, there are many difficulty settings to tailor the experience to your preference, making it well worth checking out this triumphant return to 1937 that feels like classic Indy every step of the way.

Best DLC: The Talos Principle 2: Road to Elysium 

It wasn’t long ago that you’d never hear “DLC” and “adventure games” in the same sentence. But that has begun to change, with developers offering players a bit more of what they know and love in a little less than a full-fledged sequel. With stiff completion from the likes of Stray Gods, Escape Simulator, Snufkin and Suzerain expansions, it was Croteam's The Talos Principle 2: Road to Elysium that impressed us most this year. The main game fully delivered on our lofty expectations, earning our enthusiastic Adventure Game of the Year endorsement in 2023. So it was the best sort of treat when it got a sensational continuation only seven months later, structured as three meaty campaigns all gathered together into one giant expansion. There's something for everyone here across the vast and varied chapters, from a philosophy-rich love story that flips the laser mechanics of the series on its head, to an equally touching and hilarious, laid-back "beach episode" across a massive island theme park that feels like an essential epilogue, to a brutally tough-as-nails nightmare gauntlet stuffed to the gills with an abundance of brilliant puzzles that seem at first like only a mad genius could solve them. But oh, what an unparalleled dopamine rush that comes from finally working out one of its many challenges! There's enough replayable puzzle content here to keep players joyously busy while they wait for the upcoming expanded retelling of the first game in The Talos Principle – Reawakened, due out next year.

Best Remake: Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged

You could consider 2024 to be the Year of the Remake, as more and more popular but aging games are being updated and re-released. The sheer quantity and quality made for agonizing competition, from Riven to Until Dawn, from Little Big Adventure to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Ultimately, though, with its slick visual upgrade, a dedication to preserving all the things that made the original great, a plethora of options to let players strike a balance between old and new controls, and the addition of a built-in hint system, Revolution Software’s Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged just edged out its esteemed peers. A world of mythology and conspiracies is stunningly realized with a new high-resolution treatment that infuses more charming detail into its varied international backgrounds, myriad animations, and streamlined interface. All this on top of the same deep, multilayered plot with its delightful array of characters headed by George Stobbart and Nico Collard as they race to stop the nefarious plans of a neo-Templar faction. Founded in history, but set in the present day, this excursion to save the world remains a true classic and more than deserving of such a wonderful modern update.

Best New Adventure Games of 2024

#15 – Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss 

Move over, Titanic! The salvage ship S.S. Thalassa has gone down itself under mysterious circumstances in the search for a sunken Spanish galleon in the early twentieth century. As a former crew member, you take it upon yourself to dive down to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea to investigate its remains in an attempt to figure out what happened to everyone on board. Your search for the reason responsible for sending your former friends and colleagues to their watery graves leads to unexpected revelations in Sarepta Studio’s Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss. Between first-person, free-roaming exploration and figuring out clues on a detective’s deduction board, there are many compelling secrets to be uncovered – if you succeed in finding your way past locked doors and blocked passages, that is. The mesmerizing underwater scenery pulls you in, and uncovering the truth behind each mystery fills you with a sense of accomplishment, but it’s the touching story of how human behavior ripples through time and space that will leave you holding your breath in anticipation.

#14 – Lorelei and the Laser Eyes 

Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is not a game for the easily discouraged. Its astonishing wealth of puzzles and nightmarishly surreal maze of deceptions are likely to overwhelm you at every level until you take a step back, breathe, and pull out a pen and a paper before diving back in. You'll come to discover that many of the puzzles are incredibly logical and well-clued, but there are so many of them that before you learn the language of the game, you’ll find it hard to believe you could ever work them out. The story is set in 2014, when Lorelei, the wandering lady with the laser eyes, responds to an invitation to the Hotel Letztes Jahr and finds a deeply layered story that stretches back over 150 years, hidden within countless clues and conundrums. Almost entirely in black and white with brilliantly deployed accents of red, the enigmatic hotel will gradually reveal all the challenges its bizarre host has in store. You’ll need to fill page after page of delirious notes to keep track of all the surprising details and revelations, but as daunting as it feels, never lose heart, as finishing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is far more achievable – and fulfilling – than it first seems. Many of the puzzles are optional, but you’ll want to keep at them, as rounding that final corner and finishing the dense puzzle-box of Hotel Letztes Jahr will have you feeling like the smartest person on Earth.

#13 – 1000xRESIST

Sunset visitor’s 1000xRESIST throws you into the middle of a bizarre, post-apocalyptic tale with almost no explanation. Then, after hopping a bit back in time, it sets you off exploring a complex world with a detailed backstory and nuanced characters in the hopes that you’ll pick it up as you go along. The narrative is largely told through Watcher, one of six specially designated clones of an immortal figurehead known as ALLMOTHER, as players run around bright, futuristic structures finding characters to talk to, interspersed with some teleportation-style platforming. Scattered throughout the ten chapters are “Communions,” in which you and another Sister, such as Knower or Bang Bang Fire, enter into the memories of the ALLMOTHER, through which you’ll uncover a deeply personal story about generational trauma, diaspora, revolution, disease, and the nature of memory itself. It's often mind-blowing stuff, but the plot twists are so surprising and innovative, you’ll be unable to resist the allure of this unique, compelling universe and its deeply layered lore.

#12 – INDIKA 

As a meditation on the idea that both video games and Abrahamic religions share a “points system” intended to lead you to a “good ending,” Odd Meter’s surreal INDIKA can be a challenging game to enjoy in the traditional gaming sense, but it’s never anything but utterly fascinating. When you start playing, you’re trudging through the snow in nineteenth-century Russia, a young nun named Indika in a convent full of sisters who hate you, whiling away at your task of slowly filling up a water bucket bit by bit, only to have the work prove fruitless in the end. Later, and for the majority of the game, you are the captive of an escaped criminal with messianic delusions, leaving you running around bleakly beautiful wintry landscapes solving environmental and platforming-style puzzles or playing retro-styled minigames while you deal with a devil in your head that’s prodding at your own religious convictions. The voice acting is breathtakingly good and the characters and backgrounds are rendered with AAA-level realism, but what really sets INDIKA so high above most of the pack this year is its thoughtful narrative. Combining the devout heroine’s exposition-based internal struggles with the player’s physical experience controlling the game, its challenging ideas come through loud and clear and are sure to remain with you long after it’s over.

#11 – Still Wakes the Deep 

The Chinese Room is no stranger to delivering creepy, skin-crawling experiences, and the acclaimed British developer did so again this year with Still Wakes the Deep, whisking us away to the Beira D, an oil platform in the North Sea that’s about to be visited by some unknown (and very unhappy) creatures of the deep. This is no traditional adventure, as electrician Cameron “Caz” McLeary must survive both the hazardous weather conditions and the hostile organisms now sweeping across all sections of the oil rig, as well as the platform itself, which has been damaged in an explosion and is literally falling apart all around him. You’re no action hero, possessing no weapons or special physical abilities, but between stealth segments, Quick Time Events, and light platforming sequences (fewer if you choose the optional Story Mode) across, up the side of, and even underneath the rapidly flooding, cavernous structure, Still Wakes the Deep feels like a thrill-a-minute ride despite essentially still being the type of exploration-first gameplay experience that the studio has always been known for. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s a compelling escape experience that slickly manages to work in a bona fide cosmic horror tale along the way.

#10 – The Phantom Fellows 

Oliver and Englebert are your typical odd couple, whose constant bickering and snark hides a deeper love and respect. Except for one small thing: Englebert (as you might be able to tell from his long-outdated mutton chop whiskers, bowler hat and braces) is a ghost who hasn't been able to shuffle off his mortal coil, and Oliver is a man-child whose one talent is being able to see him. As the titular "Phantom Fellows,” they investigate hauntings, help spirits to move on and occasionally even get paid. The impressive debut of solo developer Paul Korman, it's more Darkside Detective than Blackwell, but it shares aspects in common with both. The pixels are gloriously chunky, the music synthwavey, and the dialogue sparkles with idiosyncratic observations. Their endearingly offbeat world is packed with everything from roaming ghost legs with a taste for chocolate to a spirit squirrel in an abandoned speakeasy. The puzzles are comically logical, and you'll even find an abundance of secrets and Easter eggs along the way. And yet, while it’s rare enough for a ghost story to make you laugh more than shiver in fear, as curious case follows uncanny incident and you're drawn further into the deepening mystery, you'll not only find plenty of surreal humor but also very real heart as well. 

#9 – Thank Goodness You’re Here! 

There are not a lot of pure comedy games out there. Funny games? Sure, some. But it’s rare to find a game whose primary form of expression is comedy – and only one achieves it by slapping people around. In Thank Goodness You’re Here!, gameplay and story play second and third fiddle to getting a laugh through pure ridiculousness. You play an unnamed, speechless little lemon-headed guy who’s arrived for a meeting in the delightfully cartoony northern English town of Barnsworth. Where things get weird is that your only verbs are “smack,” “run,” and “jump.” Want to talk to someone? Smack them. Want to interact with something? Try smacking it, and if that doesn't work, jump on it. The game consists of darting around slapping everyone and everything as every wacky character shouts, “Thank goodness you’re here!” and gives you some absurd task to complete. You’ll find yourself replacing an old lady’s dog with a long sausage, helping to free a foppish dandy boy from a sewer grate by riding a large “Buttery Nub” through town, and assisting a deranged, pantless man in a dumpster with finding all his ducks. Aside from surprising and hilarious dialogue, each scene is packed full of sight gags and running bits that will make you laugh out loud more often than you can count. Thank goodness Coal Supper made this game!

#8 – Botany Manor 

If you appreciate exotic flowers but not all the dirt, weeds and grungy work that goes with it, how about a sunny spring trip to the lush gardens of a large Victorian manor instead? While not quite the same as the real thing, taking in the lavish, richly colored sprawling estate in Balloon Studios’ first-person adventure Botany Manor, blanketed with the sounds of sweetly singing birds and gentle wind blowing through the trees, is so vivid and calming that you can almost literally stop and smell the roses. And though botanically based, the game boasts more than just your garden variety brainteasers. As scientist Arabella Greene, you’ve returned to your family home to complete your research on the world’s rarest flora. Exploring the manor’s nooks and crannies to collect clues, letters, journals, and field notes is engaging enough, but combining that knowledge to puzzle out how to manipulate the environment in order to actually grow each one of the elusive plants is the real root of the game. It’s not especially long or difficult, but while it lasts, few games manage to capture the delight of discovery in quite such a serene and satisfying way. And in exploring themes of academic gatekeeping and prejudice, Botany Manor gently reminds us that the beauty and wonder of the natural world is a joy for all of us to experience.

#7 – Duck Detective: The Secret Salami 

With games like the Golden Idol series and Return of the Obra Dinn becoming so popular, it was only a matter of time before some innovative team set to work on a deductive mystery game that used the same basic formula but in a silly rather than serious way. Happy Broccoli Games took on that task with gusto, as Duck Detective: The Secret Salami serves up a ridiculous and lighthearted mystery that engages your thinking and laughing muscles at the same time. As Eugene McQuacklin, the Duck Detective, you’re tasked with figuring out the identity of The Salami Bandit who is terrorizing a small bussing depot. The mystery is solved by filling in words, Mad Libs style, which you’ll find from investigating the world around you and its many quirky animal inhabitants. With incredible voice acting, charming 2D sticker-like characters toddling around colorful isometric backgrounds, and an intriguing food-based mystery to solve, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami has instantly earned a spot among the greatest deductive games out there (with an upcoming sequel on its way).

#6 – The Holy Gosh Darn 

You’d probably be surprised to hear that a game where you have to speak in farts to convince a literal butt-faced demon to help keep Heaven from exploding is one of the smartest games to come out this year, but The Holy Gosh Darn manages just that and then some. Set in Perfectly Paranormal’s same delightfully whimsical universe as Manual Samuel and Helheim Hassle, this game stars the amusing Cassiel of Celerity, who is immediately likeable for the nonchalant manner in which she handles every off-the-wall divine situation as an archangel of the Lord. The stakes are high, with only six hours to save the day and only you to do it, but fortunately you’ve got a special trick up your sleeve. Making mistakes or upsetting someone in your quest and then rewinding time with a special amulet provided to you by Azrael of Mortality (aka Death) leads to some incredibly funny and unique puzzle solving, where you have to learn new things about the characters in Heaven, Hell, Helheim and Earth in order to progress. Everyone is memorable, the vibrant cartoon animation looks great, and the time travel mechanics feel fresh. It’s crude, hilarious, and an amazing ride through religious iconography cranked up to an 11 on the insanity scale.

#5 – Mouthwashing 

Let’s get one thing straight: Wrong Organ’s Mouthwashing is not a “fun” sci-fi game. There are no warm, fuzzy feelings or messages of hope or inspiration about traversing the depths of space. This is a game that starts with you crashing your own ship, stranding you to slowly starve to death and watching as the skeleton crew of the Tulpar slowly go mad in the dark, cold void of the unknown. Not fun at all. But it is absolutely incredible. The action is presented in a deliberately low-poly 3D aesthetic, highly reminiscent of the days of the original PlayStation. It’s less about scaring you than a typical first-person horror game, instead ramping up a creeping, unnerving existential dread throughout. Traditional adventure gameplay is also kept a minimum, which allows the focus to remain largely on story, atmosphere and character development. The tale is nonlinear, and the shifting time period and different protagonists give a much different picture than a single character’s perspective would allow. Expect to question everyone and everything before all is said and done, and you might not like all the answers. The whole game may only take 2-3 hours to complete, but the experience is sure to keep haunting you long after the credits roll.

#4 – PRIM 

Yet another stunning release from a first-time developer stars Prim, a young woman on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. It’s a tumultuous time for any adolescent, but especially so for one whose mother has just died. Then, as you help her go through her mom’s belongings, suddenly the father she’s never known shows up to take her to his home. Plot twist: it’s Death himself! What follows is the cozy, crazy adventure of PRIM's titular protagonist as she deals with the eccentric residents of the Underworld. Inspired by Greek mythology, Common Colors’ black-and-white, Burtonesque point-and-click adventure game embodies the soul of traditional gameplay but very much makes it its own, with engaging puzzles and well-integrated mini-games, accompanied by a rich orchestral soundtrack and high-quality voice acting. And despite its fantastical premise, it takes well-known themes of a child on the cusp of adulthood going through major life changes and a strained father/daughter relationship, presents them in a whimsically cartoony, over-the-top situation, and delivers an endearing creepy-cute story with just the right amount of humor. It’s so fun, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to... well, not heaven, but something like that.

#3 – The Crimson Diamond 

They just don’t make 'em like they used to… Sometimes they make 'em even better. One of the best parser-driven graphic adventures in thirty years, The Crimson Diamond proves it's possible to make a classic 1980's Sierra-style game today without all the old-school frustrations. Clearly inspired by Roberta Williams's The Colonel's Bequest, here it’s not Laura Bow but geologist Nancy Diamond in the starring role. Sent to investigate the possibility of diamonds in early twentieth-century northern Ontario, Nancy winds up at a remote lodge with an eclectic cast of characters. Naturally, one of them soon winds up dead, so Nancy must add homicide detective to her resume. Beautifully drawn and animated in only 16 colors, what makes Julia Minamata's first game a masterpiece is one of the best murder mysteries ever written for a computer game. Every character has a rich backstory with realistic motivations that never waver, and reaching a conclusion involves a lot of fun investigating, including spying on others and using Nancy's geological skills to analyze evidence. The typing interface is incredibly user-friendly for players of all skill levels, with no way to get permanently stuck (though you can kick the bucket if you're not careful!). There are even multiple endings based on the quality of your sleuth work, all satisfying in their own way. No matter how you cut it, The Crimson Diamond is a gem, in more ways than one.

#2 – The Rise of the Golden Idol 

The Rise of the Golden Idol is the kind of sequel adventure fans yearn for: It takes the established formula of one of the decade's best surprises, and gives it a bevy of successful narrative and gameplay shakeups, proving that the developers at Color Gray Games aren't content to rest on their laurels. It's an outstanding, spirited follow-up to The Case of the Golden Idol that makes the popular detective series feel totally fresh again, boasting twenty new mysteries with a wildly different 1970s setting that still keeps the fantastical flair of the original game's fill-in-the-blank deductions intact. The scenarios on offer run a wide and delightful tonal gamut, with each screen loaded to the brim with multilayered mystery, top-notch ingenuity and some truly devilish trickery. It's just about everything we could have hoped for in a follow-up to our 2022 Adventure Game of the Year – and fortunately, a lengthy post-release roadmap promises many more DLC cases to keep us busy in 2025.

Adventure Game of the Year

#1 – Loco Motive 

If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was 1995 and LucasArts had just released yet another brilliant pixel art adventure, with incredible 2D cartoon animation, full voice acting and enough tough-but-fair puzzles to keep any seasoned adventure gamer on their toes. Except it isn’t 1995 – it’s 2024. And it isn’t LucasArts – it’s Robust Games and Loco Motive, a comedic multicharacter whodunit aboard a moving train that serves as a love letter to the history of point-and-click adventure games. And yet it never shackles itself by being solely an homage to the genre’s glorious past. Every environment is beautifully crafted with detailed backgrounds, with each room of the Reuss Express uniquely designed to sell the setting of a 1930s high-class express train. The game’s three very different playable leads are all wonderfully well written, and every action they perform is painstakingly animated with care. They each perceive their story from a different point in time, all revolving around a murder that cleverly ties their narrative threads together.

But Loco Motive earned our highest distinction as Adventure Game of the Year for 2024 for more than just its cozy nostalgic feels, brilliant visual presentation and amusing script. The fun factor is multiplied by some incredible brainteasers as well. Wonderfully staged set piece moments and smart expansions on the player’s own understanding of items and characters ensure the experience keeps getting better and better as you progress. The meticulous sound design, too, brings every character interaction to life, and the big band jazz soundtrack will have you drumming your foot along to the beat. The game is even quite lengthy for a modern-day adventure, with up to a dozen hours of playtime that never feels like it overstays its welcome. All in all, it’s a thoroughly impressive production, and an astonishing achievement by a rookie developer. If it's the ONE game you play from this list (and we sincerely hope there's more), don’t miss out on Loco Motive, as it's sure to be enjoyed by adventure game fans everywhere.

Jack Allin, Sam Amiotte-Beaulieu, Matt Aukamp, Beau, Brian Hobbs, Richard Hoover, Peter Mattsson, Johnny Nys, Sean Parker, and Pascal Tekaia contributed to the writing of this article.