Adventure Game Hotspot celebrates its first anniversary with a look back and an invitation to a marathon livestream!

• Features by Adventure Game Hotspot staff
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This weekend marks a major event in site history: Adventure Game Hotspot turns one year old!! Cake and presents and champagne toasts all around!

Well, sort of, anyway. It’s hard to do that online, but we ARE going to throw a livestream party, and you’re invited!

Yes, to commemorate our first anniversary, just as we did a year ago, we’ll be hosting an insane TWELVE-HOUR livestream event on YouTube! We’ll have plenty of developers join us throughout the day, including Dave Gilbert, Francisco Gonzalez, Tom Hardwidge, Tag of Joy, Julia Minamata, and a certain former Sierra legend named Ken Williams (perhaps you’ve heard of him), among other special guests. This will be a very relaxed, informal occasion, with various friends of the Hotspot and fellow adventure game enthusiasts popping in and out all day to chat about this genre we love. There will be prizes, and we'll even take live calls from the community to talk about the issues most important to you.

Every hour we’ll also be unveiling another new final nominee for the Adventure Game Hall of Fame, which we officially registered this year! So tune in to find out who made the short list to become one of our first ever inductees.

So where can you find all this great adventuring goodness? On our own YouTube channel! When is it? It’s on Saturday, October 21st from noon to midnight, Eastern time. (That’s 4pm to 4am GMT, or 8am to 8pm Pacific.)

It’ll be a long day, but a fun day, so we hope to see you there! Sure, you can catch up after the fact, but there’s no substitute for watching live – anything can happen! (And probably will.)

And now, with the party invitations sent, let’s reflect back a bit on the year that was at Adventure Game Hotspot. In some ways it feels like it was only yesterday that we were getting underway, and in other ways it feels like we’ve been doing this forever.

Starting a new website from the ground up is a huge undertaking that we managed to pull together in a shockingly short amount of time, so some growing pains were inevitable – still are. But really we couldn’t have asked for a better, busier first year. Let us count the ways:

384 games released (including ports)

241 new game announcements

134 walkthroughs

117 reviews

33 podcasts

Dozens of videos and interviews (I lost count)

A few best-of lists (another coming shortly)

And a partridge in a pair tree

Whew!

We've also got a brand new logo, courtesy of the very talented Šarūnas Ledas from Tag of Joy.  (Disclaimer: our review of the studio's Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit came long before the concept of a logo redesign was raised and had no bearing on our assessment). The bejeweled hand chalice reflects both the pursuit of adventure within our grasp, and the potential rich rewards of discovery for those who successfully reach their destination. We'll be more fully integrating the logo into all aspects of the site soon, as part of a much bigger visual update. (More on that in a bit.)

One surprising/not surprising bit of welcome news is that we were accepted onto Metacritic in April. Love it or hate it, it’s "the" benchmark for any review site, and a rarity for a website so new, thanks to the consistently professional-quality writing and established pedigree of our team. We’re also a Steam Curator, so be sure to follow us there so you don’t miss out on the latest and greatest games.

We also established the Adventure Game Hotspot Network. Being big believers in teamwork and camaraderie, we were pleased form this collective of dedicated podcasters and video producers who work entirely independently but have joined forces to promote each other’s efforts. From quirky chats that deconstruct the genre, to interviews with legendary developers, to deep-dive retrospectives of the genre's rich history, there's something for everyone. Unlike the rest of our content, these aren’t Hotspot exclusives, just a handy place to make sure you haven’t missed any entertaining, insightful content about all-things-adventure.

Then, of course, there’s the upcoming Adventure Game Hotspot Convention on April 20-21, 2024 in Tacoma, Washington! There will be more news imminently about that, as we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to coordinate the first-ever adventure gaming convention in the US, and we’re thrilled to be closing in on making that a reality.

Not everything turned up roses this year, of course, with plenty of bumps along the way – not the least of which was an ever-morphing gremlin that kept trying to eat our published content! Thankfully we're confident the critter has finally been captured and locked away for good.

We also weren’t able to follow through on our plans to update the site as much as we’d have liked. Our day-one launch state was never intended to be more than an initial stepping stone, and we thought we’d be further along by this point than we are. But while not much along those lines is visible on the surface yet, this is where we springboard into more GOOD news, as the Hotspot is currently undergoing an even bigger overhaul that will update both the look and functionality of the site umpteenfold  (give or take). There will still be all the same great content, but with a much more modern design and user-friendly accessibility. We don’t have a Hotspot 2.0 deadline just yet, but it’s coming soon, and we can’t wait to show you!

There's too much in a whole year to recap everything, but ultimately here we are. One year old, and proud of what we’ve achieved, but already looking ahead to bigger and better things.

All of us here at Adventure Game Hotspot would like to thank you all for your support as we grow this website into the pre-eminent adventure game resource we know it can be. We’re still building our online presence, so we appreciate any follows and shares and links in your own social circles. We’ll keep doing what we do best, and you can help us spread the word!

P.S. Don’t forget: Celebratory 12-hour YouTube livestream! Saturday, October 21st from noon to midnight, Eastern time. (That’s 4pm to 4am GMT, or 8am to 8pm Pacific.)