Adam's Venture Chronicles

I'll be honest with you - the moment I booted this up and heard Jonathan van den Wijngaarden's score swell over the opening screen, I felt something I didn't expect: a kind of warm, dusty nostalgia, like finding a paperback adventure novel at the back of a charity shop. That warmth carried me further than it probably should have. This is a compilation of three originally episodic PC adventure games, bundled together as one linear third-person puzzle journey set in the 1920s. You play as Adam Venture, an overconfident archaeologist who, alongside his companion Evelyn, stumbles through a Templar church diary, the supposed location of the Garden of Eden, Solomon's secrets, and a corporate conspiracy fronted by the villainous Clairvaux Corporation. The plot pulls heavily from biblical sources - think Old Testament location names, scripture-embedded puzzles, and characters named Adam and Eve who somehow manage to be more awkward around each other than the actual Genesis narrative. The story is thin and the writing is cheeky-but-conservative, exactly the tone you'd expect from a proudly family-friendly, faith-adjacent indie production. It is not preaching at you, but it is absolutely winking at you. The puzzles are the real reason to be here, and they're a mixed bag. Most lean toward math-based logic and symbol deciphering, with some torch-lighting sequences, lever-and-gate combinations, and a handful of timed platform moments that the controls handle less gracefully than they should. Adam's movement is stiff - the kind of stiff where he has to physically rotate before executing an action, which becomes genuinely annoying when you're in a time-sensitive segment. The camera is fixed at scripted angles and is non-negotiable throughout, which occasionally leaves you wandering in the wrong direction before glittering interaction points rescue you. That said, the puzzle difficulty does arc upward between the three episodes, with the second and third feeling noticeably tighter than the first, and the overall runtime sits around seven hours - which is actually just enough for this kind of light adventure without outstaying its welcome. What the game lacks in production polish it partially recovers through atmosphere and the soundtrack. Wijngaarden's score is genuinely lovely - unhurried orchestration that suits the dusty temples and medieval castles you wander through. The visuals are functional at best, built on Unreal Engine with character animations that reviewers have charitably called "stiff" since the original episodes launched. There are no combat sequences at all, which is either a relief or a deal-breaker depending on why you picked up an adventure game. Windows 11 compatibility has been flagged as inconsistent by the Steam community, which is worth checking before you commit. The honest audience here is casual puzzle fans, players who appreciate a nonviolent, story-lite adventure they can finish in a couple of sittings, and anyone with an interest in biblically themed historical mystery. Hardened adventure fans who want Broken Age depth or Uncharted spectacle will come away unsatisfied. But if you have a fondness for those early-2000s third-person puzzle adventures that felt handcrafted and a little rough around the edges, Chronicles has a specific kind of appeal that is hard to fully dismiss.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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