This month you can visit a manor house in 1928, a city in biblical times or Vegas in the 1930s. You can also travel to the depths of hell in a quest to overthrow Satan, ascend to a space station in the infinite ocean of the stars or simply head out to a rather unusual house in California. Elsewhere, you could discover a really implausible excuse for being late, learn why gunslingers aren’t the only thing to fear in the old west, and what differences key decisions can make to a life. You can even experience the joy of text in 26 different ways. All these pleasures await in the following November releases from the freeware adventure scene.

Dark Visions

It’s 1928, and when Emma Fischer receives an invitation to live and work with her uncle, Doctor Frank Mahler, it seems like a great opportunity. When she arrives, however, she is greeted by his assistant, James, and the good doctor is nowhere to be seen. Investigation of the house reveals many locked doors, including the entrance, which has been chained shut behind her. Coming across a strange man – possibly an escaped patient – in the kitchen, Emma soon realises that all is not well at Hill Crest Manor. Can she unravel the mysteries locked within?

This macabre offering from 10th Play is an impressive piece of work, with detailed, realistic backgrounds and fully animated 3D characters. The setting is a luxurious manor at night, providing for lush interiors with lots of dark shadowy corners. Its interface is point-and-click, with Look, Action and Walk selected either from buttons on the menu bar or number keys. Control is slightly hampered by a lack of hotspot indication, but a small arrow attached to the cursor allows for precise targeting on the smaller hotspots. The sound includes a Dixieland jazz tune and muffled voices beyond some of those locked doors, which change in volume the closer you get to their source. The opening cutscene is also fully voiced. As the name implies, this is a dark tale with some gory elements.

Dark Visions can be played online at the 10th Play website.

Life Flashes By

Charlotte Barclay is a writer of serious novels who has achieved moderate success. On her way to the next leg of a book tour, a car accident puts her on the brink of death. In a forest of her own imagination, she meets the pixie-like Trevin, who tells her that like all people in her position, she must now take a tour of her memories. Visiting her past life from childhood to near-present day, she sees crucial decisions and many variant lives not lived. As she explores these missed opportunities, she gets the chance to see what might have been, but will that change her fate?

Those who have played Deirdra Kiai’s previous offerings like Chivalry is Not Dead will know that she prefers a unique, unconventional approach. This game is no exception, as you can freely hop back and forth through Charlotte’s life, experiencing the various vignettes any way you see fit. For each scenario, there is a road-not-travelled option that unlocks once you fully understand the choice that was made. Being a spirit travelling through memories, you have no physical interaction. Instead, you’ll experience either recollections of conversations or Charlotte’s observations of her own past. This results in extensive dialogue, all of which is fully voiced to a remarkably high standard. This is even more impressive because you’re given different options for Charlotte’s take on each situation, meaning each individual playthrough will miss much of the recorded voicework. Each scene also has its own background tune, be it the generic easy listening music of a restaurant date or the “Doom and Gloom and Horrible Torment” that backs a relationship breakup. The characters are done in a bright cartoon style, but the backgrounds have a more detailed look that helps make the true-life situations seem more realistic.

Life Flashes By is available for both PC and Mac, with downloads for both versions available on Deirdra's website.

The Infinite Ocean

A desolate research station sits in the infinity of space. Time stands still and the wall screens bear messages encouraging you to abandon your struggle. The work terminals, when left idle, simply display four unexplained letters, SGDS. With no sense of your own identity, you walk the empty corridors, fragmented and corrupted computer files all you have to guide your path. And the more you roam, the more questions you’ll ask: What is sentience? What is reality? What is SGDS?

Those looking for a light adventure to pass the time won’t find that here. This is a game that encourages you to think, not just about puzzles but about the concepts behind them. This is hardly a surprise, since Jonas Kyratzes is the man who brought us the surreal but thought-provoking Museum of Broken Memories . The graphics are a stark black-and-white, though with a fine level of detail. The space station setting is austere but at times offers astonishing views, like when crossing a vast chasm that disappears into darkness in both directions. The desolation is enhanced by the haunting choral piece that forms the background music. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else on board, so you will need to piece together what has happened from logs and diaries, many of which have unreadable portions due to file corruption. Accessing these forms the main puzzling element of the game, as you have to locate passwords around the station and within files. Occasionally these passwords can only be found as fragments and have to be pieced together using the small overlap between fragments as a guide. There are also some limited inventory-based obstacles to overcome.

The Infinite Ocean can be played online at Armor Games.