Daniel (@dungeondive) returns to one of his all-time top-ten adventure games — A Touch of Evil from Flying Frog Productions — to re-evaluate it ahead of this year’s top-ten list, and finds he loves it more than ever. He frames the piece as five things he loves, opening with the game’s greatest strength: the tight, evocative theme lets pure randomness generate genuinely memorable stories with almost no read-aloud text. He narrates his latest playthrough — an all-femme-fatale hunting party (Eliza the Witch Hunter, Abigail Stern, Sarah the Bright Witch) tracking a werewolf that turns out to be Lord Hambrook, the evil town elder and the father of one of their own.
He praises the sepia pen-and-ink map boards and the divisive live-action photography art (a bold, Hammer-horror look he adores), the sheer variety of the encounter/item/mystery/event decks, and the “Goldilocks” amount of content — just enough expansions to satisfy without becoming cumbersome. Crucially, its gentle threat management lets you wander and explore without being punished for non-optimal play.
His one recurring gripe, shared with Arkham Horror: the final showdown is a flat handfuls-of-dice slog. He lost this time — and didn’t mind, because the journey is the reward.
Do you, like Daniel, value the journey of an adventure game over its climactic showdown — and which games nail (or fumble) that final confrontation for you?