The magic of discovery in Broken Sword | Why I Love

gamesindustry.biz:

arūnas and ilvinas Ledas

Thursday 28th April 2022

Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This entry was contributed by Šarūnas and Žilvinas Ledas, co-founders of Tag of Joy, the developer of the hand-painted adventure Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit, published by Thunderful Games and launching on PC May 6.

A beautiful, innovative, fulfilling, challenging, satisfying, mysterious game. Not only a game, but a story, an experience. It got a lot of components right and was one of the best games back then and it still is. It's worth saying that the series is still very much alive, as the fifth instalment was released in 2014 and there are rumours of (and a lot of fans craving for) the sixth game. Yes, you may have guessed it (or read in the title) - we are talking about Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. But let's talk about why such an opinion would form in the first place.

My brother and I started playing PC games right before 2000 and very quickly got drawn into the world of adventures. Of course, we had played NES games like Super Mario, Battle City and Adventure Island. However, adventure games were something else: they had a story, they had amazing art, voice acting, beautiful animation and music.

One of us got our hands on a demo of Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror and couldn't stop talking about it. Our screen time was limited and it was summer, so we spent a lot of time outside and out of town, but the demo left such a big impression on a teenage brain that a lot of that time was spent analysing the puzzles, animation, story and other aspects of that amazing demo (no wonder demos had a revival in the