Gemini Bebop
This Adventure game came out of nowhere, originally a student project, the art style has a spot on Blade Runner feel and there is an obvious level craftsmanship that immediately sucks you in despite the super low res graphics. Its reminiscent of the best of the old LucasArts point and click adventure games, Full Throttle et all. It's a story told about the grungy side of sci-fi, where the interplanetary mafia and mining syndicates run the show and the common man keeps his head down to avoid getting into trouble. This game plays out from multiple character's points of view and your goal is to solve the mystery of what happened to the brother of a cop that doesn't have jurisdiction on Gemini.
There's some really good mood music, well artistically crafted scenes, and the voices are mostly good too. Some of the voices do sound familiar after a while however, I'm not sure how big of a budget they had for voice actors but pretty much everything is read out loud. Some of the scenes are reused pretty frequently too, but this is to be expected from an independent game like this and doesn't detract from the gameplay hardly at all. Some fun easter eggs and other sci fi type pop culture references peppered throughout like a surprise appearance by Ed and Einstein from Cowboy Bebop, the characters in this game feel like they themselves dropped out of an episode.
There even a few dynamic realtime elements in the gameplay that distinguish it from other point and click adventures, some cover based shooting mechanics pulled off quite successfully as well as some timed based objectives with serious consequences, you can and will die in this game! Don't worry the autosaving is well thought out and you won't be stuck running from one end of town and back in an attempt to artificially stretch out the total playtime.
All in all a great little sci-fi adventure game!
