How many adventure game characters can you identify in this picture? note
A 2008 freeware game created in AGS by Jessica Beebe aka Akril15, Adventure: The Inside Job is a Point-and-Click adventure.. set in the world of point and click adventures.
Inspired by Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, the game revolves around Thalia James who was to be the protagonist of an adventure game. However, after her game got cancelled, she became the agent of the 2D Third-Person Adventure branch of the Computer Game Maintenance Squad, dedicated to crimefighting within the world of adventure games and making sure all the games function properly.
Adventure: The Inside Job can be downloaded here
. It was followed by two sequels: Adventure: All In The Game (2011), and Adventure: Welcome to the Genre (2018).
This game provides examples of:
- Abnormal Allergy: Sidonius is allergic to low-res EGA.
- Anti-Villain: Sidonius in the first game.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: In the second installment All In The Game, Thalia gets to visit "the most offensive game ever", where she helps a farmer find his sheep. She ends up wondering what's so offensive about that game, and is given the answer: "You don't know the truth about him and his sheep".
- Dummied Out: An In-Universe element actually; game characters like to spend their free time in the dummied-out game rooms because the players won't disturb them there.
- Fictional Disability: In her cancelled game, Thalia was to have a rare disease which causes her to temporarily switch identities with the nearest living organism with a central nervous system. The disease actually appears in Welcome to the Genre, but Thalia manages to gain control of it, making it a Disability Superpower.
- Obviously Evil: Jean-Eric LeMort in the third game was specifically designed to be as much of a stereotypical villain as possible. The fact that his first name sounds very similar to "Generic" is not accidental.
- Red Herring: Sidonius, the antagonist of the first game, is initially blamed for the events of the third one. It turns out he's innocent this time, but the real bad guy, Jean-Eric LeMort, used Sidonius' device for his own evil plans.
- Shout-Out: A whole lot of them:
- The character of Thalia was inspired by Queen Valanice from King's Quest, and the scene where she catches a jackalope references a similar puzzle from King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride where Valanice has to do the same.
- The light blue book in Thalia's room is actually The Eyre Affair, the first book in Thursday Next series.
- Show Within a Show: Though most of the adventure games mentioned in the plot are real, the storyline also involves some that do not exist in real life:
- Thalia's boss Tlotzin is a character from an unreleased game about Aztec mythology.
- Her marine iguana friend and colleague Ichabod is from an unmade edutainment game Ichabod's Island Adventure.
- Another friend of Thalia, Suzy-Ann Alva, was to be the protagonist of a cancelled edutainment game for girls. In the third installment, Welcome to the Genre, her game finally gets made.
- Her another colleague Sidonius is from an unreleased fantasy adventure.
- There is also an episodic character Clem, from the unreleased "the most offensive adventure game ever", which would have been about his quest to marry a girl who is also his cousin. In the second installment All In The Game, Thalia actually gets to visit "the offensive game".
- Space Police: Thalia James was to be a space police officer in her own unreleased game. In this game, she is also a police officer, but of a different sort.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sidonius in the first game. He steals items and characters from adventure games, hoping that the players would eventually notice that. The video game companies would therefore be forced to make new adventure games, leading to a renaissance of the genre.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. Basically it's the same story, just with adventure games instead of books.
