If I really sit down and think about it—put my thinking cap on and plumb the depths of my feelings—I can only conclude that 80 Days is one of my favourite games ever made. Top five, for sure. Top three even, maybe. Inkle's adaptation of Phileas Fogg's globetrotting gamble is a dang masterpiece full of adventure, intrigue, 19th-century homosociality, and moustache grooming.
I tell you this because you can pick it up, right now, as part of Humble's Complete Inkle Library bundle. For $12 (£11), you can nab, well, the complete Inkle library. That means you get:
- TR-49
- Expelled
- A Highland Song
- Heaven's Vault
- Sorcery Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4
- 80 Days
- Overboard!
- Pendragon
For $9 (£8), you can get all that minus TR-49, Expelled, and A Highland Song, while $20 (£18) gets you the lot plus four Heaven's Vault books. If you're into, you know, reading.
It's very worth it, if you ask me. Like I said, 80 Days is a personal all-timer, but Overboard—which tasks you with covering up a mariticide while you're on a cruise—is a fantastic time too. Heaven's Vault also has its stalwart fans on the PCG staff (I've not gotten around to it yet), and our Heaven's Vault review scored it 88% and praised it for doing "a beautiful job of letting you unlock a language, and thus a dialogue of sorts, with the past, via a wonderfully engaging protagonist."
TR-49 is Inkle's most recent game, and we loved that too. "Inkle builds a weirdo computer for the ages, then lets you use it to solve a beautifully-written mystery. Outstanding," wrote Abbie Stone in our TR-49 review.
If you love a dense, intricate, and reactive narrative? It feels like a no-brainer to me. The only game in there that doesn't quite hit is Pendragon, and we still called that "An accessible strategy game tied to a powerful, dynamic story generator." Say hi to Phileas for me.
