It’s that time of year again! We’re counting down the days to Christmas with our own little “advent calendar” – one new game to play over the holiday season each and every day.
As the year winds down, things get really busy. We’ve got Christmas parties to attend, the end of year rush on work, and all the rest of it. But it’s also a time where we take holidays, find a moment to relax, and enjoy the company of others. This is the best chance to catch up on some key games that you might have missed from the year… or just play that multiplayer game that you’ve been waiting to get a crew together for.
Day 6: Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club
Okay so a murder mystery might not technically be much of a “Christmas season game,” but I am also deeply concerned that not enough people played Emio – The Smiling Man, so I’m pulling rank and recommending it anyway.
There are many good reasons to play it, too. Not only is it an excellent and often thrilling narrative, backed with some fun point-and-click adventure mechanics, but it’s the first Famicom Detective Club game to come in decades, and could well have been an attempt by Nintendo to gauge if there was interest in this becoming a major part of its portfolio. I hope it does. Visual novels with these kinds of production values are rare and precious.
