InsertDiscEighty

A sequel to this game came out this year.

I dunno, I'd pay about a dollar for something called Bizarre Earthquake. That's a pretty good title

I watched a longplay of this on Youtube, and like in the first entry, the puzzles seemed not so hot, with what I would assume is a lot of trial and error to get ahead. I did think at least a couple puzzles had pretty smart solutions, and the overall plot was presented at a slightly better pace than the first game, although both have a bit of plot-dumpy endings. Unfortunately, the visuals take a bit of a dive in this game with the primitive 3D models, when compared to the FMV people in the first entry. Some of the visual effects are cool, but there was something about that first game's visual style that was so much more appealing. Maybe it's because it was kind of the swan song of the 90s adventure game "feeling"--I'm not sure there are any adventure games after Schizm that give the same vibe. (I guess for other examples of that vibe, Myst is obviously the big one, but Lighthouse: The Dark Being is another prime example of that 3D-rendering-meets-real-life-picture/video approach that so many vaporwave artists struggle to reach.) As for the soundtrack, it is almost as strong as the first game's, which is definitely high praise. Some of the tracks aren't as "active" as others (more ambience, fewer alien-sounding noises popping in), but it's still quite good. Lastly, I should note that the third game in the series came out this year.

I haven't played this myself yet, but I watched a longplay of it on Youtube a couple years ago and I thought it was fantastic, but the music is especially where it's at--I was already listening to the soundtrack when I saw this game in the list! The puzzles do seem overly complex, and I couldn't imagine getting through it myself without just following a guide the entire time (hence why I watched the longplay), but I loved the visuals, the overall world-building, and that amazing music so much that I immediately bought the game on GOG when I saw it on there. (I also found the dual protagonist approach to be unique, but that could easily just be due to my ignorance of similar games. This one is pretty old, though!) One caveat: I noticed this game seems to have an odd predilection for dubbing over every actor in the game with another actor who doesn't "look like they'd have that voice", if that makes any sense to you. Some people try accents that I don't think ever work, while other times it almost seems like the actor is just doing ADR for themselves, but the tone they take doesn't match the facial expressions, so it comes across like they didn't even know what they looked like while reading the lines. A very strange experience, but due to the narrative in Schizm, it surprisingly didn't detract from my experience like the bad acting in so many other FMV-reliant games. I was easily able to imagine the Game Dungeon episode on this while watching the longplay for the first time. I highly recommend it (with a guide) if you're into the atmosphere the screenshots and OST give off.