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In this suspenseful coming-of-age drama, we try to save our friend Pedro and realize the LAN party we’ve always dreamed of.
Once upon a time, Avalancha Entertainment was enjoying their enormous success with the real-time strategy titles SpaceOrcs and TrollWarriors II, as well as the addictive action role-playing game Demone (this one could be spawning a popular franchise that won’t lose much of its popularity even with a half-baked mobile spin-off, a controversial Auction House, and sexism scandals). Cosmic Wars is the talk of the town – despite the prequels being controversial among veteran supporters. Shooter fans are eagerly awaiting Terror-Strike 1.6, and Catman comic books are selling like hot cakes – you guessed correctly, we’re in the early 2000s. Aspiring network engineer Spike regularly hosts LAN parties in Lima, Peru, and is joined by his friends Paula, Johnny, Jake, and Pedro. One day though, Pedro disappears, and it’s our job to track down the malicious kidnappers and rescue our friend.
LAN Party Adventures by Leap Game Studios is a first-person adventure game. In story mode we set up LAN parties, infiltrate offices, solve skill-based and environmental puzzles to avoid viruses and determine access codes. With hotkeys we select VGA cables for monitors, PS/2 cables for mice and keyboards, LAN and phone cables for connecting modems and switches, and power cables to provide them with the necessary juice. Setting up devices and connecting cables works intuitively well, just like we imagined after the developers showed us the game earlier this year. In story mode, we sometimes have to position the PCs ourselves and connect them with the necessary cables; in other cases, they are partially set up for us, and we have to make adjustments, such as establishing a network connection with the necessary floppy disks – all of this with a functioning console and websites for the fictional StarCraft clone in the game, in order to update the game or investigate our friend’s disappearance. The story is told through emails, phone conversations, and interstitial screens, and is unvoiced. Dubbed dialogue would have enhanced the dense atmosphere, but that certainly presents challenges for such a small development team. While listening to the relaxing synth music, we faithfully rotate the mouse wheel to connect the VGA cables to the computers, install power strips, and search for the few network ports on the floors of two classrooms, whose computers we can only access by solving a challenging math or physics puzzle. We get tips from our friends via a corded telephone, but watch out – make use of its cable after the call, since everything is in limited supply.
Some features make our life a little easier. For example, we can switch to a camera behind the PCs and monitors to connect cables with ease – at least in theory. Since our space is often limited, this view is often obstructed. This should be finetuned. If we then make the walk of shame around the table, the cable is often laid down across other keyboards and monitors. A bit too much micro-management is needed to properly connect the cables. On the other hand, the game will make you memorize the console command to setup a network connection quite quickly since you need it that often and it uses the IP config menus for Windows 98 and ME – an interesting contrast to upgrading from Windows 10 to 11 which is currently necessary due to the end of support. While we are not challenged much at the beginning, that changes towards the end. For example, we have to deactivate a virus in a mini-game under time pressure, though we have an infinite number of attempts to do so. Elsewhere, we have to crack two passwords using a pen-and-paper-style template. Whenever connecting a LAN cable, we have to sort the contacts. We would have liked to have played more of these mini-games, although the latter, despite several combinations, gets a bit boring after a while. At times, it’s unclear what the game expects us to do. For example, we’re supposed to comb through a huge database to find the culprit, boot up certain PCs in the correct order, and retrieve the necessary information, or connect the computer at the entrance to the other PCs in a cybercafé. Quite a few combinations are available for this, but it can take a while to find the exact solution the game is going for. Some sections are also quite dark, making it difficult to track down all the collectibles. On the other hand, The numerous references to popular games of the early 2000s, such as Counter-Strike, Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft, Tomb Raider, and Pokémon with creative fictional names, are relatively easy to find.
The dialogue in story mode is humorous, and over the course of the four- to five-hour campaign, we really want to know what conspiracy lies behind Pedro’s kidnapping, even if some of the characters’ decisions are a bit difficult to wrap our heads around. Once we collect all the mystery documents, we even unlock an ALTernate ending. In sandbox mode, on the other hand, we are able to create our very own LAN parties with over 100 customizable items, including vintage furniture, classic computers, posters, game consoles, and much more, including even more references to franchises like The A-Team, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SimCity 2000, System Shock, and Deus Ex. We can visit the story mode locations. Sharing our creations is also possible with the photo mode. It would be a great addition if we could share the blueprint of our LAN party with others online, or even import our own items, logos, and posters into the game and share them with other players—or even join their LAN parties directly. Although sandbox mode already offers plenty of customization, such options could significantly increase the play time and long-term interest in this mode.
 
Final thoughts
LAN Party Adventures is a trip down memory lane to a time when monitors were bulky and heavy, computers were window-less and were available almost exclusively in beige, and these cumbersome devices had to be carried to a friend’s house in order to play the latest games in multiplayer. Leap Game Studios’ game brings this era back to life with great charm, wrapped neatly into a suspenseful coming-of-age drama with plenty of twists and turns in Stranger Things style. In no time at all, you’ll be setting up an entire classrooms with PCs as if you’d never done anything else before. Minor caveats are that in close spaces the camera view behind the computer and monitor isn’t always available and sometimes it’s not quite apparent what the game expects us to do. There are countless objects to realize our potential in sandbox mode and we can finally set up our dream LAN party without the hassle of lugging things around or the need to be winning the lottery. It would be nice to create our own logos and items and share them with the community, as well as see the results of our work—for example in cutscenes of the actual LAN party in story mode, since the environments lack a bit of life without any character around in the long run. Anyone who enjoys exhilarating narrative adventures, and at best, is also a millennial who grew up with PC games, should take the chance to embark on an entertaining nostalgia trip with LAN Party Adventures. Younger audiences can experience this grand era for the first time and might even appreciate the comforts of today a little more. I’ll see you again in 25 years.
LAN Party Adventures was provided by Leap Game Studios. We captured the screenshots on PC.
