A heartly welcome to all new group members, and a honest hug for all those who stayed members during a hiatus of over 2 years from my side. Hope you're all doing well.

But now the time has come...and it was The Excavation of Hob's Barrow from Cloak and Dagger Games that drew me back in writing something about archaeology in games. It's a fantastic point-and-click game featuring a female archaeologist in the late 19th century England. For my blogI tried to "dig" in the biography of the protagonist and to link it with various localities of the game. So, if you are interested, have a good read: The V.R. of Alternate History[thearchaeologistplays.wordpress.com].

And as it is tradition, a giveaway of this (unbundled) game appears as part of the wonderful Community Train on Steamgifts. So, if you want to have a try in digging spooky barrows and more spooky inhabitants join the giveaway here[www.steamgifts.com].

For the future, I want to try out the game Reliefs; it seems there are some signs of ancient buildings in it. But don't wait for it; work and kids occupy almost my whole time.

The best for all of you, enjoy your time and the last summer days of early autumn (at least here), until next time!

Summer is approaching, and with the hot weather the virus retreats, hopefully. Maybe some of you are already vaccinated, congratulation! To the others, stay strong, healthy and distracted!

During the first half of the year, I wrote two new essays about classical Point and Click-Adventure games, probably unknown to most of you. If you have spare time, I would be glad if you take a look and show some interest:

The first deals with a strongly distorted view of the colosseum in Rome and a nebulous statement on the origin of winds.
Case #3: The Hand of Glory - Distorted outlooks

My newest essay assumes that the developer of Mutropolis had a serious academic background in Egyptian archaeology before creating the game; furthermore, they choose to present a wild mix of cultural references and remains to entertain, but not to distract from the plot.
Case #4: Mutropolis — Egyptian Mixed Arts

But where are the giveaway, I hear you? Well, both games are only sold directly from the Steam store; as I don't want to exclude players from distant regions from my giveaways, I will wait until both games get sold on keyseller sites. But if you have a solution for this problem, let me know.

That's it for now. All the best for you, have fun and a great summer...maybe even some holiday trips.

It's december, everyone is opening their Christmas calender doors, and the pandemic is still with us.

To bring you some joy, I created finally the giveaway for The Talos Principle on Steamgifts...and additionally one more for Dear Esther. Here are the links: The Talos Principle[www.steamgifts.com]
Dear Esther LE[www.steamgifts.com].

In order to present my essays in a better readable format and to enrich it with images, I started a blog on Wordpress and transferred the essays about Dear Esther and The Talos Principle to this format: The Archaeologist plays...[thearchaeologistplays.wordpress.com]

Furthermore, I plan to give you some up-to-date information about my research, so I made a twitter account that I have yet to feed with tweets: The Archaeologist plays....

I would be a great joy for me, if some of these things will be of interest of you; follow whatever you want or just join the giveaways!

What comes in future: As a next project I have Barrow Hill in the pipeline. I've played part 1 from 2006, part 2 is on my list. So expect something in the new year.

At the end of this post I want to thank you all for being members, and wish you all the best for these crazy times.

Dear members of The Archaeologist plays...

Time has passed since my last discussion about Dear Esther, but the virus does not let us get back into normal life so fast. I hope you are all well!

There are some news I wanted to share with you:

Firstly, we are at about 80 group members, which is great! Maybe we can get to 100 soon...

Secondly, I set up a forum discussion, where you all can contribute observations and remarks about archaeology and archaeologists in games. Would be great, if some of you step in: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/archaeoplays/discussions/0/2575445991836145022/

But most importantly, I've written a new essay, this time about The Talos Principle: An excursion to the past with ruinous contexts
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/archaeoplays/discussions/0/2796124997594570341/

Take your time to read it and let me know, what you think - it was an interesting trip.

That's all for now, wish you all the best for this summer - until next time!



P.S. The Steamgifts-Link to a giveaway of The Talos Principle will appear "soon".