I bought this game on sale, roughly 80 cents, so take that into consideration. Journey of a roach is a unique point n click adventure in which you can navigate all sides of a room, from ceiling to floor. This makes for some unique puzzles, where your approach may vary on your location. The music and graphics are cute and create a relaxing atmosphere. "Cutscenes" are a low-budget affair, reminding me of mid-00s flash games. Puzzles are straightforward, and by pressing the space button, you can identify hotspots if you get stuck, which I always consider a nice feature in adventures. The main disadvantage of this game is its' length; it took me like two n a half hours to beat it with no walkthrough, so I expect it to be like half an hour tops if you know what you're doing. As far as movement goes, it is kind of wonky at the beginning, I sometimes even missed a couple of areas due to the disorientation, but you grow used to it, and I didn't feel nauseous like some other reviewers mentioned. If you get it on sale, at a max prize of 1 euro/pound/dollar, it's definitely worth it.
Grim Fandango is in my opinion the best game ever made. The story, characters, and dialogue are the pinnacle of Lucasart's adventure games. It manages to legitimately elicit emotions from the player and stays with you long after the ending. The game's art direction is so good in combining film noirs with Mexican folklore that it manages to make 1998 graphics seem fresh even today and it also features one of the best game soundtracks ever, featuring some excellent big band and mariachi tracks. The voice acting is top-notch and along with the witty writing creates some lasting quotes. Lastly, the puzzles are actually fun, most of them provide the right amount of challenge, and although some moon logic is still present it is almost nonexistent. The remaster on the other hand is decent. The main advantage of it is the orchestral rendition of the soundtrack, which is truly something else and worth buying separately. The main problems with the game when it was firstly released were the bugs and controls. The remaster gets rid of the horrible tank controls and brings a more conventional point n click interface which is great. On the other hand, the bugs still remain, and at times even interfere with the point n click interface. Moreover, although the developers have improved the models' resolution, the backgrounds have remained the same and at times it becomes a bit distracting. It is possible that some of those original background assets were so over-compressed that they couldn't be salvaged so they went with keeping them the way they were. More playtesting was definitely needed to remove some of the bugs and optimize the new control scheme but even as it stands, it is still the best version of the game out there.
