Giften

Giften is a Danish game developed and published by Deadline Games, after a manuscript by the Danish author Merete Pryds Helle.
 

Plot

The game takes place in the fictive city of Crosstown, where the player controls the journalist Minna Walker, who works at the newspaper The Globe. During the course of her job, she uncovers a connection between the city sewers and a string of sickness that has befallen several of the residents of the city.
Digging deeper, Walker finds that a plan to poison the sewers with toxic waste from a local power plant has ties to a tale of lost love and old grudges, and she gets to learn about the lives of those involved.
 

Gameplay

Giften is a traditional point-and-click adventure. The player can make Walker interact with the environment by clicking on it, and items can be stored in Walker's handbag, which she carries with her at all times.
 
The game stars a unique graphic landscape consisting of hand-drawn environments and characters, of black and yellow colors only. Items, characters and environment that can be interacted with is highlighted in deep yellow at mouse-over.
 
 Walker can interview residents of Crosstown, although her own lines are limited to 3-4 default sentences (an introduction, a request for help etc.). Consequently, most of the dialogue in the games is actually monologues by the other characters.
 
Minna Walker cannot die in the game, so there is no " Game over". Some bugs, however, may sometimes render the game unsolvable.
 

Trivia

 In Giften, the local kiosk-owner, Ali, is constantly hitting on Minna Walker - in the sequel, Englen (which was originally planned to be the third game in the franchise, but the middle one, Manipulatoren, was never finished) it is explained that Walker tried dating Ali in the end, but broke off the relationship because his infatuation with her was too overwhelming.
 
Minna Walker meets Fred, the protagonist of the sequel, during her visit to the city hospital. In Englen, during one of the possible storylines, Fred and Norman meets Walker, and it is possible for Fred to end up dating her.
 
Giften was the first chapter of the planned Crosstown trilogy, even though Englen, the third chapter, reportedly finished development a year earlier.