Adventure game
Encyclopedia
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story
driven by exploration and puzzle-solving
instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature
and film
, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Nearly all adventure games are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult.
In the Western world
, the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1980s to mid 1990s when many considered it to be among the most technically advanced genres, but it is now sometimes considered to be a niche genre. In East Asia
on the other hand, adventure games continue to be popular in the form of visual novel
s, which make up nearly 70% of PC games
released in Japan
.
The term "Adventure game" originates from the 1970s computer game Adventure
, which pioneered a style of gameplay
that was widely imitated and became a genre in its own right. The video game genre is therefore defined by its gameplay, unlike the literary genre
, which is defined by the subject it addresses, the activity of adventure
.
Essential elements of the genre include storytelling, exploration, and puzzle solving. Adventure games have been described as puzzles embedded in a narrative framework, where games involve "narrative content that a player unlocks piece by piece over time". While the puzzles that players encounter through the story can be arbitrary, those that do not draw the player out of the narrative are considered examples of good design.
s. In the book Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
, the authors state that "this [reduced emphasis on combat] doesn't mean that there is no conflict in adventure games ... only that combat is not the primary activity." Some adventure games will include a minigame
from another video game genre, which are not always appreciated by adventure game purists. Of course, there are some games that blend action and adventure throughout the game experience. These hybrid action-adventure game
s involve more physical challenges than pure adventure games, as well as a faster pace. This definition is hard to apply, however, with some debate among designers about which games are action game
s and which involve enough non-physical challenges to be considered action-adventures.
Adventure games are also distinct from role-playing video game
s that involve action, team-building, and points management. Adventure games lack the numeric rules or relationships seen in role-playing games, and seldom have an internal economy. These games lack any skill system, combat, or "an opponent to be defeated through strategy and tactics." However, some hybrid games exist here, where role-playing games with strong narrative and puzzle elements are considered RPG-adventures. Finally, adventure games are classified separately from puzzle games. Although an adventure game may involve puzzle-solving, they typically involve a player-controlled avatar in an interactive story.
Some puzzles are criticized for the obscurity of their solutions, for example the combination of clothesline, clamp
, and deflated rubber duck
used to gather an item in The Longest Journey
, which exists outside of the game's narrative and serves only as an obstacle to the player. Others have been criticized for requiring players to blindly guess, either by clicking on the right pixel, or by guessing the right verb in games that use a text interface. Games that require players to navigate mazes have also become less popular, although the earliest text-adventure games usually required players to draw a map if they wanted to navigate the abstract space.
device, players will sometimes engage in a systematic search known as a pixel hunt. Games try to avoid this by highlighting the item, or by snapping the player's cursor to the item.
Many puzzles in these games involve gathering and using items from their inventory. Players must apply lateral thinking techniques where they apply real-world extrinsic knowledge about objects in unexpected ways. For example, by putting a deflated inner tube on a cactus to create a slingshot, which requires a player to realize that an inner tube is stretchy. They may need to carry items in their inventory for a long duration before they prove useful, and thus it is normal for adventure games to test a player's memory where a challenge can only be overcome by recalling a piece of information from earlier in the game. There is seldom any time pressure for these puzzles, focusing more on the player's ability to reason than on quick-thinking.
, and try to vary the setting from chapter to chapter to add novelty and interest to the experience. Comedy is a common theme, and games often script comedic responses when players attempt actions or combinations that are "ridiculous or impossible".
Since adventure games are driven by storytelling, character development usually follows literary conventions of personal and emotional growth, rather than new powers or abilities that affect gameplay. The player often embarks upon a quest
, or is required to unravel a mystery or situation about which little is known. These types of mysterious stories allow designers to get around what Ernest W. Adams calls the "Problem of Amnesia", where the player controls the protagonist but must start the game without their knowledge and experience. Story-events typically unfold as the player completes new challenges or puzzles, but in order to make such storytelling less mechanical new elements in the story may also be triggered by player movement.
by choosing a line of pre-written dialog from a menu, which triggers a response from the game character. These conversations are often designed as a tree structure
, with players deciding between each branch of dialog to pursue. However, there are always a finite number of branches to pursue, and some adventure games devolve into selecting each option one-by-one. Conversing with characters can reveal clues about how to solve puzzles, including hints about what that character would want before they will cooperate with the player. Other conversations will have far-reaching consequences, such as deciding to disclose a valuable secret that has been entrusted to the player. Characters may also be convinced to reveal their own secrets, either through conversation or by giving them something that will benefit them.
and some, such as Zork
, also assigned the player a rank, a text description based on their score. High scores provide the player with a secondary goal, and serve as an indicator of progression. While high scores are now less common, external reward systems such as Xbox Live
's Achievements perform a similar role.
The primary failure condition in adventure games, inherited from more action-oriented games, is player death. Without the clearly identified enemies of other genres, its inclusion in adventure games is controversial, and many developers now either avoid it or take extra steps to foreshadow death. Some early adventure games trapped the players in unwinnable situations without ending the game. Infocom
's text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
has been criticized for a scenario where failing to pick up a pile of junk mail at the beginning of the game prevented the player, much later, from completing the game.
, "Hugo's House of Horrors" and Scott Adams' games, used a simple verb
-noun
parser to interpret these instructions, allowing the player to interact with objects at a basic level, for example by typing "get key" or "open door". Later text adventures, and modern interactive fiction, can interpret far more complex sentences like "take the key which is on the desk, then open the door".
, to interact with the environment and solve puzzles. This input method remains popular in the genre, and is well-suited to interaction with the environment, as opposed to direct control schemes which emphasize character control.
Graphic adventure games will vary in how they present the avatar. Some games will utilize a first-person or third-person perspective where the camera follows the player's movements, whereas many adventure games crazy use a context-sensitive camera that is positioned to show off each location to the best effect.
s.
The plot of these games can be obscure, and may be conveyed only through interaction with the puzzles. Many puzzle adventures are played from a first person perspective with the player "moving" between still pre-rendered 3D images, sometimes combined with short animations or video. Examples of the genre include Schizm
, Atlantis: The Lost Tales
, Riddle of the Sphinx, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
, and Myst
, which pioneered this game style.
One kind of puzzle adventure is the Escape the room
sub-genre, consisting of short games where the sole object is to find a way to escape from a room. These games are typically implemented in a graphic point-and-click style, which (owing to their popularity on the Internet) are often delivered in Adobe Flash
format. Examples of the sub-genre include Submachine
-series, Mystery of time and space and Crimson room.
Other puzzle adventure games are casual adventure games made up series of puzzles used to explore and progress the story, such as Puzzle Agent, or Castle of Dr. Brain
, and the Professor Layton series.
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A is an adventure game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime
-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant
stage plays. Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan
, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released. They are rarely produced for video game consoles, but the more popular games are sometimes ported
to systems such as the Dreamcast or the PlayStation 2
. The market for visual novels outside of East Asia
, however, is limited.
Visual novels overlap with Japanese adventure games in many ways, including a menu-based interface for all navigation and interaction, reminiscent of ICOM
games. Japanese adventure games are driven by narrative, focusing almost exclusively on character interaction, in a structure similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure story. Visual novels frequently feature romantic storylines in which the main character may end up with one of several possible mates.
Visual novels have been a staple of PC software sales in Japan
and other East Asia
n countries for over a decade, so much so that popular titles are open ported to consoles, and some even have famous manga
and anime
series based upon them; such titles include Kanon
(1999), Air (2000) and Clannad (2004) by Key
; Rumbling Hearts
(2001) and School Days
(2005) by Age
; Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
(2002) by 07th Expansion
; and Fate/stay night
(2004) by Type-Moon
.
A popular subgenre of visual novels is the "crying game" (nakige). The main purpose of such a game is to make the player feel for the characters and make them cry due to emotional scenarios which serves to leave a bigger impact on the player after the game is over. These games often follow a similar formula: a comedic first half with a heart-warming romantic middle followed by a tragic separation and finally (though not always) an emotional reunion. This subgenre originated from the companies Leaf
, Tactics
and Key
. One of the most acclaimed visual novels of this subgenre was Key's Clannad, released in 2005, with a story revolving around the central theme of the value of having a family. It was voted the best bishōjo game
of all time in a poll held by Dengeki G's Magazine
.
Non-linear branching storylines are a common trend in visual novel
s, which frequently use multiple branching storylines to achieve multiple different endings
, allowing non-linear freedom of choice along the way. Decision points within a visual novel often present players with the option of altering the course of events during the game, leading to many different possible outcomes. A recent acclaimed example is 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
, where nearly every action and dialogue choice can lead to entirely new branching paths and endings. Each path only reveals certain aspects of the overall storyline and it is only after uncovering all the possible different paths and outcomes through multiple playthroughs that everything comes together to form a coherent well-written story.
), which typically use a verb
-noun
parser to interact with the user. These evolved from early mainframe
titles like Hunt the Wumpus
(Gregory Yob
) and Adventure
(Crowther and Woods) into commercial games which were playable on personal computer
s, such as Infocom
's widely popular Zork
series. Some companies that were important in bringing out text adventure games were Adventure International
, Infocom
, Level 9 Computing
, Magnetic Scrolls
and Melbourne House
, with Infocom being the most well known.
Most text adventures tell the story as if the player himself inhabited the game world. The games did not specify any details about the protagonist, allowing the player to imagine him- or herself as the avatar
.
In the mid 1970s, programmer, caver, and role-player William Crowther
developed a program called Adventure
. Crowther, an employee at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (a Boston
company involved with ARPANET
routers) used the company's PDP-10
to create the game, which required 300 kilobytes of memory.
The game used a text interface to create an interactive adventure through an underground cave system, based on part of the Mammoth Cave
system in Kentucky
. Crowther's work was later modified and expanded by programmer Don Woods using the SAIL computer at Stanford, and the game became wildly popular among early computer enthusiasts, spreading across the nascent ARPANET in the late 1970s.
The combination of realistic cave descriptions and fantastical elements proved immensely appealing, and defined the adventure game genre for decades to come. Swords, magic words, puzzles involving objects, and vast underground realms would all become staples of the text adventure
genre.
The "Armchair adventure" soon spread beyond college campuses as the microcomputing
movement gained steam. Numerous variations of Adventure appeared throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, with some of these later versions being re-christened Colossal Adventure or Colossal Caves.
. Upon his first introduction to Adventure, Adams spent almost ten days traversing the game before he achieved Adventurer Grandmaster status, the title bestowed on those who scored a perfect 350 in Crowther and Woods' version.
Once he had completed the game, Adams began to wonder how a game like Adventure could be developed on a home computer like his TRS-80
. The main obstacle was that home computers such as the TRS-80 did not actually have sufficient memory to run a large game like Adventure. Adams worked around this limitation by developing a high-level language
and an interpreter
written in BASIC, an approach that would also allow code to be reused to develop further adventure games.
In 1978, Adams founded Adventure International
with his wife Alexis in order to sell his games. His first game, Adventureland, was a version of Adventure for the TRS-80 that would become the first commercially sold adventure game. His second game, Pirate Adventure, was an original game in a similar style to Adventure—its source code, written in BASIC, was published in the December 1980 issue of Byte magazine
. It wasn't until his third game, Mission Impossible, that Adams began programming in assembly language
to improve the speed of his software.
Adventure International went on to produce a total of twelve adventure games before a downturn in the industry led to the company's bankruptcy in 1985.
In 1982, David Peugh discovered a print out of the original source code for the Adventure game on ARPANET while visiting the Stanford computer lab. At the time, he was working at the computer retailer Computerland in Tacoma, Washington. As an added value to prospective customers David Peugh modified the original program content to work on all of the computers that Computerland company sold. He offered each customer a special back door magical word to jump to different locations in the game. The password was "XYZZY" The Adventure game continued to be a free program passed on till he inserted in to the commercial retail realm, giving it away free to customers who bought computers from him. Adventure was one of the first games ever to be played on many of these systems. In the following months Microsoft Adventure was released at a price of $49.95 in a plastic folder shrink wrapped on 8 or 5 1/4 inch floppies. Interestingly, inside the Microsoft Adventure program code were the magic words XYZZY.
and Marc Blank
were students at MIT
's Laboratory for Computer Science when they discovered Crowther and Woods' Adventure. Together with Tim Anderson
and Bruce Daniels
they began to develop a similar game, Zork
, which also started life on a PDP-10
minicomputer and was distributed across the ARPANET. On graduation the students, together with their group leader Albert Vezza
, decided to form a company to market Zork for home computers, and on 22 June 1979 Tim Anderson, Joel Berez, Marc Blank, Mike Broos, Scott Cutler, Stu Galley, Dave Lebling, J. C. R. Licklider, Chris Reeve, and Albert Vezza incorporated Infocom
.
The developers faced the same difficulties as Scott Adams in porting Zork to microcomputers: The PDP-10 version, which would reach a megabyte
in size, was enormous for the time, and the Apple II
and the TRS-80
, the potential targets, each had only 16 kb of RAM. They solved this problem by breaking up the game into three episodes, and developing ZIL (Zork Implementation Language), which could function on any computer by using Infocom's Z-machine
, the first virtual machine
used in a commercial product, as an intermediary.
In November 1980 the new Zork I
: The Great Underground Empire was made available for the PDP-11
; One month later, it was released for the TRS-80
, with more than 1,500 copies sold between that date and September 1981. That same year, Bruce Daniels finalized the Apple II version and more than 6,000 additional copies were sold. Zork I would go on to sell over a million copies.
The company continued developing text adventure games even as it opened a department for the development of professional software, a department which would never be profitable. High-quality games, with massive, intelligent plots, unequaled syntax analyzers, and meticulous documentation as integral parts of the game, succeeded in all genres.
The writer Douglas Adams
produced two games with Infocom, the first based on his popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
series and a lesser known adventure game called Bureaucracy
, inspired by the difficulties he encountered in moving houses.
With the power of microcomputers increasing and the demand for graphics (which it refused to include in its games until 1987), Infocom saw sales decline and in 1989, having been swallowed up by Activision
in 1986, the Infocom division had shrunk to a mere ten employees, compared to 100 at its peak. Although later titles were marketed under the Infocom brand, the Infocom division was shut down, and games developed after 1989 would have no link with the original team.
The demise of Infocom signalled the end of the commercial age of Interactive Fiction, and text parsers were rarely seen in games after 1989. Despite this, the low barrier to entry has ensured that a vibrant and creative community of IF author
s continues to thrive on the Internet
, using languages such as Inform
, which generates files that can be read by Infocom's own Z-machine
.
. Early graphic adventures, such as Sierra's Mystery House
(1980), employed basic vector graphics
, but these soon gave way to bitmap graphics drawn by professional artists. Examples include Koei's Night Life and Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku (1982), Sherwood Forest (1982), Yuji Horii
's Portopia Serial Murder Case
(1983), The Return of Heracles (which faithfully portrayed Greek mythology
) by Stuart Smith
(1983), Dale Johnson
's Masquerade (1983), Antonio Antiochia's Transylvania
(1982, re-released in 1984), Sierra's King's Quest
(1984), and Adventure Construction Set
(1985), one of the early hits of Electronic Arts
.
A number of games were released on 8-bit
home computer
formats in the 1980s that advanced on the text adventure style originated with games like Colossal Cave Adventure and, in a similar manner to Sierra, added moveable (often directly controllable) characters to a parser or input-system similar to traditional adventures. Examples of this are Gargoyle Games
's Heavy on the Magick
(1986) which has a text-input system with an animated display screen, and the later Magic Knight
games such as Spellbound
(1985) which uses a window-menu system to allow for text-adventure style input.
From 1984, a new kind of graphic adventure emerged, following the launch of the Apple Macintosh with its point-and-click
interface. The first adventure game to take advantage of the Mac's point-and-click interface was the innovative but relatively unknown Enchanted Scepters
released the same year, followed in 1985 with the ICOM Simulations
game Deja Vu that completely banished the text parser for a point-and-click interface. That same year, the NES
version of Chunsoft
's Portopia Serial Murder Case worked around the NES's lack of keyboard by taking advantage of its D-pad
to replace the text parser of the original 1983 PC-6001
version with a cursor interface for the NES version. The following year, Square
's Suishō no Dragon
on the NES took it a step further with its introduction of visual icons and animated
scenes. In 1987, ICOM's well-known second follow-up Shadowgate
was released, and LucasArts
also entered the field with Maniac Mansion
, a point-and-click adventure that gained a strong following. A prime example of LucasArts' work is the Monkey Island series
.
The introduction of such high-quality bitmap graphics required more substantial storage capacity with many adventure games requiring several diskettes for installation, which would be the case until the CD-ROM
made its appearance.
After playing through Adventure on a Teletype
terminal, and unable to find many other examples of the fledgling genre, Roberta Williams
conceived her own, a detective story inspired by Agatha Christie
's novel And Then There Were None
and the non-linear gameplay of the board game Clue
. After working on the design for a month, she was able to convince her husband, Ken Williams
, to stop work on the FORTRAN
compiler
he was developing in order to work on the game on his Apple II
computer.
Originally known as Hi-Res Adventure, Mystery House
was the first graphical adventure game, and featured vector graphics
of each environment alongside an unexceptional two-word parser. Mystery House sold well and although Ken believed that the gaming market would be less of a growth market than the professional software market, he and Roberta persevered with games. Thus, in 1980 the Williamses founded On-Line Systems, which would later become Sierra On-Line.
Sierra soon took things further. Until this point adventure games were in the first person; images presented the décor as seen through the eyes of the player. Williams's company would introduce a new feature in the King's Quest
series: a game in the third person. Taking advantage of the techniques developed in action games which had progressed in parallel, Ken introduced an animated character who represented the player in the game and whom the player controlled. With the 3D Animated Adventures, a new standard was born, and nearly all the industry latched onto it. The commands were still entered on the keyboard and analyzed by a syntax interpreter, as with text adventure games.
Soon after, Sierra had multiple successful series of adventure games running, including King's Quest
, Police Quest
, Space Quest
, Leisure Suit Larry
, and Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory
), with each containing numerous games. A few years after these series had started, the classic graphics above the command cursor was fully replaced with "point and click" game-play and VGA graphics. Other notable series include Phantasmagoria and Shivers; Sierra's last and most critically acclaimed series was the Gabriel Knight
series, which began in 1993 and ended with Sierra's last adventure game in 1999.
Sierra would develop new games and push the boundaries of adventure gaming until its purchase by Cendant
in 1998. Then in 1998, Cendant sold off their entire interactive software branch for $1 billion to Havas Interactive, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal.
Sierra pursued technologies for their games (such as hand-drawn backgrounds, rotoscoped animation, and in-game video) that were more advanced than most other genres at the time. However, the release of the PlayStation
marked the end of the adventure game era; as 3D became the dominant graphics format, the mostly 2D adventure market began to shrink.
Through its almost 20 year involvement with the adventure game business, Sierra employed several notable game designers, including Roberta Williams
, Jane Jensen
, Al Lowe
, Scott Murphy, Jeff Tunnell
, and Lori Ann and Corey Cole.
's 8-bit PC-8801
(1981) and 16-bit PC-9801 (1982) platforms, which could display 8 simultaneous colors and had a resolution
of 640x400, higher than Western computers at the time, in order to accommodate Japanese text
. This in turn had an impact on game design
, as NEC PCs became known for adventure games with detailed color graphics, which would eventually evolve into visual novel
s. NEC soon had several competitors such as the FM-7
(1982), the AV (1985) version of which could display more than 4000 colors in addition to featuring FM synthesis sound. Its 16-bit successor, the FM Towns
(1989), could display 24-bit color (16.8 million colors) and featured a CD-ROM
drive.
Japan's first domestic adventure games were ASCII
's Omotesando Adventure (表参道アドベンチャー) and Minami Aoyama Adventure (南青山アドベンチャー), released for the PC-9801 in 1982. Another early Japanese adventure that same year was MicroCabin's Mystery House, which was unrelated to (but inspired by) the On-Line Systems game of the same name
. MicroCabin released a sequel, Mystery House II, for the MSX
that same year. The following year, the Japanese company Starcraft released an enhanced remake of On-Line Systems' Mystery House with more realistic art work and depiction of blood
.
Due to a lack of content restrictions, some of Japan's earliest adventure games were also bishoujo games with eroge
content. In 1982, Koei released Night Life, the first commercial erotic computer game
. It was a graphic adventure
, with sexually explicit images. That same year, they released another eroge title, Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku (Seduction of the Condominium Wife), which was an early adventure game with color graphics, owing to the eight-color palette of the NEC PC-8001 computer, and role-playing video game
elements. It became a hit, helping Koei become a major software company. Other now-famous companies such as Enix
, Square
and Nihon Falcom also produced similar eroge in the early 1980s before they became famous for their mainstream role-playing games. In some of their early eroge, the adult content is meaningfully integrated into a thoughtful and mature storyline, though others often used it as a flimsy excuse for pornography.
Meanwhile in the arcades
, Japanese developers also began producing early interactive movie
laserdisc video game
s, the first being Sega
's Astron Belt
, unveiled in 1982 and released in 1983, though it was more of a shooter game
presented as an action movie using full-motion video. A more story-driven interactive movie game was Bega's Battle, released in 1983, which combined shooting stages with interactive cutscene
s, where player input had an effect on the game's branching storyline.
The most famous early Japanese adventure game was the 1983 murder mystery
game Portopia Serial Murder Case
, developed by Yūji Horii
(of Dragon Quest
fame) and published by Enix. The game was viewed in a first-person perspective
, followed a first-person narrative
, and featured color graphics. Originally released for the PC-6001
, the player interacts with the game using a verb-noun parser which requires typing precise commands with the keyboard; finding the exact words to type is considered part of the riddles that must be solved. The game featured non-linear elements, which includes travelling between different areas in a generally open world
, a branching dialogue conversation system where the story develops through entering commands and receiving responses from other characters, and making choices that determine the dialogues and order of events as well as alternative outcomes
, though there is only one true culprit while the others are red herring
s. It also features a phone that could be used to dial any number to contact several non-player character
s. The game was well-received in Japan for its well-told storyline and surprising twist ending, and for allowing multiple ways to achieve objectives. Hideo Kojima praised the game for its mystery, drama, humor, 3D dungeons
, for providing a proper background and explanation behind the murderer's motives, and expanding the potential of video games. The game has also been compared to the later-released Shadowgate
where the player must examine and collect objects, and find their true purpose later on. According to Square Enix
, Portopia was "the first real detective adventure
" game.
The command selection menu
input system, where the player chooses from a menu list of commands either through keyboard shortcut
s or scrolling down the menu, was introduced in 1983, and would largely replace the verb-noun parser input method over the years. The earliest known title to use the command selection menu system was the Japanese adventure game Spy 007 (スパイ00.7), published in April 1983, and it was followed soon after by several other Japanese adventure games in 1983. These included the eroge title Joshiryo Panic, authored by Tadashi Makimura and published by Enix for the FM-7 in June and slightly earlier for the FM-8
; Atami Onsen Adventure (熱海温泉アドベンチャー), released by Basic System (ベーシックシステム) in July for the FM-7 and slightly earlier for the PC-8001; Planet Mephius, released in July; and Tri-Dantal (トリダンタル), authored by Y. Takeshita and published by Pax Softnica
for the FM-7 in August. The game that popularized the command selection system was the 1984 adventure game Okhotsk ni Kiyu: Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin Jiken (Okhotsk ni Kiyu: Hokkaido Chain Murders), designed by Yuji Horii (his second mystery adventure game after Portopia) and published by ASCII for the PC-8801 and PC-9801. Its replacement of the traditional verb-noun text parser interface with the command selection menu system would lead to the latter becoming a staple of adventure games as well as role-playing games (through Horii's 1986 hit Dragon Quest
in the latter case).
Another notable adventure game released in 1983 was Planet Mephius, authored by Eiji Yokoyama and published by T&E Soft
for the FM-7 in July 1983. In addition to being one of the earliest titles to use a command menu system, its key innovation was the introduction of a point-and-click
interface to the genre, utilizing a cursor
to interact with objects displayed on the screen. A similar point-and-click cursor interface was later used in the adventure game Wingman
, released for the PC-8801 in 1984.
The NES
version of Portopia Serial Murder Case was released in 1985 and became a major hit in Japan, where it sold over 700,000 copies. With no keyboard, the NES version, developed by Chunsoft
, replaced the verb-noun parser of the original with a command selection menu list, which included fourteen set commands selectable with the gamepad
. It also featured a cursor that can be moved on the screen using the D-pad
to look for clues and hotspots
, like a point-and-click interface. Horii's second adventure game Hokkaido Chain Murders was later also ported to the NES in 1987. Yuji Horii's third mystery adventure game Karuizawa Yūkai Annai (The Karuizawa Kidnapping Guide) was released for the PC-8801 in early 1985 and for the FM-7 in June that same year. It utilized the command menu system and point-and-click cursor interface of both Portopia Serial Murder Case and Hokkaido Chain Murders, in addition to introducing its own innovation: an overhead map
. This gave the player direct control over the player character
, who can be moved around in a top-down view to explore the area. That same year, Square's Will: The Death Trap II was one of the first animated
computer games
.
In 1986, Square
released the science fiction
adventure game Suishō no Dragon
for the NES console. The game featured several innovations, including the use of animation
in many of the scenes rather than still images, and an interface resembling that of a point-and-click interface for a console, like Portopia, but making use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions. Like the NES version of Portopia, it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the D-pad to examine the scenery, though the cursor in Suishō no Dragon was also used to click on the action icons. That same year saw the release of J.B. Harold Murder Club
, a point-and-click graphic adventure, for the PC-98. It featured character interaction as the major gameplay element and has a similar type of multiple phrase response to more recent titles such as the adventures Shenmue
and Shadow of Memories
as well as the role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
. The TurboGrafx-CD port of J.B. Harold Murder Club was one of the first Japanese adventure games released in the United States.
In 1987 a programmer named Ron Gilbert
working for the company Lucasfilm
Games—which has since become LucasArts
—created the script-writing system SCUMM
which used a point-and-click
interface similar to ICOM Simulations'
MacVenture
games first introduced in 1985. Instead of having to type a command to the syntax analyzer, this system was controlled by means of text icons. To interact with his environment, the player clicked on an order, on an icon representing an object in his inventory, or on a part of the image. This approach was first used by LucasArts for the game Maniac Mansion
to great effect.
LucasArts would come to differentiate itself from its main competitor, the giant Sierra, by rethinking certain adventure game concepts to improve playability. Gone was the possibility to die during the course of the game and everything was done to ensure that the player was never completely stuck. Finally, LucasArts abandoned the system of points indicating the player's progress in the adventure. Many adventure games from other companies followed LucasArt's lead in these changes.
Gilbert's attempts, Maniac Mansion
and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
, however, remained in 16 colors (though the FM Towns
version of Zak was 256 color), and the point-and-click engine still had vestiges of text parsing, since the player would still have to construct sentences using clickable keywords combined with objects in the game. It was The Secret Of Monkey Island
that was finally a complete work, with 256 colors, a more modern point-and-click engine, a dialogue system with optional responses, puzzles solved with items, original graphics, atmosphere music, and a characteristic sense of humor. Above all, the script was written as for a film (which could be done in-house) and the dialogue and inventory served the needs of the script. The 1993 release of Day of the Tentacle
, a remarkable success, began a line of cartoon
-style games, including the very influential Sam & Max Hit the Road
as well as the acclaimed Full Throttle, which also heralded the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of adventure games.
Steven Spielberg collaborated with LucasArts in the creation of The Dig
—a science fiction
adventure game that the director had envisioned turning into a film.
Taking advantage of advances in action games and integrating an engine similar to those of first-person shooter
s, the company took a new turn in 1998 with the game Grim Fandango
, where it abandoned the cartoon style and its SCUMM scripting environment for a new 3D game system named GrimE
.
Following the 2000 release of Escape From Monkey Island
, LucasArts would not publish another adventure game for more than eight years, canceling sequels of Full Throttle (Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels) and Sam & Max (Sam & Max: Freelance Police) that were already in development.
's Anmitsu Hime: From Amakara Castle, released in 1987, was an adventure game with some platform game
segments. The adventure game segments were puzzle-oriented and played in a side-scrolling view where the player has direct control over the character. Originally based on the Anmitsu Hime
anime, an edited version based on Alex Kidd
was later released in 1989 as Alex Kidd in High-Tech World. The Goonies II
, also released in 1987, was a first-person adventure game with some side-scrolling action game
segments. The game featured a non-linear open world
environment similar to Metroid
.
A distinct form of Japanese adventure game that eventually emerged is the visual novel
, a genre that was largely inspired by Portopia Serial Murder Case, and uses many conventions that are distinct from Western adventures. They are almost universally first-person, and driven primarily by dialog. They also tend to use menu-based interactions and navigation, with point and click implementations that are quite different from Western adventure games. Inventory-based puzzles of the sort that form the basis of classic Western adventures, are quite rare. Logic puzzles like those found in Myst
are likewise unusual. Because of this, Japanese visual novels tend to be streamlined, and often quite easy, relying more on storytelling than challenge to keep players interested.
Hideo Kojima
(of Metal Gear
fame) was inspired by Portopia to enter the video game industry, and produce his own adventure games. After completing the stealth game Metal Gear
, his first graphic adventure was released by Konami
the following year: Snatcher
(1988), an ambitious cyberpunk
detective novel graphic adventure that was highly regarded at the time for pushing the boundaries of video game storytelling, cinematic cut scenes, and mature content. It also featured a post-apocalyptic
science fiction setting, an amnesia
c protagonist, and some light gun shooter
segments. It was praised for its graphics, soundtrack, high quality writing comparable to a novel
, voice acting comparable to a film
or radio drama
, and in-game computer database with optional documents that flesh out the game world. The Sega CD version of Snatcher was for a long time the only major visual novel game to be released in America, where it, despite a Mature rating limiting its accessibility, gained a cult following
.
Following Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
, Kojima produced his next graphic adventure, Policenauts
(1994), a point-and-click adventure notable for being an early example of extensive voice recording in video games. It also featured a hard science fiction
setting, a theme revolving around space exploration, a plot inspired by the ancient Japanese tale
of Urashima Taro
, and some occasional full-motion video cut scenes. The gameplay was largely similar to Snatcher, but with the addition of a point-and-click interface and some first-person shooter
segments. Policenauts also introduced summary screens, which act to refresh the player's memory of the plot upon reloading a save
, an element Kojima would later use in Metal Gear Solid
. The PlayStation version of Policenauts could also read the memory card and give some easter egg
dialogues if a save file of Konami's dating sim
Tokimeki Memorial
is present, a technique Kojima would also later use in Metal Gear Solid. From 1997 to 1999, Kojima developed the three Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series
titles, which were adaptations of Tokimeki Memorial in a visual novel adventure game format.
In 1995, Human Entertainment
's Clock Tower: The First Fear was a hybrid between a point-and-click graphic adventure and a survival horror game, revolving around survival against a deadly stalker known as Scissorman that chased players throughout the game. The success of Resident Evil in 1996 was followed by the release of the survival horror graphic adventures Clock Tower and Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within for the PlayStation. The Clock Tower games
proved to be hits, capitalizing on the success of Resident Evil, though both games stayed true to the graphic-adventure gameplay of the original Clock Tower rather than following the lead of Resident Evil.
From the early 1990s, Chunsoft, the developer for the NES version of Portopia, began producing a series of acclaimed visual novels known as the Sound Novels series, which include Otogirisō
(1992), Kamaitachi no Yoru
(1994), Machi
(1998), 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de (2008), and 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
(2010). From the late 1990s, a number of Japanese adventure games began using a 3D
third-person direct control format, particularly on consoles like the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2
. Examples include Sega
's Shenmue
series (since 1999), Konami
's Shadow of Memories
(2001), Irem's Disaster Report
series (since 2002), and Cing
's Glass Rose
(2003).
In recent years, Japanese visual novel games have been released in the West more frequently, particularly on the Nintendo DS
handheld following the success of mystery-solving titles such as Capcom
's Ace Attorney series (which began on the Game Boy Advance
in 2001), Cing's Hotel Dusk
series (beginning in 2006), and Level-5
's Professor Layton series (beginning in 2007). English fan translation
s of visual novels such as Square's Radical Dreamers (a 1996 side story
to the Chrono series of role-playing video game
s) and Key
's Clannad (2005) have also been made available in recent years.
Cyan, later Cyan Worlds, were among the first developers to take advantage of the CD-ROM
. Their first game, a simple children's adventure game called The Manhole
, became the first computer game to use the medium in 1989. In 1993, Cyan released Myst
, a first-person adventure that used the extra storage capacity of the CD-ROM to include pre-rendered three-dimensional graphics, video, and audio. Despite being one of the first games to be published solely on CD-ROM, thereby requiring a CD-ROM drive, the game would go on to become highly successful.
Myst was an atypical game for the time, with no clear goals, little personal or object interaction, and a greater emphasis on exploration, and on scientific and mechanical puzzles. Part of the game's success was because it did not appear to be aimed at an adolescent male audience, but instead a mainstream adult audience. Myst held the record for computer game sales for seven years—it sold over nine million copies on all platforms—a feat not surpassed until the release of The Sims
in 2000.
.
Few recent commercial adventure games have been hits in the US but they are still very popular in Europe (95% of all adventures released in US are in fact translated European products). It has been suggested that this is because the "average" gamer today was weaned on console
video games and first person shooters rather than the "traditional" computer games cherished by the original crop of adventure gaming enthusiasts. Another explanation offered states that MMORPG
s, which offer a persistent multiplayer world, have at least partially supplanted the genre.
Still another possible cause of the genre's downturn may lie with the nature of 3D graphics themselves, which for much of the 90's and early 2000s tended to be more oriented toward fast movement than graphical detail. Conversely, however, if a game were to implement more detailed but static imagery, this could be perceived as technologically regressive. Some question therefore exists of the adventure game making a comeback with recent advances in technology.
Adventure games have ceased to be the flagship titles they once were, and high profile publishers like Sierra Entertainment
and LucasArts
have either disappeared or shifted towards publishing titles developed by other companies. However, adventure games continue to be made in the 2000s, primarily outside North America
where the genre is still popular. Games such as The Longest Journey
by Funcom
as well as Amerzone
and Syberia
, both conceived by Benoît Sokal
and developed by Microïds
, with rich classical elements of the genre still garnered high critical acclaims. The Myst series came to a close in September 2005 with the release of Myst V: End of Ages
by its original developer, Cyan Worlds
. (A possible exception to this is Cyan's Myst Online.) Adventure games based on the Nancy Drew
books continue to be published by Her Interactive
, comprising a series of twenty titles produced since 1998.
Similar to the fate of interactive fiction, conventional graphical adventure games have continued to thrive in the amateur scene
. This has been most prolific with the tool Adventure Game Studio
. Some notable AGS games include those by Ben Croshaw
(namely the Chzo Mythos
), Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator
, Time Gentlemen, Please!
, Soviet Unterzoegersdorf
, and AGD Interactive
's Sierra adventure remakes. Adobe Flash
is also a popular tool, known for adventures such as MOTAS
and the escape the room
genre entries.
s that combine elements of adventure games with action games are quite common. Sega
's ambitious Shenmue
(1999) attempted to redefine the adventure game genre with its realistic 3D graphics
, third-person perspective, direct character control interface, sandbox open-world
gameplay, quick time event
s, and fighting game
elements. Its creator Yu Suzuki
originally touted it as a new kind of adventure game, "FREE" ("Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment"), offering an unparalleled level of player freedom, giving them full reign to explore expansive interactive city environments with its own day-night cycles and changing weather, and interact with fully voiced non-player character
s going about their daily routines. Despite being a commercial failure, the game was critically acclaimed and has remained influential.
There have since been a number of 3D third-person adventure games with direct character control interfaces, such as Sega's Shenmue II
(2001), Konami
's Shadow of Memories
(2001), Irem's Disaster Report
series (since 2002), Cing's Glass Rose
(2003), Catherine
(2011) by Atlus
, and the Quantic Dream
titles Omikron: The Nomad Soul
(1999), Fahrenheit
(Indigo Prophecy) (2005) and Heavy Rain
(2010). In addition, some other adventure games have also attempted to adopt aspects of first-person shooter
games in an attempt to modernize the genre, such as with Frictional Games
's Penumbra series
(2007–2008) and Amnesia: The Dark Descent
(2010). Other examples of adventure game elements being incorporated into other genres include L.A. Noire
and Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened
. On the other hand, other adventure games have moved away from traditional game conventions, and more closely resemble interactive stories, a major example being the visual novel
genre that is popular in Japan.
There is something of a revival of the adventure game online, in both a fairly traditional style, such as the mouse-controlled text games on Rinkworks
and Mystery Of Time And Space
, and in 3-dimensional games, such as Crimson Room. This had led to the creation of a genre called escape the room
or room-escape. Games are usually created with Adobe Flash
. A parallel can be drawn with "Behind Closed Doors" by John Wilson of Zenobi
Software, a popular 1980s text adventure series for the ZX Spectrum, where the object was only to escape one single location, such as a bathroom. Most of the current room-escape games consist of several locations which together make up one room.
In October 2006, online game company Telltale Games
, made up primarily of ex-employees from LucasArts, released their first installment of Sam & Max: Season One. This episodic game series
utilized 3D graphics, but was played in the 'point and click' style of older LucasArts titles. It was designed to be exclusively distributed online, and featured characters from the classic game Sam & Max Hit the Road
. The series was successful, leading to a retail release of the full season for PC and Wii, and the development of a second series, Sam & Max: Season Two
. Telltale was also responsible for a two-game series
based on Jeff Smith's Bone
comics and a series of five games based on the Homestar Runner
flash cartoons.
A further resurgence in adventure games was seen due to recent changes at Lucasarts. On the first day of the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Lucasarts announced that they would be releasing both a special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island as well as working with Telltale Games to create an episodic series Tales of Monkey Island
. In early July 2009, Lucasarts announced that it would supporting digital distribution
of its back catalog of titles, including its classic adventure games, through services such as Steam, and has announced it will further consider porting these titles to mobile devices such as iPhone
s. These efforts were backed by Lucasarts' new president, Darrell Rodriguez, who has been said to be "very big on adventure games". Lucasarts has stated that digital distribution helps to remove the barrier to reproducing these titles, and hopes that they will attract a new audience to these games. The move was shortly followed by Activision who offered the King's Quest and Space Quest collections from Sierra also for digital distribution.
The Nintendo DS
, with its unique touch screen
and dual-screen features, has sparked a renewed interest in pure adventure game content and a resurgence in the genre's popularity, following the 2005 releases of Capcom
's courtroom game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
(originally a 2001 GameBoy Advance game) and Cing
's Another Code: Two Memories as well as the 2006 release of Cing's Hotel Dusk: Room 215
. GameSpot
has credited Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in particular for revitalizing the adventure game genre. The success of the Ace Attorney series was followed soon after by the even greater success of Level-5
's Professor Layton in 2007. Both have since become some of the best selling adventure game franchises, with Ace Attorney selling over 3.9 million units worldwide and Professor Layton selling over 9.5 million units worldwide. Their success has led to an increase in Japanese adventure games, primarily visual novel
s, being localized for Western release, including KID
's Ever 17: The Out of Infinity (2002), Hirameki
's Animamundi: Dark Alchemist (2004), Irem's Raw Danger! (2006), Success Corporation
's Touch Detective
series (2006–2007), Marvelous Entertainment's Lux-Pain
(2008), Cing's Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (2009), Chunsoft
's 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
(2010), Capcom's Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (2010), and Atlus' Catherine
(2011).
Nintendo
's Wii Remote
is also regarded as being well-suited for the genre, and could see some ground-breaking releases in that vein for the Wii
, such as Capcom's Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
(2007), Eidos Interactive
's So Blonde
(2008), and Cing's Another Code: R – A Journey into Lost Memories (2009). The Ace Attorney series was also ported to the Wii in 2009 and 2010. Adventure games are also seen as ideal games for mobile platforms such as the iPhone
, where the use of a touch screen to interact with the game provides new directions for such games, much like the Nintendo DS. The introduction of larger and more powerful touch screen devices like the iPad
are also seen as a boon to adventure games, allowing for more detailed graphics and better controls and precision over smaller touchscreen units, and a better sense of immersion and interactivity compared to personal computer or console versions.
s, most of which are not in use today. There are emulator
s available for modern computers that allow these old games to be played on the latest operating systems. One Open Source
project called ScummVM
provides a free engine for the LucasArts adventure games, the SCUMM-derived engine for Humongous Entertainment adventure games, early Sierra titles, Revolution Software 2D adventures, Coktel Vision adventure games and a few more assorted 2D adventures. Another called VDMSound
can emulate the old sound-cards which many of the games require.
One of the most popular emulators, DOSBox
, is designed to emulate an IBM PC compatible
computer running MS-DOS
, the native OS
of most older adventure games. Many companies, such as Sierra Entertainment, have included DOSBox in their re-releases of older titles.
Text adventure games are more accessible. There are only a small number of standard formats, and nearly all the classics can be played on modern computers. Some modern text adventure games can even be played on very old computer systems. Text adventure games are also suitable for PDAs, because they have very small computer system requirements. Many classic Infocom
games are completely playable via web browsers
.
Interactive storytelling
Interactive Storytelling [IS] is a form of digital entertainment in which users create or influence a dramatic storyline through actions, either by issuing commands to the story's protagonist, or acting as a general director of events in the narrative...
driven by exploration and puzzle-solving
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Nearly all adventure games are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult.
In the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1980s to mid 1990s when many considered it to be among the most technically advanced genres, but it is now sometimes considered to be a niche genre. In East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
on the other hand, adventure games continue to be popular in the form of visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s, which make up nearly 70% of PC games
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
released in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Definition
| Components of an adventure game | Citations |
|---|---|
| Puzzle solving Puzzle A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution... , or problem solving Problem solving Problem solving is a mental process and is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping. Consideredthe most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of... . |
|
| Narrative Narrative A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"... , or interactive story. |
|
| Exploration Exploration Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans... . |
|
| Player assumes the role of a character Fictional character A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of... /hero Hero A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion... . |
|
| Collection or manipulation of objects. |
The term "Adventure game" originates from the 1970s computer game Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
, which pioneered a style of gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it...
that was widely imitated and became a genre in its own right. The video game genre is therefore defined by its gameplay, unlike the literary genre
Adventure (genre)
The adventure genre, in the context of a narrative, is typically applied to works in which the protagonist or other major characters are consistently placed in dangerous situations...
, which is defined by the subject it addresses, the activity of adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
.
Essential elements of the genre include storytelling, exploration, and puzzle solving. Adventure games have been described as puzzles embedded in a narrative framework, where games involve "narrative content that a player unlocks piece by piece over time". While the puzzles that players encounter through the story can be arbitrary, those that do not draw the player out of the narrative are considered examples of good design.
Relationship to other genres
Combat and action challenges are limited or absent in adventure games, thus distinguishing them from action gameAction game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
s. In the book Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design is a book by Andrew Rollings and Ernest W. Adams. It was first published by New Riders Group on May 5, 2003. One of the authors, Ernest Adams, is the co-founder of the International Game Developers Association...
, the authors state that "this [reduced emphasis on combat] doesn't mean that there is no conflict in adventure games ... only that combat is not the primary activity." Some adventure games will include a minigame
Minigame
A minigame is a short video game often contained within another video game. A minigame is always smaller or more simplistic than the game in which it is contained. Minigames are sometimes also offered separately for free to promote the main game...
from another video game genre, which are not always appreciated by adventure game purists. Of course, there are some games that blend action and adventure throughout the game experience. These hybrid action-adventure game
Action-adventure game
An action-adventure game is a video game that combines elements of the adventure game genre with various action game elements. It is perhaps the broadest and most diverse genre in gaming, and can include many games which might better be categorized under narrow genres...
s involve more physical challenges than pure adventure games, as well as a faster pace. This definition is hard to apply, however, with some debate among designers about which games are action game
Action game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
s and which involve enough non-physical challenges to be considered action-adventures.
Adventure games are also distinct from role-playing video game
Role-playing video game
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
s that involve action, team-building, and points management. Adventure games lack the numeric rules or relationships seen in role-playing games, and seldom have an internal economy. These games lack any skill system, combat, or "an opponent to be defeated through strategy and tactics." However, some hybrid games exist here, where role-playing games with strong narrative and puzzle elements are considered RPG-adventures. Finally, adventure games are classified separately from puzzle games. Although an adventure game may involve puzzle-solving, they typically involve a player-controlled avatar in an interactive story.
Puzzle-solving
Adventure games contain a variety of puzzles, such as decoding messages, finding and using items, opening locked doors, or finding and exploring new locations. Solving a puzzle will unlock access to new areas in the game world, and reveal more of the game story. Logic puzzles, where mechanical devices are designed with abstract interfaces to test a player's deductive reasoning skills, are common.Some puzzles are criticized for the obscurity of their solutions, for example the combination of clothesline, clamp
Clamp (tool)
A clamp is a fastening device to hold or secure objects tightly together to prevent movement or separation through the application of inward pressure...
, and deflated rubber duck
Rubber duck
A rubber duck is a toy shaped like a stylised Yellow-billed Duck , and is generally yellow with a flat base. It may be made of rubber or rubber-like material such as vinyl plastic...
used to gather an item in The Longest Journey
The Longest Journey
The Longest Journey is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Norwegian studio Funcom for the PC. First published by IQ Media Nordic in Norway in 1999, it was later localized for and released in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Denmark,...
, which exists outside of the game's narrative and serves only as an obstacle to the player. Others have been criticized for requiring players to blindly guess, either by clicking on the right pixel, or by guessing the right verb in games that use a text interface. Games that require players to navigate mazes have also become less popular, although the earliest text-adventure games usually required players to draw a map if they wanted to navigate the abstract space.
Gathering and using items
Many adventure games make use of an inventory management screen as a distinct gameplay mode. Players are only able to pick up some objects in the game, so the player usually knows that only objects that can be picked up are important. Because it can be difficult for a player to know if they missed an important item, they will often scour every scene for items. For games that utilize a point-and-clickPoint-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
device, players will sometimes engage in a systematic search known as a pixel hunt. Games try to avoid this by highlighting the item, or by snapping the player's cursor to the item.
Many puzzles in these games involve gathering and using items from their inventory. Players must apply lateral thinking techniques where they apply real-world extrinsic knowledge about objects in unexpected ways. For example, by putting a deflated inner tube on a cactus to create a slingshot, which requires a player to realize that an inner tube is stretchy. They may need to carry items in their inventory for a long duration before they prove useful, and thus it is normal for adventure games to test a player's memory where a challenge can only be overcome by recalling a piece of information from earlier in the game. There is seldom any time pressure for these puzzles, focusing more on the player's ability to reason than on quick-thinking.
Story, setting, and themes
Adventure games are single-player experiences that are largely story-driven. More than any other genre, adventure games depend upon their story and setting to create a compelling single-player experience. They are typically set in an immersive environment, often a fantasy worldFantasy world
A fantasy world is a fictional universe used in fantasy novels and games. Typical worlds involve magic or magical abilities and often, but not always, either a medieval or futuristic theme...
, and try to vary the setting from chapter to chapter to add novelty and interest to the experience. Comedy is a common theme, and games often script comedic responses when players attempt actions or combinations that are "ridiculous or impossible".
Since adventure games are driven by storytelling, character development usually follows literary conventions of personal and emotional growth, rather than new powers or abilities that affect gameplay. The player often embarks upon a quest
Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
, or is required to unravel a mystery or situation about which little is known. These types of mysterious stories allow designers to get around what Ernest W. Adams calls the "Problem of Amnesia", where the player controls the protagonist but must start the game without their knowledge and experience. Story-events typically unfold as the player completes new challenges or puzzles, but in order to make such storytelling less mechanical new elements in the story may also be triggered by player movement.
Dialogue and Conversation Trees
Adventure games have strong storylines with significant dialog, and sometimes make effective use of recorded dialog or narration from voice actors. This genre of game is known for representing dialog as a conversation tree. Players are able to engage a non-player characterNon-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
by choosing a line of pre-written dialog from a menu, which triggers a response from the game character. These conversations are often designed as a tree structure
Tree structure
A tree structure is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. It is named a "tree structure" because the classic representation resembles a tree, even though the chart is generally upside down compared to an actual tree, with the "root" at the top and the...
, with players deciding between each branch of dialog to pursue. However, there are always a finite number of branches to pursue, and some adventure games devolve into selecting each option one-by-one. Conversing with characters can reveal clues about how to solve puzzles, including hints about what that character would want before they will cooperate with the player. Other conversations will have far-reaching consequences, such as deciding to disclose a valuable secret that has been entrusted to the player. Characters may also be convinced to reveal their own secrets, either through conversation or by giving them something that will benefit them.
Goals, success and failure
The primary goal in adventure games is the completion of the assigned quest. Early adventure games often had high scoresScore (game)
In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points, and events in the game can raise or lower the score of different parties...
and some, such as Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
, also assigned the player a rank, a text description based on their score. High scores provide the player with a secondary goal, and serve as an indicator of progression. While high scores are now less common, external reward systems such as Xbox Live
Xbox Live
Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation. It is currently the only online gaming service on consoles that charges users a fee to play multiplayer gaming. It was first made available to the Xbox system in 2002...
's Achievements perform a similar role.
The primary failure condition in adventure games, inherited from more action-oriented games, is player death. Without the clearly identified enemies of other genres, its inclusion in adventure games is controversial, and many developers now either avoid it or take extra steps to foreshadow death. Some early adventure games trapped the players in unwinnable situations without ending the game. Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
's text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (computer game)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an interactive fiction computer game based on the comedic science fiction series of the same name. It was designed by series creator Douglas Adams and Infocom's Steve Meretzky, and was first released in 1984 for the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, DOS,...
has been criticized for a scenario where failing to pick up a pile of junk mail at the beginning of the game prevented the player, much later, from completing the game.
Text adventure
Text adventures, also known as Interactive Fiction, convey the game's story through passages of text, revealed to the player in response to typed instructions. Early text adventures, such as AdventureColossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
, "Hugo's House of Horrors" and Scott Adams' games, used a simple verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
-noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
parser to interpret these instructions, allowing the player to interact with objects at a basic level, for example by typing "get key" or "open door". Later text adventures, and modern interactive fiction, can interpret far more complex sentences like "take the key which is on the desk, then open the door".
Graphic adventure
Graphic adventures are adventure games that use graphics to convey the environment to the player. Games under the graphic adventure banner may have a variety of input types, from text parsers to touch screen interfaces. Point-and-click adventures are a common type of graphic adventure in which the player uses a pointer, typically a mouseMouse (computing)
In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
, to interact with the environment and solve puzzles. This input method remains popular in the genre, and is well-suited to interaction with the environment, as opposed to direct control schemes which emphasize character control.
Graphic adventure games will vary in how they present the avatar. Some games will utilize a first-person or third-person perspective where the camera follows the player's movements, whereas many adventure games crazy use a context-sensitive camera that is positioned to show off each location to the best effect.
Puzzle adventure
Puzzle adventures are adventure games that put a strong emphasis on puzzle solving, at the expense of elements such as item gathering, item use, character interaction, or plot. Instead, they typically emphasize exploration and deciphering the proper use of complex mechanisms, often resembling Rube Goldberg machineRube Goldberg machine
A Rube Goldberg machine, contraption, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction...
s.
The plot of these games can be obscure, and may be conveyed only through interaction with the puzzles. Many puzzle adventures are played from a first person perspective with the player "moving" between still pre-rendered 3D images, sometimes combined with short animations or video. Examples of the genre include Schizm
Schizm: Mysterious Journey
Schizm: Mysterious Journey is an adventure-genre computer game created by Detalion and LK Avalon and published by DreamCatcher Games. It was authored by acclaimed Australian science fiction writer Terry Dowling....
, Atlantis: The Lost Tales
Atlantis: The Lost Tales
Atlantis: The Lost Tales is a fantasy adventure computer game developed by Cryo Interactive and published by Dreamcatcher Interactive, and released on September 30, 1997. The game is named after its initial and most important setting, Atlantis...
, Riddle of the Sphinx, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, known as in Japan, is an adventure/puzzle video game published and developed by Capcom for the Wii video game console. It was first released in North America on October 23, 2007, and was later released in Japan, PAL regions, and as one of eight Wii launch...
, and Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
, which pioneered this game style.
One kind of puzzle adventure is the Escape the room
Escape the room
Escape the room is a subgenre of point-and-click adventure game which requires a player to escape from imprisonment by exploiting their surroundings. They are usually created as a browser game for the Adobe Flash platform. Popular examples include "Crimson Room," "Viridian Room," "MOTAS,", "Droom"...
sub-genre, consisting of short games where the sole object is to find a way to escape from a room. These games are typically implemented in a graphic point-and-click style, which (owing to their popularity on the Internet) are often delivered in Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
format. Examples of the sub-genre include Submachine
Submachine (series)
The Submachine, Submerged Machine, series is a series of point-and-click adventure games, created by Mateusz Skutnik, and first released in October 2005....
-series, Mystery of time and space and Crimson room.
Other puzzle adventure games are casual adventure games made up series of puzzles used to explore and progress the story, such as Puzzle Agent, or Castle of Dr. Brain
Castle of Dr. Brain
Castle of Dr. Brain is a video game of the educational genre released in 1991 by Sierra Online. It is a puzzle adventure game.-Gameplay:The object of the game is to successfully navigate the puzzles Dr. Brain has set up in order to become the mad scientist's assistant...
, and the Professor Layton series.
Visual novel
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant
Tableau vivant
Tableau vivant is French for "living picture." The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed actors or artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move...
stage plays. Visual novels are especially prevalent in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released. They are rarely produced for video game consoles, but the more popular games are sometimes ported
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
to systems such as the Dreamcast or the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
. The market for visual novels outside of East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
, however, is limited.
Visual novels overlap with Japanese adventure games in many ways, including a menu-based interface for all navigation and interaction, reminiscent of ICOM
ICOM Simulations
ICOM Simulations was a software company based in Wheeling, Illinois. It is best known for creating the MacVenture series of adventure games including Shadowgate.Following the foundation in 1983 a number of game titles for the Panasonic JR-200 were produced...
games. Japanese adventure games are driven by narrative, focusing almost exclusively on character interaction, in a structure similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure story. Visual novels frequently feature romantic storylines in which the main character may end up with one of several possible mates.
Visual novels have been a staple of PC software sales in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and other East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n countries for over a decade, so much so that popular titles are open ported to consoles, and some even have famous manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
and anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series based upon them; such titles include Kanon
Kanon
is a Japanese visual novel developed by Key and originally released as an adult game on June 4, 1999, playable on a Microsoft Windows PC. An all ages version for the PC was released in January 2000, and was later ported to the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable...
(1999), Air (2000) and Clannad (2004) by Key
Key (company)
Key is a Japanese visual novel studio which formed on July 21, 1998 as a brand under the publisher Visual Art's and is located in Kita, Osaka, Japan. Key released their debut visual novel Kanon in June 1999, which combined an elaborate storyline, an up-to-date anime-style drawing style, and a...
; Rumbling Hearts
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
, abbreviated as Kimibou or Kiminozo, is a Japanese visual novel adventure game created by âge. It was first released in 2001 for the PC and was later ported to the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 under the title Rumbling Hearts as all-age versions...
(2001) and School Days
School Days (visual novel)
is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by 0verflow and published by Stack, and was originally released for the PC on April 28, 2005. It was subsequently released as a DVD TV game by Stack, followed by an all-ages port titled School Days L×H published by Interchannel for the PlayStation 2, in...
(2005) by Age
Âge
Âge is a division of Acid Co., Ltd., a Japanese publisher of adult video games and visual novels. Âge was formerly known as Relic and developed video games for consoles. It gained fame following the release of its 2001 adult visual novel Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. It was founded by Hirohiko Yoshida,...
; Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
, known simply as When They Cry for the North American release of the anime adaptation, is a Japanese murder mystery dōjin soft sound novel series produced by 07th Expansion. The games are built on the NScripter game engine and are playable on Microsoft Windows PCs...
(2002) by 07th Expansion
07th Expansion
07th Expansion is a Japanese dōjin group that specializes in the creation of visual novels known as sound novels. They started out drawing for the trading card game Leaf Fight, but they are most famous for creating the dōjin game series Higurashi no Naku Koro ni...
; and Fate/stay night
Fate/stay night
is a Japanese visual novel developed by Type-Moon, which was originally released as an adult game for the PC. An all-ages version of Fate/stay night, titled Fate/stay night Réalta Nua, was released for the PlayStation 2 on April 19, 2007, and features the Japanese voice actors from the anime series...
(2004) by Type-Moon
TYPE-MOON
is a Japanese game company, best known for their visual novels, co-founded by author Kinoko Nasu and illustrator Takashi Takeuchi. It is also known under the name for its publishing and corporate operations...
.
A popular subgenre of visual novels is the "crying game" (nakige). The main purpose of such a game is to make the player feel for the characters and make them cry due to emotional scenarios which serves to leave a bigger impact on the player after the game is over. These games often follow a similar formula: a comedic first half with a heart-warming romantic middle followed by a tragic separation and finally (though not always) an emotional reunion. This subgenre originated from the companies Leaf
Leaf (company)
Leaf is a Japanese visual novel studio under the publisher Aquaplus, and has offices in Yodogawa-ku, Osaka, and Tokyo. It and its competitor Key are the most popular and successful dedicated visual novel studios operating today. It was launched out of obscurity by its early release ToHeart...
, Tactics
Tactics (company)
Tactics is a Japanese visual novel studio which specializes in the development of dating sim and eroge style games. Tactics is actually a branch of the joint company Nexton. Their debut release was a game entitled Dōsei in mid-1997, followed by Moon. in the same year, and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e in...
and Key
Key (company)
Key is a Japanese visual novel studio which formed on July 21, 1998 as a brand under the publisher Visual Art's and is located in Kita, Osaka, Japan. Key released their debut visual novel Kanon in June 1999, which combined an elaborate storyline, an up-to-date anime-style drawing style, and a...
. One of the most acclaimed visual novels of this subgenre was Key's Clannad, released in 2005, with a story revolving around the central theme of the value of having a family. It was voted the best bishōjo game
Bishojo game
A , or , is "a type of Japanese video game centered on interactions with attractive anime-style girls". These games are a sub-genre of dating sims targeted towards a male audience....
of all time in a poll held by Dengeki G's Magazine
Dengeki G's Magazine
is a Japanese magazine published by ASCII Media Works and sold monthly on the thirtieth that primarily contains information on bishōjo games, but also includes an entire section on anime based on bishōjo games, and serializes manga and light novels based on such games. The "G's" in the title...
.
Non-linear branching storylines are a common trend in visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s, which frequently use multiple branching storylines to achieve multiple different endings
Multiple endings
Multiple endings refer to a case in entertainment where the story could end in different ways, described as an alternate ending.-Literature:...
, allowing non-linear freedom of choice along the way. Decision points within a visual novel often present players with the option of altering the course of events during the game, leading to many different possible outcomes. A recent acclaimed example is 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
is an adventure game developed by Chunsoft and published in Japan by Spike on December 10, 2009, and in North America by Aksys Games on November 16, 2010. The game's design team was led by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who is also the writer of the acclaimed visual novel Ever 17: The Out of Infinity...
, where nearly every action and dialogue choice can lead to entirely new branching paths and endings. Each path only reveals certain aspects of the overall storyline and it is only after uncovering all the possible different paths and outcomes through multiple playthroughs that everything comes together to form a coherent well-written story.
Early development
The first adventure games to appear were text adventures (later called interactive fictionInteractive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
), which typically use a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
-noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
parser to interact with the user. These evolved from early mainframe
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
titles like Hunt the Wumpus
Hunt the Wumpus
Hunt the Wumpus is an early computer game, based on a simple hide and seek format featuring a mysterious monster that lurks deep inside a network of rooms. It was originally a text-based game written in BASIC...
(Gregory Yob
Gregory Yob
Gregory Yob was an American computer game designer.Gregory was born in Eugene, Oregon. An article about his experiment on simulating gravitational fields with droplets of water on a soap bubble was published in Scientific American in December 1964, under The Amateur Scientist.His one published...
) and Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
(Crowther and Woods) into commercial games which were playable on personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s, such as Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
's widely popular Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
series. Some companies that were important in bringing out text adventure games were Adventure International
Adventure International
Adventure International was a computer game publishing company that existed from 1978 until 1985, started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system...
, Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
, Level 9 Computing
Level 9 Computing
Level 9 was a British computer text adventure game company which produced some of the most advanced games of the 1980s. Founded in 1981 by Mike Austin, Nicholas Austin and Pete Austin, the company produced about 20 games for BBC Micro, Nascom, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Oric, Atari, Lynx 48k, RML...
, Magnetic Scrolls
Magnetic Scrolls
Magnetic Scrolls was a British computer game developer during the mid 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of two largest interactive fiction game makers of the 1980s...
and Melbourne House
Melbourne House
Krome Studios Melbourne, originally Beam Software, was a video game development studio founded in 1980 and based in Melbourne, Australia. The studio operated independently from 1987 until 1999, when it was acquired by Infogrames, who changed the name to Melbourne House...
, with Infocom being the most well known.
Most text adventures tell the story as if the player himself inhabited the game world. The games did not specify any details about the protagonist, allowing the player to imagine him- or herself as the avatar
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
.
Adventure (1975-1977)
William Crowther
William Crowther is a computer programmer and caver. He is best known as the co-creator of Colossal Cave Adventure, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of game design and created a new game genre, text adventures.-Biography:During the early 1970s Crowther worked at defense...
developed a program called Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
. Crowther, an employee at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (a Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
company involved with ARPANET
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...
routers) used the company's PDP-10
PDP-10
The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
to create the game, which required 300 kilobytes of memory.
The game used a text interface to create an interactive adventure through an underground cave system, based on part of the Mammoth Cave
Mammoth Cave National Park
Mammoth Cave National Park is a U.S. National Park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. The official name of the system is the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System for the ridge under which the cave has formed. The park was established...
system in Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
. Crowther's work was later modified and expanded by programmer Don Woods using the SAIL computer at Stanford, and the game became wildly popular among early computer enthusiasts, spreading across the nascent ARPANET in the late 1970s.
The combination of realistic cave descriptions and fantastical elements proved immensely appealing, and defined the adventure game genre for decades to come. Swords, magic words, puzzles involving objects, and vast underground realms would all become staples of the text adventure
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
genre.
The "Armchair adventure" soon spread beyond college campuses as the microcomputing
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
movement gained steam. Numerous variations of Adventure appeared throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, with some of these later versions being re-christened Colossal Adventure or Colossal Caves.
Adventure International (1978-1985)
One of the many fans of the Colossal Cave was programmer Scott AdamsScott Adams (game designer)
Scott Adams is the co-founder, with ex-wife Alexis, of Adventure International, an early publisher of games for home computers....
. Upon his first introduction to Adventure, Adams spent almost ten days traversing the game before he achieved Adventurer Grandmaster status, the title bestowed on those who scored a perfect 350 in Crowther and Woods' version.
Once he had completed the game, Adams began to wonder how a game like Adventure could be developed on a home computer like his TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
. The main obstacle was that home computers such as the TRS-80 did not actually have sufficient memory to run a large game like Adventure. Adams worked around this limitation by developing a high-level language
High-level programming language
A high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer. In comparison to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language elements, be easier to use, or be from the specification of the program, making the process of...
and an interpreter
Interpreter (computing)
In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...
written in BASIC, an approach that would also allow code to be reused to develop further adventure games.
In 1978, Adams founded Adventure International
Adventure International
Adventure International was a computer game publishing company that existed from 1978 until 1985, started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system...
with his wife Alexis in order to sell his games. His first game, Adventureland, was a version of Adventure for the TRS-80 that would become the first commercially sold adventure game. His second game, Pirate Adventure, was an original game in a similar style to Adventure—its source code, written in BASIC, was published in the December 1980 issue of Byte magazine
Byte (magazine)
BYTE magazine was a microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage...
. It wasn't until his third game, Mission Impossible, that Adams began programming in assembly language
Assembly language
An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...
to improve the speed of his software.
Adventure International went on to produce a total of twelve adventure games before a downturn in the industry led to the company's bankruptcy in 1985.
In 1982, David Peugh discovered a print out of the original source code for the Adventure game on ARPANET while visiting the Stanford computer lab. At the time, he was working at the computer retailer Computerland in Tacoma, Washington. As an added value to prospective customers David Peugh modified the original program content to work on all of the computers that Computerland company sold. He offered each customer a special back door magical word to jump to different locations in the game. The password was "XYZZY" The Adventure game continued to be a free program passed on till he inserted in to the commercial retail realm, giving it away free to customers who bought computers from him. Adventure was one of the first games ever to be played on many of these systems. In the following months Microsoft Adventure was released at a price of $49.95 in a plastic folder shrink wrapped on 8 or 5 1/4 inch floppies. Interestingly, inside the Microsoft Adventure program code were the magic words XYZZY.
Infocom (1979-1989)
Dave LeblingDave Lebling
P. David Lebling is an interactive fiction game designer and programmer who has worked at various companies, including Infocom and Avid....
and Marc Blank
Marc Blank
Marc Blank is an American game developer and software engineer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first hit text adventure computer games, Zork....
were students at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's Laboratory for Computer Science when they discovered Crowther and Woods' Adventure. Together with Tim Anderson
Tim Anderson (Zork)
Tim Anderson is a computer programmer who helped create the adventure game Zork, one of the first works of interactive fiction and an early descendant of ADVENT . The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 in the MDL programming language on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Anderson, Marc Blank,...
and Bruce Daniels
Bruce Daniels
Dr. Bruce Daniels is an American computer programmer and business executive who has worked for Hewlett Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Borland, Sun Microsystems and his own start-up Singular Software, which created Mac database management software...
they began to develop a similar game, Zork
Zork
Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
, which also started life on a PDP-10
PDP-10
The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
minicomputer and was distributed across the ARPANET. On graduation the students, together with their group leader Albert Vezza
Albert Vezza
Al Vezza was a computer science professor and a founder of Infocom, one of the earliest computer game companies.Vezza was the assistant director of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science and in charge of LCS's Dynamic Modeling group in the late 1970s when group members Dave Lebling, Marc Blank,...
, decided to form a company to market Zork for home computers, and on 22 June 1979 Tim Anderson, Joel Berez, Marc Blank, Mike Broos, Scott Cutler, Stu Galley, Dave Lebling, J. C. R. Licklider, Chris Reeve, and Albert Vezza incorporated Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
.
The developers faced the same difficulties as Scott Adams in porting Zork to microcomputers: The PDP-10 version, which would reach a megabyte
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
in size, was enormous for the time, and the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
and the TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
, the potential targets, each had only 16 kb of RAM. They solved this problem by breaking up the game into three episodes, and developing ZIL (Zork Implementation Language), which could function on any computer by using Infocom's Z-machine
Z-machine
The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a...
, the first virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
used in a commercial product, as an intermediary.
In November 1980 the new Zork I
Zork I
Zork: The Great Underground Empire - Part I, later known as Zork I, is an interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson and published by Infocom in 1980. It was the first game in the popular Zork trilogy and was released for a wide range of...
: The Great Underground Empire was made available for the PDP-11
PDP-11
The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...
; One month later, it was released for the TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
, with more than 1,500 copies sold between that date and September 1981. That same year, Bruce Daniels finalized the Apple II version and more than 6,000 additional copies were sold. Zork I would go on to sell over a million copies.
The company continued developing text adventure games even as it opened a department for the development of professional software, a department which would never be profitable. High-quality games, with massive, intelligent plots, unequaled syntax analyzers, and meticulous documentation as integral parts of the game, succeeded in all genres.
The writer Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
produced two games with Infocom, the first based on his popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (computer game)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an interactive fiction computer game based on the comedic science fiction series of the same name. It was designed by series creator Douglas Adams and Infocom's Steve Meretzky, and was first released in 1984 for the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, DOS,...
series and a lesser known adventure game called Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy (computer game)
Bureaucracy is an interactive fiction computer game released by Infocom in 1987, scripted by popular comic science fiction author Douglas Adams. It is Infocom's twenty-fourth game.-Setting:...
, inspired by the difficulties he encountered in moving houses.
With the power of microcomputers increasing and the demand for graphics (which it refused to include in its games until 1987), Infocom saw sales decline and in 1989, having been swallowed up by Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
in 1986, the Infocom division had shrunk to a mere ten employees, compared to 100 at its peak. Although later titles were marketed under the Infocom brand, the Infocom division was shut down, and games developed after 1989 would have no link with the original team.
The demise of Infocom signalled the end of the commercial age of Interactive Fiction, and text parsers were rarely seen in games after 1989. Despite this, the low barrier to entry has ensured that a vibrant and creative community of IF author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
s continues to thrive on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, using languages such as Inform
Inform
Over the following decade, version 6 became reasonably stable and a popular language for writing interactive fiction. In 2006, Nelson released Inform 7 , a completely new language based on principles of natural language and a new set of tools based around a book-publishing metaphor.- Z-Machine and...
, which generates files that can be read by Infocom's own Z-machine
Z-machine
The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a...
.
Graphical development
Graphics were introduced in 1980 by a new company called On-Line Systems, which later changed its name to Sierra On-LineSierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
. Early graphic adventures, such as Sierra's Mystery House
Mystery House
Mystery House is an adventure computer game released in 1980 by Roberta and Ken Williams for the Apple II. The game is remembered as one of the first adventure games to feature computer graphics and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line...
(1980), employed basic vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
, but these soon gave way to bitmap graphics drawn by professional artists. Examples include Koei's Night Life and Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku (1982), Sherwood Forest (1982), Yuji Horii
Yuji Horii
is a Japanese video game designer and scenario writer best known as the creator of the Dragon Quest series of console role-playing games, as well as the visual novel adventure game Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken.-History:Dragon Quest is recognized as the first role-playing game to posit the idea...
's Portopia Serial Murder Case
Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken
, is an adventure game designed by Yuji Horii and published by Enix . It was first released on the NEC PC-6001 in June 1983, and later ported to other personal computers...
(1983), The Return of Heracles (which faithfully portrayed Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
) by Stuart Smith
Stuart Smith (game designer)
Stuart Smith is an American computer game designer and programmer.He is best known for his adventure games, and was a pioneer in the development of graphical adventures in the early 1980s. He was also a unique designer for his time because of his desire to faithfully build history and mythology...
(1983), Dale Johnson
Dale Johnson
Dale Johnson was a local businessman in Rock Island, Illinois, who is best known for his role in the ownership of the Rock Island Independents of the National Football League from 1923 until 1925...
's Masquerade (1983), Antonio Antiochia's Transylvania
Transylvania (computer game)
Transylvania was the name of a trilogy of computer games released for several home computers of the 1980s. The games were graphic adventure games created by Antonio Antiochia and produced by the now defunct Penguin Software.-Transylvania I:...
(1982, re-released in 1984), Sierra's King's Quest
King's Quest
King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...
(1984), and Adventure Construction Set
Adventure Construction Set
Adventure Construction Set is a program written by Stuart Smith that is used to construct tile-based graphical adventure games. ACS was originally published by Electronic Arts in 1984 on the Commodore 64, and was later ported to the Apple II, Amiga and MS-DOS platforms...
(1985), one of the early hits of Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
.
A number of games were released on 8-bit
8-bit
The first widely adopted 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, being used in many hobbyist computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often running the CP/M operating system. The Zilog Z80 and the Motorola 6800 were also used in similar computers...
home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
formats in the 1980s that advanced on the text adventure style originated with games like Colossal Cave Adventure and, in a similar manner to Sierra, added moveable (often directly controllable) characters to a parser or input-system similar to traditional adventures. Examples of this are Gargoyle Games
Gargoyle Games
Gargoyle Games was a British software company founded in 1983 by Roy Carter and Greg Follis in order to publish their first game, Ad Astra. They generally specialized in games for the ZX Spectrum even though the company was originally named with the intention of publishing games for Dragon computers...
's Heavy on the Magick
Heavy on the Magick
Heavy on the Magick is a computer game for Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum published in 1986 by Gargoyle Games. The game's influences draw heavily from the occult, with the Master Therion in the plot below a reference to Aleister Crowley. To finish the game, the player must invoke numerous demons who...
(1986) which has a text-input system with an animated display screen, and the later Magic Knight
Magic Knight
Magic Knight is a computer game character created by freelance programmer David Jones in his 1985 game Finders Keepers for the Mastertronic budget label. Finders Keepers is a flip-screen platform game released on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Commodore 64...
games such as Spellbound
Spellbound (computer game)
Spellbound is a computer game that was designed and programmed by David Jones with music by Rob Hubbard and released in 1985 for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC home computers...
(1985) which uses a window-menu system to allow for text-adventure style input.
From 1984, a new kind of graphic adventure emerged, following the launch of the Apple Macintosh with its point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
interface. The first adventure game to take advantage of the Mac's point-and-click interface was the innovative but relatively unknown Enchanted Scepters
Enchanted Scepters
Enchanted Scepters is an early point-and-click adventure game, released in 1984.It was created with the World Builder adventure authoring system released to consumers in 1986. The player must find the four fire, earth, air and water scepters hidden across the Kingdom, and return them to the Wizard...
released the same year, followed in 1985 with the ICOM Simulations
ICOM Simulations
ICOM Simulations was a software company based in Wheeling, Illinois. It is best known for creating the MacVenture series of adventure games including Shadowgate.Following the foundation in 1983 a number of game titles for the Panasonic JR-200 were produced...
game Deja Vu that completely banished the text parser for a point-and-click interface. That same year, the NES
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
version of Chunsoft
Chunsoft
is a Japanese video game developer specializing in console RPGs and visual novels. It was founded by Koichi Nakamura, a video game designer from Enix...
's Portopia Serial Murder Case worked around the NES's lack of keyboard by taking advantage of its D-pad
D-pad
A D-pad is a flat, usually thumb-operated directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern video game console gamepads, game controllers, on the remote control units of some television and DVD players, and smart phones...
to replace the text parser of the original 1983 PC-6001
NEC PC-6001
The NEC PC-6001 was the first of the NEC Corporation personal computer line. There were several versions of the PC-6001, including the PC-6001 MK2, the PC-6001 MK2 SR, and the PC-6801. There was also an American version, called the NEC TREK, or NEC PC-6001A...
version with a cursor interface for the NES version. The following year, Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
's Suishō no Dragon
Suisho no Dragon
is an adventure game for the Family Computer Disk System released by Square Co. in 1986.-Gameplay:Square Co. released the game under the name DOG , and the game plays as a command-style adventure game...
on the NES took it a step further with its introduction of visual icons and animated
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
scenes. In 1987, ICOM's well-known second follow-up Shadowgate
Shadowgate
Shadowgate is a 1987 "point-and-click" adventure video game originally for the Apple Macintosh and is the most popular in the MacVenture series. It was also ported to the Atari ST home computer and was also released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it garnered mild success. The...
was released, and LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
also entered the field with Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror parody of B movies, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures...
, a point-and-click adventure that gained a strong following. A prime example of LucasArts' work is the Monkey Island series
Monkey Island series
Monkey Island is the collective name given to a series of five graphical adventure games produced and published by LucasArts, originally known as LucasFilm Games through the development of the first game in the series; the games have produced a significiant cult following. The fifth installment of...
.
The introduction of such high-quality bitmap graphics required more substantial storage capacity with many adventure games requiring several diskettes for installation, which would be the case until the CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
made its appearance.
Sierra (1979-1999)
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
terminal, and unable to find many other examples of the fledgling genre, Roberta Williams
Roberta Williams
Roberta Williams is an American video game designer. She is most famous for her pioneering work in graphical adventure games, particularly the King's Quest series.-Career:...
conceived her own, a detective story inspired by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
's novel And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
and the non-linear gameplay of the board game Clue
Cluedo
Cluedo is a popular murder/mystery-themed deduction board game originally published by Waddingtons in Leeds, England in 1949. It was devised by Anthony E. Pratt, a solicitor's clerk from Birmingham, England. It is now published by the United States game and toy company Hasbro, which acquired its U.S...
. After working on the design for a month, she was able to convince her husband, Ken Williams
Ken Williams (gaming)
Ken Williams is an American game programmer and co-founded On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line, together with his wife Roberta Williams. Roberta and Ken married at the age of 19 and have two children...
, to stop work on the FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
he was developing in order to work on the game on his Apple II
Apple II series
The Apple II series is a set of 8-bit home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977 with the original Apple II...
computer.
Originally known as Hi-Res Adventure, Mystery House
Mystery House
Mystery House is an adventure computer game released in 1980 by Roberta and Ken Williams for the Apple II. The game is remembered as one of the first adventure games to feature computer graphics and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line...
was the first graphical adventure game, and featured vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
of each environment alongside an unexceptional two-word parser. Mystery House sold well and although Ken believed that the gaming market would be less of a growth market than the professional software market, he and Roberta persevered with games. Thus, in 1980 the Williamses founded On-Line Systems, which would later become Sierra On-Line.
Sierra soon took things further. Until this point adventure games were in the first person; images presented the décor as seen through the eyes of the player. Williams's company would introduce a new feature in the King's Quest
King's Quest
King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...
series: a game in the third person. Taking advantage of the techniques developed in action games which had progressed in parallel, Ken introduced an animated character who represented the player in the game and whom the player controlled. With the 3D Animated Adventures, a new standard was born, and nearly all the industry latched onto it. The commands were still entered on the keyboard and analyzed by a syntax interpreter, as with text adventure games.
Soon after, Sierra had multiple successful series of adventure games running, including King's Quest
King's Quest
King's Quest is an adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installment, the series was primarily responsible for building the reputation...
, Police Quest
Police Quest
Police Quest is a series of computer games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1993. The original series was composed of four adventure games, the first three of which were designed by former policeman Jim Walls, with the fourth title designed by former LAPD Chief Daryl F....
, Space Quest
Space Quest
Space Quest is a series of six comedic science fiction computer games that follow the adventures of a hapless janitor named Roger Wilco, as he campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice and really clean floors"....
, Leisure Suit Larry
Leisure Suit Larry (series)
Leisure Suit Larry is a series of adventure games written by Al Lowe and published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009. The main character, whose full name is Larry Laffer, is a balding, dorky, double entendre-speaking, leisure suit-wearing "loser" in his 40s...
, and Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory
Quest for Glory
Quest for Glory is a series of hybrid role-playing/adventure computer games designed by Corey and Lori Ann Cole. The series combined humor, puzzle elements, themes and characters borrowed from various legends, puns, and memorable characters, creating a 5-part series of the Sierra stable.Although...
), with each containing numerous games. A few years after these series had started, the classic graphics above the command cursor was fully replaced with "point and click" game-play and VGA graphics. Other notable series include Phantasmagoria and Shivers; Sierra's last and most critically acclaimed series was the Gabriel Knight
Gabriel Knight
Gabriel Knight is a series of adventure games produced by Sierra On-Line in the 1990s. Three games were released in the series: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery and Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned.One compilation was...
series, which began in 1993 and ended with Sierra's last adventure game in 1999.
Sierra would develop new games and push the boundaries of adventure gaming until its purchase by Cendant
Cendant
Cendant Corporation was a New York-based provider of business and consumer services, primarily within the real estate and travel industries. In 2005 and 2006, Cendant broke up and spun off or sold its constituent businesses...
in 1998. Then in 1998, Cendant sold off their entire interactive software branch for $1 billion to Havas Interactive, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal.
Sierra pursued technologies for their games (such as hand-drawn backgrounds, rotoscoped animation, and in-game video) that were more advanced than most other genres at the time. However, the release of the PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
marked the end of the adventure game era; as 3D became the dominant graphics format, the mostly 2D adventure market began to shrink.
Through its almost 20 year involvement with the adventure game business, Sierra employed several notable game designers, including Roberta Williams
Roberta Williams
Roberta Williams is an American video game designer. She is most famous for her pioneering work in graphical adventure games, particularly the King's Quest series.-Career:...
, Jane Jensen
Jane Jensen
Jane Jensen is the game designer of the popular and critically acclaimed Gabriel Knight adventure games and author of the novels Judgement Day and Dante's Equation....
, Al Lowe
Al Lowe
Al Lowe is an American musician and game designer/programmer who developed several adventure games, mostly for Sierra On-Line. He is best known for his creation of Leisure Suit Larry and the long-running series it spawned....
, Scott Murphy, Jeff Tunnell
Jeff Tunnell
Jeffrey Tunnell is a computer game producer, programmer and designer.In 1984 he founded Dynamix with Damon Slye in Eugene, Oregon.In 1990, Tunnell left Dynamix to start Jeff Tunnell Productions. Tunnell would go on to create famous brands such as The Incredible Machine, Trophy Bass, and the 3D...
, and Lori Ann and Corey Cole.
Early Japanese adventures (1982-1986)
In the early 1980s, adventure games began gaining popularity in Japan. The country's computer market was largely dominated by NECNEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
's 8-bit PC-8801
NEC PC-8801
The NEC PC-8801 was an early Zilog Z80-based computer exclusively released in Japan, where it became very popular, by NEC Corporation in 1981. It was informally called the "PC-88"....
(1981) and 16-bit PC-9801 (1982) platforms, which could display 8 simultaneous colors and had a resolution
Display resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...
of 640x400, higher than Western computers at the time, in order to accommodate Japanese text
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...
. This in turn had an impact on game design
Game design
Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as...
, as NEC PCs became known for adventure games with detailed color graphics, which would eventually evolve into visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s. NEC soon had several competitors such as the FM-7
FM-7
FM-7 is a home computer released in 1982 in Japan.The Fujitsu FM-7 was Fujitsu's first entry into the Japanese home computer market, and for their debut computer, they chose to come out with a 6809-based personal computer very similar to Radio Shack's Color Computer.-Hardware:*Two MC 68B09 CPUs @...
(1982), the AV (1985) version of which could display more than 4000 colors in addition to featuring FM synthesis sound. Its 16-bit successor, the FM Towns
FM Towns
The FM Towns system is a Japanese PC variant, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs...
(1989), could display 24-bit color (16.8 million colors) and featured a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
drive.
Japan's first domestic adventure games were ASCII
ASCII (company)
was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication...
's Omotesando Adventure (表参道アドベンチャー) and Minami Aoyama Adventure (南青山アドベンチャー), released for the PC-9801 in 1982. Another early Japanese adventure that same year was MicroCabin's Mystery House, which was unrelated to (but inspired by) the On-Line Systems game of the same name
Mystery House
Mystery House is an adventure computer game released in 1980 by Roberta and Ken Williams for the Apple II. The game is remembered as one of the first adventure games to feature computer graphics and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line...
. MicroCabin released a sequel, Mystery House II, for the MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
that same year. The following year, the Japanese company Starcraft released an enhanced remake of On-Line Systems' Mystery House with more realistic art work and depiction of blood
Video game controversy
Violent video game debates often center on topics such as video game graphic violence, sex and sexism, violent and gory scenes, partial or full nudity, portrayal of criminal behavior, racism, and other provocative and objectionable material. Video games have been studied for links to addiction and...
.
Due to a lack of content restrictions, some of Japan's earliest adventure games were also bishoujo games with eroge
Eroge
An or Ero-ga is a Japanese video or computer game that features erotic content, usually in the form of anime-style artwork. Eroge originated from galge, but unlike galge, they feature erotic/pornographic content.-History:...
content. In 1982, Koei released Night Life, the first commercial erotic computer game
Adult video game
An adult video game is a video game which has significant sexual content , and are therefore intended for an adult audience. Adult games can fall into many genres and have diverse gameplay.-PC and console:...
. It was a graphic adventure
Graphic adventure game
A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. They are distinct from text adventures. Whereas a player must actively observe using commands such as "look" in a text-based adventure, graphic adventures revolutionized gameplay by making use of natural human perception...
, with sexually explicit images. That same year, they released another eroge title, Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku (Seduction of the Condominium Wife), which was an early adventure game with color graphics, owing to the eight-color palette of the NEC PC-8001 computer, and role-playing video game
Role-playing video game
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
elements. It became a hit, helping Koei become a major software company. Other now-famous companies such as Enix
Enix
The was a Japanese company that produced video games, anime and manga. The company was founded by Yasuhiro Fukushima on September 22, 1975 as and renamed Enix in 1982...
, Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
and Nihon Falcom also produced similar eroge in the early 1980s before they became famous for their mainstream role-playing games. In some of their early eroge, the adult content is meaningfully integrated into a thoughtful and mature storyline, though others often used it as a flimsy excuse for pornography.
Meanwhile in the arcades
Video arcade
An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
, Japanese developers also began producing early interactive movie
Interactive movie
An interactive movie is a video game that features highly cinematic presentation and heavy use of scripting, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.-Philosophy:...
laserdisc video game
Laserdisc video game
A laserdisc video game is an arcade game that uses pre-recorded video played from a laserdisc, either as the entirety of the graphics, or as part of the graphics.-History:...
s, the first being Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's Astron Belt
Astron Belt
Astron Belt is an early laserdisc video game and third-person space combat rail shooter, released in 1983 by Sega in Japan and licensed to Bally Midway for release in the United States. Developed in 1982, it is commonly cited as the first laserdisc game...
, unveiled in 1982 and released in 1983, though it was more of a shooter game
Shooter game
Shooter games are a sub-genre of action game, which often test the player's speed and reaction time. It includes many subgenres that have the commonality of focusing "on the actions of the avatar using some sort of weapon. Usually this weapon is a gun, or some other long-range weapon". A common...
presented as an action movie using full-motion video. A more story-driven interactive movie game was Bega's Battle, released in 1983, which combined shooting stages with interactive cutscene
Cutscene
A cutscene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no or only limited control, breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, strengthen the main character's development, introduces enemy characters, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue, and clues...
s, where player input had an effect on the game's branching storyline.
The most famous early Japanese adventure game was the 1983 murder mystery
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
game Portopia Serial Murder Case
Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken
, is an adventure game designed by Yuji Horii and published by Enix . It was first released on the NEC PC-6001 in June 1983, and later ported to other personal computers...
, developed by Yūji Horii
Yūji Horii
is a Japanese video game designer and scenario writer best known as the creator of the Dragon Quest series of console role-playing games, as well as the visual novel adventure game Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken.-History:Dragon Quest is recognized as the first role-playing game to posit the idea...
(of Dragon Quest
Dragon Quest
, published as Dragon Warrior in North America until 2005,Due to the inconsistent usage by sources since Square Enix obtained the naming rights to Dragon Quest in North America. Dragon Quest has been used by sources to refer to games released solely under the Dragon Warrior titles...
fame) and published by Enix. The game was viewed in a first-person perspective
First person (video games)
In video games, first person refers to a graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character. In many cases, this may be the viewpoint from the cockpit of a vehicle. Many different genres have made use of first-person perspectives, ranging from adventure games to flight...
, followed a first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, and featured color graphics. Originally released for the PC-6001
NEC PC-6001
The NEC PC-6001 was the first of the NEC Corporation personal computer line. There were several versions of the PC-6001, including the PC-6001 MK2, the PC-6001 MK2 SR, and the PC-6801. There was also an American version, called the NEC TREK, or NEC PC-6001A...
, the player interacts with the game using a verb-noun parser which requires typing precise commands with the keyboard; finding the exact words to type is considered part of the riddles that must be solved. The game featured non-linear elements, which includes travelling between different areas in a generally open world
Open world
An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how to approach objectives...
, a branching dialogue conversation system where the story develops through entering commands and receiving responses from other characters, and making choices that determine the dialogues and order of events as well as alternative outcomes
Multiple endings
Multiple endings refer to a case in entertainment where the story could end in different ways, described as an alternate ending.-Literature:...
, though there is only one true culprit while the others are red herring
Red herring
A red herring is a deliberate attempt to divert attention.Red herring may refer to:* Red herring , the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question....
s. It also features a phone that could be used to dial any number to contact several non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s. The game was well-received in Japan for its well-told storyline and surprising twist ending, and for allowing multiple ways to achieve objectives. Hideo Kojima praised the game for its mystery, drama, humor, 3D dungeons
Dungeon crawl
A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinthine environment, battling various monsters, and looting any treasure they may find...
, for providing a proper background and explanation behind the murderer's motives, and expanding the potential of video games. The game has also been compared to the later-released Shadowgate
Shadowgate
Shadowgate is a 1987 "point-and-click" adventure video game originally for the Apple Macintosh and is the most popular in the MacVenture series. It was also ported to the Atari ST home computer and was also released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it garnered mild success. The...
where the player must examine and collect objects, and find their true purpose later on. According to Square Enix
Square Enix
is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series...
, Portopia was "the first real detective adventure
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
" game.
The command selection menu
Menu (computing)
In computing and telecommunications, a menu is a list of commands presented to an operator by a computer or communications system. A menu is used in contrast to a command-line interface, where instructions to the computer are given in the form of commands .Choices given from a menu may be selected...
input system, where the player chooses from a menu list of commands either through keyboard shortcut
Keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a finite set of one or more keys that invoke a software or operating system operation when triggered by the user. A meaning of term "keyboard shortcut" can vary depending on software manufacturer...
s or scrolling down the menu, was introduced in 1983, and would largely replace the verb-noun parser input method over the years. The earliest known title to use the command selection menu system was the Japanese adventure game Spy 007 (スパイ00.7), published in April 1983, and it was followed soon after by several other Japanese adventure games in 1983. These included the eroge title Joshiryo Panic, authored by Tadashi Makimura and published by Enix for the FM-7 in June and slightly earlier for the FM-8
FM-8
The FM-8 was a personal computer developed and manufactured by Fujitsu in May 1981. It was Fujitsu's second microcomputer released to the public after the LKIT-8 kit computer, and the first in the "FM" series. The FM-8 would later be replaced by two new models in November 1982 - the FM-11, aimed...
; Atami Onsen Adventure (熱海温泉アドベンチャー), released by Basic System (ベーシックシステム) in July for the FM-7 and slightly earlier for the PC-8001; Planet Mephius, released in July; and Tri-Dantal (トリダンタル), authored by Y. Takeshita and published by Pax Softnica
Pax Softnica
is a Japanese video game developer founded in 1983 under the name Image Soft and based in Kanagawa, Japan. Pax Softnica developed strong ties with Nintendo, and was hired often as a subcontracted programmer to work with Nintendo EAD and Nintendo R&D1 on several games published on Nintendo consoles....
for the FM-7 in August. The game that popularized the command selection system was the 1984 adventure game Okhotsk ni Kiyu: Hokkaido Rensa Satsujin Jiken (Okhotsk ni Kiyu: Hokkaido Chain Murders), designed by Yuji Horii (his second mystery adventure game after Portopia) and published by ASCII for the PC-8801 and PC-9801. Its replacement of the traditional verb-noun text parser interface with the command selection menu system would lead to the latter becoming a staple of adventure games as well as role-playing games (through Horii's 1986 hit Dragon Quest
Dragon Warrior
Dragon Warrior, known as in Japan, is the first role-playing video game in the Dragon Quest media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System and published by Enix in Japan in 1986...
in the latter case).
Another notable adventure game released in 1983 was Planet Mephius, authored by Eiji Yokoyama and published by T&E Soft
Technology and Entertainment Software
, fully titled as Technology and Entertainment Software, is a Japanese based video game developer founded in 1982. Although they have made games with a wide variety of genres, they are primarily known in the U.S...
for the FM-7 in July 1983. In addition to being one of the earliest titles to use a command menu system, its key innovation was the introduction of a point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
interface to the genre, utilizing a cursor
Cursor (computers)
In computing, a cursor is an indicator used to show the position on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The flashing text cursor may be referred to as a caret in some cases...
to interact with objects displayed on the screen. A similar point-and-click cursor interface was later used in the adventure game Wingman
Wingman (manga)
, also known as , is a Japanese science fiction manga series by Masakazu Katsura. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1983 to 1985. It was adapted into an anime television series in 1984....
, released for the PC-8801 in 1984.
The NES
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
version of Portopia Serial Murder Case was released in 1985 and became a major hit in Japan, where it sold over 700,000 copies. With no keyboard, the NES version, developed by Chunsoft
Chunsoft
is a Japanese video game developer specializing in console RPGs and visual novels. It was founded by Koichi Nakamura, a video game designer from Enix...
, replaced the verb-noun parser of the original with a command selection menu list, which included fourteen set commands selectable with the gamepad
Gamepad
A gamepad , is a type of game controller held in two hands, where the digits are used to provide input. Gamepads generally feature a set of action buttons handled with the right thumb and a direction controller handled with the left...
. It also featured a cursor that can be moved on the screen using the D-pad
D-pad
A D-pad is a flat, usually thumb-operated directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern video game console gamepads, game controllers, on the remote control units of some television and DVD players, and smart phones...
to look for clues and hotspots
Screen hotspot
A screen hotspot, in computing, provides a special area on the display screen of a computer for hyperlinking or for other GUI-based activity ....
, like a point-and-click interface. Horii's second adventure game Hokkaido Chain Murders was later also ported to the NES in 1987. Yuji Horii's third mystery adventure game Karuizawa Yūkai Annai (The Karuizawa Kidnapping Guide) was released for the PC-8801 in early 1985 and for the FM-7 in June that same year. It utilized the command menu system and point-and-click cursor interface of both Portopia Serial Murder Case and Hokkaido Chain Murders, in addition to introducing its own innovation: an overhead map
Overworld
An overworld is, in a broad sense, an area within a video game that interconnects all its levels or locations. They are mostly common in role-playing games, though this does not exclude other video game genres....
. This gave the player direct control over the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
, who can be moved around in a top-down view to explore the area. That same year, Square's Will: The Death Trap II was one of the first animated
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
computer games
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
.
In 1986, Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
released the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
adventure game Suishō no Dragon
Suisho no Dragon
is an adventure game for the Family Computer Disk System released by Square Co. in 1986.-Gameplay:Square Co. released the game under the name DOG , and the game plays as a command-style adventure game...
for the NES console. The game featured several innovations, including the use of animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
in many of the scenes rather than still images, and an interface resembling that of a point-and-click interface for a console, like Portopia, but making use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions. Like the NES version of Portopia, it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the D-pad to examine the scenery, though the cursor in Suishō no Dragon was also used to click on the action icons. That same year saw the release of J.B. Harold Murder Club
J.B. Harold Murder Club
J.B. Harold Murder Club, known as J.B. Harold no Jikenbo #1: Murder Club in Japan, is a 1986 murder mystery adventure game, developed by Riverhillsoft and released for the NEC PC-98, MSX, MS-DOS, NEC TurboGrafx-CD and Nintendo DS platforms...
, a point-and-click graphic adventure, for the PC-98. It featured character interaction as the major gameplay element and has a similar type of multiple phrase response to more recent titles such as the adventures Shenmue
Shenmue (series)
Shenmue is an interactive cinema open-world adventure video game series created, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki, and developed and published by Sega. Shenmue was listed in the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive video game produced for its time, with a production budget of...
and Shadow of Memories
Shadow of Memories
, also known as Shadow of Destiny in North America, is an adventure video game developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo for the PlayStation 2. Originally released for the PlayStation 2, it was later ported to the PC and Xbox in 2002 by the now-defunct Runecraft company...
as well as the role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by LucasArts. It was released for the Xbox on July 15, 2003, for Microsoft Windows on November 19, 2003, and on September 7, 2004 for Mac OS X. The Xbox version is playable on Xbox 360 with its...
. The TurboGrafx-CD port of J.B. Harold Murder Club was one of the first Japanese adventure games released in the United States.
LucasArts (1986-2000)
Ron Gilbert
Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. Gilbert was also co-founder of Humongous Entertainment and its sister company Cavedog...
working for the company Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
Games—which has since become LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
—created the script-writing system SCUMM
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion....
which used a point-and-click
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
interface similar to ICOM Simulations'
ICOM Simulations
ICOM Simulations was a software company based in Wheeling, Illinois. It is best known for creating the MacVenture series of adventure games including Shadowgate.Following the foundation in 1983 a number of game titles for the Panasonic JR-200 were produced...
MacVenture
MacVenture
The MacVenture games is a series of four adventure games introducing a characteristic menu-based point-and-click interface. They were originally developed for the Apple Macintosh by ICOM Simulations:*Deja Vu: a Nightmare Comes True...
games first introduced in 1985. Instead of having to type a command to the syntax analyzer, this system was controlled by means of text icons. To interact with his environment, the player clicked on an order, on an icon representing an object in his inventory, or on a part of the image. This approach was first used by LucasArts for the game Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror parody of B movies, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures...
to great effect.
LucasArts would come to differentiate itself from its main competitor, the giant Sierra, by rethinking certain adventure game concepts to improve playability. Gone was the possibility to die during the course of the game and everything was done to ensure that the player was never completely stuck. Finally, LucasArts abandoned the system of points indicating the player's progress in the adventure. Many adventure games from other companies followed LucasArt's lead in these changes.
Gilbert's attempts, Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror parody of B movies, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures...
and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphical adventure game, originally released in October 1988 , published by LucasArts . It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after Maniac Mansion...
, however, remained in 16 colors (though the FM Towns
FM Towns
The FM Towns system is a Japanese PC variant, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs...
version of Zak was 256 color), and the point-and-click engine still had vestiges of text parsing, since the player would still have to construct sentences using clickable keywords combined with objects in the game. It was The Secret Of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island is a graphic adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games and published by the same company after its name was changed to LucasArts. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the Monkey Island series...
that was finally a complete work, with 256 colors, a more modern point-and-click engine, a dialogue system with optional responses, puzzles solved with items, original graphics, atmosphere music, and a characteristic sense of humor. Above all, the script was written as for a film (which could be done in-house) and the dialogue and inventory served the needs of the script. The 1993 release of Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle
Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion...
, a remarkable success, began a line of cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
-style games, including the very influential Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road is a graphic adventure computer game released by LucasArts during the company's adventure games era. The game was originally released for DOS in 1993 and for Mac OS in 1995. A 2002 re-release included compatibility with Windows and Amiga...
as well as the acclaimed Full Throttle, which also heralded the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of adventure games.
Steven Spielberg collaborated with LucasArts in the creation of The Dig
The Dig
The Dig is a graphical adventure game developed by LucasArts and released in 1995, and a game based on an idea for an Amazing Stories episode by Steven Spielberg...
—a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
adventure game that the director had envisioned turning into a film.
Taking advantage of advances in action games and integrating an engine similar to those of first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
s, the company took a new turn in 1998 with the game Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango is a personal computer game in the graphic adventure genre released by LucasArts in 1998 and primarily written by Tim Schafer. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered, static backgrounds...
, where it abandoned the cartoon style and its SCUMM scripting environment for a new 3D game system named GrimE
GrimE
GrimE is an adventure game engine, created by Bret Mogilefsky at LucasArts using the free software scripting language Lua. It was first used for Grim Fandango. Partly based on the Sith engine, GrimE was the successor to SCUMM, preserving some of that engine's features...
.
Following the 2000 release of Escape From Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island is a computer adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series....
, LucasArts would not publish another adventure game for more than eight years, canceling sequels of Full Throttle (Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels) and Sam & Max (Sam & Max: Freelance Police) that were already in development.
Japanese adventures (1987-present)
SegaSega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's Anmitsu Hime: From Amakara Castle, released in 1987, was an adventure game with some platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
segments. The adventure game segments were puzzle-oriented and played in a side-scrolling view where the player has direct control over the character. Originally based on the Anmitsu Hime
Anmitsu Hime
is a manga series by Shosuke Kurakane.The story was originally produced in 1949-1955.In 1986-1987, Izumi Takemoto retold the original manga series, releasing it under the same title.- Live-action television dramas :...
anime, an edited version based on Alex Kidd
Alex Kidd
is a video game character whose popularity peaked during the late 1980s and who was the protagonist of both a series of video games released by Sega and their fictional universe, as well as in numerous spin-off merchandise such as novelizations and comics...
was later released in 1989 as Alex Kidd in High-Tech World. The Goonies II
The Goonies II
is an adventure game developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released on in Japan, November in North America, and on in Europe. It is a sequel to the first Famicom Goonies game, which was only available in North America on Nintendo Vs. System and...
, also released in 1987, was a first-person adventure game with some side-scrolling action game
Action game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
segments. The game featured a non-linear open world
Open world
An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how to approach objectives...
environment similar to Metroid
Metroid
is an action-adventure video game, and the first entry in the Metroid series. It was co-developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division and Intelligent Systems, and was released in Japan in August 1986, in North America in August 1987, and in Europe in January 1988...
.
A distinct form of Japanese adventure game that eventually emerged is the visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
, a genre that was largely inspired by Portopia Serial Murder Case, and uses many conventions that are distinct from Western adventures. They are almost universally first-person, and driven primarily by dialog. They also tend to use menu-based interactions and navigation, with point and click implementations that are quite different from Western adventure games. Inventory-based puzzles of the sort that form the basis of classic Western adventures, are quite rare. Logic puzzles like those found in Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
are likewise unusual. Because of this, Japanese visual novels tend to be streamlined, and often quite easy, relying more on storytelling than challenge to keep players interested.
Hideo Kojima
Hideo Kojima
is a Japanese game director originally employed at Konami. He is currently the director of Kojima Productions and was promoted to Vice President of Konami Digital Entertainment in early 2011...
(of Metal Gear
Metal Gear (series)
is a series of stealth video games created by Hideo Kojima and developed and published by Konami. The first game, Metal Gear, was released in 1987 for the MSX2. The player takes control of a special forces operative Solid Snake who is assigned to find the eponymous superweapon "Metal Gear", a...
fame) was inspired by Portopia to enter the video game industry, and produce his own adventure games. After completing the stealth game Metal Gear
Metal Gear (video game)
is an overhead military action-adventure video game originally released in by Konami for the MSX2 computer standard in Japan and parts of Europe. Considered to be the progenitor of the stealth game genre, it was also the first video game designed by Hideo Kojima, who also directed many of the...
, his first graphic adventure was released by Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
the following year: Snatcher
Snatcher
is a cyberpunk-themed graphic adventure game produced by Konami, originally released in Japan for the NEC PC-8801 and MSX 2 computer platforms in 1988. It was followed by a CD-ROM-based remake released for the PC Engine video game console in 1992, which was subsequently ported and localized into...
(1988), an ambitious cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
detective novel graphic adventure that was highly regarded at the time for pushing the boundaries of video game storytelling, cinematic cut scenes, and mature content. It also featured a post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
science fiction setting, an amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
c protagonist, and some light gun shooter
Light gun shooter
Light gun shooter, also called light gun game or simply gun game, is a shooter video game genre in which the primary design element is aiming and shooting with a gun-shaped controller. Light gun shooters revolve around the protagonist shooting targets, either antagonists or inanimate objects...
segments. It was praised for its graphics, soundtrack, high quality writing comparable to a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, voice acting comparable to a film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
or radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
, and in-game computer database with optional documents that flesh out the game world. The Sega CD version of Snatcher was for a long time the only major visual novel game to be released in America, where it, despite a Mature rating limiting its accessibility, gained a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
.
Following Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
is an overhead stealth action game that was originally released by Konami in for the MSX2 computer standard exclusively in Japan. Metal Gear 2 was directed and written by Hideo Kojima, who also designed the MSX2 version of the original Metal Gear...
, Kojima produced his next graphic adventure, Policenauts
Policenauts
is a cinematic adventure game with a hard science fiction storyline, written and directed by Hideo Kojima, and published by Konami. It was initially released for the PC-9821 computer platform in 1994, followed by remade versions for the 3DO in 1995, and the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1996...
(1994), a point-and-click adventure notable for being an early example of extensive voice recording in video games. It also featured a hard science fiction
Hard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...
setting, a theme revolving around space exploration, a plot inspired by the ancient Japanese tale
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
of Urashima Taro
Urashima Taro
is a Japanese legend about a fisherman who rescues a turtle and is rewarded for this with a visit to Ryūgū-jō, the palace of Ryūjin, the Dragon God, under the sea...
, and some occasional full-motion video cut scenes. The gameplay was largely similar to Snatcher, but with the addition of a point-and-click interface and some first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
segments. Policenauts also introduced summary screens, which act to refresh the player's memory of the plot upon reloading a save
Saved game
A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped...
, an element Kojima would later use in Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid
is a videogame by Hideo Kojima. The game was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan and first published by Konami in 1998 for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Kojimas early MSX2 computer games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake...
. The PlayStation version of Policenauts could also read the memory card and give some easter egg
Easter egg
Easter eggs are special eggs that are often given to celebrate Easter or springtime.The oldest tradition is to use dyed or painted chicken eggs, but a modern custom is to substitute chocolate eggs, or plastic eggs filled with confectionery such as jelly beans...
dialogues if a save file of Konami's dating sim
Dating sim
Dating sims are a video game subgenre of simulation games, usually Japanese, with romantic elements. They are also sometimes put under the category of neoromance. The most common objective of dating sims is to date, usually choosing from among several characters, and to achieve a romantic...
Tokimeki Memorial
Tokimeki Memorial
is a popular dating simulation series by Konami. It consists of 6 main games in addition to a large number of spin-offs. The games are notable in the dating sim genre for being highly nonlinear. Their nickname amongst their fans is the contraction TokiMemo....
is present, a technique Kojima would also later use in Metal Gear Solid. From 1997 to 1999, Kojima developed the three Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series
Tokimeki Memorial (series)
is a popular dating simulation series by Konami. It consists of 6 main games in addition to a large number of spin-offs. The games are notable in the dating sim genre for being highly nonlinear. Their nickname amongst their fans is the contraction TokiMemo....
titles, which were adaptations of Tokimeki Memorial in a visual novel adventure game format.
In 1995, Human Entertainment
Human Entertainment
Human Entertainment was a Japanese computer and video game developer and publisher. The company produced games for a number of platforms, including Dreamcast, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, TurboGrafx-16, PC , PlayStation, Saturn, Sega CD, Super NES, TurboGrafx-CD, and WonderSwan...
's Clock Tower: The First Fear was a hybrid between a point-and-click graphic adventure and a survival horror game, revolving around survival against a deadly stalker known as Scissorman that chased players throughout the game. The success of Resident Evil in 1996 was followed by the release of the survival horror graphic adventures Clock Tower and Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within for the PlayStation. The Clock Tower games
Clock Tower (series)
Clock Tower is a stealth-based survival horror adventure video game series, created by Human Entertainment and continued by Sunsoft. The series plays like a horror film and unlike some of the other survival horror games, the Clock Tower series does not focus on shooting creatures or using violence,...
proved to be hits, capitalizing on the success of Resident Evil, though both games stayed true to the graphic-adventure gameplay of the original Clock Tower rather than following the lead of Resident Evil.
From the early 1990s, Chunsoft, the developer for the NES version of Portopia, began producing a series of acclaimed visual novels known as the Sound Novels series, which include Otogirisō
Otogirisō
is a sound novel developed and published by ChunSoft. The game was first released on March 7, 1992 in Japan. It became available on the Virtual Console on August 28, 2007.- Story :...
(1992), Kamaitachi no Yoru
Kamaitachi no Yoru
is a sound novel developed and published by Chunsoft. The game was first released on November 25, 1994 for the Super Famicom. It became available on the Virtual Console in February, 2007 for 800 Wii Points...
(1994), Machi
Machi (video game)
Machi is a visual novel adventure game developed and published by Chunsoft and released exclusively in Japan for the Sega Saturn in 1998 and then for the Sony PlayStation in 1999...
(1998), 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de (2008), and 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
is an adventure game developed by Chunsoft and published in Japan by Spike on December 10, 2009, and in North America by Aksys Games on November 16, 2010. The game's design team was led by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who is also the writer of the acclaimed visual novel Ever 17: The Out of Infinity...
(2010). From the late 1990s, a number of Japanese adventure games began using a 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
third-person direct control format, particularly on consoles like the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
. Examples include Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's Shenmue
Shenmue (series)
Shenmue is an interactive cinema open-world adventure video game series created, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki, and developed and published by Sega. Shenmue was listed in the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive video game produced for its time, with a production budget of...
series (since 1999), Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
's Shadow of Memories
Shadow of Memories
, also known as Shadow of Destiny in North America, is an adventure video game developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo for the PlayStation 2. Originally released for the PlayStation 2, it was later ported to the PC and Xbox in 2002 by the now-defunct Runecraft company...
(2001), Irem's Disaster Report
Disaster Report
Disaster Report, known in Europe as SOS: The Final Escape, and known in Japan as , is a survival action-adventure video game created by Irem. It was first released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in 2002 by Irem, and later released in North America and Europe in 2003 by Agetec...
series (since 2002), and Cing
Cing
was an independent video game developer based out of Fukuoka, Japan. The company, a small development house employing only 29 people, was founded in April 1999, and was run by Takuya Miyagawa, who served as President and CEO. Miyagawa also acted as the producer on all of Cing's titles. The company...
's Glass Rose
Glass Rose
is a survival horror adventure video game developed by Cing and published by Capcom. It was released in Japan on , and later in Europe, however it did not have a North American release.-Plot:...
(2003).
In recent years, Japanese visual novel games have been released in the West more frequently, particularly on the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
handheld following the success of mystery-solving titles such as Capcom
Capcom
is a Japanese developer and publisher of video games, known for creating multi-million-selling franchises such as Devil May Cry, Chaos Legion, Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil. Capcom developed and published Bionic Commando, Lost Planet and Dark Void too, but they are less known. Its...
's Ace Attorney series (which began on the Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
in 2001), Cing's Hotel Dusk
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Hotel Dusk: Room 215, released in Japan as , is a graphic adventure game for the Nintendo DS. Originally announced on October 5, 2005 as Wish Room, the game made its first public appearance on May 9, 2006 at that year's E3 convention. It was released in North America on January 22, 2007, before...
series (beginning in 2006), and Level-5
Level-5
is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Fukuoka, Japan. The company, which currently employs about 200 individuals, was founded in October 1998 by Akihiro Hino after he departed from the now defunct Japanese developer Riverhillsoft...
's Professor Layton series (beginning in 2007). English fan translation
Fan translation
A fan translation, in video gaming, refers to an unofficial translation of a computer game or video game.The fan translation practice grew with the rise of video game console emulation in the late 1990s. A community of people developed that were interested in replaying and modifying the games they...
s of visual novels such as Square's Radical Dreamers (a 1996 side story
Gaiden
is a Japanese-language word meaning "side story" or "tale", used to refer to an anecdote or supplementary biography of a person. This use of gaiden is commonly used in popular Japanese fiction to refer to a spin-off of a previously published work that is neither officially considered a sequel nor...
to the Chrono series of role-playing video game
Role-playing video game
Role-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
s) and Key
Key (company)
Key is a Japanese visual novel studio which formed on July 21, 1998 as a brand under the publisher Visual Art's and is located in Kita, Osaka, Japan. Key released their debut visual novel Kanon in June 1999, which combined an elaborate storyline, an up-to-date anime-style drawing style, and a...
's Clannad (2005) have also been made available in recent years.
Cyan Worlds (1987-present)
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
. Their first game, a simple children's adventure game called The Manhole
The Manhole
The Manhole is a computer adventure game intended for children in which the player opens a manhole and reveals a gigantic beanstalk that can be climbed either up or down, leading to fantastic worlds in either case.-Summary:...
, became the first computer game to use the medium in 1989. In 1993, Cyan released Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
, a first-person adventure that used the extra storage capacity of the CD-ROM to include pre-rendered three-dimensional graphics, video, and audio. Despite being one of the first games to be published solely on CD-ROM, thereby requiring a CD-ROM drive, the game would go on to become highly successful.
Myst was an atypical game for the time, with no clear goals, little personal or object interaction, and a greater emphasis on exploration, and on scientific and mechanical puzzles. Part of the game's success was because it did not appear to be aimed at an adolescent male audience, but instead a mainstream adult audience. Myst held the record for computer game sales for seven years—it sold over nine million copies on all platforms—a feat not surpassed until the release of The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
in 2000.
Decline
For much of the 1980s, adventure games were one of the most popular types of computer games produced. However, their US market share drastically declined in the mid-1990s; action games took a greater share of the US market, particularly first person shooters such as Doom and Half-Life which progressively began featuring strong, story-structured solo games. This slump in popularity led many publishers and developers to see adventure games as financially unfeasible in comparison. Text adventures met the same fate much earlier, but their simplicity has allowed them to thrive as non-commercially developed interactive fictionInteractive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
.
Few recent commercial adventure games have been hits in the US but they are still very popular in Europe (95% of all adventures released in US are in fact translated European products). It has been suggested that this is because the "average" gamer today was weaned on console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
video games and first person shooters rather than the "traditional" computer games cherished by the original crop of adventure gaming enthusiasts. Another explanation offered states that MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
s, which offer a persistent multiplayer world, have at least partially supplanted the genre.
Still another possible cause of the genre's downturn may lie with the nature of 3D graphics themselves, which for much of the 90's and early 2000s tended to be more oriented toward fast movement than graphical detail. Conversely, however, if a game were to implement more detailed but static imagery, this could be perceived as technologically regressive. Some question therefore exists of the adventure game making a comeback with recent advances in technology.
Adventure games have ceased to be the flagship titles they once were, and high profile publishers like Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
and LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
have either disappeared or shifted towards publishing titles developed by other companies. However, adventure games continue to be made in the 2000s, primarily outside North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
where the genre is still popular. Games such as The Longest Journey
The Longest Journey
The Longest Journey is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Norwegian studio Funcom for the PC. First published by IQ Media Nordic in Norway in 1999, it was later localized for and released in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Denmark,...
by Funcom
Funcom
Funcom Productions A/S is a Norwegian video game developer specializing in online games. It is best known for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game titles Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and its The Longest Journey series of adventure games...
as well as Amerzone
Amerzone
Amerzone is a first-person adventure game produced by French company Microïds, and designed by Benoît Sokal...
and Syberia
Syberia
Syberia is a 2002 computer adventure game conceived by Benoît Sokal, developed by Microïds and published through The Adventure Company. It follows the protagonist Kate Walker as she attempts to wrap up a sale on the behalf of her law firm...
, both conceived by Benoît Sokal
Benoît Sokal
Benoît Sokal is a Belgian comic artist and video game developer, best known for his comics series Inspector Canardo.-Biography:...
and developed by Microïds
Microïds
Microïds is a French software brand belonging to Anuman Interactive that publishes and develops video games. In recent years the company's collection of brands and game licenses has grown since being a part of MC2 France...
, with rich classical elements of the genre still garnered high critical acclaims. The Myst series came to a close in September 2005 with the release of Myst V: End of Ages
Myst V: End of Ages
Myst V: End of Ages is a 2005 adventure video game, and the fifth and final installment in the Myst series. The game was developed by Cyan Worlds, published by Ubisoft, and released for Macintosh and Windows PC platforms on September 20, 2005...
by its original developer, Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds, Inc. is a video game development company, founded by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1987, and best known as the creators of the Myst series. After Myst and its sequel Riven sold several million copies each, Cyan went on to create the massively multiplayer online adventure, Uru,...
. (A possible exception to this is Cyan's Myst Online.) Adventure games based on the Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...
books continue to be published by Her Interactive
Her Interactive
Her Interactive is the leading mystery-maker and pioneer of fun and inspiring interactive entertainment. The company, with 24 awards to its name, designs, develops and publishes high-quality, mystery adventure games and apps, and is the world leader in the mystery games category. Her Interactive's...
, comprising a series of twenty titles produced since 1998.
Similar to the fate of interactive fiction, conventional graphical adventure games have continued to thrive in the amateur scene
Amateur adventure game
An amateur adventure game is a computer game belonging to the adventure genre that has no commercial or similar official backing. The amateur adventure game scene emerged in the mid to late 1990s, when releases of new commercial adventure games became more rare and easy distribution of games and...
. This has been most prolific with the tool Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio is a free software development tool that is primarily used to create graphical adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an Integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language to process...
. Some notable AGS games include those by Ben Croshaw
Ben Croshaw
Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is an English comedic writer, video game journalist and author of adventure games created using Adventure Game Studio software. He writes articles for Australia's Hyper magazine, a major games publication...
(namely the Chzo Mythos
Chzo Mythos
The Chzo Mythos is the collective title given to a series of four amateur adventure games created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw using the Adventure Game Studio development tool. The games are, in order of release and intended play-order, 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a...
), Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator
Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator
Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator is the main title of a planned series of eight amateur adventure games made by Francisco "Grundislav" Gonzalez with freeware adventure game engine Adventure Game Studio. To date, there have been seven games released in the series, each game being a separate...
, Time Gentlemen, Please!
Time Gentlemen, Please! (video game)
Time Gentlemen, Please! is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Zombie Cow Studios. It is the sequel to the freeware game Ben There, Dan That! and was commercially released on June 22, 2009. As with the first game, Time Gentlemen, Please! was created using the Adventure Game Studio...
, Soviet Unterzoegersdorf
Soviet Unterzoegersdorf
Soviet Unterzoegersdorf is a fictitious country created by the art/technology/theory group monochrom. It is the "last existing appanage republic of the USSR", located inside the Republic of Austria....
, and AGD Interactive
AGD Interactive
AGD Interactive , LLC. is a non-profit company given a fan license to remake Sierra Entertainment's popular classic adventure games from the 1980s and early 1990s.-History:...
's Sierra adventure remakes. Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
is also a popular tool, known for adventures such as MOTAS
MOTAS
The Mystery Of Time And Space is a popular online graphic adventure game created by Jan Albartus . The game was produced using Macromedia Flash and was an early influential example of the escape the room genre...
and the escape the room
Escape the room
Escape the room is a subgenre of point-and-click adventure game which requires a player to escape from imprisonment by exploiting their surroundings. They are usually created as a browser game for the Adobe Flash platform. Popular examples include "Crimson Room," "Viridian Room," "MOTAS,", "Droom"...
genre entries.
New directions
Although traditional adventure games are rare today in the US market, action-adventure gameAction-adventure game
An action-adventure game is a video game that combines elements of the adventure game genre with various action game elements. It is perhaps the broadest and most diverse genre in gaming, and can include many games which might better be categorized under narrow genres...
s that combine elements of adventure games with action games are quite common. Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's ambitious Shenmue
Shenmue
is a 1999 open-world adventure video game developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for the Dreamcast, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. Suzuki coined a genre title, "FREE" , for the game, based on the interactivity and freedom he wanted to give to the player...
(1999) attempted to redefine the adventure game genre with its realistic 3D graphics
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
, third-person perspective, direct character control interface, sandbox open-world
Open world
An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how to approach objectives...
gameplay, quick time event
Quick Time Event
In video games, a Quick Time Event is a method of context-sensitive gameplay in which the player performs actions on the control device shortly after the appearance of an on-screen prompt. It allows for limited control of the game character during cut scenes or cinematic sequences in the game...
s, and fighting game
Fighting game
Fighting game is a video game genre where the player controls an on-screen character and engages in close combat with an opponent. These characters tend to be of equal power and fight matches consisting of several rounds, which take place in an arena. Players must master techniques such as...
elements. Its creator Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
is a Japanese game designer and producer who has spent his entire career with Sega Enterprises. Often referred to as Sega's answer to Shigeru Miyamoto, he has been responsible for the creation of many of Sega's most important arcade games such as Hang-On, Out Run, After Burner II, Virtua Fighter,...
originally touted it as a new kind of adventure game, "FREE" ("Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment"), offering an unparalleled level of player freedom, giving them full reign to explore expansive interactive city environments with its own day-night cycles and changing weather, and interact with fully voiced non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s going about their daily routines. Despite being a commercial failure, the game was critically acclaimed and has remained influential.
Shenmue II
is a adventure game for the Dreamcast and Xbox. It is the sequel to Shenmue, and was produced and directed by Yu Suzuki of Sega AM2.Due to exclusivity rights obtained by Microsoft, the North American Dreamcast version was cancelled. Because of this, no English dub was recorded for the Dreamcast...
(2001), Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
's Shadow of Memories
Shadow of Memories
, also known as Shadow of Destiny in North America, is an adventure video game developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo for the PlayStation 2. Originally released for the PlayStation 2, it was later ported to the PC and Xbox in 2002 by the now-defunct Runecraft company...
(2001), Irem's Disaster Report
Disaster Report
Disaster Report, known in Europe as SOS: The Final Escape, and known in Japan as , is a survival action-adventure video game created by Irem. It was first released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in 2002 by Irem, and later released in North America and Europe in 2003 by Agetec...
series (since 2002), Cing's Glass Rose
Glass Rose
is a survival horror adventure video game developed by Cing and published by Capcom. It was released in Japan on , and later in Europe, however it did not have a North American release.-Plot:...
(2003), Catherine
Catherine (video game)
is a horror puzzle-platformer adventure game developed by Atlus Persona Team and published by Atlus for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game is Atlus' first internally-developed game for seventh-generation consoles in high definition, and is described as an "adult-oriented" title by the game's...
(2011) by Atlus
Atlus
is a Japanese computer and video game developer, publisher, and distributor based in Tokyo, Japan, best known for developing the console role-playing game franchise Megami Tensei. The first Megami Tensei was a Nintendo Entertainment System video game published by Namco based on a trilogy of...
, and the Quantic Dream
Quantic Dream
Quantic Dream is a French video game developer based in Paris, France, founded in 1997. The company also supplies motion capture services to the film and video game industries.-History:...
titles Omikron: The Nomad Soul
Omikron: The Nomad Soul
Omikron: The Nomad Soul is a Microsoft Windows and Dreamcast 3D adventure game developed by French developer Quantic Dream and published in 1999 by Eidos Interactive. It was released on October 31, 1999 for PC and on June 21, 2000 for Dreamcast...
(1999), Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit (video game)
Fahrenheit, also known as Indigo Prophecy in North America, is a cinematic adventure video game developed by Quantic Dream and manufactured and marketed by Atari Europe SAS...
(Indigo Prophecy) (2005) and Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain is an interactive drama psychological thriller video game created by Quantic Dream exclusively for the PlayStation 3. The game is written and directed by Quantic Dream's founder and CEO David Cage....
(2010). In addition, some other adventure games have also attempted to adopt aspects of first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
games in an attempt to modernize the genre, such as with Frictional Games
Frictional Games
Frictional Games is an independent video game company located in Helsingborg, Sweden. The developer comprises a small core team and is led by Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson. Certain key roles such as Music and Narrative Design are performed by external staff like Mikko Tarmia and Tom Jubert,...
's Penumbra series
Penumbra (video game series)
Penumbra is the name of an episodic video game series by developer Frictional Games, published by Lexicon Entertainment and Paradox Interactive. The games use the HPL Engine, initially developed as a tech demo...
(2007–2008) and Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror video game by Frictional Games, who previously developed the Penumbra series. Released for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms, the game features an unarmed protagonist exploring a dark and foreboding castle, while avoiding monsters and other...
(2010). Other examples of adventure game elements being incorporated into other genres include L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire is a 2011 crime video game developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games. It was released for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows. It was released as a 3-disc game for the Xbox 360 console, which prompts the player to switch to another disc at certain points in the...
and Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an adventure game developed by Frogwares and published in 2006 for Microsoft Windows. The game follows an original plotline as Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H...
. On the other hand, other adventure games have moved away from traditional game conventions, and more closely resemble interactive stories, a major example being the visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
genre that is popular in Japan.
There is something of a revival of the adventure game online, in both a fairly traditional style, such as the mouse-controlled text games on Rinkworks
Adventure Games Live
Adventure Games Live is a suite of online adventure games on the entertainment website RinkWorks. It features single-player turn-based games run in CGI on an engine written by Samuel Stoddard, who runs RinkWorks and wrote five of the ten games currently available...
and Mystery Of Time And Space
MOTAS
The Mystery Of Time And Space is a popular online graphic adventure game created by Jan Albartus . The game was produced using Macromedia Flash and was an early influential example of the escape the room genre...
, and in 3-dimensional games, such as Crimson Room. This had led to the creation of a genre called escape the room
Escape the room
Escape the room is a subgenre of point-and-click adventure game which requires a player to escape from imprisonment by exploiting their surroundings. They are usually created as a browser game for the Adobe Flash platform. Popular examples include "Crimson Room," "Viridian Room," "MOTAS,", "Droom"...
or room-escape. Games are usually created with Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
. A parallel can be drawn with "Behind Closed Doors" by John Wilson of Zenobi
Zenobi
Zenobi is a computer game company that is known for its interactive fiction. The company was started by John Wilson in late 1982. Originally formed as a part-time operation it became full-time in early 1986. The company produced and published adventure-games for the ZXSpectrum range of home...
Software, a popular 1980s text adventure series for the ZX Spectrum, where the object was only to escape one single location, such as a bathroom. Most of the current room-escape games consist of several locations which together make up one room.
In October 2006, online game company Telltale Games
Telltale Games
Telltale Games is a leading independent digital first publisher and game developer founded in June 2004 as Telltale, Incorporated. Based in San Rafael, California, the studio includes designers formerly employed by LucasArts...
, made up primarily of ex-employees from LucasArts, released their first installment of Sam & Max: Season One. This episodic game series
Episodic games
An episodic video game is a video game of a shorter length that is commercially released as an installment to a continuous and larger series. Episodic games differ from conventional video games in that they often contain less content but are developed on a more frequent basis.Such a series may or...
utilized 3D graphics, but was played in the 'point and click' style of older LucasArts titles. It was designed to be exclusively distributed online, and featured characters from the classic game Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Sam & Max Hit the Road is a graphic adventure computer game released by LucasArts during the company's adventure games era. The game was originally released for DOS in 1993 and for Mac OS in 1995. A 2002 re-release included compatibility with Windows and Amiga...
. The series was successful, leading to a retail release of the full season for PC and Wii, and the development of a second series, Sam & Max: Season Two
Sam & Max Season Two
Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, originally released as Sam & Max: Season Two, is an episodic series of adventure games by Telltale Games based around the characters of the Sam & Max comic series created by Steve Purcell and follows from Sam & Max Save the World.Season Two builds on Season One with...
. Telltale was also responsible for a two-game series
Bone: Out from Boneville
Bone: Out from Boneville is the second video game endeavor by Telltale Games, and the first episode of the Bone adventure game series. It was released in September 2005 after around seven months in production...
based on Jeff Smith's Bone
Bone (comics)
Bone is an independently published graphic novel series originally serialized in 55 irregularly released issues from 1991 to 2004. Bone was drawn and written by Jeff Smith....
comics and a series of five games based on the Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner is a Flash animated Internet cartoon. It mixes surreal humor with references to retro pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music.The cartoons are nominally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner...
flash cartoons.
A further resurgence in adventure games was seen due to recent changes at Lucasarts. On the first day of the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Lucasarts announced that they would be releasing both a special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island as well as working with Telltale Games to create an episodic series Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was...
. In early July 2009, Lucasarts announced that it would supporting digital distribution
Digital distribution
Online distribution, digital distribution, or electronic software distribution is the practice of delivering content without the use of physical media, typically by downloading via the internet directly to a consumer's device. Online distribution bypasses conventional physical distribution media,...
of its back catalog of titles, including its classic adventure games, through services such as Steam, and has announced it will further consider porting these titles to mobile devices such as iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
s. These efforts were backed by Lucasarts' new president, Darrell Rodriguez, who has been said to be "very big on adventure games". Lucasarts has stated that digital distribution helps to remove the barrier to reproducing these titles, and hopes that they will attract a new audience to these games. The move was shortly followed by Activision who offered the King's Quest and Space Quest collections from Sierra also for digital distribution.
The Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
, with its unique touch screen
Touchscreen
A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...
and dual-screen features, has sparked a renewed interest in pure adventure game content and a resurgence in the genre's popularity, following the 2005 releases of Capcom
Capcom
is a Japanese developer and publisher of video games, known for creating multi-million-selling franchises such as Devil May Cry, Chaos Legion, Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil. Capcom developed and published Bionic Commando, Lost Planet and Dark Void too, but they are less known. Its...
's courtroom game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, released in Japan as , is an adventure video game published and developed by Capcom in Japan, North America, and Europe, and published by Nintendo in Australia...
(originally a 2001 GameBoy Advance game) and Cing
Cing
was an independent video game developer based out of Fukuoka, Japan. The company, a small development house employing only 29 people, was founded in April 1999, and was run by Takuya Miyagawa, who served as President and CEO. Miyagawa also acted as the producer on all of Cing's titles. The company...
's Another Code: Two Memories as well as the 2006 release of Cing's Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Hotel Dusk: Room 215, released in Japan as , is a graphic adventure game for the Nintendo DS. Originally announced on October 5, 2005 as Wish Room, the game made its first public appearance on May 9, 2006 at that year's E3 convention. It was released in North America on January 22, 2007, before...
. GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
has credited Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in particular for revitalizing the adventure game genre. The success of the Ace Attorney series was followed soon after by the even greater success of Level-5
Level-5
is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Fukuoka, Japan. The company, which currently employs about 200 individuals, was founded in October 1998 by Akihiro Hino after he departed from the now defunct Japanese developer Riverhillsoft...
's Professor Layton in 2007. Both have since become some of the best selling adventure game franchises, with Ace Attorney selling over 3.9 million units worldwide and Professor Layton selling over 9.5 million units worldwide. Their success has led to an increase in Japanese adventure games, primarily visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s, being localized for Western release, including KID
KID
KID, whose name is an acronym of Kindle Imagine Develop, was a Japan-based company specializing in porting and developing bishōjo games....
's Ever 17: The Out of Infinity (2002), Hirameki
Hirameki
Hirameki International Group Inc. was an American company founded in March 2000 which specialized in translating visual novels from Japan and releasing them to the American market. It is named after the Japanese word for the noun "flash" or "insight"...
's Animamundi: Dark Alchemist (2004), Irem's Raw Danger! (2006), Success Corporation
Success (company)
Success Corporation is a Japanese game developer and publisher, based in Tokyo, and founded in: June 1976. They are best known for their Cotton series of shooter games , Zoo Keeper and others...
's Touch Detective
Touch Detective
or Mystery Detective in Europe is a point-and-click mystery adventure game for the Nintendo DS which makes use of the device's touch screen. It was developed by BeeWorks and released in Japan by Success Corporation. It was developed and released in the United States by Atlus, and in Europe by 505...
series (2006–2007), Marvelous Entertainment's Lux-Pain
Lux-Pain
is a visual novel-type adventure video game developed by Killaware and published by Marvelous Entertainment for the Nintendo DS video game console. The game was released in Japan on March 27, 2008...
(2008), Cing's Last Window: The Secret of Cape West (2009), Chunsoft
Chunsoft
is a Japanese video game developer specializing in console RPGs and visual novels. It was founded by Koichi Nakamura, a video game designer from Enix...
's 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
is an adventure game developed by Chunsoft and published in Japan by Spike on December 10, 2009, and in North America by Aksys Games on November 16, 2010. The game's design team was led by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who is also the writer of the acclaimed visual novel Ever 17: The Out of Infinity...
(2010), Capcom's Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (2010), and Atlus' Catherine
Catherine (video game)
is a horror puzzle-platformer adventure game developed by Atlus Persona Team and published by Atlus for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game is Atlus' first internally-developed game for seventh-generation consoles in high definition, and is described as an "adult-oriented" title by the game's...
(2011).
Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
's Wii Remote
Wii Remote
The , also known as the Wiimote, is the primary controller for Nintendo's Wii console. A main feature of the Wii Remote is its motion sensing capability, which allows the user to interact with and manipulate items on screen via gesture recognition and pointing through the use of accelerometer and...
is also regarded as being well-suited for the genre, and could see some ground-breaking releases in that vein for the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
, such as Capcom's Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, known as in Japan, is an adventure/puzzle video game published and developed by Capcom for the Wii video game console. It was first released in North America on October 23, 2007, and was later released in Japan, PAL regions, and as one of eight Wii launch...
(2007), Eidos Interactive
Eidos Interactive
Eidos Interactive Ltd. is a British video game publisher and is a label of Square Enix Europe. As an independent company Eidos plc was headquartered in the Wimbledon Bridge House in Wimbledon, London Borough of Merton....
's So Blonde
So Blonde
So Blonde is a point-and-click adventure video game released for PC, Wii and Nintendo DS.-Story:The game is based on the adventures of a girl, Sunny Blonde, who has very rich parents...
(2008), and Cing's Another Code: R – A Journey into Lost Memories (2009). The Ace Attorney series was also ported to the Wii in 2009 and 2010. Adventure games are also seen as ideal games for mobile platforms such as the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, where the use of a touch screen to interact with the game provides new directions for such games, much like the Nintendo DS. The introduction of larger and more powerful touch screen devices like the iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
are also seen as a boon to adventure games, allowing for more detailed graphics and better controls and precision over smaller touchscreen units, and a better sense of immersion and interactivity compared to personal computer or console versions.
Emulation
Many classic adventure games cannot run on modern operating systems. Early adventure games were developed for home computerHome computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s, most of which are not in use today. There are emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
s available for modern computers that allow these old games to be played on the latest operating systems. One Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
project called ScummVM
ScummVM
ScummVM is a collection of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system , it now also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies like Revolution Software and Adventure Soft. It was originally written by Ludvig Strigeus...
provides a free engine for the LucasArts adventure games, the SCUMM-derived engine for Humongous Entertainment adventure games, early Sierra titles, Revolution Software 2D adventures, Coktel Vision adventure games and a few more assorted 2D adventures. Another called VDMSound
VDMSound
VDMSound is an open source emulator of legacy sound card devices, designed to allow video games and other applications written for MS-DOS to run on the Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP/95/98/Me operating systems...
can emulate the old sound-cards which many of the games require.
One of the most popular emulators, DOSBox
DOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
, is designed to emulate an IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
computer running MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, the native OS
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
of most older adventure games. Many companies, such as Sierra Entertainment, have included DOSBox in their re-releases of older titles.
Text adventure games are more accessible. There are only a small number of standard formats, and nearly all the classics can be played on modern computers. Some modern text adventure games can even be played on very old computer systems. Text adventure games are also suitable for PDAs, because they have very small computer system requirements. Many classic Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
games are completely playable via web browsers
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
.
See also
- Adventure GamersAdventure GamersAdventure Gamers is a computer game website created in 1998 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game designers....
, website dedicated to the adventure game genre - Amateur adventure gameAmateur adventure gameAn amateur adventure game is a computer game belonging to the adventure genre that has no commercial or similar official backing. The amateur adventure game scene emerged in the mid to late 1990s, when releases of new commercial adventure games became more rare and easy distribution of games and...
- CybertextCybertextCybertext is the organization of text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997...
- Interactive fictionInteractive fictionInteractive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
- List of graphic adventure games
- List of text-based computer games
- MUDMUDA MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...
- RoguelikeRoguelikeThe roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
- Visual novelVisual novelA is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
, the Japanese style of adventure games
External links
- SCI Programming Community, community based on making adventure games using Sierra's Creative Interpreter
- IFReviews Organization, repository for text adventure game reviews written and rated by Interactive Fiction community players and members
- "Creating Adventure Games on Your Computer", a 1983 programming manual by Tim HartnellTim HartnellTim Hartnell was an Australian journalist, self-taught programmer and extremely prolific, bestselling author of books and magazines on computer games. His company, Interface Publications , produced titles for all of the machines in the home computer market, including Sinclair machines...
- "Defining the ideal adventure game", article by David Tanguay (1999)
- "Searching under the rug", an article on adventure game puzzles and interfaces
- Adventureland, database of adventure games
- GameBoomers, walkthroughs, reviews, and info on Adventure games
- Fantasy Adventures, classic adventure computer game museum
- Just Adventure+, a repository for reviews and walkthroughs
- Mystery Manor, site dedicated to adventure games, with content such as walkthroughs, music, screenshots
- Adventure Point, database of information on adventure games
- Adventure Point Forums, community of Adventure game enthusiasts
- Download Adventure Games for PC, Download & play new released adventures games for PC!
- GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary . Google Tech Talk March 7, 2011. 2hour documentary.