Graphic adventure game
Encyclopedia
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. Eventually, the text parser
interface associated with older adventure games was phased out in favor of a point-and-click
interface
, i.e., a game where the player interacts with the game environment and objects using an on-screen cursor. In many of these games, the mouse pointer is context sensitive in that it applies different actions to different objects.
. After the rudimentary Mystery House
(1980), and the first color adventure game Wizard and the Princess
(1980), they established themselves with the full adventure King's Quest
(1984), appearing on various systems, and went on to further success with a variety of strong titles.
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 include Gargoyle Games
's Heavy on the Magick
(1986) which has a text-input system with an animated display screen, the later Magic Knight
games such as Spellbound (1985) which uses a window-menu system to allow for text-adventure style input, the original PC-6001
version of Yūji Horii
's murder mystery
game Portopia Serial Murder Case
(1983), and Hideo Kojima
's classic Snatcher
(1988).
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 console'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
. In 1988, popular adventure game publisher Sierra Online created Manhunter: New York
. It marked a major shift for Sierra, having used a text parser for their adventure games akin to text adventures. Another famous point-and-click graphic adventure game was Hideo Kojima
's Policenauts
(1994). Point-and-click was used in horror games as well as Human Entertainment
's Clock Tower
series quickly became popular in its first release in 1995. It later branched a sequel and a spin-off.
Graphic adventure games were quick to take advantage of the storage possibilities of the CD-ROM
medium and the power of the Macromedia Director multimedia-production software. Games such as Alice
(1990), Spaceship Warlock
(1991), The Journeyman Project
(1993), and Iron Helix
(1993) incorporated pre-rendered 3D elements and live-action video, as seen to good effect later in Blade Runner.
In 1993, Day of the Tentacle
, a sequel to Maniac Mansion
, was released. It featured the original game as an Easter egg.
Space Quest IV became the first in the popular series to feature a point-and-click interface. King's Quest V was the first for its series. Eventually, the first games in both series would be remade in the point-and-click format with VGA graphics.
Other notable point-and-click adventure games include:
The 1980s also saw the development of first-person-adventure games, similar to point-and-click adventure games, but using a first-person perspective, often featuring limited or no other characters.
By 1993, Myst
represented a major milestone for graphical adventure games. It featured a first-person viewpoint
and reached 6 million sales, making it one of the best selling PC games of all time.
A sequel to Myst was later published, known as Riven
. A satire of Myst, known as Pyst
, was published in response to the success of Myst. Another notable first-person-adventure game is Lighthouse.
The third installation of Myst, entitled Myst III: Exile
, was released on PC as well as the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2
.
Another popular series marketed as a first-person adventure, included the Metroid Prime
series from Nintendo, due to the large exploration component of the game and its precedence over combat.
Notable events included Sierra almost entirely shutting down its studio in 1999, and LucasArts ceasing publication after 2000; the Tex Murphy
franchise was also shelved after 1998. Commercially, Grim Fandango
(1998) by LucasArts was considered a failure, selling under 100,000 copies in the 5 years after launch – compare with over 500,000 sales of King's Quest V (1990) less than a decade earlier – and while LucasArts published one further adventure game (in 2000), it canceled remaining games, dismissed most of the teams involved in 2004, and in 2006 declared that it was exiting the market for the time being and did not plan to make adventure games for another decade.
Recently however independent users have created many smaller graphic adventure games in Adobe Flash
, such as the series Johnny Rocketfingers, which is one of the most popular point-and-click in Flash on the Internet or the series The Several Journeys of Reemus
by Jay Ziebarth and the Submachine
series by Mateusz Skutnik. Many of these challenge the player to interact with objects in an environment. These form very short and basic point-and-click adventure games. A popular sub-genre is known as escape the room
games.
The graphic adventure genre has seen a rebirth with the introduction of new video game hardware like the Nintendo DS
, and Wii
, that allows the gamer to interact with the game similarly to using a computer mouse. As a result, many developers have developed new graphic adventures for these platforms.
Recent examples of graphic adventures include Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
for the Wii, Ceville
for the PC, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
for the Nintendo DS, as well as games developed by Telltale Games
, founded by former LucasArts employees. Their games include Sam & Max Save the World
and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures
, the Monkey Island revival, Tales of Monkey Island
and the recently announced Back to the Future: The Game
, which will be released episodically in five parts.
Some recent adventure games have made attempts to revitalize and reinvent the adventure game genre by blending new technologies, interfaces, and gameplay elements into it. RealMyst and several other recent Myst games took the Myst series into Realtime3D, and Myst Online: Uru Live
included multiplayer functionality and physics-based puzzles. Dreamfall
, Portal, and many other games have mixed action elements with elements of the adventure genre, blurring genre lines. Some recent adventure games, including Machinarium
and some of the titles by Telltale Games
, have integrated a variety of hint systems into their game design in order to make the genre more accessible to players.
) and animation were able to use their talent on the computer. One such game that makes a great example of this is Metal Slader Glory
. Thanks to the efforts of various artists in conjunction with the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons
type First Person Shooter games, many revolutionary programs such as Deluxe Paint
and Photoshop were actually put to use on actually hand-drawn images rather than typical photographs. These Comic Adventure games is part of the reason why the popularity of point-and-click and FMV games was able to survive.
developed a game known as Peasant's Quest. The game is mostly a parody of the first King's Quest game, but also references the second through fourth games in the series. Peasant's Quest also somewhat references Black Cauldron.
Adventure game
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,...
. 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. Eventually, the text parser
Text parser
In an adventure game, a text parser takes typed input from the player and simplifies it to something the game can understand. Usually, words with the same meaning are turned into the same word and certain filler words are dropped .The parser makes it easier for the game's author to react on input...
interface associated with older adventure games was phased out in favor 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
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
, i.e., a game where the player interacts with the game environment and objects using an on-screen cursor. In many of these games, the mouse pointer is context sensitive in that it applies different actions to different objects.
Early years
Graphic adventure games were introduced by a 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...
. After the rudimentary 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), and the first color adventure game Wizard and the Princess
Wizard and the Princess
Wizard and the Princess, also known as Adventure in Serenia, is a 1980 computer game by On-Line Systems for the Apple II and Apple II Plus. It is the second title released in On-Line Systems' "Hi-Res Adventure" series after Mystery House...
(1980), they established themselves with the full adventure 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), appearing on various systems, and went on to further success with a variety of strong titles.
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 include 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, 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 (1985) which uses a window-menu system to allow for text-adventure style input, the original 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 of 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...
's 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...
(1983), and 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...
's classic 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).
Point-and-click adventure
From 1984, a new kind of graphic adventure emerged, following the launch of the Apple Macintosh with its 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...
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
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...
worked around the console'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 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...
. In 1988, popular adventure game publisher Sierra Online created Manhunter: New York
Manhunter: New York
Manhunter: New York is a post-apocalyptic adventure game designed by Barry Murry, Dave Murry and Dee Dee Murry of Evryware and published in 1988 by Sierra On-Line. A sequel, Manhunter 2: San Francisco was released the next year in 1989-Scenario:...
. It marked a major shift for Sierra, having used a text parser for their adventure games akin to text adventures. Another famous point-and-click graphic adventure game was 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...
's 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). Point-and-click was used in horror games as well as 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
Clock Tower (video game)
is the first installment of the stealth-based survival horror adventure game series Clock Tower created by Human Entertainment for the Super Famicom. The game was published by Human Entertainment and was released in Japan in 1995. It was then re-released in Japan in 1997, when it was ported to the...
series quickly became popular in its first release in 1995. It later branched a sequel and a spin-off.
Graphic adventure games were quick to take advantage of the storage possibilities of 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....
medium and the power of the Macromedia Director multimedia-production software. Games such as Alice
Alice: An Interactive Museum
Alice: Interactive Museum is a 1991 click-and-go adventure game, the elements and idea of which were much inspired by Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It was designed for Windows 3.x and later released for the Windows 95 platform. The game was developed by Toshiba-EMI Ltd and was...
(1990), Spaceship Warlock
Spaceship Warlock
Spaceship Warlock is an adventure game created by Mike Saenz and Joe Sparks. The game featured arcade action and interactive dialogue, which enabled the player to type whatever he chose. The game was released in 1991 for the Macintosh and in 1994 for Windows. It was graphically ahead of its time...
(1991), The Journeyman Project
The Journeyman Project
The Journeyman Project is a time travel adventure computer game developed by Presto Studios.-Gameplay:The game features a first-person perspective. The protagonist sees a display, a rectangle shaped visor . This user interface helps to reduce the movie size and maintain relatively high frame rates...
(1993), and Iron Helix
Iron Helix
Iron Helix is the name of an adventure video game made for the Windows, Mac, and the Sega CD. It was an early example of a CD-based game, including video elements integrated with conventional 2D maps and controls...
(1993) incorporated pre-rendered 3D elements and live-action video, as seen to good effect later in Blade Runner.
In 1993, 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 sequel to 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...
, was released. It featured the original game as an Easter egg.
Space Quest IV became the first in the popular series to feature a point-and-click interface. King's Quest V was the first for its series. Eventually, the first games in both series would be remade in the point-and-click format with VGA graphics.
Other notable point-and-click adventure games include:
- Sam & Max Hit the RoadSam & Max Hit the RoadSam & 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 DigThe DigThe 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...
- Torin's PassageTorin's PassageTorin's Passage is a graphic adventure game developed and released by Sierra On-Line, designed by Al Lowe. The game holds the distinction of being a family friendly game by Lowe, designer of the adult-oriented Leisure Suit Larry series of games....
- Freddy Pharkas: Frontier PharmacistFreddy Pharkas: Frontier PharmacistFreddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist is a comic Old West adventure computer game created by Al Lowe and Josh Mandel and published by Sierra On-Line in 1993...
- Broken Sword: The Shadow of the TemplarsBroken Sword: The Shadow of the TemplarsBroken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a point-and-click adventure game released to the PC on November 5, 1996. It was released on the PlayStation in December that same year and on the Game Boy Advance March 19, 2002. It has also been ported to the Mobile phone, and re-released to the Wii, PC,...
- Blade Runner
First-person adventure
By 1993, 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...
represented a major milestone for graphical adventure games. It featured a first-person viewpoint
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...
and reached 6 million sales, making it one of the best selling PC games of all time.
A sequel to Myst was later published, known as Riven
Riven
Riven is a puzzle adventure game and the sequel to Myst. Developed by Cyan Worlds, it was initially published by Brøderbund. Riven was distributed on five compact discs and released on October 29, 1997, in North America; it was later released on a single DVD-ROM, with improved audio and a...
. A satire of Myst, known as Pyst
Pyst
Pyst is a computer game published in 1996. It was created as a parody of the highly successful adventure game, Myst. The parody features full motion video of John Goodman as "King Mattruss", the ruler of "Pyst Island". Pyst was written by Peter Bergman, a co-founder of the Firesign Theatre, and...
, was published in response to the success of Myst. Another notable first-person-adventure game is Lighthouse.
The third installation of Myst, entitled Myst III: Exile
Myst III: Exile
Myst III: Exile is the third title in the Myst series of first person adventure video games. While the preceding games in the series, Myst and Riven, were produced by Cyan and published by Brøderbund, Exile was developed by Presto Studios and published by Ubisoft...
, was released on PC as well as the Microsoft Xbox and Sony 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...
.
Another popular series marketed as a first-person adventure, included the Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime is a video game developed by Retro Studios and Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube, released in North America on November 17, 2002...
series from Nintendo, due to the large exploration component of the game and its precedence over combat.
Decline and rebirth
The genre has since seen a relative decline, since the late 1990s, notably in the United States; graphic adventures remain popular in Japan and Europe. Reasons for the decline involve the ability for computer hardware to play more graphically and gameplay advanced action games such as first-person shooters, and the advent of online gaming where players can play against other gamers online. Such online features are irrelevant to adventure gaming. The popularity and sales of these games have made publishers less inclined to fund development teams making graphic adventures for fear of bad sales.Notable events included Sierra almost entirely shutting down its studio in 1999, and LucasArts ceasing publication after 2000; the Tex Murphy
Tex Murphy
Tex Murphy is a series of five adventure games from Access Software, designed by Chris Jones. The games feature the titular character, performed by Chris Jones himself...
franchise was also shelved after 1998. Commercially, 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...
(1998) by LucasArts was considered a failure, selling under 100,000 copies in the 5 years after launch – compare with over 500,000 sales of King's Quest V (1990) less than a decade earlier – and while LucasArts published one further adventure game (in 2000), it canceled remaining games, dismissed most of the teams involved in 2004, and in 2006 declared that it was exiting the market for the time being and did not plan to make adventure games for another decade.
Recently however independent users have created many smaller graphic adventure games 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...
, such as the series Johnny Rocketfingers, which is one of the most popular point-and-click in Flash on the Internet or the series The Several Journeys of Reemus
The Several Journeys of Reemus
The Several Journeys of Reemus is a point-and-click adventure game series by game developer Jay "Zeebarf" Ziebarth, published by Newgrounds starting in 2008. Like Zeebarf's other point-and-click games, The Several Journeys of Reemus involves the use of logic and the cause-and-effect of selected...
by Jay Ziebarth and the 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 by Mateusz Skutnik. Many of these challenge the player to interact with objects in an environment. These form very short and basic point-and-click adventure games. A popular sub-genre is known as 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"...
games.
The graphic adventure genre has seen a rebirth with the introduction of new video game hardware like 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...
, and 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...
, that allows the gamer to interact with the game similarly to using a computer mouse. As a result, many developers have developed new graphic adventures for these platforms.
Recent examples of graphic adventures include 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...
for the Wii, Ceville
Ceville
Ceville is a humorous graphic adventure video game developed by the German game studio Realmforge Studios and published by Kalypso Media. Despite the game's use of 3D environments and sprites, the gameplay is very true to the graphical point-and-click adventure tradition of gameplay, immortalized...
for the PC, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a point-and-click adventure game released to the PC on November 5, 1996. It was released on the PlayStation in December that same year and on the Game Boy Advance March 19, 2002. It has also been ported to the Mobile phone, and re-released to the Wii, PC,...
for the Nintendo DS, as well as games developed by 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...
, founded by former LucasArts employees. Their games include Sam & Max Save the World
Sam & Max Save the World
Sam & Max Save the World is a graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games. The game was originally released as Sam & Max: Season One before being renamed in early 2009. Save the World was developed in episodic fashion, comprising six episodes that were released for Microsoft Windows...
and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is an episodic point-and-click adventure game developed by Telltale Games based on the Homestar Runner web cartoon, with Strong Bad as the lead character. A total of five episodes were released for WiiWare and Windows between August 11, 2008 and...
, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures is an episodic series of adventure games by Telltale Games based around the characters of Wallace and Gromit created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. The first episode was released on March 24, 2009 for the PC...
, the Monkey Island revival, 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...
and the recently announced Back to the Future: The Game
Back to the Future: The Game
Back to the Future: The Game is a graphic adventure video game based on the Back to the Future film franchise. The game was developed by Telltale Games as part of a licensing deal with Universal Pictures. Bob Gale, co-creator, co-writer and co-producer of the film trilogy, assisted Telltale in...
, which will be released episodically in five parts.
Some recent adventure games have made attempts to revitalize and reinvent the adventure game genre by blending new technologies, interfaces, and gameplay elements into it. RealMyst and several other recent Myst games took the Myst series into Realtime3D, and Myst Online: Uru Live
Myst Online: Uru Live
Myst Online: Uru Live is an open source massively multiplayer online adventure game developed by Cyan Worlds. The game is the multiplayer component to the 2003 video game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. Like Uru, Myst Online takes place in 2000's New Mexico, where an ancient civilization known as the D'ni...
included multiplayer functionality and physics-based puzzles. Dreamfall
Dreamfall
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is an adventure video game with elements of action-adventure. It was released for the Windows and Xbox platforms on 17 April 2006 by Norwegian developer Funcom...
, Portal, and many other games have mixed action elements with elements of the adventure genre, blurring genre lines. Some recent adventure games, including Machinarium
Machinarium
Machinarium is a puzzle point-and-click adventure game developed by Amanita Design. It was released on October 16, 2009 for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, on September 8, 2011 for iPad 2 on App Store and on November 21, 2011 for BlackBerry PlayBook. Demos were made available on September 30,...
and some of the titles by 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...
, have integrated a variety of hint systems into their game design in order to make the genre more accessible to players.
Japanese development
In Japan this is known as a "Comic Adventure" , in which many of the graphic designers who worked on Comic books (MangaManga
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 animation were able to use their talent on the computer. One such game that makes a great example of this is Metal Slader Glory
Metal Slader Glory
is a science-fiction-themed graphic adventure game developed by HAL Laboratory that was released for the Family Computer exclusively in Japan on August 30, 1991. It was the final game released by HAL Laboratory as an independent third-party developer before their buy-out by Nintendo...
. Thanks to the efforts of various artists in conjunction with the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
type First Person Shooter games, many revolutionary programs such as Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint is a bitmap graphics editor series originally created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts .The original version was created for the Commodore Amiga and was released in November 1985...
and Photoshop were actually put to use on actually hand-drawn images rather than typical photographs. These Comic Adventure games is part of the reason why the popularity of point-and-click and FMV games was able to survive.
Parody
The creators of Homestar RunnerHomestar 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...
developed a game known as Peasant's Quest. The game is mostly a parody of the first King's Quest game, but also references the second through fourth games in the series. Peasant's Quest also somewhat references Black Cauldron.
Further reading
- Richard Moss (2011). A truly graphic adventure: the 25-year rise and fall of a beloved genre". Ars TechnicaArs TechnicaArs Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
.