The long suffering Adventure game genre

[thursday_next]

I love adventure games to a point that is … possibly illegal. My other time is spent at a site for adventure gamers and they have a long list of free and indie games. You probably can’t die in most of them, but it won’t hurt your wallet to try. Pm me and I’ll send you a link to the site (unless I can post it, it has a message board also).

Also, have you checked out GOG? Good Old Games, but already updated so that you don’t have to run an emulator or sacrifice chickens to use workarounds to make your old games play. I have the boxed Tex Murphys, but plan on getting the GOG versions so that I can get things started easily.

Don’t laugh, (OK, go ahead and laugh and tease) but have you tried any of the Nancy Drew games by Her Interactive? It’s point and click, you can die or be fired, and it’s fun. It says ages 10 and up but a lot of adults enjoy them. At some point in the series, they do start to include some “arcade” type puzzles, fortunately I have a Sweet Pea to help me.

Lastly, sometimes Big Fish Games has the type of adventure games you’re looking for. They’re mostly a casual game site, but if you check them out, sometimes you can find what meets your needs.

Hope this helps and happy gaming!

[Sinaijon]

Best Adventure Game Ever: Peasant’s Quest

[Quercus]

@YogSosoth

What I mean when I say Adventure games …old point-and-click … your 2D sprite character over colorful landscapes …

Oooh, listen to you with your fancy ‘sprites’ and ‘color’ and ‘clicking’!
THAT’s NOT AN ADVENTURE GAME!!!
A real adventure game is text descriptions of twistly little passages, and a cursor for text input. And it was better that way!

What happened to Adventure games? I’ll tell you what happened. They were ruined because a new generation of snot-nosed kids couldn’t be bothered to read or do complicated things like using actual words, and whined for pictures and pointy thingies (I assume so they could continue grunting and scratching) and flashy moving things on the screen to combat their ADD, and all the fancy pictures ruined the genre, that’s what happened!!
(and stay off my lawn, too. I just re-seeded it.)

[choie]

Oh man. I can’t believe I get to share these with you guys – I was certain they’d already have been mentioned!

From the UK’s Zombie Cow Studios:

• Ben There, Dan That, a free point-and-click adventure game, and its incredibly low-priced sequel, Time Gentlemen, Please. Both are available bundled together on Steam, if that’s how you roll. These are funny, funny games. I’ve just started the first one and I recommend it highly, especially if you’re a fan of British humor.

From a review of Ben There, Dan That by the best PC gaming site (IMHO), Rock Paper Shotgun:

It’s a sharp and funny collection of knowing and sarcastic references to the cliches of old-school adventure gaming, which is actually a fairly impressive feat. Far too many games are now collections of eye-rolling references to how silly it is to pick up everything, and the ludicrous nature of clicking the bucket on the hedgehog to make a windmill or whatever – the biggest problem being: THE GAMES FROM THE EARLY NINETIES MADE THE SAME JOKES THEN! Lordy lawks, everyone thinks they’re being so terribly clever for pointing out that a ladder can’t fit in an inside pocket, as if Space Quest wasn’t already mocking itself for this twenty years ago (yes, twenty). Anyway, point being, BTDT makes all these jokes without being patronising, or acting as if it’s genius for having thought of them. If anything, it’s the post-ironic approach, celebrating what we all already acknowledge.

Perhaps it occasionally goes too far with the in-joke adventure references (seriously, that’s enough references to Monkey Island everybody), but thankfully it supports these by thinking of original puzzles of its own. The highlight for me is the enormous dedication to unnecessary gags, with lines written for the most ridiculous of things you might choose to do (like clicking Dan on the moon, for instance). There’s also a decent use of timing, with pauses before the written dialogue appears (although this is of course incredibly annoying when you accidentally trigger the same response a second time).

My favourite exchange comes when using Dan on himself:

Ben: There’s no way I’m allowing Dan to interact with himself. Who knows where it’d lead.
Dan: Wanking

(The “Ben” and “Dan” of the title refers to the games’ creators, in case you were wondering.)

[judikium]

@Sinaijon

Best Adventure Game Ever: Peasant’s Quest

I died when I

[spoiler]kicked the horse.

Thanks though, neat game. Love the snarky comments.[/spoiler]

[YogSothoth]

@thursday_next

I love adventure games to a point that is … possibly illegal. My other time is spent at a site for adventure gamers and they have a long list of free and indie games. You probably can’t die in most of them, but it won’t hurt your wallet to try. Pm me and I’ll send you a link to the site (unless I can post it, it has a message board also).

Also, have you checked out GOG? Good Old Games, but already updated so that you don’t have to run an emulator or sacrifice chickens to use workarounds to make your old games play. I have the boxed Tex Murphys, but plan on getting the GOG versions so that I can get things started easily.

Don’t laugh, (OK, go ahead and laugh and tease) but have you tried any of the Nancy Drew games by Her Interactive? It’s point and click, you can die or be fired, and it’s fun. It says ages 10 and up but a lot of adults enjoy them. At some point in the series, they do start to include some “arcade” type puzzles, fortunately I have a Sweet Pea to help me.

Lastly, sometimes Big Fish Games has the type of adventure games you’re looking for. They’re mostly a casual game site, but if you check them out, sometimes you can find what meets your needs.

Hope this helps and happy gaming!

Thanks, I’ll check them out.

I found a couple of fun adventure games using Flash on the web that haven’t been mentioned yet. I can’t check out any of the sites to see if they’re the official games (blast you work firewall!!!) but if you google The Crimson Room or Mysteries of Time and Space, you should be able to find them pretty easily. I remember that the creator of MoTaS kept adding rooms so that the last time I played it, which was years ago, it was quite a long and fun journey.

[Wolverine]

The Nintendo Wii actually makes a good home for adventure games as well (it’s where I bought Strong Bad’s Game…). Also, if you get a chance, check out Zak and Wiki.