For more than 40 years, adventure games have been the most story-driven genre of computer games. Since its founding in 1976 by the gaming industry, many have found that adventure games have a real immersive quality that is comparable to reading a book or watching a movie.
Adventure games are about unraveling stories, exploring worlds, and solving puzzles. Play as Ray McCoy as you complete missions to track down replicants in Razor’s Edge, embark on a four-year journey through the mystical Land of the Dead in Mexican folk art and film noir.Thunder of Fandango, or travel the globe confronting ancient conspiracies in Broken Sword. When you play an adventure game, you never know what you’re going to get. Fantasy, comedy, westerns, mysteries, horror or science fiction; there is an adventure game for everyone.
Genre definition
Adventure games focus on solving puzzles within a narrative, usually with little or no action. Other popular names for this genre are “graphic adventure” or “point-and-click adventure,” but they represent only a part of a much broader and more diverse range of games.
Adventure games are not based on what the dictionary defines as “adventure”. Some are, but many forgo the dangers and excitement for calmer, more thoughtful endeavors.
But labels can only take us so far. Many games push the boundaries of traditional genres in new and interesting ways while remaining at their core adventure games.Dreamfall, a sequel to the point-and-click classic.The Longest Journey, includes several hidden scenes and combat scenes.Heavy Rain is a new generation of interactive adventure movies with motion controls and fast-paced action. On the other end of the spectrum, titles like Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove mix a lot of “Where’s Waldo?” style scavenger hunts. Even Portal, which gives you a gun to solve physics-based puzzles instead of killing, qualifies as an adventure.
Of course, stories, puzzles, and exploration aren’t limited to adventures. More and more games outside of the genre are incorporating elements of an adventure game, such as Scribblenauts, Scythe, and Limbo. Given their common features, we will sometimes consider them as special “games of interest”, but always with the understanding that they fall outside our definition of an adventure game.