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RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - Space Quest Historian - 09-28-2025
Trouble rears its head when we start trying to separate "puzzle games" with "adventure games." They obviously have so much in common, and puzzle games can have great stories, too, but I still maintain they're separate genres. The 7th Guest, Professor Layton, and Gobliiins aren't adventure games in my narrow definition; they're puzzle games, like Tetris with fancier presentation.
Also, it's eyebrow-raising that no one has mentioned Hidden Object games yet, aka the red-headed stepchild of adventure games.
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - Guyra - 09-28-2025
I would argue that games like The 7th Guest is a larger departure from games puzzle games than from adventure games. Hence why I would put it in the Puzzle Adventure subgenre. It heavily emphasizes story and exploration, but the puzzles aren't intrinsically part of the narrative(despite their strange efforts in trying to make it so), and lacks verisimilitude.
Which leads to HOGs, which I honestly think is a subgenre of the Puzzle Adventure subgenre. One that takes a very specific type of puzzle and makes it a main design pillar. A "subsubgenre" if you will.
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - DIYDeer - 09-28-2025
I'd like to get some disclaimers out of the way about words/concepts in general first. Personally my brain automatically is constantly busy with ''just what IS x?'''. As such, I'll leave a signature wall of text you may or may not want to ignore lmao. This comment quickly became a 5 page thing. Oops.
It's a bit easier for people to answer ''Describe what kind of things am I reffering to when you say adventure game?'' vs. ''what makes an adventure game an adventure game, what's its essence as a concept in relation to other concepts, in an ontological sense? And what does it mean to us? What value do we get out of it?''. Just because I can point to a dog and say it's a dog through my subconcious being trained on the right associations, doesn't mean I can explain what a dog is (plus, that explanation can depend on from what angle of study you look at it from, such as biological vs social).
A lot of people treat genres like little categories which have certain traits that define them. The more it has those traits, the more it is that thing. Emperical Characteristics are an aspect of them, but they often make little sense that way.
They're more like significant lineage of traditions, trends and audience subcultures based on various templates of influences and needs. Things that are not genetically related may then be shoehorned in based on pragmatics or just what that culture now associates with those traits. What's tough is that genres evolve over time, typically into new genres. But the question is: When is it a subgenre and when is it more an offshoot? Sometimes a genre evolves to be wildly different yet we consider it the same genre. Sometimes it becomes similar and we call it a different genre. Not to mention that the genre is always an abstraction. It's less that a game IS a genre. It's more that it can be described to have traits, pragmatics and a lineage so that it makes sense to place into that genre as to your description. Or, you can look at the game as that genre.
A knife is not inherently cutlery, we categorize this object by what it is primarily made and used for, what role it tends to play in our society.. it takes on the form it does because it makes it intuitive and effective to use it in that way (high affordance). But you can use the knife as a weapon too. You can analyze everything from different perspectives of being, as every concept is an abstraction we use to make sense of what's a rather gradual spectrum of a complex ever changing world, and there's only so many words we can learn too (imagine 1 word for every color on the color spectrum. We have metrics for that). The way our brain chunks things is subjective. That said, it is very clear that certain concepts and the things they refer to or can be used to describe, are inherently different from others. Water and ice are close concepts, but not as close with tree. It is associated with tree, but not ontologically similar. What muddles the water more is language, because a word can refer to or mean different overall shared concepts, and words change in meaning more quickly than shared concepts. Words typically also gain meaning by usage in context, not through definitions that come after the fact. And those concepts also depend on our society interacting with individuals more specific concepts..But they're used to refer to something ''real''. No matter how I categorize or communicate things, it is true that when someone stabs me, it hurts me.
Genres then, can be used for many different things. But they're not just categories. ''Games with jumping''' is a category, but not a genre. It can be made into one though..
Lastly, the concept of a prototypical thing is important. It's the most typically that thing you think of. THe more something has traits in line with it, the more you see it as that concept, or at least associate it with it. Have too little, and it's sort of adjacent. Only some traits however, are what I'd call fundamentally necessary, and only some are at the root of something. Still, many traits may be highly expected to be there.
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Now that all that's out of the way I'd like to give my answer.
There's 2 different genres the word adventure can refer to. One that was used at the very start, and nowadays is usually used, is the thematic genre ''adventure''. This means it features a significant emphasis on elements people percieve as ''adventerous''. Like long intense or daring journeys through foreign lands maybe collecting artifacts or something while encountering enemies. These elements are not based in gameplay, but in broader ideas that also apply to non gameplay elements. It's more how that gameplay is represented and contextualized. Adventure is honestly more something someone feels or experiences than a fully measurable trait, so the traits can differ a bit. I personally find this genre to be rather useless. Not only is it so basic for video games that it's not helpful in narrowing things down, I just don't really think it's something that has much of a significance to gaming culture as a whole. It's like making a genre for ''Games with violence in it''. It's only really useful to find games that don't, because most abstract gameplay conflict is most easily represented by combat. Hell, ''comabat'' is an apt description even in the abstract sense.
Then there's a level of specificity too. Do we mean the umbrella genre, or do we mean ''short for point and click graphic adventure games'' or short for ''Traditional style adventure games?''
But we aren't here for that ''genre''. We mean what's an adventure game. In the cultures sense I'd say its ''Any game that shows a significant enough lineage and spirit from Collosal Cave Adventure, and appeals to similar audiences. These audiences have been split into the IF community and the point and click communities. Various adjacent games sit around it''. These games are then described as story driven games emphasizing exploration and puzzles, in opposition to pure puzzle games, simulation games or games that involve improving a skill like strategy, or action. Some people then have some more specific ideas based on whatever they ''get'' out of adventure games. Some think the puzzles are a bit more important, others give more importance to the story. It makes sense to attribute most of it through story driven games because there was no prior narrative game genre and it was one of the main appeals that set it apart before other genres could catch up in technology. But I don't really think all that explains what's really going on under the hood.
in a personal way though, I think it's a lot more complicated. And I actually think there is a sort of ''root'' concept that really holds the adventure game spirit together as one of the main umbrella genres. Notice how there is also no ''exploration'' umbrella genre. ''Adventure'' gets its title the same way ''soulslike'' or ''doomclone'' did. A name doesn't always say everything, indie rock isn't just independent rock. But it does tell us a lot here. Will crowther was trying to add elements of his actual cave mapping experience into a game. It's not some arbitrary cave, it's order is based on an actual map he made. The goal of the game? Collect the items (prefferably with the best score). That gives a direction, a reward, goal to your exploration, otherwise what are you doing? But this was an era where challenge was a big thing and the games short. So what will stand between you and your exploration? ''Puzzles''. I put that in quotes for reasons I'll get to later. But suffice to say, the "root" everything else is dependent on..is contextualized exploration.
People often attribute things to narrative..Infocom even called their games ''interactive fiction''. But then something does not hold up. Collosal cave, Zork, Kings Quest 1 and 2..They don't actually feature that much story. Not much more than the contextualizing excuse plots in the manuals of other types of games. Sure they had little space to work with and clearly seem to want it to be there, but a lot of the text is just..descriptions of things that in other games are represented by graphics. Interacting with a literature type description or things being represented in a way as to where they have thematic events going, does not really mean you're telling stories. Storytelling has elements of world building, lore, etc..But that's not what makes it that thing. It's surely ''fictional'' and its ''interactive''..But not in a way that different from some other games.
The board game community I'm not a part of already gets it: There's systems/mechanics, which are abstract like music's notes. And then there's thematics which have actual meaning corresponding to our worlds, like lyrics. Music does not need lyrics to be music. It's an abstract medium. The same goes for Games. For some reason when people describe video games, we often confuse thematic descriptions for gameplay ones. You could shoot someone in Into the Breach but it''d be an entirely different mechanic from shooting someone in Doom. It's a similar abstraction to a ''window'' on your computer, it makes things easier, but it's often unclear what mechanics people actually mean from their descriptions. Sometimes its asif video games are so good at the illusion they don't even realize the mechanic is there on a conscious level.
Collosal Cave is different for 2 reasons. It was inspired by REAL LIFE cave exploration. Not just navigating it. But you want to learn and discover more about the cave itself. So when you're in this game, it's a fictional world you're exploring too, and the scenarios it finds itself in. The second was the Dungeons and Dragons influence. D&D Itself had ties to the term ''adventure'' (as you went on fantasy adventures and went through a co op campaign rather than just random vs. battles). Anyway, The whole description + command thing is suspiciously similar to Dungeons and Dragons their DM+player relationship, which was taken from their wargaming sessions player and referee interactions getting more and more simulaty/roleplay-y. These 2 traits mean that Collosal cave is simply strong in having Thematics be a main driver in the gameplay. The thematic scenario the world and its characters find itself in, influences the actual gameplay.
Most genres are named after the main thing you do in the game. In adventure and zorks case, the main activity is exploring. It's how you interact with everthing. The main verbs you use over and over again are what I call ''exploratory'' verbs. Stuff that lets you take in your environment and learn more information, as well as interact with your environment. Looking. Examining. Talking to. Taking. Moving.
Because it's all based on the scenario/thematics of the world and its characters and events, and intertacting with/exploring an environment, the puzzles end up becoming more like ''riddles'' more than anything. Puzzles typically have all the pieces you need, and pieces mostly behave in ways that are expected. They're systemic. Adventure game puzzles are more like the author making you find clues, then you experimenting to come up with whatever solutions they had in mind. It's a scenario riddle. Not ALL adventure game puzzles are like this, but they're the crux. Because it's based on the scenario, the games progress is very author driven. Not about emergent systems like sims. Not about player agency within a strict system like a fighting game. Not in randomization like many RPGs... The author is in control. This trait of adventures also means that a lot of adventures have very ''specialized'' non systemic aspects to them, both in gameplay and graphics. Their systems tend to be broad, so the author has a lot of control by filling them in with specialized things. 1 Door may not look the same as another door, and behave completely differently.
The core gameplay of Adventure is something I call a '' Search Adventure'' game, named after ''search action'' from Japan to describe Castlevania Symphony of the Night. In essence, you're doing a similar thing here, just with a different set of conventions. It's why Zelda 1, inspired by real life exploration as a kid and Action RPGs (initially it was called an action RPG), feels earily similar to adventure. It just keeps some of the progression aspect of action rpgs by turning them into long term powerups instead of incremental. You're exploring and navigating while looking for a bunch of items which let you get to other items and places. It's just wrapped around a little arcade action game. The micro is arcade action, the macro the exploration.
The other aspect, I call the ''Thematic Scenario Game''. It's making a game driven out of thematic scenarios, as opposed to gameplay scenarios. ''You wake up stuck in a room made of candy. What do you do?'' Notice these are aspects found in RPGs..But RPGs come from other places. They root in applying incremental progression systems/mechanical roleplay to a wargame not focused on large troops, with a fantasy setting and adding non wargame actions, and then adding identity style roleplay optionally. They grew organically from a group of wargamers. That's why a dungeon crawler or JRPG still goes ding ding ding for RPGs.
Genres then have conventions and typical forms they take on. But, it's actually the ROLE and EFFECT of those things that really tend to drive things. In this case, it is driven by concepts like exploration, investigation, mystery, discovery, whatever you wanna call it.
Then, a genre typically has fundamental mechanics they lean on. As long as our fundamental mechanics are not too dissimilar from an abstraction or alternate take on the zork 1 type of thing, it's adventury enough. As long as we have mechanics used in a similar enough role, it will be adventure like too.
The fundamental mechanics (which must be used in a similar role) are:
-Thematic Scenario Event Triggers. You do X thing, the author decides what else happens in the world/scenario.
-Scenario Verbs. You give commands which guide a character. The scenario determines what will actually happen. The commands are immediate physical interactions. The general outcome if the character listens is known, but not the exact one. Verb riddles were a big thing in Text Adventures.
-Diologue riddles are a subtype of the above.
-Interactable Background Objects/NPCs. You can do stuff to these.
-Specific subsystems of certain interactables. You may be able to get a detailed view where you can manipulate certain mechanisms.
-Inventory Items. You can hold onto these. You can then Use items on items or the other interactables. Sometimes you can use the interactable ones on eachother if you're close enough.
You explore. You collect stuff. You come accross clues. You run into problems. You try to come up with solutions of sequences of things to try, verbs to try, items to use, etc. The items differ in most pure adventure games in that you're often not made clear what to do with them. They are what I'll call ''Obfuscated locks and keys''. Making them odd is part of the riddle.
Then, experimentation, study, discovery, navigating..It was all a part of these games. The riddle isn't just there to crack your brain. It's also for you to you know, explore and discover things of the gameplay and scenario.
Over time they were simplified only to the most basic exploratory verbs, becoming more contextual. This means sequence of things became more important than scenario command riddles. People see different things in it and take it into different places. This is where different subgenres come in.
Puzzle adventures emphasize the type of puzzles found in Adventure games. Escape Rooms and certain myst likes are more like pure environmental puzzlers, they have a similar conflict in gameplay, but the adventure role and structure is gone. Hidden Object/Adventure hybrids will sort of hybridize the pixel hunting aspect of item collecting and where's wally style gameplay. Exploration Adventures and walking sims emphasize exploration. Narrative adventures emphasize narrative and may add some narrative play. But the latter is not the same as being narrative focused or narrative driven. Narrativeplay is like a Choose your own adventure book/Singleplayer RPG gamebook or even some of the interactive storytelling of a tabletop RPG. You play with a narrative in some way, effecting it in some way. Narrative focused is simply emphasizing story as an important aspect, and narrative driven means something like, maybe your next mario stage and objective looks different because of story beats.
Anywho, it was quickly noticed that adventure games did well for storytelling at the time. So you saw things like the infocomics (literally just digital stories). Japan had the whole yuji horii's portopia serial murder. He wanted a game where you talked to the computer..Which wasn't super feasible. It became a detective adventure, emphasizing talking to people and deducting information. The console port had a selection based interface, foregoing the parser. They became more story focused and linear with lots and lots of talking. Then Spike Chunsoft comes out with their ''sound novel'' choose your own adventure like horror games. And the rest is kind of history: Japanese Adventure games, mostly turned into visual novels..Or visual novel like adventure games. Japanese Adventures like Ace Attorney however, still run on verb the noun mechanics. Not Preset choice mechanics. Preset choices are even broader, so the author can fill in even more. The choices can be way more specific with much more unpredictable outcomes. It's about trying to get the right story branch..Or just solving mysteries like a detective show.
Aforementioned adventure elements of the above, in different conventions or roles, can be found in other games. Action Adventures, RPGs, and even regular action games. There are some other mechanics which can be used for that kind of game.
-Deduction Adventures replace a lot of items with well..Looking for info. But also often add a deduction info linking or search mechanic.
-Narrative Games emphasize preset choices like choose your own adventure books.
-Roleplay focused games often use stat check dicerolls
-RPGs and visual novels may have certain things you do count to certain variables for different outcomes (I call them effect variables).
To me, an adventure game is either any Thematic Scenario Game driven by exploration/discovery, It may be thematic for storytelling, or just for its fictional environment. Or, it's any search adventure focused game. Then any other game with elements of them, related or unrelated, different conventions or not, are tangentially related as having adventure elements. Basically every mainstream AAA game started to add some nebulous adventure element just like they did for RPG elements as it was just..Useful to make longer, grander games and keep players playing. But those games are still centered around way different fundamentals.
I will often consider something an adventure game when it has a clear similar set of mechanics and lineage..But Honestly, I like to include stuff that's unconventional or even from other genres. Yume Nikki fits the bill despite a JRPG Interface and a lack of emphasis on puzzles. You explore thematic dreams and can also collect items..It's just focused on the exploration. Hypnospace Outlaw fits the bill as a deduction adventure of sorts, you explore pages for clues and solve little riddles. Disco Elysium runs on CRPG mechanics. But the role is so much more similar to a narrative adventure.
I do not think Portal counts. Ive only played a little of portal 2. But at the very least portal does not count. It's a puzzle game through and through with the typical FPS interface, just plopping a narrated story on top. I do think it makes SENSE to review on an adventure game site. There's a lot of overlap in traits that adventure game players may like. Ironically though, it can be harder to reccomend action adventures that fit the search adventure element to a T. Because the asked skills of the action simply do not overlap well, they evolved into separate subcultures and audiences. They also kind of have their own lineage that only somewhat intertwines (Adventure on the atari 2600, Ocarina of time taking influence from PC Adventures, etc). Still, adding some more adventure leaning, or really major action adventures can work if its close in spirit. It's just less practical than portal, which ironically is less adventure.
We can also talk about other conventions like the way time tends to flow. I just think its less relavent to what makes it that thing. We have to abstract it broadly, or else it falls apart to just being a very specific tradition someone likes. Did Kings Quest having random encounters matter that much? I doubt it.
Oh and I forgot. Visual Novels. The west has had games with visual novel style gameplay in their own way, Typically as interactive movies. I would not really consider them adventure games, but a sister genre with roots in Adventure Games. In Japan, ADV is anything VN/Adventure like with interactivity, and NVL for anything without significant interaction. Over there that's how the genre culturally developed, but I'd argue it's not ontologically sound...In my view. Still, SOME of these games again, make sense to review on a site like this, it's very adjacent. Ace Attorney is not a visual novel. It's a Japanese style detective narrative adventure in its fundamentals. Steins gate is a visual novel.The Walking Dead sits in between interactive movie and narrative adventure.
Lastly, there seems to be a lot of divide over text and visuals. The entire ''IF''(some are adventures, some more like Interactive stories) community split off from graphic adventures all because one is more like classic literature and another is more like theatre/film. Similarly VNs split off because they use Japanese otaku tropes and are..A bit more theatre like, but not very film like. I personally find this classification to go a bit more to audience needs than fundamentals. A doll is still the same overall thing as an action figure.
That's my eehm..200 cents on the issue.
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - kamineko - 09-29-2025
Funny, 3 pages of carefully crafted definitions and nobody used the word "immersion".
If an adventure game doesn't make you want to immerse yourself in its game world and walk it along with the main characters then where is the adventure?
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - BobVP - 09-29-2025
I'm freestyling here, but I think it originates in storytime. Your tribe gathering around the fireplace. Effective and affective communication. Immersion comes from getting people to follow along. It's used to convey ideas, knowledge, experiences. Immersion is in presentation.
Play serves to develop skills. It helps with bonding, getting a sense of/improving your capabilities. It can be used to establish or challenge hierarchies. The immersion is in play. Presentation is there to enhance engagement in play.
Adventure games, more than other genres, are rooted in the tradition of storytime, rather than play. AGs were preceeded by novels, movies, etc, not sports, war games, stuff like that. To put the G in AG, the most obvious addition would be puzzles.
I think puzzles are a specialized and abstracted form of play. Presentation is there to lessen the abstraction, to help the player visualize the challenge. The focus (immersion?) is on the problem and figuring out the solution. I think this is a form of play that has to do with our capacity for specialization, to develop so-called "high-order thinking skills".
This is one of the things about AGs I love (weird kinds of puzzles that you can't really pull off in any other genre), but they're also a structural weakness. The mode of immersion of the narrative runs into the roadblock of a puzzle. In other games, you're still engaged in some sort of dynamic if you fail. If you're stuck, you can get better by trying again. Making a mistake may teach you something, put you in a position you can use to your advantage, etc. AGs essentially get you on board with a story and then it comes to a halt, you try arbitrary and specific things until you hit the right combination of both.
It's like reading an article, getting hijacked by a crossword and having to finish it before you can get back to the article.
But AGs have another way to achieve immersion: exploratory play. Even though it sometimes takes a backseat to narrative and puzzles, it may be the greatest thing AGs can offer to maintain immersion.
(09-29-2025, 04:22 AM)kamineko Wrote: If an adventure game doesn't make you want to immerse yourself in its game world and walk it along with the main characters then where is the adventure?
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - Johnny Nys - 09-29-2025
I lost count of the times I went "Is THAT an adventure game?!" in my life. Even when reviewing for the AGH. With so many control schemes, so many ways to tell a story, so many gameplay elements, it's become an immense genre. Yes, I used to think only the point 'n clicks were the TRUE adventure games. But then, what about those earlier text parsers? Okay, include them too, then. But hey, what about those games where you control your character with the keyboard or a controller? Okay, add them too. But wait, what about those first persons, those FMV's? Yeah, okay, let them in. It doesn't stop. Even the term "narrative games" doesn't cut it anymore, because kids these days have started calling the likes of Assassin's Creed and Ghost of Tsushima "story" games. And yes, there are huge stories behind them. But they're no "adventure games".
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - DIYDeer - 09-29-2025
(09-29-2025, 04:22 AM)kamineko Wrote: Funny, 3 pages of carefully crafted definitions and nobody used the word "immersion".
If an adventure game doesn't make you want to immerse yourself in its game world and walk it along with the main characters then where is the adventure?
Its an emergent subjectively experienced property and also not necessarily one that makes the game. An RPG can be immersive. Half life 2 can be immersive. Hell in an abstract gameplay flowstate kind of way, tetris can me immersive. I'm not saying that just because other games have it doesn't mean it can't be a core trait. But I don't think it is one. Its just someone into adventure games would be looking for a specific type of immersion into a world, its events and its characters. Immersion in crpgs typically means worldbuilding and thematic agency while agency is not expected for jrpgs and adventures.
I'm not a fan of the term in general. I feel like its used a bit like a buzzword a lot of the time. If a game is gripping you in gameplay or thematics then its design is just.. working well. If a game is atmospheric its doing a good job in presentation and thematics. If a game is not thematically cohesive its not thematically cohesive. If things take you out of the experience they're poorly connected mechanics, bad mechanics，or poor handling of thematics. Just..make a decent game and it will follow. A lot of the time it also has ties to people who don't seem to appreciate much gamy who just wanna make believe into escapism and escapism is a bit of another can of worms for me.
Meanwhile, I don't think some dude going around grabbing random items like a kleptomaniac in adventures while being able to carry allof it should seem "more immersive than other genres" yet it can definitely grip you in their world. Personally tho q-bert can "immerse" me just as much and a random gamy menu is not gonna take me out of it. Its really personal.
(09-28-2025, 07:22 AM)Space Quest Historian Wrote: Trouble rears its head when we start trying to separate "puzzle games" with "adventure games." They obviously have so much in common, and puzzle games can have great stories, too, but I still maintain they're separate genres. The 7th Guest, Professor Layton, and Gobliiins aren't adventure games in my narrow definition; they're puzzle games, like Tetris with fancier presentation.
Also, it's eyebrow-raising that no one has mentioned Hidden Object games yet, aka the red-headed stepchild of adventure games.
Puzzle games are kind of their own lineage. Adventure games used environmental/scenario type riddles and puzzles for whatever its trying to do. They take it as an element as its a composite/complex genre (puzzle is a single component genre), but its its own umbrella.
I dont know much about these games, but they supposedly kinda sit at the end bridging adventure to puzzle. They're adventure games heavily emphasizing puzzles and leaving lots of other elements, or adventure ish puzzle games. However, if like a pure escape room puzzle.. its basically distilling adventure gameplay down more to its puzzles (kinda like a dungeon crawler does for an rpg). So yeah, it makes sense its contentious.
Tetris on the other hand? It's only puzzle in an overall cultural sense. They use thise abstract puzzle mechanics in a non puzzle way, but ended up being seen as the video game equivelent of a puzzle game anyway. In actual gameplay, tetris is a highscore based arcady action game adapting a type of puzzle (tetronimo puzzles), similar to what bookworm or bejeweld does in a turn based way. Its play centered around adapting ones skills where problems are there slong the way, not play centered around the ingrnuity of solving specific problems. One way to see its not a true puzzle is that these sometimes come with puzzle modes where you have specific gameplay scenarios you gotta solve. Its kinda like chess puzles (solving type play) vs playing chess (decision making type skillplay). A chess match has little puzzles to solve and knowledge checks along the way but its ultimately about the skill of decision making, tactics and stragrtizing trying to beat an opponent. Reaching a completely solved state means theres not much to improve on, while reaching a solved state in a puzzle is the whole point.
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - sneaky - 09-30-2025
A lot of great discussion here.
For me it was always a game that allowed me to be immersed into the world and characters. It was an attachment that made it feel very real. The main character was essentially you. It was then driven by a narrative and allowed puzzles to progress the story in most cases. I believe this is why some many of are are attached to these worlds. It's why when a classic game gets made by the original developer or a sub company there is a lot of time backlash. The is due to the emotional attachment to this fictional world. We are invested in these characters.
The puzzle aspect always intrigued me of why this genre was involved with it. I believe a lot of the players of this genre are puzzled orientated and this leads well with how their brains work. Smart people that like challenges and stories/characters with real substance.
I find I like a certain type of tv show/movie that allows me to escape into a rich world/characters that allows for the same investment as adventure games.
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - Space Quest Historian - 09-30-2025
Maybe Tetris was a bad example. I just threw out the first thing that came to mind.
To waffle a bit, the puzzles in PUZZLE games (vs adventure games) are hermetic. Each puzzle has its own set of rules and gameplay. It is not part of a grand thread of interconnected puzzle chains; it is its own singular thing and it is unaffected by anything else.
Contrast them to adventure game puzzles, at least the traditional kind borne from your questin' kings and monkeying islands, are lateral thinking exercises, and they frequently require you to solve a number of smaller conundrums in order to accomplish a bigger, overarching goal. Your usual "to do this, you need that, but to get that, you need to do thus, and that requires you to do thither..."
Obviously the two intermarry on occasions — particularly the (from my standpoint unwelcome) intrusion of the aforementioned hermetic PUZZLE-puzzles into quote-unquote "standard" adventure games — which we call "logic puzzles" for reasons I'm not entirely clear on; probably because their "logic" seems elusive (or, in some/most cases, entirely absent) until you fuck around with them long enough.
I can't think of any examples where the reverse occurs — a lateral thinking exercise in a puzzle game — but I'm sure one such unicorn must exist somewhere.
Maybe Tetris was a bad example. I just threw out the first thing that came to mind.
To waffle a bit, the puzzles in PUZZLE games (vs adventure games) are hermetic. Each puzzle has its own set of rules and gameplay. It is not part of a grand thread of interconnected puzzle chains; it is its own singular thing and it is unaffected by anything else.
Contrast them to adventure game puzzles, at least the traditional kind borne from your questin' kings and monkeying islands, which are lateral thinking exercises, and they frequently require you to solve a number of smaller conundrums in order to accomplish a bigger, overarching goal. Your usual "to do this, you need that, but to get that, you need to do thus, and that requires you to do thither..."
Obviously the two intermarry on occasions — particularly the (from my standpoint unwelcome) intrusion of the aforementioned hermetic PUZZLE-puzzles into quote-unquote "standard" adventure games — which we call "logic puzzles" for reasons I'm not entirely clear on; probably because their "logic" seems elusive (or, in some/most cases, entirely absent) until you fuck around with them long enough.
I can't think of any examples where the reverse occurs — a lateral thinking exercise in a puzzle game — but I'm sure one such unicorn must exist somewhere.
RE: What is an "adventure game" to YOU? - Legerdemancy - 10-01-2025
My preference for something to be considered an adventure game is for it to have a story as the main focus, which I feel is best conveyed to the player with a dialogue tree or by being fully voice acted. At a bare minimum the dialogue tree should provide exposition in bite-sized chunks, and more ideally, have branching choices to give the player a sense of autonomy.
Usually these decisions are an illusion of choice as they are not a CRPG. I’m okay with this as I often play comedy point & click adventure games anyway. For meaningful choices and consequences, plus multiple endings, I will seek out CRPGs for those specific elements.
The comedy genre is my favourite across all mediums of media, the controlled narrative of an adventure game is better suited to comedies than RPGs, however, I appreciate both types of games equally for entirely different reasons.
I consider dialogue to be a crucial prerequisite for me to be interested in playing an adventure game (along with CRPGs). However, an adventure game can rely solely on characterisation as a substitute for words, examples include both Machinarium and Curse of Enchantia.
Puzzles and other gameplay mechanics such as mini-games should be included in adventures for the purpose of pacing. In the best-case scenario, it’s a moment to reflect upon the storyline so far, with the additional benefit of preventing the overall game from feeling too linear and monotonous.
In the worst-case scenario, an overabundance of puzzles, or puzzles with egregious difficulty, just end up artificially extending the length of the game. Furthermore, I wouldn’t classify it as an adventure if the puzzles drastically outweigh the quantity of dialogue and lore. An appropriate balance of gameplay and dialogue is the perfect blend for adventures.
I personally don’t consider The Legend of Zelda for NES to be an adventure game.
I’m unlikely to play Myst because it feels too much like a 3D tech demo.
Honorable mention to Impossible Creatures, which exudes an adventurous atmosphere throughout the game, but it’s strictly a real-time strategy.
My favourite adventure games include: Most of the Humongous Entertainment games, the Nancy Drew series by Her Interactive, Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Curse of Monkey Island and Brok the InvestiGator.
I also love playing Adventure-RPG hybrids such as The Council and Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption.
Final note: I wouldn’t ever let arbitrary definitions get in the way of me playing a good game.