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.

Sorry, didn't quite get that bit about "immersion is in presentation".

What I meant to say is that immersion for adventure games is as important as story and puzzles, i.e. if the world of an adventure game have captivated you, have made you want to immerse yourself in it, you will enjoy playing the game even if the story and puzzles are not so good and vice versa.

Its just someone into adventure games would be looking for a specific type of immersion into a world, its events and its characters.

Not specific type of immersion, but what I said above.

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.

OK, I see your point.

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.

Yes, it was turned into a buzzworld by marketers, now people feel negative just hearing it.

For me, adventure games are about :

- Characters
- Dialogues
- Stories (both the big one and those of characters)
- Environments (what is this place ? What does it tell you ? Who lives here ?)
- Puzzles and how to solve them (do you need to talk ? Have an object ? Do something you don't know you can do to get past this stupid goat ?)

There are exceptions of course, but it's what resonate with me when I play.
The genre can bleed through other kind of games too : for me Psychonauts IS an adventure game despite being a 3D platformer with some combat, but where some
consider Myst-like as adventure, I too see them more as puzzle games.

I think I'm too attached to the concept of a journey : if you get plop down on some place and you character (or a book, or the UI, or nothing) tell you 'Do something' but don't tell you why or why I am here, what is this place... Well it's not engaging for me. Some can find the adventure in this, to go explore and do stuff, but I'm really attached to the story AROUND puzzles, and not JUST the puzzles, if it make sense.

It may be a dosage thing too. I love Professor Layton, but it's more 'puzzle with adventure side dishes' than an 'adventure with puzzle side dishes'.

Hey, thanks for responding! I appreciate this being an exchange.

I think you're right. Feeling immersed in the world of an adventure game can really set it apart. I think I was trying to get at something like that.
That was me trying to have thoughts and describing them at the same time.

So to me it's more like a books and movies in how you are captured. But since they are games, there are also other ways, puzzles, looking for clues, etc.

With a book or a movie, it seems like the story is the most imporant. But even if the story isn't that good, if it's presented in a way that makes you want to stick around, you'll probably like it. And like you said, if the puzzles or story in an adventure game aren't that good, when you feel immersed, you will still enjoy playing.

I think in most games, the gameplay is the most important part. Nowadays everything mixes and matches. Game genres borrow from each other, from movies and the other way around. So it's harder to say: this is what seperates adventures from other genres.

But I really liked what you said. There is something special about AG worlds and how you are invited to visit them. A lot of people look for this in RPGs, a lot of modern games have also done this really well. But the more casual nature makes it easier to focus on how the world makes you feel, instead of what you're doing in it.

I hope that makes sense.

To me the 'adventure genre' is just a meta genre that includes all the genres that originate from it, initially text adventures, and then genres that developed and forked off from it such as point and clicks (including 'escape room' games that later became popular on the web, although perhaps many of those lacking much/any story would end up falling out of the definition and instead become purely puzzle games); Japanese adventure games (especially ones that include logical deduction and/or puzzles, although completely linear 'sound novels'/'visual novels' probably fall out of the definition and are more like multimedia books); interactive movie/'choices matter' games (often FMV but also include some non-FMV) and 'walking simulators' (these have seem to have a lot in common with visual novels to me but seem less controversial inside the adventure game community since you have direct movement controls that can give some ability for exploration). You could argue that some elements of survival horror and CRPGs make them partly fall under the adventure game genre but it's a weaker case to make since they usually have just as much non adventure game elements such as combat too.

With that in mind I'd say the commonalities between all these seem to be that 'adventure games' are primarily story focused, but still retain some form of interactivity throughout so that's how I'd probably define it.

I think part of why the 'adventure genre' is often argued about is that due to these sub genres being fairly niche within the larger game industry, their online communities end up overlapping. This is somewhat natural since people that like one sub genre are likely to like many of the others, but also just from practicality in terms of review sites existing dedicated to these types of games due to mainstream sites often ignoring them, adventure game tags on online stories being used to find similar games and places to discuss games like these being somewhat limited. This can result in situations where different fans of games such as Myst (which does have story and characters, although far less developed in the first game in the series), Grim Fandango or Danganronpa mixing and then noticing the differences more than the similarities with their favourite style of games.

Also the term 'adventure game' isn't really that great of a genre name but nothing ever came to replaced it. I believe it's somewhat commonly accepted that 'adventure' in the genre name comes from it being used to describe one of the first text adventure games Colossal Cave Adventure (since it's before my time, I can only base this on what I've read). That makes me think that it's a bit like if people still referred to First Person Shooter games as 'Doom clones'. If Doom had not been a mega hit and instead created a viable but niche genre you may have had people who liked Duke Nukem 3D arguing that Half Life doesn't count as a doom clone because it lacks collecting keys to open doors. There would of course have been truth to that since Duke Nukem 3D is mainly about fast paced shooting gameplay combined with maze like levels containing keys that unlock doors to progress just like Doom while Half Life is a scripted set piece driven linear game, but in this hypothetical timeline since they're both niche they are grouped together under the 'doom clone' genre. (I know Half Life very likely would never have existed if there wasn't already the established FPS genre for it to enter, and that there actually is sub genres of FPS with distinct fanbases, but this is just a thought experiment...)

Iv always kept a large tent and if theres doubt about whether something is, i lean towards it probably is. But to me this is the single most important factor: a game that tasks you with thinking about problems like you would in the real world. You identify what you want to do and then its up to you to figure out how that works in the context of your story. Many games are defined by a tutorial, your problems wil be solved by combat and mechanic x,y,z. Great adventure games feel fluid from exploring to meeting characters and breaking down your goals in ways that come to you in the moment. The bottom line is typically linear, but its the journey that makes you feel immersed in a world of possibilities.