Adventure games are a beautiful and archaic mess.

Other games want you to brace the learning curve. Improve your results, continously, like playing an instrument or driving a car. But that's also a limitation. Because you can't do certain mental challenges while playing an instrument or driving a car. The type of mental challenges a demon would come up with to torment you.

This is where adventure games come in.

At this point, the term has become so generic that it has lost its meaning.

I guess it's a game in which you have an adventure, but it's not an RPG, arcade, or simulation game, though it can have elements from RPG, shooter, or simulation genres.

In the past, I've tried to come up with a robust definition. Something like, an adventure game's core gameplay focuses on exploration, dialog, and using ordinary objects to solve puzzles. "Ordinary" being relative to the world of the game. I think I was trying to figure out a clean way of excluding shooters. In other words, if you primarily solve your problems with a weapon, that isn't an adventure.

I think that works well enough. But in practice, I go on vibes. How similar does this new game feel compared to other games that are firmly, obviously adventure games?

Portal, to me, is an excellent game, but not an adventure game. When I play it, it just doesn't feel like playing an adventure game. I'd describe it as a puzzle-platformer. But I don't really care what you call it, it's fun, regardless.

Samuel R. "Chip" Delaney (an eminent science fiction writer, and an acquaintance) once said that the attempt to define "science fiction" as a genre was an essentially fascist enterprise. What he meant was that trying to define the genre inherently meant excluding writers doing interesting work who didn't meet some arbitrary definition by saying "That's not really science fiction, you're not writing the True Quill!" To my mind, trying to define "adventure game" too narrowly falls into the same trap. While I love traditional point-and-click adventures (when well done), and own just about every LucasArts adventure, and every game from Wadjet Eye, I'm interested in all games that have narrative at their core, even if the classic point-and-click and puzzle solving mechanics are not what they're about. Walking sims? Virtual novels? "Choices matter" games like the Life is Strange series? Something weird where narrative is still at the core (like Asterism, which I can recommend)? From my perspective this is all fair game, all games I would be willing to pitch to AHS as something I'd like to review, because if there's a strong narrative spine, it's likely something AHS readers would probably like to learn about, and might be willing to check out. Or to put it another way: I'm more inclined to be inclusive than exclusive, although I do understand that AHS readers are probably not interested in shooters (nor am I) or serious strategy games (which I am, but that's not appropriate to AHS's audience, and I'm more likely to pitch a review elsewhere).

I can't really define it. After all, are Zork, Monkey Island, Heavy Rain, and Gobliiins really the same genre? And if yes, is Portal an adventure game as well? What about Ai: The Somnium Files? Ace Attorney?

I think that an adventure game needs to have puzzles, but also a connecting thread between the puzzles in the form of a story or exploration. There needs to be some kind of discovery process to tell me "Why" I'm doing the puzzles. And some puzzles need to span multiple screens/locations or even go on throughout the game. If it's all just single-screen/locked room puzzles, then it's a puzzle game. There should be an inventory, so that i can carry items and use them to solve later puzzles. But there also needs to be just pure exploration, doing things just because.

And I think that action sequences shouldn't be the main focus. I know that even back in the day, some games had action elements/mini-games, and some games were on an actual timer. But overall, adventure games have a more cozy element where I can think trough stuff and try out a bunch of things.

They need to be much more interactive and open-ended than Visual Novels (which is what Ace Attorney is), and much less twitchy/high-pressure like an Action Adventure/Shooter (e.g., Tomb Raider and Uncharted are not adventure games). And offer more world building/story than a hidden object game.

For me, an adventure game is one where reactions are not the primary method by which the game or story progresses. Ie: the player can just stand around and not progress anything other than by thinking, nor come to any harm by doing so. I'm sure there must also be exceptions to this rule, though.

as long as the primary means of moving the narrative forward requires exploration of that world & problem solving within the narrative's context, i'd say it's an adventure game

i watched SQH's video on Curse of Enchantia and, to be honest, I am waffling on whether that is an adventure game or not, because there isn't really any meaningful story, just a world full of puzzles, which i don't know if i can really honestly count as an adventure game or not, but also i wouldn't bat an eye if someone described it to me as one, so i'm having a hard time coming up with a *useful* description of an adventure game

i also agree with others that if the main engagement with the world sidesteps problem solving in favor of combat, or replaces story with just puzzles, that they really aren't adventure games, even if you can ascribe elements of adventure games to them. imo, a game's genre should be a useful description of what to expect from gameplay of a game. so if you were to say "Undertale is an adventure game" I'd probably disagree, even though I don't think it's an incorrect statement to call it one, but nobody's gonna go in and expect a visual novel or point & click adventure from it.

my question is though: is adventure game supposed to be an overarching genre that encapsulates multiple games, or is it supposed to be an umbrella term like how people treat it? because there's a difference between visual novels, point & click adventures, and hidden object games, but all of them can easily be labeled "adventure games" correctly, but there's still something that feels wrong about that to me.

Games where narrative is a focus and the puzzles/choices serve the narrative. Narrative does not have to be the main focus but I personally prefer it that way.

I think genres in general are quite fleeting concepts, and will by their very nature bleed into each other. There will be games that take some from one genre, and something else from a different genre, to create a hybrid of the two. Does it belong to the one genre, to the other, to both, to neither ..? Then there are games within a genre that just adds something new that no other games in the genre has done. Is this game now no longer part of the genre, does it suddenly belong to a different genre despite being based in the first genre, or does it invent a new genre entirely? And is it a new genre at the same level, or a subgenre? And why do some new additions to a genre make it a new "top level" genre, while other additions make it a subgenre? Also, with how constantly evolving language is, does the name of one genre come to mean something else over time, meaning what games should be counted under that umbrella changes over time? And who are the final arbiters in a genre's actual definition?

To me, "adventure game" is an umbrella term for games with the following main design pillars: Exploration, story, puzzles.

Then there are subgenres, which still maintain the above focuses as main pillars of their designs, while also adding specifics in addition:
- Point & Click Adventure: Defined by control scheme.
- Text-Parser Adventure: Defined by control scheme.
- Text Adventure: Defined by being text heavy and graphics light(or non-existent).
- Graphic Adventure: Defined by being graphics heavy and text light(relative to text adventures), and usually refers to either point & click or text-parser adventures.
- First Person Adventure: Defined by camera perspective.
- Third Person Adventure: Defined by camera perspective.
- Action-Adventure: Defined by having combat or other types of "action movie stuff" as part of the main gameplay.
- Survival Horror: Defined by specifically adding resource management to the gameplay for the purposes of avoiding failure, while also featuring a horror story.
- Walking Sim: Defined by focusing heavily on exploration and story, at the severe cost of the puzzle pillar.
- Puzzle Adventure: Defined by focusing heavily on puzzles, usually at the cost of either one or both of the other two pillars.
- Survival Adventure: Defined by focusing heavily on exploration, at the cost of the story and puzzle pillars, with resource management added to the gameplay for the purposes of avoiding failure.
- Interactive Fiction: Defined by focusing heavily on story, at the cost of the exploration and puzzles pillars.
- Horror Adventure: Defined by having a horror story.
- Escape Room Game: Defined by focusing heavily on puzzles, specifically for the sake of escaping as opposed to exploring.
- etc.

Thing is, many games are a combination of genres. For example, The Longest Journey is a third person adventure, a point & click adventure, and a graphic adventure. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a horror adventure and a first person adventure, and some would also call it a walking sim.

Now, what about when graphic adventures incorporate gameplay elements from completely different genres? Often called "arcade sections" back in the day, would you say these sections changes the genre of the game? How much of a completely different genre does the game need to include to become a different genre? Personally, I wouldn't call Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter a driving game of any sorts just for having that skimmer section, because that part isn't big enough to have been a design pillar for that game. However, I would say Harvester is at least an action (horror) adventure, because of the amount of (terribly designed and unavoidable) combat in the game is so much it had to have been a design pillar. But does that mean Harvester isn't an adventure game? Of course it is!

How about a game which doesn't have a (clearly told) story, but exploration and puzzles are its main(or even only) focuses? Well, I'd argue it'd be the same amount of adventure game that a walking sim is: Either game has essentially eschewed one of the three main pillars of adventure games. Same goes for if the pillar of exploration is the eschewed pillar. And I'm sure some would then try to argue that the word "adventure" means there has to be exploration! But, no, not really. Because if we're going to go into pedantry, a lot of adventure games does not involve any adventure by the definition of the word, which is to say there has to be danger included.

And if subgenres that remove design pillars are adventure games, like walking sims, why can't games that add design pillars? Genres are nebulous things. There's no proper authority for their definitions. And even if there was, we'd still argue over whether game X belongs in genre Y or Z.

So again, my answer is simply that an adventure game is any game that has Exploration, Story, and Puzzles as its main design pillars.

I wanna be real honest here and burst everyone's bubble. 

We are MOSTLY point n' click fans here, which is a sub-genre of the broader adventure games genre.

What an Adventure Game Is: A Story built around three main pillars: Exploration/Puzzle Solving/ Narrative progression.  They typically don’t focus on fast reflexes or action, but on thinking, experimenting, and interacting with the world.

Subtypes of Adventure Games

1. Text Adventures / Interactive Fiction
   The earliest form, games like Colossal Cave Adventure or Zork or -if your reading this Josh Mandel- Queen of Phobos... (late 1970s–early 1980s), where you type commands like “go north” or “take lamp.”
   
2. Graphic Adventures
   Early 1980s titles (e.g., Sierra’s King’s Quest 1, Mystery House etc) combined text input with on-screen characters and environments.
   
3. Point-and-Click Adventures (YOU ARE HERE)
   The late 1980s–1990s era popularized by Sierra and Lucas. text parser at first / later mouse to point, click, and interact with the environment. This is the style most people think of when they hear “classic adventure game.”
   
4. Modern Narrative Adventures
   Modern games like Life is Strange or Disco Elysium carry the same DNA, but often emphasize dialogue choices and branching stories over traditional inventory puzzles.
   

 There it is guys.