Point-and-click adventure

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A screen shot from Myst, a popular graphic adventure game.

A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game^[1]. They are distinct from text adventures. Whereas a player must actively observe using commands such as "look" in a text-based adventure, graphic adventures revolutionized gameplay by making use of natural human perception. Eventually, the text parser interface associated with older adventure games was phased out in favor of a point-and-click interface, i.e., a game where the player interacts with the game environment and objects using an on-screen cursor.

History

Early years

Graphic adventure games were introduced by a new company called On-Line Systems, which later changed its name to Sierra On-Line. After the rudimentary Mystery House (1980)^[2] they established themselves with the full adventure King's Quest (1984), appearing on various systems, and went on to further success with a variety of strong titles.

A number of games were released on 8-bit home computer formats in the 1980s that advanced on the text adventure style originated with games like Colossal Cave Adventure and, in a similar manner to Sierra, added moveable (often directly-controllable) characters to a parser or input-system similar to traditional adventures. Examples of this include Gargoyle Games's Heavy on the Magick (1986) which has a text-input system with an animated display screen, the later Magic Knight games such as Spellbound (1985) which uses a window-menu system to allow for text-adventure style input, Enix's murder mystery game Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (Portopia Serial Murder) (1985), and Hideo Kojima's classic Snatcher (1988).

Point-and-click adventures

In 1984 a new kind of adventure games emerged following the launch of the Apple Macintosh with its point-and-click interface. First out was the innovative but relatively-unknown Enchanted Scepters the same year, then in 1985 ICOM Simulations released Deja Vu that completely banished the text parser for a point-and-click interface. In 1987 the well-known second follow-up Shadowgate was released, and LucasArts also entered the field with Maniac Mansion - a point-and-click adventure that gained a strong following. A prime example of LucasArts' work is the Monkey Island series. Another famous point-and-click graphic adventure game was Hideo Kojima's Policenauts (1994).

In 1988, popular adventure game publisher Sierra Online created Manhunter: New York. It marked a major shift for Sierra, having used a text parser for their adventure games akin to text adventures.

Graphic adventure games were quick to take advantage of the storage possibilities of the CD-ROM medium and the power of the Macromedia Director multimedia-production software. Games such as The Journeyman Project, Spaceship Warlock and Iron Helix incorporated pre-rendered 3D elements and live-action video. By 1993, Myst represented a major milestone for graphical adventure games. It featured a first-person viewpoint and reached 6 million sales, making it one of the best selling PC games of all time.^[3][4]

Decline

The genre has since seen a relative decline, although there continues to exist a dedicated fanbase. Several online games created in Adobe Flash challenge the player to interact with objects in an environment. These form very short and basic point-and-click adventure games. A popular sub-genre is known as escape the room games. Recent examples of point-and-click adventures include Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure for the Nintendo Wii, as well as games developed by Telltale Games, founded by former LucasArts employees. Their games include Sam & Max Season One and Two, and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.

See also

• List of graphic adventure games

References