In the 1990s, one of the most popular computer game genres was the point-and-click adventure. The decade saw classic titles such as the Monkey Island franchise, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Myst, and many others. Since then, very few exceptional adventure games have been made and the genre has fallen out of style with most developers and gamers.
With the success of The Walking Dead game last year and some promising titles on the horizon, we may be looking at a resurgence of adventure games into the mainstream.
Back From the Dead
One of the modern champions of the genre is Telltale Games. Their early games, based on licensed properties like Monkey Island and Sam & Max, appealed to a niche audience of adventure fans. That changed when they released the first season of The Walking Dead game last year in April.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead eschews the often complicated and sometimes absurd puzzle-solving of the traditional adventure game for a character-driven narrative full of tough moral choices. Though the episodic series features some pretty shaky action sequences and some other technical problems, The Walking Dead delivers a great story and memorable characters that stick with you.
According to VGChartz, The Walking Dead game sold more than 8.5 million units by January 2013 (this includes each episode sold as a unit).
The critically acclaimed game was the first of Telltale’s games to gain widespread popularity, but it wasn’t just successful with gamers and fans of the comic books. For example, I was surprised when I got into a conversation last year with my upstairs neighbor, a college-age non-gamer girl, about an intense scene in Episode 2 of the series. Both of us made the same choice to not kill a certain character.
The game’s mainstream success introduced many new casual gamers to the adventure genre, so I think it’s safe to say that The Walking Dead game has set the stage for a new wave of adventure games.
Double Fine’s Crowdfunding Success
Tim Schafer is one of the biggest names in adventure games, working as a writer, director, and programmer on classic titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle. After leaving LucasArts, he started his own company called Double Fine Productions and branched out into other genres with games like Psychonauts and Iron Brigade. Their latest adventure game, Ron Gilbert’s The Cave, was met with mixed reviews earlier this year.
Last February, a project called Double Fine Adventure appeared on crowdfunding site Kickstarter. The campaign raised $3.3 million dollars from more than 80,000 people. The title of the game being funded, Broken Age, was later announced.
Broken Age follows the lives of two children, tentatively named Sacrifice Girl and Space Boy, whose coming-of-age stories are somehow connected across time and space. It will have traditional point-and-click adventure mechanics and rely on intuitive puzzles rather than action to engage players.
What’s Next From Telltale
Telltale is following up The Walking Dead game with another graphic novel adaption. Telltale first announced they would be working on a game based on the popular Fables comic book series back in 2011. After posting a tweet that simply read “#howl” in March, Telltale later confirmed that their next game would be a Fables game called “The Wolf Among Us.” It is scheduled to release later this year.
In the world of Fables, the characters from classic fairy tales have been forced from their homeland and now live in a community in New York City called Fabletown. The game will star Bigby Wolf, the formidable sheriff of the Fabletown, as he investigates a murder.
According to GameInformer, the game will have a lot in common with The Walking Dead game. It will be an episodic story with moral decisions that affect gameplay and a strong narrative based on relationships between characters. These similarities will most likely attract fans of The Walking Dead game as well as fans of Fables, bringing a wider audience to the adventure genre.
If Broken Age and The Wolf Among Us are as successful as The Walking Dead, other developers will likely try their hand at the adventure genre, for better or worse. If things go well, the genre might finally make its comeback.
Never Sleep Gaming 