Genres usually have specific requirements. A shooter needs to have players firing projectile-based weapons at targets, even if the projectile is ink instead of bullets. Strategy games such as StarCraft and Fire Emblem require you to make tough calls and carefully manage valuable resources to defeat enemies. However, “adventure” is such a nebulous term and the evolution this particular genre has taken over the years only reinforces just how malleable it is.
Once upon a time, an interactive adventure meant digging through your inventory for an item that would help you bypass a puzzle. Now, for many people, it means simulations that force them to make tough moral choices in life-and-death situations. From ancient quests in underground kingdoms to solving the disappearance of a child in a small town, we examine the genre’s twisted and unique evolution.
A HEARTWARMING GENESIS
The first real adventure game of note, Colossal Cave Adventure, sprung up as a way for programmer Will Crowther to connect with his daughters after his divorce. The text adventure casts players as someone exploring a cave in search of treasure. Crowther used a mapping of Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave system and his own love of Dungeons & Dragons to create the game. With its focus on exploration and puzzle-solving, the game served as a template for influential adventure titles like Zork and King’s Quest.
“Adventure games from the ’80s and ’90s were more puzzle-focused,” says Ron Gilbert, a writer on classic adventure games like Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion. “It may seem like a small thing, but it has drastic ramifications for the design (and the audience).”
Gilbert and fellow adventure game writers like Tim Schafer came to prominence when the genre’s bedrock was goofy humor and puzzles that had their own wacky logic to solving them. The times have changed, but Gilbert believes there’s still a place in the world for this kind of adventure game. “Puzzle-based adventure games never died,” he says. “They still sell the same number of copies today they sold in the ‘90s. The issue is they never grew with the rest of the industry.”
He’s not alone on that assertion. Dave Gilbert (no relation) has made his career as an indie developer working on modern point-and-click adventure titles like Shardlight and The Blackwell series. He’s made his living creating games in this niche for nearly a decade. “It’s funny, because you always hear that adventure games are dead or they’re coming back,” he says.
He finds the “resurgence of adventure games” narrative to be an interesting one because it doesn’t happen to other genres. “You never hear that story about any other genre even though you take like [shoot ’em ups] or rogue-likes or platformers, and by like the same metric they’ve also died and come back,” he says. “It’s like people like that narrative: ‘Oh, adventure games are coming back’ or they’re dead and ‘This person is bringing them back.’ It’s never been true…adventure games have always been there.”
While the main audience for interactive adventures seems to be geared toward narrative-driven games, that’s not stopping either Gilbert from making classic adventure games. Ron is currently working on Thimbleweed Park, which embraces the pixelated aesthetic of Maniac Mansion as well as the tone of quirky ‘90s investigative dramas like The X-Files and Twin Peaks. “We want to show the world you can make a puzzle-based adventure game with compelling characters, narrative, and no stupid puzzles,” he says.
Gamers will have to wait until Thimbleweed Park is released next year to see if Gilbert and company can meet his ambitions. However, he’s right about one thing: Narrative-focused games have taken center stage for fans of the genre.
Head on over to page 2 to read about first-person adventure games as well where the genre will go next.
from www.GameInformer.com - The Feed http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2016/11/07/tracking-the-strange-trails-of-the-adventure-game.aspx
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