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Graphic adventure game
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A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. 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.
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A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. 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. In many of these games, the mouse pointer is context sensitive in that it applies different actions to different objects.
History
Early years
Graphic adventure games were introduced by a company called On-Line Systems, which later changed its name to Sierra On-Line. After the rudimentary Mystery House (1980), and the first color adventure game Wizard and the Princess (1980), 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 adventure
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.
Decline and rebirth
The genre has since seen a relative decline. Reasons for the decline involve the ability for computer hardware to play more graphically and gameplay advanced action games such as first-person shooters, and the advent of online gaming where players can play against other gamers online. Such online features are irrelevant to adventure gaming. The popularity and sales of these games have made publishers less inclined to fund development teams making graphic adventures for fear of bad sales.
Recently however independent users have created many smaller graphic adventure games in Adobe Flash. Many of these 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.
The graphic adventure genre has seen a rebirth with the introduction of new videogame hardware like the Nintendo DS, and Wii, that allows the gamer to interact with the game in new and innovative ways. These new play styles were naturally intuitive to the method that adventure games are played, and as a result many developers have developed new graphic adventures for these platforms.
Recent examples of graphic adventures include Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure for the Wii, Ceville for the PC, Hotel Dusk Room 215 and the Phoenix Wright series for the Nintendo DS, as well as games developed by Telltale Games, founded by former LucasArts employees. Their games include Sam & Max Season One and Two, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, and the upcoming Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures.
See also
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