Adventure Games Never Died, They Just Stopped Being Good | Extra Punctuation

This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee dives into the adventure game genre following the announcement of Return to Monkey Island.
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#ExtraPunctuation

[@Poormrworry]

He is right on the money with Obra Dinn. its not a series of puzzles but one GIANT puzzle and the more you solve of it and the more names you find the more invested you become. I think Disco Elysium is also an example of a giant puzzle adventure game. where everything you do is based on a core mechanic that never changes but the deeper you go the more invested you become. As these are 2 of the best adventure games in modern history it may the style for future success.

[@cornbredx]

Ya, I agree with you on Disco Elysium . My only problem with that game is the obscurity in mechanics brought on by the RPG like system they use. It's not "bad" but it is confusing which I do suspect is at least somewhat intentional. Great game that has a lot of ways to grow and another example for me of how Adventure games are not dead and still worth checking out from time to time. It reminds me of what the developers of that one Call Of Cthulhu game tried to do a few years ago. I like that game too although it's harder to recommend because you have to be able to deal with how broken the game is. I didn't care for Obra Dinn so I'll just not speak to that.

[@chron5798]

i really enoyed the forgotten city aswell for this reason

[@thefirstramsey]

Outer Wilds is another excellent evolution on this

[@noirscape_]

I think Obra Dinn clicks because while it is one giant puzzle, the specific parameters of that puzzle are ever-changing. The game is pretty much a constant stream of small murder mysteries with a whodunnit at the end. One time you figure it out because someone literally yelled the persons name, another time you figure it out because you saw their rank somewhere, then you figure it out because of a tiny obscure fact in the bridge that indicates the others weren't able to be there, which narrows the suspects list down. Add to that a macrogame with a strong leading goal ("what happened to the Obra Dinn") and you start to see how all the pieces connect up. Not that I expected any less from Lucas Pope, Paper's Please was just as much a joy to play for similar reasons and almost entirely revitalized/reinvented the genre of bureaucracy games that was dormant for quite a few decades.

[@noisykestrel]

Riven is another excellent example of one a 'one giant puzzle game'

[@peterzerfass4609]

In remembrance of the epic Zero Punctuation line from the Orange Box (Team Fortress 2) review: "There's a role for every one regardless of what type of games you like: There's the heavy for ...the spy for... ...and the sniper for point and click adventure games, although admittedly the only puzzle is: Use. Gun. On. Man" Still cracks me up after all those years

[@magnusm4]

So every quick scoping sniper is a speedrunner.

[@amra6126]

PLAY LAIR OF THE CLOCKWORK GOD

[@ReverendTed]

There was an upside to "combine everything with everything else and see what works" gameplay - when the writers were talented and passionate, it was another place to stuff in clever dialogue, so that you were rewarded even when you hadn't actually solved the puzzle.

[@StevoIDH]

Makes me think of presenting your badge to witnesses in Ace Attorney or examining the pipe in 999. Yahtzee said on his video on "rebellion in video games" that anything you're programmed to be allowed to do in the game is content, and I have to say I adore when developers have funny/interesting dialogue for weird niche things or failure states It makes it feel like a discovery and not just an accident.

[@VitaEx]

Sierra and space quest say hi

[@ReverendTed]

@@VitaEx Tell them we miss them!

[@chronicbrightside8757]

its precisely why i like text adventures. the amount of time i spend just trying out random actions just to see what all the creators thought of often eclipses the amount of time i spend actually engaging with the story.

[@sved-sh]

@@StevoIDH Ben There Dan That had a quip for ALL the things you tried, it was awesome.

[@TheG119YT]

I really like this series, it reminds me of “Let’s all laugh at a industry that never learns anything tee hee hee”

[@tommyscott8511]

Its nice to hear someone with a genuine point to make, who knows what he's talking about

[@MrAcuriteOf1337]

What I wonder, really, is whether or not Yahtzee might be getting bored of Zero Punctuation? I mean he's a creative, clever guy, he's got other ideas, and he's been doing ZP for over a decade. I like them a whole lot, I've learned a lot from them, and been influenced by them, but it's unfair to expect him to do them forever. Frankly, I wonder whether or not a university might hire him as faculty for a game design department; maybe give him a little bit more experimental freedom instead of requiring him to bring in subscribers and ad revenue, let him mold the minds of the next generation of developers and designers, and also maybe give him something a little bit more stable, compared to submitting to the capricious whims of youtube and the like? I mean he's got a wife and kids now, right?

[@monckey44]

nothing hits like a british person talking about video games

[@leonardorestrepo5196]

I think he finds this series more enjoyable to produce- the sense I get from it is that these are intellectually denser, with real opportunities to unpack the strategic, economic, and creative incentives that characterize the games industry.

[@MrAcuriteOf1337]

@@leonardorestrepo5196 There's a level at which, if Extra Punctuation stopped existing in the shadow of Zero Punctuation, and transitioned to being something almost like a lecture series, I think a lot of people would be down for that?

[@matan8074]

"Oh fuck, I have invited a crafting system from first principles" I'm dying please send help.

[@deusexvesania1702]

So...want me to press the pillow down?

[@jasonblalock4429]

I mean, in fairness, if someone could come up with a procedural crafting system that behaved in a reasonably intuitive fashion, that could be huge. Half the reason people get sick of crafting systems is that they're just glorified scavenger hunts, for use in completely arbitrary "crafting recipes" pre-determined by the developers. If I could just organically pick up a stick, and a rock, and then duct tape them together to make a club, that would be really cool. But also very hard to program.

[@KingOfElectricNinjas]

That part actually made me think more Disco Elysium, where inventory items can be used for certain tasks along with skills, and your various skill choices, equipment bonuses and other options like thoughts and situational bonuses give you more options for dealing with most challenges.

[@zappodude7591]

@@jasonblalock4429 A Katamari-esque object-sticking system might work

[@ThatFanBoyGuy]

Ironically, I just watched Ahoy's take on the point-and-click adventure, and I think you both deduced the same conclusion. I would agree that modern video games no longer have to compromise between gameplay and story, so telling a convincing narrative cannot be reduced down to a gameplay of "guess what you need to click on!"

[@starmaker75]

Yeah the whole “gameplay shit, but the story is decent” can’t be used a good excuses as recent games showed you can do both(even if it can hard to get both right).

[@orange_sauce5951]

Ditrot human something was as point and click as it gets for this day and age

[@pirojfmifhghek566]

Anybody who has a rose-tinted fondness for "Point and Click" games needs to play "Return to Zork." That game was absolutely punishing to anyone with a natural sense of intuition. That game was as non-intuitive as a point-n-click can get. At one point you're supposed to feed a glowing rock to a bat and follow its glowing shit through a forest. You have to operate a MOTOR BOAT by putting a rat in the motor. And of course, there's the infamous 'first puzzle' of the game.... "WANT SOME RYE? 'Course ya do!"

[@jasonblalock4429]

Yep. That's why I've fallen away from the genre, despite having grown up during its heyday in the 80s-90s. At this point, whenever I play a P&C adventure, it just turns into a tedious mechanistic exercise in endlessly sticking "keys" into "doors" until something unlocks. The joy is basically gone for me because the entire genre is trapped by its own formula.

[@Richitsu]

@@seriousjokar6237 I came into the comments to type that.

[@freedanzero1078]

I appreciate that King's Quest VI was shown - one of the memorable things about that game was how there were different endings that could be achieved depending on how the player solved certain puzzles. It rewarded experimentation and lent itself well to additional playthroughs.

[@Krushak8888]

Was that heir today gone tomorrow? I remember that one the ending sequences was different depending how you enter the castle.

[@Rustspray]

@@Krushak8888 Correct. Kings Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. @FreedanZero I agree, that game stands out for me too.

[@BB-te8tc]

Calling it a different ending is selling it short, even. It's an entire extended gameplay section that not only gives you a much better ending, but also contains a pretty substantial amount of unique content, puzzles, and setpieces.

[@heikosiebert8265]

The 2015 reboot was kinda nice, btw. Puzzles felt way too easy, but the art style and narrative made it a cute mixture of nostalgia and 3D tech, thanks to Cel Shading.

[@darkfool2000]

@@heikosiebert8265 I was filtered by how wimpy they made graham, so I never gave the game a chance. I've never been interested in playing as male characters who look as if they would cry just because a stranger insulted them. Also the art style wasn't very appealing.

[@ScribbleNuts]

The funny thing is no adventure game ever sold me on it's puzzles. It was the world, charm, and narrative.

[@natalyrausch]

Honestly I could have a whole game of just charming hilarious dialogue and friend building and be fine with one or two puzzles. Maybe I want a walking simulator lol.

[@rfichokeofdestiny]

That’s really what made them what they were. Portal is the modern evolved adventure game Yahtzee was going for. It has all of those things, plus lore and gorgeous visuals and sounds. What a well-made game.

[@Selrisitai]

@@natalyrausch I think we would need more than just a couple puzzles, but I expressed essentially the same sentiment in my own response to this video. When I played Tales of Monkey Island, I found the puzzles a nice way to make me feel like I was the one progressing the story, but as soon as a puzzle become a brain-bender, I became frustrated, not interested.

[@magnusm4]

Sanitarium is such a game. The puzzles are very simple but it's all about the worlds and characters.

[@tubeminer1325]

I think that’s why they are called ‘adventure’ games

[@averagefez]

Just to be clear, Return to Monkey Island takes place between LeChuck's Revenge and Curse. Ron Gilbert himself confirmed that nothing would go out of canon.

[@Mantis47]

Actually, in a recent review he said that the game would start between Lechuck's Revenge and Curse, but after that it would get a bit complicated. He also said that people shouldn't get too hung up on what's canon and what's not.

[@Pedro_Colicigno]

@@Mantis47 So probably Curse will go to hell? I love the theme park... and the poker puzzel... and the hair of the dog... and the mirror one... and the lactose intolerant vulcano god

[@Bibblesworth]

Also I haven't heard anyone claim later games somehow "don't count" in the series. Sure some of the newer ones had some junk but all were pretty decent games. Also he neglects the other things that made Monkey Island especially good. Compelling lovable characters and witty great quality writing.

[@straightupanarg6226]

@@Pedro_Colicigno I was not expecting to encounter the phrase "lactose intolerant volcano god" when I got up this morning

[@lordrork5884]

It feels thoroughly appropriate that a game series like Monkey Island ends up getting shot out of its own canon.

[@azulesmalls5514]

I feel like the modern example of a point and click in the modern day would be "There is no Game" It is a lot of fun to play and experience.

[@MatthewCSnow]

Somewhat of a counterpoint: that was more of a puzzle game than an "adventure game". While you had some fun writing with the narrator, there wasn't too much of areas to explore/side characters/main character, just a collection of fun events with puzzles to solve (no problem with that, just not the same as Monkey Island). But honestly, those could be better versions of the genre that can have really good stories with a fun unabashed puzzle game base. A really recent example is "Bad End Theater" which took a David Cage "find all the routes" element and just commit full stop to the puzzle element of finding all the endings (with great pixel art/16 bit music), AND then revealing that it was a story within a story that contextualized a lot of things.

[@Toxicfox63]

Also the song from that game was low key fire.

[@Legomicroman]

@@MatthewCSnow where is the exact line between "puzzle-" and "adventure game"?

[@RaRa-eu9mw]

@@Legomicroman He's just being a pedantic jerk for no reason. There is No Game is an adventure game. It even won a bunch of Aggies.

[@magnateze]

I would also think that Dont escape 4 is a good example of modern point and click

[@dubiousprime2021]

"Culture shouldn't be that disposable." wow, what a great line for everything.

[@amra6126]

PLAY LAIR OF THE CLOCKWORK GOD

[@chrisk5402]

When Yahtzee said "How to update the point and click adventure" I immediately thought Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds. There has to be a way to make adventure games that aren't based on traditional combat and those two land the "explore around and interact with things" while still giving puzzles.

[@MisuVir]

Yep! Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds are two of my favourite games of the last few years because they both did such a *great* job building up the narrative and the story, but not overtly so. Both were designed around "knowledge" as a puzzle mechanic - Obra Dinn had you slowly collecting small pieces of information to the point where you could deduce identities and modes of death, and Outer Wilds gave you an open world to explore and your only real limitation was how much you knew about the various areas. The negative side to having games revolving around the player's knowledge is that they ultimately have no replayability. I can't really play Obra Dinn again because even years later I still remember almost all of the identities. I replayed Monkey Island when the "special edition" came out on Steam years ago and finished it in only a few hours. Same with Outer Wilds - I can't erase my memory of how to beat the game, so there's no reason for me to load it up again. So it's understandable for companies to focus heavily on action-based games because they keep people hooked for months/years.

[@alaeriia01]

What about Obduction?

[@Pentium100MHz]

@@alaeriia01 I liked it, there are a few new adventure games I like, Quern being another. The new Syberia is also good. I am not a game developer so I may be completely wrong, but it looks to me like a point-and-click game (Syberia) would be easier/cheaper to make than a first person game like Quern.

[@samkerridge7456]

@@Pentium100MHz Point and click adventures are incredibly easy to make. Yahtzee slightly alludes to it in this video but tools like Adventure Game Studio (that he used to make the games he mentions) have made it incredibly easy for amateurs to make point and click adventures for over 20 years (no programming knowledge necessary, only art assets, creativity and patience required). I would suggest (without proof) that the flood of free amateur adventure games (some good, many very bad) that came out in the 2000s really put the nail in the coffin of the genre as far as large studios were concerned. After all, how can any game be profitable when it competes with literally hundreds of free competitors that are effectively the same? Since then, Telltale were really the only major studio that continued to make adventure games and they a. went out of business and b. relied on established IP licenses like the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones.

[@arellajardin8188]

The Longest Journey was one of my favorite games. The puzzles weren’t that deep, standard “collect things to do things.” But it had one of my fav protagonists and an imaginative premise.

[@YorkJonhson]

Yeah, I adored that and Dreamfall. April and Zoe were great, and the whole blend between the modern and fantasy settings blew my mind back in the day. (Even if there was zero shame in looking up a guide for certain puzzles, and the stealth sections in Dreamfall made me want to eat my controller.)

[@RongleBringer]

That game also managed to go on forever, in the best way. It just kept going with new story branches and settings and plot lines that somehow managed to join the main plot yet it never felt padded for content. Every new thing was interesting and clearly had effort put into it as much as everything else, like a sprawling fantasy novel, or in some ways like the best dreams that just keep going. I can't think of another game that managed anything close, that designer was a genius.

[@dorpth]

Really? I remember it having the most convoluted bullshit puzzles since the old Sierra days. The "get inside the theater" puzzle is up there with the cat mustache from Gabriel Knight 3.

[@Refloni]

TLJ is my favourite adventure game as well. Great, epic story and memorable characters. But I'm not going to pretend most of the puzzles weren't total bullshit. The second game had its moments, but the fighting and stealth sections and the terrible cliffhanger ending dragged it down a lot. At least Dreamfall Chapters wrapped things up in a somewhat satisfying way.

[@TCO_404]

@@Refloni In the end, I feel like the series fell a victim to being overly ambitious. Dreamfall Chapters had more plot and tangentially connected side-stories than they had time and resources to resolve them. Even the final scene with Zoe and her Father has to have a lot of exposition to get us up to speed. As a whole I do love the universe, and these games, but by the end the flaws were definitely showing.

[@captainufo4587]

Just one note: no one disses Monkey 2. In fact I have never hear anyone call this "the real sequel to Monkey Island", but "the real Monkey Island 3". I guess it has to do with it being authored by most of the same team that made 1 & 2.

[@jasonblalock4429]

And for that matter, Gilbert has said that he's keeping MI3 in the timeline. Murray being in the trailer is proof of that. No idea about MI4 or TFMI, tho. (But I am curious if that means he's accepted the idea of Guybrush and Elaine hooking up.)

[@captainufo4587]

@@jasonblalock4429 I don't think Gilbert has retracted on his intention to make this game start ten minutes after 2's ending. So my hypothesis so far are either 3 (and maybe 4 & Tales) are hallucinations or dreams Guybrus has in the carnival, or this Monkey Island bridges the gap between Guybrush in the carnival at the end of MI2 and Guybrush on a rollercoaster car in the middle of the ocean in MI3.

[@adamwhitehead7289]

@@captainufo4587 Gilbert has said on Twitter that Curse (and later) is still canon, so this game will be an interquel set between MI2 and Curse. Although it does sound like there might be a mild retcon to explain how Murray is around earlier than he should be.

[@JPH1138]

Correct. Yahtzee got some tweets on this topic and so decided to 'make a video' about the new Monkey Island without spending the five minutes to read up the very little that is known about it, and just pasted on some blatantly wrong info onto his standard adventure game rant he's been using for at least a decade.

[@RongleBringer]

Even monkey 4 was good compared to a lot of the dross out there today. The Edna and Harvey series from daedalic are the only modern ish things that come close.

[@rangerkasdorf4476]

Yahtzee will take every opportunity to remind us how great Return of the Obra Dinn is, and he's absolutely right to do so.

[@amra6126]

PLAY LAIR OF THE CLOCKWORK GOD

[@seadhna]

A good example of an organic puzzle system was Loom, where you had to learn melodies (sequences of notes) and their effects, but also had the option to play them in reverse for opposite effects, thus gaining a variety of tools to tackle the obstacles (at which point you obviously had to guess which one to use, but it was mostly logical).

[@dankovsky9473]

Ask me about Loom™

[@hecksnek6158]

I'd argue that visual novels largely took the place of adventure games. Edit: removed the part about the public's eye. My brain was still in essay writing mode.

[@Poormrworry]

I disagree, VN while similar are even more niche, as most of them are Japanese, subtitled and involve even less gameplay. I am not saying they are unpopular, but they are a genre based around a very specific audience with very specific tastes and the games are made with the understanding they will not be selling Elden Ring numbers. there are exceptions like dangonropa and zero escape which have a lot game mechanics but in general VN are exactly what they say they are novels you read with visuals

[@benjamincook8479]

I was thinking the same thing The Ace Attorney series feel like they would have been Point and Clicks if they had come a decade earlier

[@Poormrworry]

@@benjamincook8479 I don’t know I think they would always be dialogue focused games

[@hecksnek6158]

@@TheZaius That too.

[@soarel325]

Visual novels are literally called adventure games (or ADVs) in the sense of point and click adventures in Japan

[@Yuhara_rev]

Seeing this as someone who didn't grow up with adventure games was really interesting.

[@LJW1912]

How tf are you doing that with your user name?

[@Smoked_Cheddar]

@@LJW1912 if you are wondering about the yatzhee face it's probably because he's a KZbin member of the escapist

[@LJW1912]

@@Smoked_Cheddar ahhh ty, yeah I was

[@Yuhara_rev]

@@LJW1912 yeah that's why I can comment 5 days ago. Pretty worth it so far

[@LJW1912]

@@Yuhara_rev didn't even notice the 5 days bit haha. Maybe I should do that, been watching zp for like 9 years lmao

[@jasonblalock4429]

There's a third branch of the adventure game worth mentioning: the Myst-style first-person immersive adventure. What made Myst and its sequels so great is that the world was internally cohesive. Puzzles weren't arbitrary exercises in putting cans on a shelf. They were artifacts of the inhabitants of that world, existing with a real purpose that the player has to deduce through holistic understanding of the environment. I can't help but think that if someone mashed up the storytelling of a narrative walking sim like Gone Home or Firewatch, but with the worldbuilding and attention to detail of a Cyan game, they'd have something pretty special if they could pull it off.

[@GepardenK]

Outer Wilds very much feel like a next step in the Myst tradition of games. Particularly reminiscent of Riven in that the main emphasis is on understanding context and concepts rather than straight up mechanical puzzles.

[@joeyparkhill8751]

The '90s LucasArts games [example: Sam & Max, Grim Fandango & Monkey Island] are adventure games that have stood the test of time & this is coming from ME, A dude who never played Grim Fandango until the Remaster came out on PSVITA... yes I am one of the 25 people on Planet Earth who still owns a PlayStation Vita. I Regret Nothing!

[@michaelday8459]

I still have one too, and still play things on it. Space Hulk mostly. I wonder if the other 23 people will chime in now?

[@DrPantsMD]

@@michaelday8459 Got one too. It's the 1000 model still as well. :D

[@proto303]

I am just here, in a corner with my PSP there are dozens of us!

[@bullshitdepartment]

PSP and PS Vita here, i liked that old star wars battlefront game it had

[@joeyparkhill8751]

@@bullshitdepartment That Star Wars Battlefront game was 1 of the last EA games I purchased, with Skate 3 being the last one in 2010!

[@NJoCaulfield]

I see the Visual Novel genre as the modern incarnation of the P&C adventure. Games like Danganronpa, 999, Ace Attorney, AI The Somnium Files, and so on have always given me strong adventure game vibes, with heavy emphasis on environmental interaction and storytelling pushed to the forefront over gameplay.

[@zubrhero5270]

Yea, it kinda split into visual novels and hidden object adventures.

[@MrTrombonebandgeek]

Visual novels actually go back a lot further back than recently. To what I know it seems to have actually started in the 80’s as well

[@rantingrodent416]

Ghost Trick is a great example that is mechanically very close to old point and click adventures

[@glitchygear9453]

Basically what I wanted to say

[@rawhide_kobayashi]

@@MrTrombonebandgeek That's cuz calling games like "visual novels" is a mischaracterization. I'd never call them visual novels. they're heavily narratively focused, but they actually have game mechanics. "visual novels" are just click next, read, maybe sometimes you get to make a dialogue choice...

[@jbaby362]

I'm intrigued by crafting-style inventory puzzles, it does sound like it would bring possibility into it so there's not just one linear way to do things, so there's replayability and you can make something funny happen

[@pablobronstein1247]

'Age of decadence' uses a variation of that system for interactions with the game world and NPC's, it doesn't work that well IMO. But it's a really interesting game, would recommend.

[@jasonblalock4429]

We Happy Few also had elements of the same idea. Very little crafting was *required* by the game, aside from health-related items, but typically if you were in need of a tool you'd have the ability to bash one together from junk.

[@Kevin-cf9nl]

There's a game I worked on that had something like that. Most items have substitutes of various quality, and having a sufficient number in whatever the relevant trait was let you use it for various tasks (and the better the number the better it did at that task to a point). If you can't find a hammer, a good sized rock will do, but you're better off having the hammer, or at least something that can be used as a hammer and has a nice handle. Some tasks might require enough precision that a more specialized tool is necessary, though. You can cut cloth into strips with just a sharp rock, but a proper knife is needed to conduct surgery, although even then a kitchen knife will *work* while a surgical scalpel is ideal.

[@waferion474]

The problem with non-linearity in point&click adventure games is that you have to write sensible content for all the possible paths. It becomes very hard to make the game plot interesting. With attribute based items the puzzles stop being puzzles and instead become more like obstacles. It's also impractical to eg. write jokes based on item interaction, when you don't know what items will be used. I think RPG:s kind of do that already, so it can be done. Then the gameplay just can't be such an integral part of driving the plot forward. The narrative content progresses based on your achievements, but not so much your actions. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a different thing.

[@lordmuhehe4605]

@@pablobronstein1247 That game is interesting, but it really is one of the ugliest games I've ever seen.

[@SpaceCadetTafmo]

Disco Elysium is a pretty good modern point and click adventure.

[@Tickerchicken]

God I fucking love that game, but never want to go back to it unless I’m drunk for some reason.

[@joeyparkhill8751]

Disco Elysium is the epitome of being the exception rather than the rule of Adventure Games not being good nowadays. Disco Elysium is a masterpiece!

[@JimJava007]

The thing about Disco Elysium is that it was an amazing experience but I'm not convinced it wasn't actually a crappy game. What exactly was its gameplay, actually? Putting on the right clothes to pass checks? Taking pills every time your morale or health got low? With most great games- and certainly those accepted by Yahtzee and/or his audience as great (IE Portal, Dark Souls, Prince of Persia)- you can strip out every ounce of story and context and still have a fun game. If you strip out all the story and context from Disco Elysium, you've got nothing.

[@spagootest2185]

@@zUJ7EjVD Boring? I was never bored by it.... I'm a classic CRPG nerd, though

[@wormerine8029]

Except it's an RPG - the distinction would be that it asks players to make choices, and choices player can make are defined by build, rather then being a linear story with puzzles as gameplay. Now the quesiton is, are puzzles what people liked in Point&Click. Because I didn't. I remember reading somewhere that back in a day one of the appeals of point&click was that they were the pinnacle of technology at their time. Would that made Sony games modern equivalent? Uncharteds, Last of Ones, God of War etc. all are on the edge of graphical advancement, while focusing mostly on writing, cutscenes and narrative, with interuptions of mostly throwaway gameplay inbetween. They are essencialy point&clicks except instead of finding right key for right doors you smash or shoot couple heads - quite literally click on heads if you would play with mouse and keyboard.

[@deathcallscall3438]

There are some great point and click adventure games in the indie side of things. Like Primordia, Oxenfree, Thimbleweed Park, The Blackwell series, and many others. You just need to look for them. They are usually very cheap too.

[@MaksVerver]

Oxenfree is more walking-simulator than adventure game; there are barely any puzzles and there is no inventory to manage. It's a fun game in its own right, and definitely well-written, but it's not the same as classic adventure games.

[@sadpotato4931]

@@MaksVerver Yes it is an adventure game, their design has changed and seen new trends like every other genre. Adventure Games exist outside of the classical style.

[@Mark73]

Technobabylon, Unavowed, Kathy Rain

[@underdog3371]

@@MaksVerver A walking simulator is a type of adventure game. Though I still don't know if would call Oxenfree a walking simulator.

[@Peagaporto]

Primordia puzzles also make a great deal of sense, have you played Unavowed?

[@EmperorZ19]

I actually really like Yahtzee's adventure series, Trilby's Notes in particular. I think there's something really engaging about needing to independently decide what the appropriate action is with the text input rather than follow a button prompt

[@geldonyetich]

While it's true that technology has progressed to the point where point and click adventures are no longer a technical necessity, I could still argue that a point and click adventure can still specialize on being a very specific interface for specialized storytelling. To suggest that the point and click medium is obsolete and useless is not too far afield from suggesting print media is same. Surely, there's still an audience for books, and their means of storytelling has unique qualities that may benefit a creator. That said, every medium has its limitations and its lemons, so I could see why that'd sour you on the whole genre.

[@beefpelican]

The actual conclusion supported by what Yahtzee is saying is that point and click puzzle games are difficult to make well. This is true now and always has been, which is why monkey island holds up and king’s quest does not. I guess that didn’t sound as dramatic as saying that they “stopped being good”.

[@spikejrb7572]

I'd think that VR is a ripe opportunity for a replacement to the point an click adventure game, especially now that there are some very impressive physics in VR games. You could easily (read hear as hard as fuck, but not significantly harder than any other aspect of Game Development) build a series of escape rooms, with tools that need to be found, deciphered and reused/sacrificed to advance further.

[@guthriecollins5307]

I dunno that your simile is entirely accurate. Print media, especially books, are an entirely different medium than video or video games. Their consumption and interaction is unique. And people's expectations of them are unique as well. But adventure games are a genre within a single medium. They communicate themselves the same way every game does, with cutscenes and text blurbs. They're interacted with the same as every game, with keyboard or controller. And so the general audience holds the same expectations of them that they do other games. But the genre isn't able to meet those expectations with its stiff controls and convoluted progression. Saying point and click games are obsolete is more like saying Shakespearean prose is obsolete because most people find it arcane and off putting.

[@Meatbag05]

@@spikejrb7572 But, the way you describe it, it sounds more like the same p&c adventure game with the same p&c adventure game logic, just that the interface is more intuitive. That doesn't by itself solve the main problem of adventure games that Yahtzee is talking about. And you already have some VR games that do exactly this, The Room VR for example, which is an escape room type experience, and I'd argue that if you think about it, is almost the same genre as p&c adventures, depending on story focus. Hell, even real life escape rooms feel exactly like this for obvious reasons, but it's still the same kind of logic all the way through (getting to the designer's intent). It might be more interesting to realize that these games have their best successes if the puzzle to be solved is contained enough, so the inevitable trial and error doesn't cost too much time, which is unrelated to it being VR, real life, or any other interface method.

[@jic1]

@@pedropradacarciofi2517 That's not an evolution, it's what they were to start with.

[@joejoesoft]

I'd argue that adventure games diverged into several different genres, so it's not so recognizable. There's the retro, the meta, the walking sim, the visual novel, the escape room, the experience-game, the FMV game, and so on. It's not just point-and-click for the whole genre. People forget that Portal is clearly an adventure game and mostly escape room. 'Death Stranding' is mostly walking simulator. The 'Vader Immortal' VR series is clearly part of the experience-over-gameplay genre of adventure 'game' that was spawned from the walking sim. 'I Expect You to Die" is an action version of the escape room. Even the point-and-click 'There is no Game' is more of a meta game; very comparable to World of Goo and the prototypical Stanley Parable. Take a game like Inscryption as a very good example of a not-so-recognizable adventure game. It's part deck build, part escape room, part ARG, and ton of meta. It is an adventure game? Clearly. Is it just an adventure game? Not really. Does it have an "adventure" tag on Steam? Nope, and that just proves my point. People that buy Inscryption expecting a deck builder game (as it is tagged) are the ones leaving negative reviews. Adventure game does not mean point-and-click anymore.

[@TheBlueLink3]

Death Stranding really isn’t mostly walking simulator, at least not in the traditional sense.

[@nifftbatuff676]

Because everyone use a gamepad now.

[@JackFoz454]

I won't say that you're wrong when you assign controversial new genres and origin atories to all of these games... but I will say that I have no way to agree with you. Considering it's the foundation of your whole point, you haven't said anything to explain your rationale or back up with you're saying. You say 'clearly' a bunch, but never explain why it's so clear. Proof by assertion (clearly, hee hee) doesn't cut it as actual proof! To be clear, I only say all this because your actual point sounds interesting and I would LIKE to be able to understand it and decide if I agree with you.

[@rfichokeofdestiny]

@@JackFoz454 I think his point is that the essence of adventure games was not point and click, but rich storytelling through a gradually revealed user controlled experience. And all of these new genres have taken up that mantle while replacing point-and-click with different game mechanics. The spirit is the same but the surface level details have changed to accommodate new technology and expectations.

[@Tyler-gg6xt]

I remember someone saying JRPG's where bigger back in the day (whenever that was) precisely because they combined action and narrative first. Turn based battles and plots longer than most novels and such. Any thoughts?

[@PowerUpT]

My fundamental issue with JRPGs is actually that they tend to have a lack of action. There's "action" in that you're fighting something, but it's always just going through menus. That's why I always liked Mario RPG, Mother 3, Undertale, even Earthbound with the rolling counters, is that they all have something to make the game more tactile, to make me feel like I'm part of the battle and that there's stakes.

[@starmaker75]

Or in the case of megami tensei(persona shin megmai tensei) their UI and menus are snappy and fast so battle go pretty fast. Also with megmai tensei they encourage you to use everything you have like buffs and debuff becuase if you don’t they going to suffer or make the battle less fun.

[@ollllj]

yes, you can easily make a JRPG without any (or much) JRPG-style turn based combat (without degrading to a visual novel, by still keeping other gameplay), or make a narrative focused JRPG, where any combat mechanic is more an extension of the character-design (any battle mechanic is diegetic and in-character and it enhances character-traits and it is full of imaginative/funny item-lore), like in Jimmy-And-The-Pulsating-Mass.

[@clwho4652]

@@PowerUpT The menus are why I never liked JRPGs. Menu,menu, menu, wait, menu,menu,menu wait, menu, menu, menu, turn off game. It makes for boring game play and when mixed with grinding makes it even more boring.

[@orange_sauce5951]

Japanese fail at pacing, they will send you to hot springs in the middle of a planet threatening event.

[@JPDEOfficial]

rotfl I loved that ending xD It was basically: "it's still doable, just give it some gameplay and git gud at the puzzlemaking"

[@LudicSavant]

Brilliant ending. I want more Return of the Obra Dinn-like games in my life.

[@Dr-CthulhuOfRlyeh]

P&C is niche, no arguing that, I agree with Yahtzee on why they died and the genre's limitations. But as an old fart who grew up with them it's nice that they still trickle out as they do (Wadjet Eye FTW). I do agree that ignoring sequels is bullshit, I am part of the minority with that Curse of Monkey Island is my favorite in the series and I do get grief for it online.

[@sPiN_OP1]

Just leaving here a little comment saying that I played through the Chzo Mytgos series as you released them, always eagerly awaiting for the release of the next one, and loved every single bit of it. The mistery surrounding the Tall Man, the massive jumps in time periods between games, the twist in Trilby's Notes going back to a text parser since you were writing the notes themselves... Point & Click were much of what I played as a kid/teen, and I thank you for your awesome addition to the genre.

[@ImCurrentlyNaked]

I still really like point-and-click adventure games though. There are definitely problem with them, I think they're caused by the issues you pointed out, but the way they give characters time to develop by allowing the player to interact with everything and slowly converse with each other isn't really done in other game styles. The puzzles are honestly also just kind of fun. Honestly it feels like you're saying "we CAN have fast paced action games with fantastic stories now, so all games should be such", I know that's not your point, but it comes across as such. Point & clicks have their problems, as do every game type, and I enjoy them for what they are. Could they be improved? I'm sure they can! But do I still want more even if they can't? Absolutely! That said, I agree they never really disappeared, they're a niche because of their slower, more dialogue and puzzle focused, interactions. I don't think they've become worse, I think your tastes have changed. Puzzle games in general are less popular than they used to be too (more ubiquitous though), but they don't require some big dissection to explain why, now do they?

[@TheBlueLink3]

I’d argue they’ve become better for the most part. The puzzles are just more intuitive in general, at least in the really good ones.

[@Haukipesukone]

"we CAN have fast paced action games with fantastic stories now, so all games should be such". That's what it sounded like to me. There are plenty of good adventure games made in the last 10 years, but Yahtzee didn't mention any of them. Wadjet Eye, Daedalic, Clifftop Games make them for example. I for one enjoy the slow pace of adventure games, and the peaceful problem solving. It's not like I have a problem with Violence in Video Games™, but sometimes it's nice to play different kinds of games. Dark Souls, despite being excellent, is still a game where you solve problems with violence. Also it's certainly not relaxing to play unlike good adventure games.

[@KingOfElectricNinjas]

There definitely have been recurring issues with the industry of 'X is popular, literally everything has to be X now'. From the often disastrous 3D leap- the term 'polygon ceiling' has been used to describe how a lot of franchises struggled to adapt- to the 'literally everything has to be a shooter' 360/PS3 era that's been argued to have been a lost decade for game design, and even things like forced stealth sections and other bits that ape popular games in an engine and style that does not at all suit the gameplay.

[@Talking_Ed]

​@H Also that idea that you can focus on both gameplay and story doesn't really work, money is limited and you can't focus on 10 game development things at once, if you want to make a game with a good story you have to cut somewhere else, and it's okay, that's how things work

[@varsoonhks3211]

Disco Elysium and 13 Sentinels stand in stark opposition to this thesis. Furthermore, just because a game is mechanically relaxed and straightforward doesn't render it 'bad' from a gameplay PoV--adventure games like NORCO and Unavowed prove that you can still create perfectly compelling interactive narrative experiences even if the gameplay itself takes a backseat.

[@Haukipesukone]

I haven't played either of those games, but good adventure games are still being made. Yahtzee didn't really explain why traditional point and click formula is "bad gameplay". Many adventure games are bad, but it doesn't mean the concept inherently is.

[@ObsidianHunter99]

I must be living on the dark side of Mars because I didn't hear about this monkey island sequel until now

[@MojoTheClown]

I also loved in the first Monkey Island that you could burn all the inessential inventory items you no longer needed. Very clever.

[@bird3713]

I always thought of visual novels as a continuation of this kind of game - Phoenix Wright and the Zero Escape series don't have real gameplay elements to them, but they have good writing with some limited interactivity.

[@animewatcher102]

I would say that the gameplay for Phoenix Wright and Zero Escape are essentially puzzles. Figuring out the logic of cases in Pheonix Wright, and the puzzles to essentially "Escape the Room" in Zero Escape. It does vary a lot how integrated with the story they can be though.

[@a.dennis4835]

Except for all the escapes rooms in "Zero Escape"

[@shwajo]

Just popping in to say that the end goal for all game design is not Souls. We don't all want action combat or git gud culture in *all* of our games. People who liked point and click adventure games weren't *all* just there because shooters lacked deep narratives and charmingly written characters. If anything, Mass Effect is a million times closer to what P&C adventure games were than any souls-like has ever been, and even Mass Effect isn't quite right for every fan of the genre. Personally I really liked the LucasArts principles of no missables, no dying. For a world that has only become less patient, it seems weird that gamers have rallied so strongly behind game design that punishes you with wasted time -- oh you have to replay the whole game to see this thing because you missed it or chose wrong, oh you died here so the last 5 minutes / 5 hours of progress evaporates. It's exhausting and somehow the gaming community has decided that it just isn't a game if it doesn't have these "lol guess you have to do it all over again" punishments. I'm inclined to think that it's become harder to make P&C games well primarily because the community has become too single-minded in game design. It's not that it's too hard to make the games -- it's that these games require accepting that a game doesn't *have* to be about twitchy reflexes and platforming.

[@gebs123]

"design that punishes you with wasted time", also known as Sierra Design. But seriously, Sierra games were known for there convoluted puzzles that would make you load if you messed up, and it seems like that is what a lot of P&C games used as the standard in the late 90s and early 2000s.

[@bobbob3458]

You sound like you don't have much experience with the point and click genre. Mass Effect is not a "million times closer" to P&C games; one of the cliches of the genre is that, to progress the game, you have to use key puzzle items in ways that aren't immediately obvious, don't make sense, and are either only vaguely hinted at or not alluded to at all. A lot like the Souls series and its easily missed/fucked up side quests that require using key items in specific, poorly explained ways to progress NPC questlines. Another cliche is that you need to pixel hunt to find the items in the first place. Similar in spirit to scouring every inch of a Soulsborne level looking for hidden items/interactions to progress sidequests. But at least with Soulsborne the sidequests are optional and won't hardlock you out of progressing the main questline if you miss them or mess up the sequence. As for "wasting time" (all video games are a waste of time lmao), the P&C genre was plagued by games, especially by Sierra, that would lock you into unwinnable states if you misused or missed a key item. You'd have to restart the game entirely, oftentimes without even understanding what it was that locked you out of progress in the first place. A lot of P&C games were DESIGNED around the expectation that you'd wind up in a fail state and have to restart multiple times. Similar to stumbling into failing a Soulsborne NPC's quest without understanding what happened and having to restart the game to take another crack at resolving their storyline. But again, at least in Souls, this doesn't stop you from finishing the main quest. Thinking that ME has more in common with P&C games than Soulsborne does is a smoothbrain take. Fromsoft's approach to quests is much closer (often to the game's detriment) to classic P&C games than ME's spoonfeeding.

[@shwajo]

@@bobbob3458 Ehhh, since you've decided to go attacky with your reply, I'm gonna guess you've already locked in on finding a way to disagree with anything I might say even if you would've agreed to it in isolation (yay internet commenter stubbornness), so there's not really a *point* to replying to you, but meh. When I wrote my original comment, I did wonder if someone was gonna take the obvious bait about how "all games are wasted time". I'm sure a ton of gamers would disagree with you there, or at least acknowledge that there's a big difference between time *spent* on a game and time *wasted* by a game. Not really much more to it than that. I do wonder about people who don't see a difference, and whether they even actually enjoy games. I'd hope you're, like, getting something out of it. You really did have to struggle to find a way to insist Souls is more P&C-like than Mass Effect. Yes. Key items. For sure. Souls also has stats and leveling, so I guess that makes it just like Final Fantasy and Persona, yeah? But there's just no way you can actually play through a P&C from LucasArts (or Longest Journey, or Siberia, or Broken Sword, or...) and not see the character-driven, conversation tree obsessed exploration of a story that Bioware games are quicker to exhibit than From games are. Souls is closer to a Metroidvania than a P&C adventure.

[@serenity8839]

I personally always loved the ingame mouse pointer things with a controller, the main issue i have is there is not snapping or speed controls for the things which would infinitely improve them, i cant imagine how aggravating destiny 2 would be without it

[@demondays3956]

i can't see why. snapping from icon to icon is infinitely more fluid and less annoying than moving a pointer accross the screen. the latter has always come accross as something devs only do because they're too lazy to make two different menu controls between controller and MnK. but to each their own, i guess.

[@serenity8839]

@@demondays3956 Owf i was willing too explain but then read "Lazy dev" Aka invalid opinion on anything game related. xD

[@serenity8839]

@@DamnedSilly Its amazing to be honest, especially if you came from d1, mastering the movment is rewarding as hell , especially with the faster pace of d2 over the tank walking d1 felt like at points haha

[@Mernom]

If destiny 2 didn't have it, it would've designed it's menus properly to not NEED it.

[@serenity8839]

@@Mernom Which its current menus feel fantastic an right for the game.

[@Modie]

I was going to write that Obra Dinn basically nullifies that statement, but Yahtzee did remember at in the end. I don't think, these games are bad, they are just a bit more niche which is why most of them are probably missed. "The Sexy Brutale" is another of those examples. I am not a huge Adventure game fan, but those two were even fun to me so I think if you just look a bit more into the Indie market you will find a lot of good to very good adventure games. It's just that they have to be excellent to reach an audience beyond that since they aren't games where you can just make one trailer and people know what to expect.

[@888Grim]

The Sexy Brutale was great, and I think Disco Elysium would be another exemplar.

[@SeanMcGehee]

5 Days A Stranger still makes me giddy, you should be proud about making that series.

[@Robert399]

0:39 I completely disagree with this bit. I think every work in a franchise should focus first and foremost on being good in its own right and as a distant second on franchise continuity. It not that past entries "didn't happen"; it's just that they don't matter to the current entry, unless acknowledging them makes it better. Continuity and allusions are creative tools, nothing more. No work has an obligation to acknowledge any other (at least beyond legal, copyright stuff).

[@shawnconway6009]

A friend of mine, when this debate came up, said that 'adventure games didn't die, they just became visual novels.' Essentially, gameplay based games went one way, story focused games went another, and if you wanted one kind of game about story you didn't need to deal with the bad gameplay, and if you wanted gameplay you didn't need to deal with a bad story.

[@UniDeathRaven]

Adventure games with southpark gameplay can work good. Lots of explorations/puzzles with some combat on top of it. Damn nice.

[@MatthewCampbell765]

One thing I'll note is that Point-and-Click's core mechanics are actually a core part of many, many other genres these days. For example, you could actually put Monkey Island in a game like Skyrim. All the actions you can take in Monkey Island are basically things you can do in Skyrim. In a sense, every game is a point and click adventure game, which means that no games are.

[@Selrisitai]

For the most part, "The Book of Unwritten Tales" circumvents a lot of the issues by just being very entertaining and gorgeous. The dialogue is fun, the atmosphere is fun, the characters are fun. . . it's very much an interactive story where you barely even need puzzles to be more than just "combine A with B" because engaging with the world and characters was so enjoyable. There's a scene in the second game of the duology where you're in a library and you're trying to find something or other, and there's this cozy fireplace and books lining the walls of a rather circular room that seems to rise up into the blackness of space. Just being in that room, clicking things, talking to the books (yeah) was a really nice experience. I also liked how the Tales games worked. I love both Tales of Monkey Island, which is a bit more of a classic point and click adventure, and the more linear The Wolf Among us, and the _even more linear_ Tales from the Borderlands, which is like a mildly interactive but hilarious cartoon. Some of the best overall writing and storytelling I've seen in a game, its lack of real gameplay notwithstanding. Anyway, what's my point? There are some good ones, but they don't make enough money, I guess. People who play them might love them, but it's not enough. Who the EFF buys point and click adventure games, right? Sam & Max was probably the last ultra-popular one, I reckon.

[@e.y.d.6079]

May the Extra Punctuation series never die. Really really informative.

[@vinnythewebsurfer]

It’s basically like how folks misunderstand how Rock and Roll didn’t just die as a genre and taken over by hip hop but rather that after several decades of running the genre into the ground, innovation stopped happening and the support overall was cut off so it’s all up to the indie scene to figure out ways to keep going and evolving and it’s not just gonna spring back up like it did in the old days.

[@SOTPOD]

It's all made up of what came before, and lives on in what comes after. Anyone that sees genres, or art movements for that matter, as static objects are missing the fun of journey. I was half expecting Yahtz to mention his beloved Silent Hill 2, since it gives off massive "insane point and click adventure" vibes in some of the puzzles and keys, and I'd very much argue some of their values live on in mystery games like that.

[@luisaazul]

shitty comparison

[@JanVerny]

I loved all the Danganronpa games and the weird AI: Somnium one (doubt Yahtze played those though) and I would say they are more point and click games rather than VNs. I don't think this is a genre that doesn't fit into 21st century and I don't think it stopped being good.

[@improvwithlions4173]

I appreciated AI way more on the second go-around. Extremely solid writing and especially voice direction. It's kind of funny comparing it to the earlier point and clicks because both involve kind of abstract and sometimes nonsensical puzzle solutions, but AI at least has the excuse of everything being a dream lol

[@mattnart]

I misread that as a Weird Al game at first and I was TERRIBLY excited at the idea of a point and click game with His Royal Weirdness at the helm.

[@goranisacson2502]

I think Yathzee would perhaps like the plot of AI Somnium, but HAAAAATEEEEE the gameplay. Because let's be honest- there is SELDOM logic behind making succesful choices in the Somnium. You just have to interpret their weird, dream-like worlds the best you can, some times I was just randomly guessing rather than intuitively understanding what I should click to progress, and while I accept that because I'm so into the story that i want to see it progress... I feel like it would drive Yathzee, a FAR more critical man than I, up the freaking wall.

[@JanVerny]

@@goranisacson2502 True, sometimes it feels pretty random. But looking back after finishing the "puzzles" and the story, it all made sense within the context. Contrary to many puzzles in for example Deponia, which I also enjoyed, but I found it to be too random and wacky.

[@goranisacson2502]

@@JanVerny Oh yeah, I should have been clearer there- there is seldom "real world" logic behind the solutions, they're all mostly based on "interpret the particular psychology of the character whose mind you're diving into and what kind of bizarre dream logic their quirks and character traits would view as a solution"-logic... Or to be more specific, "interpret the WRITERS interpretation of what the particular psychology of the character whose mind you're diving into and what kind of bizarre dream-logic the writer thinks the characters quirks and character traits would view as a solution", and it's not every time me and him are of one mind, which could get a little frustrating some times, ngl. And I feel, especially with Yathzee's emphasis in this video on how he's not fond of "guess which key opens which door"-puzzles, he'd definitely resent having to play "get inside the writers head to figure out what solution they want" over a gameplay system in which something is intuitive and makes direct real-world sense. And you know, I actually DO like taking the time to understand those kind of, at times overly obtuse puzzles and systems, to really try to leave my own brain and guess at what goes on inside someone elses head... but I also can't find it in me to argue his point that they AREN'T main-stream popular anymore for a reason.

[@Haukipesukone]

Have you played any modern adventure games like the Deponia series, Technobabylon, Book of Unwritten Tales or Kathy Rain? There are good ones out there. The only interesting aspect about adventure games isn't the story, but also that you tend to solve problems using intelligence rather than violence.

[@chronicbrightside8757]

pretty sure he played "book of unwritten tales," because i specifically remember him jokingly calling it "book of demonstrably written tales" in a review.

[@polaris6933]

agreed on Deponia, I'm not big into adventure games but that series blew me away

[@matthewgagnon9426]

One of my favorite jokes in the Deponia series was the one where they more or less said in the English dub "Yeah, this joke can't be translated, but trust us it was really funny in German."

[@MadameChristie]

Loved Kathy Rain myself. I'm generally a point and click fangirl. I LIKE inventory puzzles, dialogue trees etc. Yatzee likes Monkey Island. Me, I'm a Gabriel Knight fangirl lol. Even played the the hanky FMV sequel. The third sequel in very early 3D graphics was too hanky for me though XD

[@wilheminaandfriends]

I remember Yahtzee's old "Chzo Mythos" adventure games. They literally gave me nightmares, and ruined that kind of pixel game art for me forever. Like any game I see in that style makes me panic and hyperventilate a little. That being said, I absolutely loved them all, and got all the director's cut versions, and still hold out hope for the cold day in hell Yahtzee decides to make more....

[@DragonNexus]

The sequel point is, I believe, about the fact the second game never got a sequel...because they basically wrote themselves into a corner. But now it is.

[@Tynian27]

To be fair Daedalic Entertainment have produced pretty competent Point And Click games over the years with their deponia series. You could spend your 1-3 bucks on way worse games than theirs.

[@Ugramosch]

Droggeljug!

[@-Benedict]

Honestly, I hated Deponia. Making your protagonist a despicable piece of crap with no redeeming features isn't clever game design. I liked Night of the Rabbit, though. That was sweet.

[@mbvalency]

The charcater in deponia was quite unlikable, the puzzles sometimes odd. Liked Ceville or Jack Keane a lot more. The games are all from Germany and not so well known.

[@sethbrokmeier3744]

If anyone wants a good modern Monkey Island-like game I really recommend the Deponia series. Honestly, I really like the item combination puzzle mechanics of games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. It's really a shame how little attention the modern versions of these games get. Deponia, The Inner World, and Thimbleweed Park are all great incarnations. I know they get a little luck-based sometimes, but the gameplay is just so good.

[@leetleshinigami6099]

I actually just finished Return of the Obra Dinn, partially on Yahtzee's recommendation, and that game is now what I think of when I want to talk about masterfully designed puzzles.

[@Maarten8867]

Its a sudoku puzzle.

[@Hentarded]

I think the appeal of the new Monkey Island game is that it would be Gilbert's vision of the third game rather than Curse of Monkey Island. I love Curse, but the original 2 MI games were very different in terms of lore and deeper story. That's the reason why it's a big deal. I don't think it would be as hyped if not for Gilbert. I recommend people watch B Mask's 2 Monkey Island videos for a better overview of the franchise.

[@TTarragon]

I don't understand why the video dismisses Monkey Island 2. That is a very beloved and well received secuel!

[@Hentarded]

@@TTarragon yeah, this is meant to be a sequel to LeChuck's Revenge. The original two games are seen as different feel to the sequels.

[@ZekeRaiden]

Though I doubt you need any ego-stroking from random Internet talking heads, I very much appreciated this video because I went into it thinking you were wrong and came out of it forced to admit that you had a point. I may not totally grant everything you said, but even with the sarcasm, you raised some key issues. These really were games that were a product of their age, and they're a challenge to fit into the modern era. Good bespoke puzzle sequences (or singular puzzles vast enough to fill an entire game, as with Obra Dinn) are really hard to do. We were willing to forgive some of these limitations in the past because, as you say, we couldn't have it all. However, I don't think this means the adventure game is a victim so much as it requires reframing. Many casual gamers don't have the patience or interest for the action heavy mechanics of most action games, and many folks who enjoy action heavy games find too much plot to get in the way of enjoying the action, hence DOOM 2016 using a truly paper thin excuse for a plot while doing a lot of atmospheric storytelling through hand gestures and first-person camera movement. This points to either horizontal market segmentation (accept that adventure games are a small market and embrace this fact), or to *fusion* games, where one actively tries to wed the better elements of different genres together so they reinforce each other. It's pretty rare to get the level of humor and puzzle cleverness of a good adventure game in, say, a modern RPG. Your idea of the bespoke crafting system sounds, to me, like the seed of a new fusion: a roleplay adventure, where action takes a backseat (if it shows up at all), but progression and development still happen through cleverly leveraging the tools given to you, with the possibility of emergent solutions to problems. Sort of like a "MacGuyver RPG," you could say, or a more specifically RPG version of the Interplay Star Trek TOS adventure games, both concepts including that encoded opposition to violence and creativity in solutions to problems while still learning and growing along the way. Anyway, lovely video as always. Should you actually read this comment, I hope that you enjoy your weekend and that you add a cheeky reference in your next video to the "what a shame" meme from Deus Ex (a great example of a more action focused "fusion" game that has adventure elements in it).

[@tahunuva4254]

We all know that point n click adventure games peaked with the Mata Nui Online Game. A noble high to reach, as a genre.

[@turbonerdo6838]

All of these comments talking about adult adventure games they used to play, and here I am with my entire childhood gaming experience being centered around Humungous Games. Putt Putt, Spy Fox, Pajama Sam, one of these games would always be downloaded onto a school computer, and they were fantastically made kids games. It is weird that technological limitation of computers meant that click and point was an adult genre, even though the mechanics are infinitely more suited to a more basic and childish game design, with simplistic puzzles. Though that's the other thing Humungous Games did to counter the issue of needing to find the one single solution to a puzzle, the puzzle's would change and vary on different playthroughs, so there were multiple unique solutions for each objective.

[@Drstrange3000]

Right!? I would spend hours upon hours with these games and they were always a great part of my childhood. They even had a lot of educational ones like the JumpStart series. And I discovered more later on the Nintendo DS with games like Professor Layton.

[@GUUUUU2099]

What??? you made 5 days a stranger?? I played this game when I was in high school, I was really into it. The sequel in space was pretty good too.

[@Tickerbee]

Game Maker's Toolkit touched on something similar to Yahtzee's input/output system when talking about Breath of the Wild, where fire, electricity and rough surfaces behave logically and allows you to come up with alternative solutions to things, like climbing around stuff that's rough enough to grip or bypassing puzzles with things like using metal weapons to create electrical circuits and whatnot.

[@mrburger]

The indie dev community has kept the torch of point-and-clicks burning, however humbly, for decades now. Check out Wadjet Eye Games' Unavowed, Primordia, or the Blackwell series. Or the Deponia games. Or Ron Gilbert Himself's Thimbleweed Park.

[@Haukipesukone]

This. Why doesn't Yahtzee acknowledge these games?

[@lasmirandadennsiewillja9435]

We got some point&click adventure games in Germany in the 2010s that I enjoyed, mostly from Daedelic. But I like inventory puzzles in general and I especially liked those games because of the humour. However, the rumour is heavily based on puns and rhetoric and a good chunk of it got lost in the English translation. Frankly, in a time where visual novel games of all genres, from dating/romance over crime to horror, or "walking simulators" that tell a story, look pretty, but you don't do much more than walk around and click on exposition, have found their niche, I find it odd that point&click adventures aren't more popular. In a way, they're advanced visual novel games that show more than tell and give you something to do while you walk and backtrack from screen to screen.

[@hrotha]

Yeah I would say that point & click adventure games went through a sort of silver age around the early to mid 2010s, and a lot of that was Daedalic. I played a lot of their games, and a few like Memoria and the Deponia series were fantastic. I would also mention Heaven's Vault as a sort of point & click adventure game with a twist

[@galacticspacebear9589]

Man, I gotta go back and replay the Blackwell games now. I never finished the last one. I remember loving the interaction and dialogue between the two main characters, and that's primarily what I played it for rather than the game play lol

[@bfish89ryuhayabusa]

Definitely finish the last one. I played the entire series in basically one sitting. (I fell asleep between beating Deception and starting Epiphany, then woke up and played it)

[@galacticspacebear9589]

@@bfish89ryuhayabusa lol awesome. I remember getting stuck at one part and walkthroughs weren't helping, and I kinda just gave up on it. It might have been a glitch or something, I don't remember

[@misterprickly]

This is one of the main reasons why I've been writing the story for my own QFG fan-fic game. Graphics are the problem, it's writing a compelling story ah-la "choose your own adventure" books and creating a series of compelling puzzles; beyond put a thing on a thing to get another thing. I'm always happy to see a new P&C game pop up on steam and I'm always ready/willing to smash like/retweet when I see the trailer on twitter. IMO it's a genre that needs to be supported more, as opposed to the thousand and one looter-shooters.

[@FlakAttack0]

I think it's safe to say that point & click games did not die, so much as they evolved into multiple types of games. You can see the bones of the genre in things like Orwell, Papers Please, Hypnospace Outlaw... the cerebral story/puzzle games are still out there, but they are certainly niche material. Considering how poorly most reboots of media have been going, I hold little hope that the new Monkey Island game will be good.

[@ZondervanSchnibble]

I feel like the branching puzzles of the original maniac mansion are also another way to approach the guess the developers mind problem. I will say that there's still nothing more satisfying than figuring out a good puzzle in an adventure game though, especially when it's interlinked with other puzzles and story beats. For me it's really a better version of that feeling of branching paths in a Dark Souls game. A bad adventure game does feel absolutely miserable to play, but few experiences in gaming measure up to a great adventure game.

[@Hoobastomp]

As a wise old Murray once said, "Adventure games weren't killed. They committed suicide." Trying out even modern point-and-clicks, I've got to agree. Puzzles have the unfortunate quality of being mostly bimodal. They are either trivial - in which case the game wastes your time asking you to solve the obvious thing - or absolute lunacy, in which case you can smash your head against them for an hour before "realizing" (or more likely, looking up) that you have to get a fake mustache to impersonate a person that *doesn't have a mustache*. Including a hint system, as modern games tend to do, doesn't really help matters. All it does is remove any need to give the player more organic hints. The problem is fundamental. People come in to these games with varying amounts of puzzle-solving ability, and it doesn't grow as naturally as, say, skill does in an action game (with the notable exception of some puzzle games built around mastering a specific skillset or mechanic - The Talos Principle and the Zachtronics games come to mind). Some puzzles will always be mind-meltingly frustrating, even to the most galaxy-brained MENSA alumnus, and force a call to the Sierra help line. It's galling to have to do that. But when your only gameplay mechanic is puzzles, those roadblocks become more than that; a sign telling the player they are too dumb to experience the rest of the game. This is more noticeable in a miscegenated (i.e. non-pure puzzle) game, since the player can, rightly, think that there are more ways to solve a puzzle than the strict path the designer laid out. See the problem Plague Tale: Innocence presents with it's stupid torches that you can just take with you if the main character thought for a second. And yet, annoyingly, I keep coming back to the point-and-click genre, buying the games and trying them out. They can tell a good story! It's just such a shame that their mechanics are so separate to the story and often so disappointing. A point-and-click where the puzzles had multiple solutions, which each had different outcomes to the story (for example, a detective story with contradictory evidence wherein you could actually, legitimately, accuse an innocent person of the crime because the evidence points that way, and the game permits you to do it. Ambiguous victory and failure and the inherent conflict such a job presents would be a great theme to explore in a game like this) would be great! But it feels like so many designers of these games are terrified of players having agency in their story, making the games themselves no more interactive than a book or movie that occasionally shows the bloopers and forces you to rewind.

[@DelphinusZero]

You should look up the old Blade Runner game, it’s somewhat similar to what you want you are hunting a replicant and can accuse basically anyone of being the replicant. It can even be you!

[@Hoobastomp]

@@DelphinusZero Yes, I've heard good things about it. It's in my GOG library and backlog. But I've heard that if you accuse a human of being a replicant in that game, it's a game over. That's the difference I'm imagining where player agency matters. I'm picturing a game where the player can accuse the wrong person, and the game continues without telling you if your were right or not. Sometimes your investigation leads to a person being sent to jail. Sometimes you didn't find enough evidence and their lawyer gets them out of it. In neither case do you know if you did the right thing. Most point-and-clicks offer no ambiguity in their stories, where (I think) they are the perfect candidates for it. The ability to just say, "I searched as much as I care to, let's move on to the next part of the game with the clues that I've gathered so far" would make the game much more open-ended and allow the player much more control over the narrative - with the obvious issue of being much more difficult to tell as a cohesive story. This is where, I think, L.A. Noire really failed. The story was so rail-roaded that the player never really had an option to be anything but right if they wanted to progress. Which is especially aggravating given what happens later in that story, but I'd rather not spoil it.

[@Medytacjusz]

idk, crosswords are as popular as ever and you can see how it's similar to traditional point&click in the sense that it's just about finding the one solution the creator had in mind based on a limited set of clues. I think the reason for P&C, and also pure puzzle-games, being niche is much simpler - both genres are not that addictive. Solving a puzzle feels great, getting there doesn't. The dopamine surge is delayed. People played these games a lot more in the past is because they weren't yet hooked on the more addictive drugs (and their addictiveness wasn't yet as refined). And I think the presence of story actually makes it more frustrating than in a pure puzzle game because you are anxious to find out what happens next and a puzzle, even a fun puzzle, stands in the way. There will always be tension between the two.

[@fuckoff5893]

“A full adventure game needs a constant procession of the fuckers” LOL

[@JasperPeters]

I could see why for many people PNC games are not that appealing any more, as the aspects they liked are now done in other genre's in ways they prefer. However I must say I disagree that they stopped being good/are obsolete. I'm a huge fan of the genre because of the unique qualities this genre has. The fact is is slow paced, a thinking based game is exactly why I like them so much. I really like those moments where I get stuck in a puzzle, go do something else and then while going through the puzzle in my head during some mundane activity the solution hits me. It's also very satisfying to then go back to the game and try the solution (especially if the solution was correct). Also as far as the title is concerned, stopped being good? What? Yes especially in the early 3D days adventure games took a big dive in quality as they were forced into 3D which does not suit the genre well at all (at least imo). But recent(-ish) 2D point and click games have been amazing imo. I really enjoyed Thimbleweed Park, Broken Sword 5 and Broken Age. Also the humongous entertainment games are still amazing kids games (on PC) to this day. Especially for younger children who have more difficulty playing fast-paced games, it's an excellent introduction to gaming for them!

[@cube2fox]

Yeah I agree, they are still good. The problem is that for some reason hardly anybody buys them. So only some low budget indie developers can hope to make a profit with them. I guess we won't won't ever again see an adventure with significant budget and modern graphics. (May be the point of action-adventures is true: the average people buy games with story and puzzles, but only if they also contain large amounts of action in between. Something like Uncharted or Zelda.) One thing I don't quite understand - what is the problem with 3D adventures really? I never played any of the early 3D adventures like Grim Fandango. I guess their problem has something to do with camera behavior? One of my favorite adventure games, Lost Echo (2013), doesn't have any problems, despite being 3D. As long as the camera is mostly fixed there doesn't seem to be a large difference between 2D and 3D.

[@an2qzavok]

Point-and-click adventures transitionsed to 3D quite well with first person puzzlers such as Myst or Penumbra, though this became it's own genre.

[@maxresdefault_]

Anyone who wants a good history of the life and death of puzzle games should definitely check out the KZbin series "Who Killed Guybrush Threepwood". It's three parts, and wonderful

[@melvinotherwise6354]

Then you'll love "Lacuna: A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure." The game is a point and click adventure, minus the aspect of carrying items but there is a emphasis on inspecting your area for clues, and intuitive thinking, since you are a detective in this game.The story as well is very engaging and is even determined by how successful you are at solving your cases.

[@cosmingurau]

OMG, it was YOU that did 5 Days A Stranger? I friggin LOVED that game, played it a bunch of times, shared it around

[@stryke-jn3kv]

6:09 I genuinely yelled out "FUCK THAT!". The anguished pain of my inner child that even after resorting to a guide couldn't find the cocking spot on the wall that the game wanted. To this day I still can't believe people talk about Full Throttle like it was a good game when it had that utterly unreasonable shit in it. See also Discworld which had some similar pixel hunt puzzles, and worse had a tendency to bug out rendering the actual right solution to not work.

[@DeathEatsCurry]

Honestly, inventory puzzles have a weird niche in that your items might be nuggets of knowledge instead. Outer Wilds and Forgotten City are exceptional examples of this. You still have to 'collect' certain 'items', but rather than having to slam them together in your menu, you can cross reference them and think it out yourself.

[@Unstablegroundz]

Obrah dinn also has this to an extent

[@stevenclubb7718]

One thing that changed which I don't think I've ever seen anyone discuss is that the Internet provided easy answers to tough puzzles. When I was a kid, Infocom was the big thing in Adventure games and there was a huge difference between their regular releases and their classic releases... namely, you had instant access to puzzle solutions if you had a classic release. You could always buy a hint book to get you through a game, but that was usually something you did after hitting a wall for a long time. And playing a new release (without built hints) was a more engaging experience as you slowly figured things out... until you got completely stuck and shelled out for the hint book. When I got back into Adventure games years later, the internet was a thing... and I never had a really engaging experience because I'd invariably look up the answer after banging my head against a wall a few times... instead of spending days or weeks trying to puzzle it out. The internet completely changed how I interacted with the games for the worse.

[@billvolk4236]

Old adventure games very seldom rewarded paying attention because the one possible solution to each puzzle was so insane and counter-intuitive that you could only arrive on it by brute forcing every possible action. Within a rounding error, nobody solved that syrup-and-cat-hair-mustache puzzle from Gabriel Knight by thinking about the best way a real person could approach that problem. Compare that to, say, Disco Elysium, where you are rewarded for paying attention and there are also multiple solutions to things.

[@waluigiisthebest2802]

I think Shmup games suffer from a similar problem to the point-and-click adventure game, but on the opposite scale. They are usually purely gameplay and have little story. They are also hard to do right, as people decided the best way to make your game seem unique is to make it harder, so only the most dedicated Shmup fans will try to play them.

[@KingOfElectricNinjas]

Yeah, it's definitely a genre that kinda ended up catering to the hardest of the hardcore to the exclusion of all else and basically turned into a creative dead end.

[@JPH1138]

First time I've watched a Yahtzee video on increased speed, to hear him get to the point and waiting in vain to hear him make a point that he hasn't made two dozen times. Nope. He even brought up the Full Throttle wall again like clockwork. Christ, Yahtzee, it's only been 27 years, think you can let that one go yet? I guess I can understand why people keep asking Yahtzee for his views on adventure games since he used to be an AG dev and is a gaming critic, but every time it's been discussed for the last ~15 years (yes, I read Yahtzee's columns back before he did this videos) whether a column, a video, a TV skit, a review of a new game, it's the same rant. And it's barely even his rant, it's so identical to the famous Old Man Murray rant. He was on such autopilot making this video he didn't even realise he got the wrong game it was a sequel to. (Surprisingly Ron Gilbert did not want to make one of his own most popular and famous games non-canon). And also that was just fan assumption in the first place, so this game is just an interquel that doesn't reboot anything, something you could have found out if you read two questions into a single interview, but clearly 5 minutes of research is far too much work when you've already got 80% of your script written from decades ago.

[@SomeIdiota]

It's almost as if it matches a genre that has barely moved or been much of a blip for the same number of years. No need to reinvent the wheel. If Yahtzee didn't say something about Monkey Island coming out, there would've been an endless crowd of fans going "Hey, where is it? We know you do this. This is your thing!" Not to say that this video is riveting, as it is as you say. Just pointing out that you are receiving what you should have expected. The saying usually stops at "fool me twice" not "fool me countless times for 15 years".

[@JPH1138]

@@SomeIdiota "It's almost as if it matches a genre that has barely moved or been much of a blip for the same number of years." Yeah, it matches a dumb strawman perfectly. If you play Lair of the Clockwork God, Primordia, Life is Strange, Firewatch, Pillars of the Earth, There is No Game, etc and think 'this is indistinguishable from a game from the early 2000s' then you're an idiot. But then I suppose you could be getting the 'or' in that sentence to do a lot of work, and saying that those don't count because they're not well known? (Which would be a weird argument. Critics are meant to know their topic in depth, not just the famous entries) Design attitudes towards adventure games have changed massively BECAUSE they are a genre that is underexposed and doesn't attract money. Without marketing budgets the genre largely relies on word of mouth. Playtesting and hint systems are massive, alternate solutions and using NPCs more dynamically. " If Yahtzee didn't say something about Monkey Island coming out, there would've been an endless crowd of fans going "Hey, where is it? We know you do this. This is your thing!" " I doubt that. Maybe a couple of dozen at the most. Yahtzee hasn't had anything to do with adventure games since he cobbled together a massively unsatisfying conclusion to his series just under a decade ago. Only a few old timers like myself remember this being his 'thing', and even that more a matter of him being prolific and massively opinionated rather than being the best at it. But then Yahtzee is misanthropic enough to be driven to putting this video out after a single tweet. "Just pointing out that you are receiving what you should have expected." Yeah, I already said it was what I expected, hence why I watched it at 1.5 speed. I looked because most people put a video out when they ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, unless they are cynical enough to take ad revenue off reheating a diatribe written by someone else 22 years ago. I mean the series is called 'Extra punctuation', which suggests there is something else Yahtzee needs to say, not that he's just going to repeat himself for nobody's benefit. And now I know for certain if he reviews Return of Monkey Island it's going to be at least 20% the same content of this video.

[@RaRa-eu9mw]

@@SomeIdiota That's a bizarre and ignorant comment. Have you played Lamplight City, Perfect Tides, Resonance, Not Another Weekend, There is No Game, Heaven's Vault, Hypnospace Outlaw, Lair of the Clockwork God, Overboard, Paradigm, Unavowed, The Sexy Brutale, Welcome to Elk, Who's Lila... Recent years have seen loads of high quality adventure games, which push the genre in interesting directions. Yahtzee (and yourself) just don't know about them, and so repeat the same normie takes over and over.

[@RehenNodrog]

I remember playing Escape From Monkey Island as a kid and being completely blown away and entranced. I'd never played another adventure game, didn't even know what they were, and had no idea this was supposed to be one of the bad ones. I loved the sense of mystery and the creativity the solutions required. So suffice to say I definitely don't buy that the entire adventure game format only succeeded as a result of the limitations of technology.

[@spikey556]

I think the most natural evolution of the adventure game with the added modern qualities was disco elysium. You felt clever for solving certain things, if your mind was specced to the task at least

[@SurprisinglyDeep]

I'd just like an adventure game that had puzzles mostly based just on real life logic. Here's one example I made just off the top of my head of the type of puzzle I mean. "Attach a piece of chewing gum to the end of a rope and put it down the storm grate to grab the key to the door that fell down there". Here's another one. (Took me somewhat longer to think up.) "Get a hair pin, a screw driver and a pair of pliers. Use the pliers on the hair pin to make a lock pick. Use the lock pick to pick the lock on a door." Another such example. "Put some tinfold on the rabbit ears antenna of the TV that the security guard at the front entrance is watching. The tinfoil will allow the rabbit ears antenna to pick up the signal from the local sports channel that's showing the hockey game. The guard will get distracted watching the hockey game, allowing you to sneak past him into the building". Most Adventure Games never did that. Most of them had the most random f***ing puzzles possible, like "put masking tape on a cat to steal its fur to use as a fake mustache in order to startle a frog."

[@OnyxIdol]

The best (most logical/reasonable) puzzles I have ever seen were in Simon the Sorcerer 2.

[@cube2fox]

The great Rusty Lake adventure games are very interesting in this regard: Many solutions to puzzles make no sense in real life, but they still follow a certain logic. You often have to think of combining objects which are _metaphorically_ (instead of literally) related to the thing you want. Of course using such puzzles only works for games which are not realistic.

[@jstar2235]

I wouldn't say Dark Souls is a particularly good example of storytelling, because it practically doesn't tell the story at all. If you wanna learn about that world you're limited to vague item descriptions and youtube videos theorizing about the lore. When your storytelling relies on turning off the game and watching Vaati videos I don't think you're doing a particularly good job. It is amusing to see the discussions develop online though, and in a way Miyazaki broke the fourth wall with his vague, almost non existent storytelling. I feel like there's something about the atmosphere of a point and click adventure that other videogame genres can't replicate. If you need to balance a good story with constant shootouts happening in between, something is lost in the process. Point and click adventures allow me to explore environments at my own pace and not worry about anything that requires dexterous skills, while not being as passive an experience as reading a "choose your own adventure" book.

[@gabedamien]

People can like what they like, but to defend Dark Souls: I think Dark Souls is a terrific example of a specific _kind_ of "storytelling" which some of us really enjoy (in specific doses). Not all games should use the same approach to narrative and world-building, and not all players need to enjoy it. But there are plenty of people who _do_ enjoy Dark Souls' implied, buried, arcane, ambiguous-yet-purposeful brand of drip-revealing the context for its world and the arcs of its characters. Too many games are worried that the player will miss something, whereas Soulsbornes require the player to deliberately seek out explanations and try to connect subtle details. They definitely take it to an extreme and I am not going to pretend that they do it perfectly. But I'm glad that they exist, and believe it or not some of us connect most of the dots without having to watch lore videos… but we also _enjoy_ the lore videos, and view them as a product of the enthusiasm that these games engender in their fans. It is *fun* to come together as a community and compare notes, debate the intended meaning of things, etc. Anyway, people debate the definition of "storytelling" or "story-driven." It is definitely possible to play Dark Souls purely as an action game without understanding or caring about a single mote off lore, and in that sense I agree that DS is not at all story-driven. But in another sense I would claim that many players find uncovering Soulsbornes' stories to be a big part of the motivation to play. (It helps that the lore typically has a lot of actual thought behind it that changes the meanings of things in significant and usually tragic ways. I.e. there is a genuine narrative reward rather than just a ton of extraneous background detail.)

[@jstar2235]

@@gabedamien From is particularly good at environmental storytelling, which is a great way to immerse the player without getting in their way with gameplay-interrupting cutscenes. There's so much they do right and I love all the games, I just think it's a stretch to set them as the gold standard for every single aspect of the medium. They're not doing it better, they're doing it uniquely.

[@gabedamien]

@@jstar2235 Totally agree

[@SkeleTonHammer]

I'm 36 and a game developer. I "solved" adventure game rigidity years ago but never made an adventure game using my system because I like living in a house with a roof and eating food and those things cost money. The concept was based around a tag system. So, for instance, let's say you couldn't get through a door because someone duct taped the doorknob to hell (I don't know why someone would do such a heinous thing). There would be a "sharp" tag that many objects could possess, and a lot more items strewn about than typical adventure games. So for instance, you might have scissors and a nail in your inventory. Both distinct items, but both also possess the "sharp" tag internally. And the duct taped door handle can be "solved" using an object that is tagged as sharp. Therefore, you can use the nail or the scissors to remove the duct tape. Tags would be assigned to items kind of fluidly on a whim as development goes on, which means it's conceivable that the player could find solutions that weren't explicitly scripted, expected, or intended by me as the developer which would make the player feel like they actually thought of something. Of course, this system was deeper than just that. It also included item combinations. So, if something could conceivably have a string tied to it, it might be called "stringable" or some such thing, and could therefore be dangled on a string. Since a string would have tags such as "long", and perhaps scissors have a "metallic" tag, you would therefore be able to dangle a string with scissors tied to them over a railing or some such thing to retrieve a magnet. I actually had much of this system working. It was neat and fun. Perhaps the only possible downside to having multiple solutions however is that it does inherently make the game easier to solve when you are only limited by your ingenuity (think Scribblenauts but not as ridiculous since you were limited to items that were actually pre-placed in the world). Still, it was neat and it worked.

[@Haukipesukone]

Interesting concept, although it probably works mostly in simple problems, like get through this locked door or how to get the object from the drain. If you need the Consecrated Chalice of Curnagh to exorcise the demon lord, you need to find the item, and you can't simply put a bunch of junk together. Nor would the tag system help you making various alternatives on how to convince the king to aid you in your quest. Some games already had the tag system to a small degree, like Zak MacKracken. You could use a kazoo, golf club or something else to summon the attention of the taxi driver.

[@DuneStone6816]

Interesting system, but I think it sounds boring for the player. I do like the idea of allowing multiple solutions to one problem. If I understand you correctly, your system would allow you to program multiple solutions to a puzzle and multiple uses for each item without scripting a specific response to every possible item interaction. I assume your goal is to allow more creativity for the player without creating more work for the developer. The alternative would be for the programmer to analyze every puzzle, and then look at every item and decide which ones could logically be useful, and then manually script for each logical item to solve the puzzle. The reason I say your system sounds boring is because it sounds like it would streamline the game responses too much. One of the things I personally enjoy most about P&C games is when you can find hidden jokes by using items in incorrect and useless ways. If the game uses internal tags to decide which items work where, then you lose unique responses to different item interactions. Like in your example, I imagine that instead of having a different response to using scissors or a nail on the tape, you would get the exact same response to using any sharp item on it. It would make the experience a little robotic. I totally respect the fact that scripting a unique response to every possible interaction is a lot of work, but I think that the genre would lose a lot of it’s charm if you streamlined all the responses.

[@SkeleTonHammer]

@@DuneStone6816 Yep, that's unfortunately right. Every item's interaction would have to use a generic appearance/animation and result in probably no real visual change or feedback, and no feedback from the player character. If my system would be useful for anything, it would probably be more for a text adventure where you don't have most of those feedbacks anyways.

[@Neonsilver13]

I liked starting to play adventure games, but I rarely enjoyed playing them for long. The moment you reach a puzzle where your own logic intuition doesn't align remotely with the developers, all you can do is try all permutations of items with objects in the world and hope that you didn't miss anything in the world and that you have the necessary item. It's especially frustrating if you need a specific item despite having a different item that should have worked just as well.

[@danparsons1423]

I think you missed the impact the internet, and instant solutions, had on the genre. People dont have the patience to think laterally when they can just goolgle it and instantly make the game not fun.

[@MichaelChisholmChizzieRascal]

Unavowed is a good point and click adventure game, probably one of my favourite games of any genre released recently. Sort of like the Dresden files, modern noir fantasy plus they add old school bioware companions. Also, I haven't finished Forgotten City but that's practically a 3D adventure game, most walking sims are, you could say that Firewatch is. I'd say that Oxenfree is a point and click adventure game as well.

[@YorkJonhson]

My only nitpick about Unavowed is that I always felt like I was missing out on interesting character interactions when I had to choose between party members. But I guess that just gives it more replay value in the end.

[@ColonelMidi]

dude i had not known that 5 days a stranger had been made by you. massive 00s "fanadventure" flashbacks, when the "adventure games are dead" trope really was everywhere.

[@trentlytell3702]

I can’t say my viewpoint is valid because I don’t own a VR system, but from what I’ve seen, VR gameplay is the modern “point and click adventure game.” I watch my brother play mini golf games on his VR headset. He points where he wants to go and is magically there to swing the golf club or find a Easter egg. The same appeared to me when I watched others play Half Lyfe Alyx. Because of the limited movement they pointed where they wanted to go, pointed at puzzle objects or throwable items and slowly progressed through the game. Yes there were action sequences but they all revolved around point at the target and fire away because of the limited movement. Obviously that’s not true of all VR games but most of them seem that way to me.

[@Syffsy]

Tangentially, I think "metroidvanias" could be understood as a form of adventure game based around scouring the map for secrets using every verb you know, rather than using every noun in your pockets to look for plot progression. This also puts an interesting pin in the question of "how do you put Zelda games in a genre, anyway?" - not point-and-click adventure games, no, but that part of the gameplay loop feels very similar. Maybe the term "action-adventure" could actually mean something, someday, instead of being slapped on any game that doesn't immediately reject it.

[@ducky36F]

Question, do deductive games count? Because if so there’s been a bloody lot of them lately.

[@walmaker8372]

I'm actually working on a point-and-click adventure game myself inspired by games like Day of the Tentacle (and even having a similar art style) yet after watching this video, I realise that I need to try and up my game with new types of puzzles that don't just seem like combinations all throughout the game. Thanks for making this video.

[@geoffreytbaker8724]

For those curious, Access is a book/record-keeping software. They tried to teach it to me in college. They tried sooo hard.

[@SurprisinglyDeep]

Well you understand what it is and have at least some understanding of how it works. That's better than 95% of people including me

[@IzunaSlap]

Deus Ex, Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium might be good games to draw influence from if you want to modernize the point and click genre.

[@hailmuffins6934]

None of them are point-and-click adventure, P:T and DE are Point-and-Click RPGs and Deux Ex is flat-out one of the games that merged together good gameplay and deep storytelling that made the Point-and-Click Adventure genre obsolete, Yahtzee bring that up as an example.

[@bobbymaycry9748]

I'm excited for Return to Monkey Island, first I'm hearing that it's a reboot, last I checked it's just replacing Curse of Monkey Island which itself was filled with plotholes.

[@JPH1138]

It's not replacing anything, it's just set between Revenge and Curse. Curse has a super vague time gap and Guybrush has lost part of his memory in that game so there shouldn't be any serious problems.

[@bobbymaycry9748]

@@JPH1138 I just looked up the official statement on Devolver Digital and nothing says it's set between Revenge 2 and Curse. At anycase I'm going to see for myself when it comes out, seems the internet just spreads fake rumors around.

[@JPH1138]

@@bobbymaycry9748 You may have seen it, but just 2 days ago on Ron Gilbert's blog he says "The one thing I wanted to do was start the new game right where LeChuck's Revenge ended, and that became the one unmovable stone", which seems to be confirmation. Everything before that was a little vague.

[@bobbymaycry9748]

@@JPH1138 I did not know about this but thank you for the information. That quote seems vague in some areas and leaves a lot of questions unanswered, does Curse take place after Return for example? But I'll place those at the door till we all get to play it :) who knows the ending may lead into Curse, to make its plot-holes less confusing. Though I get the feeling it's a semi-reboot.

[@pokemonmanic3595]

Also bringing up that Humongous Entertainment (also founded by Monkey Island alumn Rob Gilbert) really nailed the formula in the 90s-and their games were for kids!

[@ArcaneAzmadi]

I love the way Yahtzee completely undermines the point of his entire near-7 minute video right at the end with a single line. Incidentally, I really should get around to playing Return of the Obra Dinn at some point...

[@a.r.e.j.1693]

So the conclusion is "making good games is hard to do"? Yeah, congrats that's every genre ever.

[@Haukipesukone]

Yes. I don't get what the ultimate point in the video is. It doesn't even acknowledge any of the good modern adventure games from Daedalic, Wadjet Eye, etc. And then claims good ones aren't made anymore except Obra Dinn. It's also not explained how exactly do adventure games have "bad" gameplay.

[@cube2fox]

I do think making really good games is harder for adventure games than in other genres. Compare the original Doom to modern shooters like the latest Doom installment. The difference in gameplay quality is enormous. The old Doom has basically only nostalgia factor. Now look at Monkey Island. The game largely still holds up today. It seems to be very hard to improve even on a very old adventure game. I think the reason is that they heavily rely on writing and creative puzzles, which can't be iteratively improved over the years like the sophisticated gameplay mechanics of other game genres. Making adventure games is apparently a bit like writing a book, which also doesn't seem to get easier over the decades. Or like making a movie, which gets somewhat easier (better special effects over time), but not much. But making a shooter which is better than one from 20 years ago is very easy in comparison, simply because there have been large advancements in game design. Of course it is always difficult to keep up with the current competition since other game developers also profit from any advancements in game design. But this isssue concerns relative difficulty, not absolute difficulty.

[@ollllj]

Adventure games never died, they just failed to realitze, that obfuscation makes for the worst puzzles, and 3d perspective always adds obfuscation. This put them on sleep, where only "hidden object games" lived a famous zombie-life , marketed to a very different demographic, while telltale literally only made zombie-like games, and (yas you know) AdbventureGameStudio kept the genre barely afloat by making a cute free editor for them, while myst-clones still did well occasionally. The genre was in semi-hypersleep until [Daedalic] revived the genre with [edna and harveys the breakout] and [deponia]. Kickstarted games did NOT revive the genre, because they came long after Daedalic (and because they mostly sucked, BrokenAge was a bad game)

[@FenolftaleinRE]

Let's not forget about the nonverbal spark of Amanita Design.

[@LemonGrinder]

@@FenolftaleinRE Oo I am so glad you brought up Amanita!! A great reminder of point and clicks now!

[@TheBlueLink3]

TellTale did more than zombie games. They kept the genre alive for a good amount of time too. Also, Broken Age was good.

[@davidwilliams5497]

I feel like a lot of these traits of the old adventure games devolved into the modern hidden object games grandmothers play. It’s basically the same interface, the same overly-written nonsense (“show don’t tell” being a better way to summarize Yahtzee’s point about action and story merging to kill the old genre’s appeal), and a lot of them seem to have the same inventory puzzle nonsense that plagued adventure games. I think it’s just because the modern, successful ones are only popular with a very specific, narrow audience that we think adventure games “died”. They didn’t so much die as regressed to a similar level of Jiminy Cockthroat-obligatory-sameness as the rest of the mass-produced games industry. Their audience just isn’t as active on Twitter to complain about that sameness, that’s all.

[@reizak8966]

I hadn't heard about it, but people keep telling me I'm a cat, so that might be why.