Point-and-click adventure games occupy a unique space in the video game industry, combining gameplay centered around exploration and puzzle-solving with thrilling narratives of adventure, mystery, and discovery. Adventure games such Myst or The Secret Of Monkey Island, which surged in popularity during the 1990s, seemed to be on the verge of dying out as advanced 3D computer graphics became the norm. In recent years, though, the point-and-click adventure genre has gone through a revival, thanks to studios like Double Fine Productions, Telltale Games, Wadjet Eye Games, and other indie developers who are pushing the limits of storytelling, art direction, and puzzle design within this unique game medium.

As with many other narrative-focused video games, point-and-click adventures owe a lot to text adventures/interactive fiction, codified by 1970s games such as Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork I: The Underground Empire. In these games, players read descriptions of different areas, then interacted with the objects and features within them by typing in text commands such as "Go North," "Pick Up Lantern," or "Check Inventory."

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Interactive fiction variants such as The Pawn, The Hobbit, and The Prisoner II introduced illustrations as a supplement to their textual narrations, while the King's Quest games published by Sierra Entertainment introduced actual graphical environments a player could move their character through using keyboard arrows. These titles, however, lacked the point-and-click interface iconic to the whole genre. This particular leap forward in gaming became possible in 1984 when the first Apple Macintosh introduced the concept of an icon-based computer desktop, controlled through both keyboard and mouse.

Early Point-and-Click Adventure Games In The 1980s

Point'n'Click Adventures Maniac Mansion

According to this article on Adventure Gamers.com, one of the first proper point-and-click adventures was an Apple Macintosh game called Enchanted Scepters, a fantasy title where players could interact with objects in game visuals by clicking on them. Successive games added more versatile, intricate ways for players to 'point' and 'click,' introducing visual inventories, and buttons with verb commands such as "open" and "talk."

It was the B-Movie adventure game Maniac Mansion, published in 1987 by Lucasfilm Games, that really evolved the point-and-click adventure game into its modern form. Maniac Mansion let players click on a selection of verbs in the command interface to "prime" their mouse icon. Then, they could click on parts of the game's graphics to interact with environments and solve puzzles.

LucasArts & The Golden Age Of Point-And-Click Adventure Games In The '90s

Lucasfilm Games, eventually re-named to LucasArts, quickly came to dominate the adventure game market with titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones And The Fate of Atlantis, and Sam & Max Hit the Road. These were mostly light-hearted games built around a design philosophy where players were free to experiment with different solutions to puzzles without worrying about killing off their characters or breaking their ability to progress. Non-LucasArts games such as Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky (with art by illustrator Daniel Gibbons), the Broken Sword franchise, and the adaptation of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (presided over by Harlan Ellison himself) added dark and more mature themes to the point-and-click adventure genre, along with stunning 2D visuals and animations.

Related: Why King’s Quest 9 Finally Needs To Happen

As LucasArts, Revolution, and other game studios were refining the gameplay model established by Maniac Mansion, other developers were taking advantage of the new graphical capabilities enabled by CD-ROMs to create different paradigms of point-and-click adventures. The 7th Guest, a horror mystery game by Trilobyte Games, and Myst, a science fantasy adventure created by Rand and Robyn Miller, both used pre-rendered 3D images, Full Motion Video clips, and footage of live actors to create stunning environments players could click their way through from a first-person perspective. These two games kickstarted a whole sub-genre of first-person puzzle adventures such as Douglas Adam's Starship Titanic and inspired old-school adventure game developers like LucasArts to experiment with 3D assets in games such as Grim Fandango.

The Fall & Ongoing Revival Of Point-and-Click Adventures

Unavowed Nintendo Switch Bathroom Exorcism

As video games with real-time 3D graphics grew more and more sophisticated, the popularity of 2D third-person puzzle adventures and pre-rendered 3D games like those of the Myst series waned, to the point that some commentators at the start of the 21st century claimed point-and-click adventure games were doomed to go extinct. Instead, the point-and-click adventure genre wound up surviving and even reviving in the 2010s thanks to the efforts of adventure game fans and developers still interested in exploring the medium.

As LucasArts transitioned away from point-and-click adventures, former alumni from the company formed independent studios that kept the genre alive. Double Fine, founded by Tim Schafer, released re-mastered versions of LucasArt classics like Day Of The Tentacle, along with original adventure games such as Broken Age. Telltale Games created sequels to the Monkey Island and Sam & Max franchises, while also cooking up whole libraries of branching-narrative story games adapted from franchises such as The Walking Dead, Borderlands, and Minecraft. Other modern adventure game developers include Wadjet Eye Games, makers of the Blackwell series and the urban fantasy-themed Unavowed, and Tequila Works, creators of the murder mystery masquerade game The Sexy Brutale.

The Future Of Point-and-Click Adventure Games Is Looking Bright

Myst First Location

The point-and-click adventure genre's resurgence in popularity can be credited to several factors. First, gamers nostalgic for adventures they played in the 1980s and 1990s eagerly gobbled up the sequels, remasters, and remakes of classics such as the Monkey Island games. Second, Kickstarter and other crowd-funding platforms made it easier for developers of point-and-click adventures to fund their niche titles. Third, modern smartphones and tablets with touch screens are gaming platforms well-suited to the interfaces of point-and-click adventures, letting players literally reach out and poke at the objects and characters in the game.

Far from dying out, point-and-click adventure games are now a firm pillar of the gaming industry, a genre for players who are interested in narratives of mystery and challenges overcome through wits and logic rather than violence and reflexes. Indeed, as virtual reality headsets become more accessible, the genre may even undergo a new evolution, as the newest VR remake of Myst seems to foreshadow.

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Source: Adventure Gamers