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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!"

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

What keeps me invested is nice backgrounds and animations to look at and clever, unexpected funny dialoge and moments

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Been watching your vids since high school, I'm 32 now. You really are a champ and king for your dedication and wit. 😎

10/10 video, thoughtful, precise, and still humorous Great work!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

Learned a lot about both history and game design here! Thank you for making this

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.

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.

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.

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.

2:39 "Kind of an emaciated Charles Atlas". That's the name of a famous body builder, but he wasn't happy with that line, and LucasFilm Games got a cease-and-desist letter, which is why later releases of the game don't have that line. It's neat that it is included here, a bit of trivia to pique our interest. Is this what the kids call a "deep cut"?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Not on word about Ron Gilbert? It is because of him, that we are excited for a new Monkey Island.

Mad props for the Zork screen shot!

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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!

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

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.

As it happens, I'm working on a game that does have elements of a point and click adventure (including a Monkey Island 2-style verb system though with the open/close verbs combined, a lock/unlock verb to avoid inventory hunting, the ability to start dialogue about things in the world not in your inventory as a verb and talking to people in its own separate interface) but the key difference is that it's also an action game with plenty of combat alongside puzzling, and the verb system can be theoretically be used outside of standard puzzling in some cases, which is something I'm keen to explore.

The whole review I was thinking "Wait, isn't he gonna acknowledge...?" And then he did at the very end. Anyhow, my less ambitious in concept, but probably more challenging in execution, idea to shake up the P&C puzzle formula would simply be to allow multiple ways of solving puzzles - ideally moving them as far towards a Pen&Paper RPG in this respect as possible. Many times in traditional adventure games, where you had just one exact solution for each puzzle (at most two slight different ways to tackle one or two over the whole game) I thought "Why couldn't my character just do XY instead?" So instead of saying you need X door-opening points to open door A, you need to either a.) convince a sufficiently strong NPC to open it for you, b.) construct or acquire an item capable of destroying the lock or c.) get a key from a number of possible locations, with each option having a couple of different possible sub-options in the game. That would increase immersion as well as replayability (if different solutions come with different dialogue/comments) and reduce frustration since you no longer get stuck in single-solution chockepoints. Similarly, the story progress could be less of a checklist; i.e. you would not have to solve *all* the puzzles, but could bypass or ignore certain ones.

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.

Never played monkey island but I do remember king's quest. The baby heads growing out of the ground always creeped me out. Then doom happened and everything got covered in blood.

I miss the MacVenture series: Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate. I’d love to play a new one on any system

Wadjet Eye does good stuff. Hope he mentioned it.