Adventure Games

From Text to Terrain: How Adventure Games Shaped the Landscape of Gaming

Adventure gaming often comes down to the telling of a story, from the earliest days of text-based adventures like "Colossal Cave Adventure," by the 1970s. Perhaps there is a story that came along: adventure games became among the earliest types to announce using narrative as the primary experience for the player, with exploration and puzzle solving emphasized over fighting or speed. The evolution of adventure games has been from simple text commands to elaborate, visually rich worlds with every detail telling a part of the story. Always has this genre appealed to its players by way of puzzles, twists of plot, and the simple joy of discovery in preparation for the modern game that created so much depth and character.

With the advent of technology, the intricacy and size of adventure games continued to grow. Then came the point-and-click adventure games, further invented in the '80s and '90s, as "Monkey Island" and other series like "The Secret of Monkey Island," which made an adventure that is filled with humor and amazing puzzles. Their storylines were made interactive through the players themselves piecing together their stories through actions and choices. This innovative concept has inspired other games in various genres. The innovations made into the 3D world with "Myst" and later "The Longest Journey" showed the adventure game had fully dipped itself into drawn graphics, where many times the environment itself became the answer to the puzzle.

Twilight of modern-day adventure gaming has witnessed a phoenix-rising-from-ashes scenario in its core concepts. Classic adventure mechanics featured in many games, such as "Life is Strange" or "The Last Guardian," have been fused with action, stealth, or even horror elements to tie the 'story vehicle' closer to the player's activities. Thus, if not for adventuring, they broaden the game by creating a narrative connection between action or stealth or even horror aspects. Adventure games these days very have been into experimenting with advanced storytelling, branching narrative forms, fo