The Random Adventure Game News Thread

[Darkozric]

CyberWhale Hey cyberRetard butthurt, explain to us why VN are a subgenre of adventure games.

 

[Darkozric]

No? Then go fuck yourself with a tiny lightsaber.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

CyberWhale Hey cyberRetard butthurt, explain to us why VN are a subgenre of adventure games.

I'm not sure if they share a genre, but they're both definitely members of the same supergenre of non-games that make money by pretending to be games.
Other things you can find in this category include idlers, cookie clicker clones, most autistic sims, etc.,

 

[Darkozric]

non-games

Nice troll-ish answer. Puzzle solving isn't a gameplay element for you?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

non-games

Nice troll-ish answer. Puzzle solving isn't a gameplay element for you?

no

 

[Modron]

While I wasn't looking Innkeeper got a Steam store page:

 

[WallaceChambers]

Visual Novels actually are a subgenre of adventure games

Who said that? Zoomers or twitter retardos?

The entire country where the genre was developed. Even calling them VNs is a western thing that happened due to early 00s marketing, they're just called adventure games 99% of the time in Japan. Not understanding this is actually much more of a Zoomer perspective. Go do any cursory reading into the genre's history and you'll see it clear as day.

Which is also irrelevant to me posting AI, since it's not a VN anyway.

 

[Darkozric]

they're just called adventure games 99% of the time in Japan

I'm supposed to take japs seriously? Japs can call them whatever the fuck they want.

 

[WallaceChambers]

I'm supposed to take japs seriously? Japs can call them whatever the fuck they want.

No you don't have to do anything, but if you're happy to be ignorant then it's dumb to try and correct someone else.

 

[Darkozric]

No you don't have to do anything, but if you're happy to be ignorant then it's dumb to try and correct someone else.

I'm not the one who praising pretentious shit like Norco, but if you're happy to be a coprolagnist I can't stop you, keep posting reading adventures.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

guys, there's no reason to argue
both genres are just awful

 

[Darkozric]

guys, there's no reason to argue
both genres are just awful

I agree, sierra games are idlers clickers. The stuff of legend that only codex can provide.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Visual Novels actually are a subgenre of adventure games

Who said that? Zoomers or twitter retardos?

The entire country where the genre was developed. Even calling them VNs is a western thing that happened due to early 00s marketing, they're just called adventure games 99% of the time in Japan. Not understanding this is actually much more of a Zoomer perspective. Go do any cursory reading into the genre's history and you'll see it clear as day.

Which is also irrelevant to me posting AI, since it's not a VN anyway.

Pretty sure that it isn't a western thing considering even the Japanese call some of them novels.

 

[WallaceChambers]

Pretty sure that it isn't a western thing considering even the Japanese call some of them novels.

Calling every type of Japanese adventure game a VN and specifically using the term VN is almost exclusively western, yes. In Japan, the term Visual Novel is primarily a marketing label associated with a specific series of games by Leaf, which is itself a derivation of Chunsoft's "Sound Novel" branding. Outside of a few companies specifically invoking Leaf's branding, like Type-Moon, almost no one uses the term Visual Novel. 99% of the time they're just called Adventure games and when they're specified from other types of adventures they'll typically be called Novel Games or Text Adventures.

Here's a quote from Kotaro Uchikoshi (creator of the Zero Escape series and AI) touching on this from "The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers:"

JS: How would you define the difference between adventure games and visual novels?
KU: First of all, the visual novel term does not really represent the genre in Japan. This is accepted as the genre and regarded as the genre outside of Japan, overseas. In Japan people basically think
about it as… We have the adventure game, we have the sound novel, and we have the bishoujo genre. But there is no visual novel genre per say. With me personally, when I made 999, and Virtue’s Last Reward, these are not referred to as visual novels, they’re referred to as actual adventure games. Whereas overseas they’re referred to as visual novels. But in Japan, we don’t really make that distinction [between visual novels and adventure games].

 

[Jenkem]

non-games

Nice troll-ish answer. Puzzle solving isn't a gameplay element for you?

no

then why were you making fun of owlcat for having shitty puzzles in wotr?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

non-games

Nice troll-ish answer. Puzzle solving isn't a gameplay element for you?

no

then why were you making fun of owlcat for having shitty puzzles in wotr?

Because they were bad even by regular puzzle standards.
I don't want a game inside my game, thanks. Average puzzle lovers are like "ah time to open this door, better solve this completely random and unrelated Hanoi tower puzzle that has no basis for existing"

 

[wishbonetail]

non-games

Nice troll-ish answer. Puzzle solving isn't a gameplay element for you?

no

then why were you making fun of owlcat for having shitty puzzles in wotr?

Because they were bad even by regular puzzle standards.
I don't want a game inside my game, thanks. Average puzzle lovers are like "ah time to open this door, better solve this completely random and unrelated Hanoi tower puzzle that has no basis for existing"

Adventure games is THE best gaming genre. So kindly bug off, thanks.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

non-games

Nice troll-ish answer. Puzzle solving isn't a gameplay element for you?

no

then why were you making fun of owlcat for having shitty puzzles in wotr?

Because they were bad even by regular puzzle standards.
I don't want a game inside my game, thanks. Average puzzle lovers are like "ah time to open this door, better solve this completely random and unrelated Hanoi tower puzzle that has no basis for existing"

Adventure games is THE best gaming genre. So kindly bug off, thanks.

people who like adventure games should be required to solve a captcha before posting because they think random puzzles are good design

 

[Darkozric]

I don't want a game inside my game, thanks.

First you said adventures are non games that pretend to be games, and now you say that you don't want a game inside your game...
Can you and your multiple personalities finally decide?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't want a game inside my game, thanks.

First you said adventures are non games that pretend to be games, and now you say that you don't want a game inside your game...
Can you and your multiple personalities finally decide?

they're not video games
they're games in the same way a crossword puzzle is a game

 

[Modron]

Adventure Jam 2022 had 103 entries and voting doesn't end for another 16 days.
https://itch.io/jam/adventure-jam-2022/entries

There are number of traditional point and click adventures among them
https://powerhoof.itch.io/the-telwynium-book-two
https://georgebroussard.itch.io/stowaway
https://hvavra.itch.io/the-witchs-lullaby
https://the-argonauts.itch.io/oh-my-god
https://marcogiorgini.itch.io/the-mysterious-gear-chest
and more to try out.

 

[Infinitron]

The Digital Antiquarian on Broken Sword: https://www.filfre.net/2022/07/broken-sword-the-shadow-of-the-templars/

For all of its high production values, the game was widely perceived by the gaming press as a second-string entry in a crowded field plagued by flagging enthusiasm. Computer Gaming World‘s review in the United States reads as a more reserved endorsement than the final rating of four stars out of five might imply. “The lengthy conversations often drag on before getting to the point,” wrote the author. If you had told her that Broken Sword — or rather Circle of Blood, as she knew it — would still be seeing sequels published in the second decade after such adventure standard bearers as King’s Quest and Gabriel Knight had been consigned to the videogame history books, she would surely have been shocked to say the least.

Ah, yes, Gabriel Knight… the review refers several times to that other series of adventure games masterminded by Sierra’s Jane Jensen. Even today, Gabriel Knight still seems to be the elephant in the room whenever anyone talks about Broken Sword. And on the surface, there really are a lot of similarities between the two. Both present plots that are, for all their absurdity, extrapolations on real history; both are very interested in inculcating a sense of place in their players; both feature a male protagonist and a female sidekick who develop feelings for one another despite their constant bickering, and whose rapport their audience developed feelings for to such an extent that they encouraged the developers to make the sidekick into a full-fledged co-star. According to one line of argument in adventure-game fandom, Broken Sword is a thinly disguised knock-off of Gabriel Knight. (The first game of Serra’s series was released back in 1993, giving Revolution plenty of time to digest it and copy it.) Many will tell you that the imitation is self-evidently shallower and sillier than its richer inspiration.

But it seems to me that this argument is unfair, or at least incomplete. To begin with, the whole comparison feels more apt if you’ve only read about the games in question than if you’ve actually played them. Leaving aside the fraught and ultimately irrelevant question of influence — for the record, Charles Cecil and others from Revolution do not cite Gabriel Knight as a significant influence — there is a difference in craft that needs to be acknowledged. The Gabriel Knight games are fascinating to me not so much for what they achieve as for what they attempt. They positively scream out for critical clichés about reaches exceeding grasps; they’re desperate to elevate the art of interactive storytelling to some sort of adult respectability, but they never quite figure out how to do that while also being playable, soluble adventure games.

Broken Sword aims lower, yes, but hits its mark perfectly. From beginning to end, it oozes attention to the details of good game design. “We had to be very careful, and so we went through lots of [puzzles], seeing which ones would be fun,” says Charles Cecil. “These drive the story on, providing rewards as the player goes along, so we had to get them right.” One seldom hears similar anecdotes from the people who worked on Sierra’s games.

This, then, is the one aspect of Broken Sword I haven’t yet discussed: it’s a superb example of classic adventure design. Its puzzles are tricky at times, but never unclued, never random, evincing a respect for its player that was too often lost amidst the high concepts of games like Gabriel Knight.

Of course, if you dislike traditional adventure games on principle, Broken Sword will not change your mind. As an almost defiantly traditionalist creation, it resolves none of the fundamental issues with the genre that infuriate so many. The puzzles it sets in front of you seldom have much to do with the mystery you’re supposed to be unraveling. In the midst of attempting to foil a conspiracy of world domination, you’ll expend most of your brainpower on such pressing tasks as luring an ornery goat out of an Irish farmer’s field and scouring a Syrian village for a kebob seller’s lucky toilet brush. (Don’t ask!) Needless to say, most of the solutions George comes up with are, although typical of an adventure game, ridiculous, illegal, and/or immoral in any other than context. The only way to play them is for laughs.

And this, I think, is what Broken Sword understands about the genre that Gabriel Knight does not. The latter’s puzzles are equally ridiculous (and too often less soluble), but the game tries to play it straight, creating cognitive dissonances all over the place. Broken Sword, on the other hand, isn’t afraid to lean into the limitations of its chosen genre and turn them into opportunities — opportunities, that is, to just be funny. Having made that concession, if concession it be, it finds that it can still keep its overarching plot from degenerating into complete absurdity. It’s a pragmatic compromise that works.

I like to think that the wisdom of its approach has been more appreciated in recent years, as even the more hardcore among us have become somewhat less insistent on adventure games as deathless interactive art and more willing to just enjoy them for what they are. Broken Sword may have been old-school even when it was a brand-new game, but it’s no musty artifact today. It remains as charming, colorful, and entertaining as ever, an example of a game whose reach is precisely calibrated to its grasp.

 

[Grauken]

I only read German gaming magazines at the time, but here Broken Sword wasn't perceived as a second-string entry but as one of the best games in the field.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Adventure Jam 2022 had 103 entries and voting doesn't end for another 16 days.
https://itch.io/jam/adventure-jam-2022/entries

There are number of traditional point and click adventures among them
https://powerhoof.itch.io/the-telwynium-book-two
https://georgebroussard.itch.io/stowaway
https://hvavra.itch.io/the-witchs-lullaby
https://the-argonauts.itch.io/oh-my-god
https://marcogiorgini.itch.io/the-mysterious-gear-chest
and more to try out.

Played George's Stoaway and I thought it was incredibly weak, even for something put together in 2 weeks by one guy. At least it was playable from a browser and didn't require a download/installation.

 

[Alex]

CyberWhale Hey cyberRetard butthurt, explain to us why VN are a subgenre of adventure games.

I'm not sure if they share a genre, but they're both definitely members of the same supergenre of non-games that make money by pretending to be games.
Other things you can find in this category include idlers, cookie clicker clones, most autistic sims, etc.,

VNs aren't games (unless they actually have some kind of gameplay added, but not by virtue of being VNs). Adventure games on the other hand are.

None of this Is supposed to say anything about the quality of either VNs or adventures. It is a simple definition issue. Adventure games challenge the player to solve their puzzles. While visual novels are stories that you read and sometimes have a choice on.

From your post, I am guessing you don't like puzzle solving. Which is a pity, since it is very fun. But arguing it isn't a game is a definition mistake.