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Adventure games with action sequences? Looking for suggestions…
Hello All, I’ve been thinking about ways in which action sequences could be integrated into a point-and-click adventure game. I haven’t played some of the oldies for awhile, but I do remember BladeRunner, Fate of Atlantis, and Gabriel Knight 2 having some segments which gave me a sense of peril and suspense in some parts. There’s probably many I’ve never played, or heard of. I’m wondering if anyone can recommend any other games that have action-type sequences in them, without straying too far from a point-and-click game?
I’m not so sure I like timed-events (having to react before something bad happens), there is a place for them under the right circumstances, but when I think about timed-events I’m reminded of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, which I thought were way too hard on the player. Of course they were rigged that way to keep you feeding quarters into the machine. Out of curiosity does anyone know of any adventure games that use timed-events, or badly over uses them, I would like to see how they turned out, and know if it frustrated players. I can’t think of any off hand.
I’m envisioning choice-driven scenarios where the player might have to use some strategic planning and calculating, and reading the environment for clues or potential pitfalls, before attempting to do something risky that places them in peril, and might get them killed if they fail.
For example, if you’re faced with having to cross over a chasm, there might be multiple ways to attempt it, but some of the poorer choices would fail.
If any games come to mind I would really appreciate hearing about them, because I think I’d like to try some. Thanks!
The Walking Dead, Final Season. You have to shoot Zombies with a Bow and Arrow. If you miss, you get eaten.
I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.
Alright!
A recent game that did this pretty well: The Hand of Glory. If I remember correctly it even starts with a scene like this. Heads up: the threat is rather heavy on the misogyny.
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller has several scenes like this. I’d definitely check it out for this particular reason.
I still haven’t played Twelve Minutes, but from what I’ve read, there might be something there for you as well.
I’d recommend Don’t Escape: 4 Days to Survive. It’s a working combination of traditional point & click adventure and survival management. The urgency is generally just relatively imminent. Time is an in-game resource that is spent, rather than a driving force. The sense of peril purely relies on immersion. If you disengage and only look at the structure, it becomes a relaxing puzzle game. But there is planning, tension and a looming threat.
This is going to be on my mind for the next couple of days, so I’ll see what I came come up with.
In the meantime, I think the old trope of the possibly lethal cave might be worth checking out. The old AG maze, but there is a threat (death traps/running out of light/etc) and it requires planning, based on hints in the environment/inventory items/notes/etc.
King’s Quest VI has a decent labyrinth, The first Kyrandia game has one that barely functions. Shadow of the Comet has a crypt in this style, but it relies more on arcade-style “action”. There’s also a cave, but that’s just pure arcade insanity.
Out of curiosity does anyone know of any adventure games that use timed-events, or badly over uses them, I would like to see how they turned out, and know if it frustrated players. I can’t think of any off hand.
King’s Quest III has a great way of communicating urgency. It has the timed wizard, which works pretty well. Then there’s the story, that lets you in on the urgency of your situation on a different level.
Chronicles of Innsmouth has a couple of timed action scenes. It’s slightly dysfunctional, but there are elements there worth checking out.
We recently did a community playthrough of Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy. It has both real time action sequences (pressing buttons) and timed AG puzzle scenes where you have to plan for an oncoming confrontation. It’s pretty much all timed, so I didn’t include it in my earlier list, but there is something there that corresponds with what you’re looking for.
People have mentioned the balance gets better in later titles by Quantic Dream.
Hello All, I’ve been thinking about ways in which action sequences could be integrated into a point-and-click adventure game. I haven’t played some of the oldies for awhile, but I do remember BladeRunner, Fate of Atlantis, and Gabriel Knight 2 having some segments which gave me a sense of peril and suspense in some parts. There’s probably many I’ve never played, or heard of. I’m wondering if anyone can recommend any other games that have action-type sequences in them, without straying too far from a point-and-click game?
I think Blade Runner had mostly timed events where you have only 2-3 seconds to act if you wanted to succeed in the situation (of course, you could fail and follow another scenario without dying if that’s what you mean), while Fate of Atlantis featured a rather clumsy, but still true to the fighting genre system. It’s rather hard to reach this “feel of excitement” in adventures without adding some real action.
Interactive fictions are probably more successful in this than graphical adventures due to their turn-based nature: in a critical situation you have plenty of time to think what to do next, but once you wrote something down and it didn’t work, your turn ends and you die. I replayed a couple of sci-fi Gateway games by Legend Entertainment recently (IFs, but with additional interface and graphics which almost makes them graphical adventures), and they have plenty of those moments where you play by ear as you are attacked by a monster, for example. You just stare at it in front of you and think how to avoid or kill it in one-three moves using your environment. It doesn’t feel artificial since turn-based gameplay is natural for those games, and yet it adds a lot of epicness to the gameplay.
In “real-life” graphical adventures this doesn’t usually work the same way, you expect a monster or a mad killer to attack you once you confront them, and if they don’t and just stand there waiting for you to come up with a solution, it feels fake. This seems like a big problem for developers, how to make the final tense and adventure-firendly at the same time. In this regards that wolf mini-game from The Beast Within was pretty smart indeed, mixing turn-based and real-life gameplay.
Ace Attorney games have plenty of those intensive moments (especially during the courtroom trials, of course) that feel absolutely natural, also due to their turn-based gameplay mixed with cross-examinations which you can replay, unexpected plot turns and last-minute “aha!” moments. I’d say they came up with more-or-less perfect adventure formula.
As for some “action” non-action… Well, I can think of several games like Curse of Monkey Island or Strangeland where you are sort of stuck in a time loop as the villain gives you few seconds to look around and then sends you to another location, then again and again, making you go in circles until you come up with the right solution. I’m not a fan of this sort of puzzles tbh, and they are also more-or-less time-based, but at least they don’t kill you and give enough time to think.
The Walking Dead, Final Season. You have to shoot Zombies with a Bow and Arrow. If you miss, you get eaten.
That’s some shitty zombies that die from an arrow hit. Back in my days one had to burn down a zombie completely or rip it apart to destroy.
PC means personal computer
Hello All, I’ve been thinking about ways in which action sequences could be integrated into a point-and-click adventure game. I’m wondering if anyone can recommend any other games that have action-type sequences in them, without straying too far from a point-and-click game?
The Feeble Files has some action sequences.
If you are into freeware games, La Croix Pan is a wonderful (but short, less than half an hour) combination of point-and-click and first person shooter.
There are plenty of other games too, and it really depends on what you consider point-and-click, and what you consider action.
If you go way back to the 80’s, for instance, there are some old 8-bit games which might qualify, assuming you accept joystick for pointing and clicking. But if you mean mouse-driven stuff from the 90’s to the present day there are still lots of games out there that have at least some kind of sequences that use some other control methods than traditional pointing and clicking.
Out of curiosity does anyone know of any adventure games that use timed-events, or badly over uses them, I would like to see how they turned out, and know if it frustrated players. I can’t think of any off hand.
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist is basically a series of hidden timers or timed events with several Sierra deaths. Definitely the worst game that I have played when it comes to timers.
Thanks for all of these suggestions, I’m looking to queue a bunch of adventure games for playing during winter days, and these action elements are something I’m really interested in exploring.
Some friends have recommended some RPG/adventure game type hybrids, I’ve never played any as I’m not crazy about turn-based combat, collecting weapons, building stats and leveling up. I would rather play a straight up graphic adventure or IF game without all that.
I might be alone in saying this, but based on growing up playing classic D&D, I have always thought that PC based RPGs seem too heavily skewed towards hack-and-slash combat, and leveling up, so you can take on more monsters. When I began to play those games on a computer I quickly lost interest, and I always thought graphic adventures and IF more closely resembled tabletop D&D gaming, at least the way we used to play it.
Mostly because fighting monsters was always a complex, messy, elaborate ordeal in tabletop D&D, because if you have multiple players who meet a monster, the DM would have to go through second-by-second attack/reaction scenarios with each player, so a single battle could easily eat up over an hour of time at the table, usually more. It was often preferable to find a way to avoid encountering monsters altogether, which is more adventuresome. Computer RPGs made battles instantaneous, to the point where these types of games seemed to become all about leveling up and combat. And it seemed like there were less and less innovative puzzles and characters in computerized RPGs as they evolved. At least that’s how I always felt about it, rightly or wrongly.
I’m not sure how combat could be implemented in a graphic adventure, without including turn-based RPG elements, or if it even belongs in a point-and-click type game. I think it would be better to have to hide from from a monster, or trick it somehow into doing itself in. Combat was such a time-sucking ordeal in tabletop D&D, the most enjoyable campaigns I remember playing were again more like graphic adventures or IF, where you had to think your way out of a dangerous encounter. They were full of intellectual challenges, tricky death-traps, and devious puzzles, rather than just constant combat and collecting weapons. But they did have non-combat action challenges, where for example you might have to jump over a pit, with a chance of failure. Which brings me back around to action sequences in adventure games.
If anyone cares to share, I wouldn’t mind hearing why others prefer adventure games over other types of games. For me, it’s because they remind me more of playing tabletop RPG games, and the way we used to play them which was more focused on story and puzzles, than anything else I have tried.
i always thought there was no game that implemented action into adventuring better than Machinarium, i remember at the time i thought at the time the game will take on a sub-genre of its own, and many will follow.. but it didnt.
Beyond a Steel, Sky had ‘some’ ideas and tasks from timed action to running, little jumps here and there, there always nothing else you do until done with the section, sadly felt hollow afterall, like a miss or hit, didn’t hold up, really
also Technobalon, but that was good, tho different to action-adventure; mini-games, with a variety of different colorful gameplay; from classic PnC-adventuring to another detective-themed chapter, to another Myst-ian one, esp near the end, the gameplaying differed more and more.
i always thought there was no game that implemented action into adventuring better than Machinarium, i remember at the time i thought at the time the game will take on a sub-genre of its own, and many will follow.. but it didnt.
Oh yes, speaking of Machinarium I just remembered another game with a similar style - Full Pipe. It had a number of fun action/arcade mini-games, like throwing balls into a kangaroo-like creature’s pouch or swinging, neatly interwoven into the surreal game world, and all of them could be played using only left mouse button. Nothing fatal, if you failed, you could return back to the game or try again (but you need to finish them). Great game.
PC means personal computer
Going back a bit, both Dracula: The Last Sanctuary and The Messenger (aka Louvre: The Final Curse) had several timed events, each of which took me at least a few reloads to figure out what I needed to do.
Secrets of the Luxor had many ways to die, but the game was nice enough to place you back to just before you made your mistake.
“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.” -Bill Watterson
If timed sequences qualify as action sequences there are scads of games that have them. Amerzone, my first Sokal game had a timed underwater maze that I hated. I think the Amber roller coaster was timed.
And there is the game that everybody loves to hate, Traitor’s Gate, where the entire game is a timed set of sequences that must be completed in 24 hours. (I had to resort to a WT to get through the sewer maze, or I would never have finished the game.)
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
Wow I would have never thought there were so many games that used timed-events, I thought it was something seldom used and generally frowned upon in adventure games like mazes, thanks for the tips I’m looking forward to playing some of these over the winter!
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist is basically a series of hidden timers or timed events with several Sierra deaths. Definitely the worst game that I have played when it comes to timers.
One of my all-time favorite games. It was the last game they made that would play on a 486 machine. Also one, if not the last game Sierra distributed on floppy disks. I only remember three timed, and/or action sequences. Saving Srini from the hoard of ravenous slugs, the balcony gun battle, and, of course, the sword fight with Penelope that ended the game. Three timed/action sequences would be a lot for any adventure game. But was probably particularly unusual for a game of that era. If you don’t like timed/action sequences in adventures, I can see why you might not have liked FPFP at the time you played it.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
One of my all-time favorite games. It was the last game they made that would play on a 486 machine. Also one, if not the last game Sierra distributed on floppy disks. I only remember three timed, and/or action sequences. Saving Srini from the hoard of ravenous slugs, the balcony gun battle, and, of course, the sword fight with Penelope that ended the game. Three timed/action sequences would be a lot for any adventure game. But was probably particularly unusual for a game of that era. If you don’t like timed/action sequences in adventures, I can see why you might not have liked FPFP at the time you played it.
That’s how I remember the game as well - one timed sequence (made into a whole chapter!) after another mixed with tedious copy protection parts. Just can’t find any redeeming qualities in that game despite it was made by the two very funny guys.
PC means personal computer
That’s how I remember the game as well - one timed sequence (made into a whole chapter!) after another mixed with tedious copy protection parts. Just can’t find any redeeming qualities in that game despite it was made by the two very funny guys.
I disagree with the phrase “tedious copy protection parts.” First there are no “parts.” Just the introduction that requires you to mix the appropriate pharmaceuticals. The solution was in the manual that came with the game. I thought it was a genius way of integrating copy protection into the theme of the game. Of course it would be a bit more difficult if you did not actually purchase the game. It’s the same puzzle as in the baking puzzle in Still Life. Some may have found it tedious. I found it ingenious in the way it served its purpose.
Edit: This conversation is way off the theme of the thread. Sorry. Let’s get back to it.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
I disagree with the phrase “tedious copy protection parts.” First there are no “parts.” Just the introduction that requires you to mix the appropriate pharmaceuticals. The solution was in the manual that came with the game. I thought it was a genius way of integrating copy protection into the theme of the game. Of course it would be a bit more difficult if you did not actually purchase the game.
There were at least two long potion mixing puzzles (I think more), that’s what made them frustrating. It was probably fun designing them, but not all that fun playing, at least for me. Same with timed sequences - there might be few of them, but the way they are introduced (I didn’t even realise I was racing against time during that horse gasses chapter) is weird, they last for too long in the otherwise short game, and as a result there’s hardly any place for story/character development. That’s why I think it’s not a good example of how to integrate action/timed sequences into adventures. Speaking of Sierra, to me a good example would be Conquests of the Longbow: it also had timed and action sequences as well as copyprotection puzzles, but they felt so natural, so varied and were so well embedded into the story that I didn’t mind them at all.
PC means personal computer
There’s a pretty good scene in the first chapter of King’s Quest VII. Valanice walks into what seems to be a temple: it’s dark, but you can some kind of elaborate altar, so you want to check it out. The music intensifies, you hear the shuffling of.. arachnid legs?
There is a timer, but I wouldn’t call it a timed puzzle or an action sequence, it’s more to up the ante and give you the sense that you have to think fast. Once you get to the altar, the game zooms in so you can examine the puzzle. The music and the creature’s vocalizations keep playing in the background, at slightly lower volume. After completing the first step of the puzzle, the camera zooms out and you see the creature struggling for another chance to end you. Then your attention goes back to the puzzle. The point is clear: you’re in danger, don’t take your time.
There are a couple of cool ideas in that game and I also wish Valanice would’ve appeared in more Quests. But regarding this action sequence: I think it’s basic, but done well.
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