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Adventures with RPG like skills & levelling

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Hey all. Just really out of personal curiosity I am trying to think of adventure games that have some sort of RPG like skills and/or levelling system. So far I have:

The Council
Disco Elysium
Call of Cthulhu
Unavowed

To try and explain a bit further what I am interested in...
‘Adventure games’ - a very broad definition obviously. If it was only traditional P’n'C then there wouldn’t be any. Essentially if this site might be interested in it I’m happy to count it.
‘Skills’ - the top three above all have literal skill trees with assignable points. Unavowed has companions you can select who have different skills which affect what you can and can’t do in the game.
‘levelling system’ Either that there is a ‘character creation’ at the beginning where you assign points or - more importantly - skills increase or ‘level up’ during the game based on either manually adding points, or continued use.

What I am not so interested in:
‘Classes’ just for fighting/combat - that’s why I haven’t mentioned the QFG series above.
Just fighting - I know you can play the ‘fists’ route with Indie and many other AG’s let you *Use gun on badguy* or similar. That doth not an RPG-like AG make for me.

What I am ambivalent about:
Other RPG like stuff - unavowed has a party system which is very RPG like, but the bit that really interests me is that by choosing a party you choose skills (i.e. fire-mage & Ghost talking guy) which affect the gameplay. The fact you choose a party on its own is much less interesting to me.

I’m sure there are games I haven’t thought of so far and there are probably other games I just don’t know of - can you help me good people of the AG forums?

Thanks all.

     

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*sees Disco Elysium and Unavowed already mentioned*

Yeah, I got nothing. Meh

     

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Maniac Mansion? It’s got the same “pick your party and solve different puzzles” mechanic as Unavowed, just for the whole game instead of on a mission-by-mission basis.

     
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I’ve only viewed some videos of it, but maybe Shannara?

     

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Daughter of Serpents is really the granddaddy of that small genre, and you ought to play it if you’re curious. It’s an interesting experience. I wrote briefly about it years ago (which generated no interest whatsoever, unfortunately).

I wish Dave Gilbert had played it; that might have prevented him from making the exact same mistakes a quarter of a century later.

(Also, I think you’re selling the QfG games short when you say your class and skills only matter for fighting. Lots of alternate puzzle solutions and optional sidequests are affected by them.)

     
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Grundislav - 18 August 2020 02:43 PM

Maniac Mansion? It’s got the same “pick your party and solve different puzzles” mechanic as Unavowed, just for the whole game instead of on a mission-by-mission basis.

Good point on the party system front, thank you.

Lady Kestrel - 18 August 2020 05:36 PM

I’ve only viewed some videos of it, but maybe Shannara?

I haven’t heard of that, will check it out, thanks!

Kurufinwe - 18 August 2020 05:51 PM

Daughter of Serpents is really the granddaddy of that small genre, and you ought to play it if you’re curious. It’s an interesting experience. I wrote briefly about it years ago (which generated no interest whatsoever, unfortunately).

Hmmm, never heard of that either, will definitely have a look.

Kurufinwe - 18 August 2020 05:51 PM

(Also, I think you’re selling the QfG games short when you say your class and skills only matter for fighting. Lots of alternate puzzle solutions and optional sidequests are affected by them.)

That’s a fair comment I was pretty reductive. I suppose that I am thinking about games without (much) combat at all but I could have put that better. Smile

     

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Just for completionism’s sake, Bureau 13 is along the same lines as Unavowed. Pick a party, choose from the thief, the vampire, the mech, etc. No fighting that I can recall. Based on a pen & paper RPG I believe. It’s not a very good game.

     
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Thinking about it more I guess Whispers of a machine fits the bill with the personality traits and then the ‘enhancements’ which sort of level up through the game.

     

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Beyond Zork had this also, it added to the adventure actually:

Heart

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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That’s an interesting question - if we take “levelling” and manually assigning points during the game into consideration, I can hardly think of a proper adventure game, even a hybrid, because all fall into the RPG category. And there’s nothing wrong with it - RPG protagonists are what “we made them to be”, and adventure games character traits and skills usually grow with the story that you’re pushing forward via exploration/solving puzzles etc., not by your micromanagement. We get to follow and love George Stobbart, Kate Walker… for what they are, and how they change during the course of the game. Stopping at some point to assign “more charm” or “stamina” to them would kill the joy of it. Paradoxically, less manual skill assignment there is, the more you’re attached to the character. When you’re playing a RPG game, and leading a character with all the levelling and skill management (even him/her named as yourself!) it IS you! You already love (hopefully) yourself, there’s no big news about it. Playing an adventure game is like connecting to a movie hero - it’s not you, but you’re relating to it.

That said, I still haven’t looked into recentish The Mage’s Initiation, but it definitely falls into adventure first/RPG second hybrid.

The old-school Dragon Lore series by Cryo was real eye-candy for the time, but also original and highly hybrid compared to their later offerings.

Even looking at this screenshot from Dragon Lore 2, it’s certain that you need to take care of things like where and when you’ll character sleep, food management etc.

There’s also Waxworks (1992), possibly inspired by not-shabby-at-all earlier movie Waxwork, which has plethora of RPG elements, like XP points, health management and psychic powers. The interesting thing is that team behind it went on to create Simon the Sorcerer series.

     

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Below the Root came close to this formula as early as 1984. A platform adventure where your choice of character really matters since the way you communicate with the gameworld depends on your age, gender and race. Characters also have a number of spirit skills such as mind/emotions reading and telekinesis you learn and perfect through skill points. You also have to watch your stamina, eat and rest like in your basic RPG. But while you explore the world by jumping and flying from branch to branch (most of the game takes place in the tree world), violence is against the game’s pacifistic nature and you will get eventually stuck if you try fighting someone. So basically you use skills to solve puzzles and move further. I wish it was remade today or get a spiritual successor, it was an epic and highly original game ahead of its time.

     

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TimovieMan - 18 August 2020 02:39 PM

*sees Disco Elysium and Unavowed already mentioned*

Yeah, I got nothing. Meh

my thoughts exactly tbh. haha

     

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