Adventure Gamers - Forums

These are games which are basically adventures but have one or two gameplay elements which make you say “almost…but not quite”. It definitely should not be a combat-heavy game or RPG, but considering many adventurers enjoy QFG, Alone in the Dark and Dreamfall if there’s a good chance we might like it - then list it!

So go ahead and list your games. The most important thing is to include what makes it a “not-quite” adventure - combat, action, lack of story or too many RPG elements.

I’ll start with a few obvious ones:
Anachronox
An epic space adventure with great dialogue and jokes. There is a small amount of turn-based combat, but on easy mode it’s incredibly simple and you can’t lose. If you play on easy it’s basically an exploration adventure with combat that plays itself.
Dr. Brain 1 and 2 (Castle and Island)
Strictly I suppose these are puzzle games but more story-focused than the later Dr. Brain games (think Puzzle Agent for kids). I’m not 100% sure why they didn’t make the AG cut, not enough story perhaps? Still plenty for adventurers to enjoy, especially Sierra fans.

Edit: Oh, and try not to list games you thought were bad. The point of the thread is to recommend games slightly outside the genre for others to enjoy, not punish them!

Silent Hill 2
Very well known game, It’s a horror game that you can set it up to easy combat and hard puzzles to make it a more adventurous experience of the amazing setting and story (with some twisted puzzles)

Tearaway
Puzzle-platformer, incredibly charming that makes great use of the Vita capacities. The platform elements are mostly very easy and the game keeps throwing great gameplay ideas.

Deadly Premonition
Action/adventure horror game. You can’t really escape the awful combat in this one, but if you can stomach it you can experience one of the most original games out there. The setting, characters should be in an adventure game.

Psychonatus
I don’t think this one really needs an explanation. Milkman conspiracy chapter…

Luigi’s Mansion 2
Ghost-hunting game, some action elements, not very hard, and some adventure elements, most of the game consists of solving environmental puzzles to catch the ghosts. It doesn’t have much of a story but it’s pretty fun.

And now an oldie
The Lost Vikings
Blizzard game that you control 3 vikings in a sci-fi settingthat have to work together to solve the various puzzles that keep showing up. Crazy story. It’s free on battle.net now.

The Swapper
To be honest I’m not sure why it’s not considered an AG. It’s a puzzle platformer that requires no reflexes, with small, self-contained puzzle rooms and easy navigation between them using a system of teleporters. It has a decent plot and even two endings, so to speak.
It’s almost Braid quality, missing only the extra oomph of a meta layer.

Folklore PS3

There are heavy adventure sections with lots of talking and finding village past.
The fighting, soul capturing sections are more about finding the right folk for enemy.
Absolute must for any AG fan, outstanding story , as good as Dreamfall if not better.

Killer7

Surreal masterpiece by suda51, story that not a single AG can beat. Presentaion like no other.
Gameplay is unconventional shooting and there are many puzzles to solve.
Lots of talking , as well as heavy visual narrative.

Skyrim

I finished it at level 6 on easy diffculty, keep exploring without much fuss.

Shenmue

Like LA noire shooting sections, brawling sections are 10 to 15%, rest are QTEs and mingames in otherwise exploration heavy game.

I think there was similar thread in which i mentioned Planescape torment and Rule of Rose.
New Shadowrunreturns is basically adventure most of the time, i will highly recommend it, infact the actual turnbased stuff starts 1 hour into the game. Story/text heavy game.

Dark Souls.  And its sequel. They really scratch the itch for big games that reward careful exploration, something that adventure games used to be all about.  Not at all an “adventure game” but very appealing and rewarding if you can take the time to learn the combat and the enemy patterns.

I’ll second vampire bloodlines.. the exploration and investigating definitely gives it an adventure feel… and it also happens to be an excellent game. I’d also suggest okami, which is a zelda-style game, but it is particularly beautiful and has creative puzzle solving.
Another is Catherine for consoles. It very much has an atmosphere almost like a modern noir game.. but the core of the gameplay completely revolves around this weird tetris like puzzle gaming… and then you have adventure-like sequences in between rounds.

Lambonius - 21 May 2014 10:07 PM

Dark Souls.  And its sequel. They really scratch the itch for big games that reward careful exploration, something that adventure games used to be all about.  Not at all an “adventure game” but very appealing and rewarding if you can take the time to learn the combat and the enemy patterns.

Did you play it?
Glad to see someone here who actually played this series.
Having said that i reckon this series is not at all close to adventure.

Without good gameplay skills , one can hardly clear the first 10% of the game,
basically deadlock.

And fighting constitutes majority of the game.

Careful exploration yes, but if there is onehit kill guy waiting to ambush you,
it destroys any reward, reward is equal to your skill to actually overcome
enemies first , locations later.

This is going to be really far out there, but I’ve found that the locked room mysteries of John Dickson Carr feel more adventure-gamey to me than a lot of adventure games.

Now, most detective stories are not fundamentally much like adventure games in general. Even when they play fair with their clues (and many don’t), it’s often more important to draw timetables or check statements against each other than it is to visualize an environment, mentally explore it, and imagine all the possible tricks that could be done. In addition, many rely on obscure details or bits of science. Agatha Christie worked in a pharmacy, and to solve The Mysterious Affair at Styles without peeking, the reader would need a similar background. But Carr generally doesn’t go that route.

But Carr writes adventure games.

Carr’s books have dated worse than Christie in their characterization and attitudes, and have fewer sneaky false-solution twists, but never mind that. The reasons I think of them as essentially non-interactive adventure games are:

1) All clues are given in the story before the culprit is announced. Furthermore, Carr is not a fan of the “tiny easily-forgotten detail/contradiction/suspect” trick - he does not, in the four novels of his I’ve read, pull the equivalent of pixel-hunting.

2) He describes his environments and the objects in them very carefully, and often the “trick” the murderer used turns out to be an adventure game maneuver or series of adventure game maneuvers. Creative use of objects, etc.

3) Rather than rely on a single puzzle with multiple false solutions, as Agatha Christie often does, Carr tends to fill a novel to the brim with puzzles. Often there will be more than one impossible murder, and in at least one of his novels, The Problem of the Green Capsule, he even poses a LIST of “environmental puzzles” in the form of contradictions between the reports of three witnesses. All can be resolved by imagining yourself in their shoes and thinking creatively. Visualization is key.

4) The puzzles are usually somewhat contrived, and the author makes no secret of it. Psychological plausibility is not regarded as being all that important compared to the puzzles. One character even announces that they are going to “test the observational skill” of other characters by staging a puzzle.

5) The solutions are almost always quite fair, though one of the ones I read stretched scientific plausibility to the limit.

Expect a certain amount of dated stereotyping, but less than in The Dagger of Amon Ra. If you read one of these novels while taking notes, then make guesses as you go, you can consider it a (very tough) adventure game with no feedback.

I’ve read:

* The Problem of the Green Capsule (high puzzle density, one crime is a little arbitrary in its motive. The closest of his novels to an adventure game.)

* He Who Whispers (One very elegant solution, one okay solution, very fair play. One of the murders in it is easily his simplest to solve, so this is a good one to start on. Characters unusually unlikeable even for Carr, though. Puzzle density not very high, but quite atmospheric.)

* The Plague Court Murders (Solution is extremely elaborate, and one part of it seems scientifically impossible or at least unlikely. Fantastic atmosphere.)

* The Judas Window (Best, most tense writing. Great court scenes. Puzzle solution is not too complicated at heart, but very, very nice.)

I’m in the middle of The Four False Weapons now, which also seems to have adventure-gamey elements.

nomadsoul - 22 May 2014 12:57 AM

Did you play it?
Glad to see someone here who actually played this series.
Having said that i reckon this series is not at all close to adventure.

Without good gameplay skills , one can hardly clear the first 10% of the game,
basically deadlock.

And fighting constitutes majority of the game.

Careful exploration yes, but if there is onehit kill guy waiting to ambush you,
it destroys any reward, reward is equal to your skill to actually overcome
enemies first , locations later.

Yes—the first is probably my favorite game of this last console generation.  Or at least, it was the one that sucked me in and kept me going back for repeated playthroughs for the longest amount of time.  I just started the second one about a week ago, but I’ve been swamped with work and haven’t had much time to devote to it lately.  They remind me a bit of contemporary Rogue-likes—at least with the first playthrough, the sense of slow careful exploration and constantly delving deeper into the world is really palpable, and unparalleled in other contemporary games.  Definitely not adventure games (I acknowledged that, I believe) but for me they do bring me back to that same feeling of the joy of discovery that I remember getting with games like King’s Quest when I was a kid.  You definitely need to have the patience to learn the combat system and enemy patterns though, no question.  It’s not for everyone.

Lambonius - 22 May 2014 02:11 AM

Yes—the first is probably my favorite game of this last console generation.  Or at least, it was the one that sucked me in and kept me going back for repeated playthroughs for the longest amount of time.  I just started the second one about a week ago, but I’ve been swamped with work and haven’t had much time to devote to it lately.  They remind me a bit of contemporary Rogue-likes—at least with the first playthrough, the sense of slow careful exploration and constantly delving deeper into the world is really palpable, and unparalleled in other contemporary games.  Definitely not adventure games (I acknowledged that, I believe) but for me they do bring me back to that same feeling of the joy of discovery that I remember getting with games like King’s Quest when I was a kid.  You definitely need to have the patience to learn the combat system and enemy patterns though, no question.  It’s not for everyone.

I liked Demon’s souls more than Darksouls. I get your drift, that feeling is
the main draw that made me love this game over others. Not to mention the
satisfaction of overcoming hard balanced fights.
It gave me feeling of more survival, more like survival horrror like RE,
where you have to keep exploring every room to see if there in any safe room,
typewriter so that you could save your game. Same way i looked for bonfires or
check points. The feeling of loosing you health bar, your progress, your souls
and sometimes your 30min progress is horror.

Like this area define it perfectly , these enemies out of dark suddenly on your face charging is just the beginning of nightmare later in that area.

Not new info but Ico and Shadow of the Colossus always need to be in these lists. I think PS2 emulation works great in modern PCs now, so anyone that missed them on PS2/PS3 should give it a try.

Masseffect1 fulfiiled my Space adventure fantasy, with all that galaxy exploration,
detailed planets analysis, find new planetry bodies, and best part was they spent
alot on making planets look different and unique unlike sequels which had none
of that variety.
Those planets are full of exploration, different gravity, land formations ,
texture and detailed skyboxes to set the right feel.
Most of them were empty added to the feeling of real isolated space exploration.
The emptiness was taken as negative and they discarded them in sequels.

No Man’s Sky looks like adventure thats suits this category well.
Cannot wait for it.