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do traditional adventures (2D) become a rarity

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SirDave - 26 May 2017 12:19 AM

Okay, you posted a ‘big’ list of 2D traditional games, but, apparently, only about 25% of them would be good. (I would guess that it is even less than 25%.) So the list of good 2D traditional games is not so ‘big’. I think it can be assumed that Advie meant good traditional 2D games. Why would anyone be interested in bad games?

You do realize the same applies to 3D games? Most of them aren’t good either. I think Advie is looking at all these non-traditional games come out and thinking the genre is being swallowed up. That isn’t the case.

     
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four years ago this was my statement, hope no one challenging me no more for my oversight of the future matters for this genre.

     
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I don’t know if traditional adventures are becoming rare. The genre is changing, that’s certainly true. But I’ve still played a few good ones this year: The White Door - Creaks - There Is No Game - Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice. And then there’s Virtaverse, which I abandoned because I got bored, but other people liked it a lot. And some 1st-person ones got good reviews too, like Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil.

PS: I also played Void Breach, a retro adventure. The atmosphere and gameplay of the classics is quite good. The story didn’t make much sense to me though.

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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We still get a very few AAA games, I love those when they come out. Many sell well.

The indie scene is amazing. I play those all the time. Most are in 2D too. Kathy Rain is my fave of these.

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

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Advie - 24 May 2017 12:45 AM

talk percentage, not listing… are they above 50%, 2017?

Looking at percentage alone without context wont answer whether or not 2D adventures are becoming a “rarity.” Due to the indie scene there’s way more games being made than ever. So it’s entirely possible that 2D/retro/classic/traditional adventures are a smaller piece of the overall percentage, but due to the massive number of games being produced that smaller percentage still amounts to a lot of games. Far from “becoming rare.”

Just this year there was Luna: The Shadow Dust, Zniw Adventure, VirtuaVerse, The Blind Prohpet, Dude? Where’s My Beer, When The Past Was Around, The Girl of Glass and Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Die Twice. You could throw Beautiful Desolation in there too since it’s graphical style is comparable to Sanitarium.

Im sure I’m missing some, too. These are just the ones I was personally paying attention too.

     
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PlanetX - 13 November 2020 01:32 PM
Advie - 24 May 2017 12:45 AM

talk percentage, not listing… are they above 50%, 2017?

Looking at percentage alone without context wont answer whether or not 2D adventures are becoming a “rarity.”

Very true.
In the early days the number was close to 0% simply because there was no technology to run 2D adventures. Coincidentally I have just last week discovered hundreds of old text adventures that I didn’t even knew existed, so going through that is very interesting.

When point-and-clicks and all that happened, the share of 2D games was probably dominant at one point, but even after that just looking at percentage is irrelevant, because again there are games which weren’t possibly earlier, like all that 3D and later VR stuff.

It’s better to count how many 2D games are being released per year, and in that, there are probably more than ever. Of course quality of those can be argued, but that can be argued with older games as well.

PlanetX - 13 November 2020 01:32 PM

Due to the indie scene there’s way more games being made than ever. So it’s entirely possible that 2D/retro/classic/traditional adventures are a smaller piece of the overall percentage, but due to the massive number of games being produced that smaller percentage still amounts to a lot of games. Far from “becoming rare.”

Indeed.
Browsing itch.io catalogue with adventure and 2D tags reveals 11,881 games! Gasp
http://itch.io/games/genre-adventure/tag-2d

Even if 99% of those is wrongly tagged or just otherwise unplayable garbage, there are still over 100 games to play through there.

I, again coincidentally, went through this month games which will be released soon or which I have somehow missed, and my wishlist grew from less than 600 games to over 800.
Obviously not all those are 2D, some might argue whether all of those are even adventures, like Shenmue III, but there are a good number of traditional 2D point-and-clicks there too.

The problem is that individual gamers and gaming media can’t keep up with all that, not even adventure game sites with all releases, so many games go unnoticed.

     

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PlanetX - 13 November 2020 01:32 PM
Advie - 24 May 2017 12:45 AM

talk percentage, not listing… are they above 50%, 2017?

Looking at percentage alone without context wont answer whether or not 2D adventures are becoming a “rarity.” Due to the indie scene there’s way more games being made than ever. So it’s entirely possible that 2D/retro/classic/traditional adventures are a smaller piece of the overall percentage, but due to the massive number of games being produced that smaller percentage still amounts to a lot of games. Far from “becoming rare.”

Just this year there was Luna: The Shadow Dust, Zniw Adventure, VirtuaVerse, The Blind Prohpet, Dude? Where’s My Beer, When The Past Was Around, The Girl of Glass and Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Die Twice. You could throw Beautiful Desolation in there too since it’s graphical style is comparable to Sanitarium.

Im sure I’m missing some, too. These are just the ones I was personally paying attention too.

Yes, and I have more than a hundred adventure games on my personal release list that have been announced for either 2021 or 2022. Some may even be in development until 2023 before we can play them. Most of them are 2D. There are rather few 3D adventure games among them. What comes after that? Who knows. But at least for the next couple of years the indie game developers have us all set. And I’m going to enjoy this as long as it lasts.

     
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GateKeeper - 13 November 2020 02:38 PM

Indeed.
Browsing itch.io catalogue with adventure and 2D tags reveals 11,881 games! Gasp

Wow. It’s hard to see arguments of any type of game being a rarity when there are more than anyone can play in a lifetime.

It’s even harder to see this being a bad thing, since no one presumably wants to sit on their a** playing every single game of one type out there.

     
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Rare (definition): (of a thing) not found in large numbers and so of interest or value

so how about the other part of the thread title; traditional ? did any even browse those Alibaba’s 11,881 treasure of games to discover what they are really about and how they tagged ‘adventures’ the way it is with the new millennials/diverse definition of the word.


i spent half an hour browsing them, and the 1st-page (alone) of 28 ‘2d’adevntures content was; side-scrolling/battle themed AG(s) - RPGs -atmospheric scroller - Puzzler(s) - narrative/Story driven platformer(s) - Combat/shooter side scrolling etc, and so on.

 

     
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Advie - 14 November 2020 12:59 AM

so how about the other part of the thread title; traditional ? did any even browse those Alibaba’s 11,881 treasure of games to discover what they are really about and how they tagged ‘adventures’ the way it is with the new millennials/diverse definition of the word.

i spent half an hour browsing them, and the 1st-page (alone) of 28 ‘2d’adevntures content was; side-scrolling/battle themed AG(s) - RPGs -atmospheric scroller - Puzzler(s) - narrative/Story driven platformer(s) - Combat/shooter side scrolling etc, and so on.

It has nothing to do with millennials.

Adventures with combat or RPG have a longer history than point-and-clicks, so maybe you should redefine your thread title, or at least use another word instead of traditional.

Even though point-and-clicks have been around for decades, once upon a time they were the new kind of games, challenging what used to be called adventures back then.

But OK, let’s change the definition here to mean point-and-clicks only.
There are still 617 games which show up. Considerably less, of course, but still very much to choose from.

http://itch.io/games/genre-adventure/tag-2d/tag-point-and-click

 

     
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I went to the AdventureGamers “Discover Adventure Games” page and put in 3rd person with 2D or 2.5D and there were 864 games. If you go to the last pages, a LOT of those are 2020 or 2021 releases. Games I never heard of, and too many for me to even have time to play. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about a decline.

Advie, how many of those 2020 traditional point and clicks have you played? I’m genuinely curious.

     
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A wishlist of 800 games? That ghasts my flabbers. My own wishlist looks more like 800 minus the 00s.

PlanetX - 13 November 2020 01:32 PM

Just this year there was [...] and Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Die Twice.

Great typo! Smile

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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Karlok - 14 November 2020 05:10 AM

A wishlist of 800 games? That ghasts my flabbers.

Well, I was trying to remember how many there were when replying, and actually I got that a bit wrong. The exact number is 871.  Wink

That doesn’t include itch.io indies collection, which is for indies that most likely won’t be released elsewhere. Currently I have 239 games listed there. So no matter how you count that, there are over 1,000 games waiting to be played.

None of this includes those hundreds of text adventures that I just discovered, so there’s plenty of new (to me, anyway) games to go through in the future!


But back to that traditional game thing, I quickly checked what kind of stuff I have wishlisted. There are some very old style games there. To give a few examples:

Cascadia Quest is like an old Sierra game, with parser input and all that.

Framing Dawes is a randomly picked 2D adventure from many similar games.

Orbis Fugae, I recall talking about this game before, maybe it was another thread or even another forum altogether, who knows…

Monorail Stories, I don’t know if this is traditional or not, but I love the graphics and the concept, really wanna play this one!

Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure, another one which seems absolutely brilliant.

Slender Threads, from Blyts, probably will be good.

And so on. I could list a long list of games here, but I guess the point has already been made.


I also strongly recommend reading adventure game sites in other languages, it is possible to find new games there which are not mentioned elsewhere. To give an example:
The Last Day of Adolf, at least technically a very traditional looking game, even if somewhat controversial when it comes to subject matter.

This game is not listed on AdventureGamers, GameBoomers, Pagoda, Wikipedia, Mobygames, and so on, but yet it exists. I learned about this game from a German site of all places, which is very ironic not only considering the subject matter, but also the fact that it’s forbidden and geoblocked in Germany.

So there are lots of games out there, if one is actively looking for them.

     
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there is some great shit at the PnC link you have added up there GK, really some impressive and great looking AGs, i am downloading a couple of them now, this is really promising.

     
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Thanks for the links above. Saw some games that weren’t on my wishlist that looked interesting.

Obviously we haven’t got a traditional 2D point and click adventure game in a long time from a major studio. That’s partly from a console-first design choice and adventure games do not well which makes them hard to greenlight even with a reduced budget. I think our only hope for a traditional 2D point and click adventure game from a major studio lies with Doublefine. Since they are now an Xbox first party studio, I think that as XBox continues to push game pass subscriptions they will need to release games with smaller scope to keep people subscribed. I’m hoping that will translate into a larger variety of titles on Game Pass with a Doublefine 2D point and click adventure game being one.

Outside of them, which non-indie studio would make a traditional 2D point and click adventure game? Hard to imagine any.

Now indies on the other hand have been doing a great job at filling the void. This year was great with There is No Game, VirtuaVerse, Urban Witch Story and Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice.

Other 2D traditional point and click adventure games released this year and rated 4 or more stars on the site include Creaks, Lancelot’s Hangover, Procession to Calvary and Shapik: The Moon Quest.

So that’s around 8 good to great traditional games released this year. There were of course some other good non-traditional games that are close like Lair of the Clockwork God and Röki released as well. There’s likely to be a couple more highly-rated traditional games yet to be released or reviewed like Imposter Factory so rounding up would make at least 12 great traditional point and click adventure games corresponding to at least one a month, which is likely an even higher rate than we ever had during the golden age. So they are definitely not a rarity.

2021 looks to continue delivering great games to add to what GateKeeper posted check out these upcoming games:

Strangeland - next Wadjet Eye published game

Incantamentum - next Cloak and Dagger game

The Darkside Detective - A Fumble in the Dark - no date, but will release next year

I have lots more in my wishlist, but these are ones close to release.

     

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