Adventure Gamers - Forums

zane - 04 August 2017 04:12 PM

I wouldnt use the word dead. We continue to get very nice gems here and there. But the market share that the genre symbolized is not what it was and probably never will be. In part because the video game market is much much larger now.
So youve got a game like the KQ revival.. everyone talked about it. People on my social media who arent gamers talked about it. It got celebrity mentions and headlines. The first episode rolls out and its *beautiful* with top notch visuals, voices and design. It was reminiscent of 90s productions. And it commercially was not successful. Debatably episodes after that took some hits in quality. It made the case easily that this is a different era.
But the genre is not dead.. only different. And finds itself into many commercial borderline-action releases, and tell-tale-likes, with smaller budget classic-like releases popping up here and there. For example i am confident mage’s initiation will release this year. That is sure to be another treat like thimbleweed.

This about sums up where I am with things.

The genre is certainly not as dead as it was in the 2000s.  The explosion of the indie gaming scene and democratisation of publishing via Steam and other platforms has really given the genre a chance to carve out its own niche.

Back when physical retail was your only option, classic adventure gaming just got completely pushed out in the battle for shelf space.  Not only that but even in the late 90s the rapid advances in graphical technology at the time meant that publishers wouldn’t even touch an adventure game unless it was in 3D - not always the best format for the genre (as anyone who has played Escape From Monkey Island can attest). Now designers can focus on the best format for their game, be it 2D or 3D and usually find a market.

Agree,genre is resurrected.

hot take: adventure games have been the subject of a perpetual Weekend at Bernie’s-style caper for the past fifteen years.

Where does the purist stand on ascii graphics? Acceptable, tolerable or a step on the slippery slope to heresy?

The genre is always evolving, I myself like the variety we are getting today, classic point and click, FMV, interactive movie, VR, etc. Sure, indies are our bread and butter today, but they are innovative and different.

In the golden era of point and click adventure games, they made a lot of them and I myself have enough of them to last a lifetime and their graphics are simply beautiful.to behold, so I will enjoy playing all of them in my collection that are waiting to be played.

So, the adventure game genre is not dead and never will be in my humble opinion. When DS adventure games ruled the shelves at GameStop there were some point and click PC conversations in the mix. I bought and played them, some of them were simply amazing.

I don’t know.. but I can’t really think of any example of ascii art adventure games (outside of the homebrew ZZT worlds), let alone games from that particular time, though it seems a natural transition from text only to graphics.

Most of the 80s ascii stuff (as I remember) is RPG/rogue-like. Adventure games at that time were text with graphics, or graphics with text, without blurring that line.

edit: I found this game called SLEUTH, from 83/84! Pretty cool, but also a seems like a rarity.

I might do an ascii art adventure game at some point. I’m currently writing a text adventure, I’ll see how that works out.

I remember loads of ASCII graphics from Usenet posts and documents, sometimes real art too. Not from games.

Is this the Sleuth game you were talking about, VP? Doesn’t look like ASCII to me. But if it is, Bureaucracy also used ASCII graphics.

I see char 2, char 32, char 219 and char 196!

I suppose the depiction of the boysenberry interface in Bureaucracy, rather than a text description of said interface, is a form of ascii design. 

@Luhr: who knows! I’ll certainly share the result on this forum.

Vegetable Party - 02 October 2021 09:59 AM

I see char 2, char 32, char 219 and char 196!

You see two invisible characters and two extended ASCII characters. In my memory (yes, I may be wrong) ASCII art confined itself to the well-known 128 characters. But of course the Sleuth graphics aren’t art.

I suppose the depiction of the boysenberry interface in Bureaucracy, rather than a text description of said interface, is a form of ascii design. 

There’s no supposing about it.