Does Maniac Mansion count? (Genuinely asking, it's got a couple effective jumpscares and may be creepy here and there in a YMMV sort of way despite the tongue in cheek tone)
>Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
Yes
>Why they can't make a comeback?
Like all retro genres there are plenty of indie games that do this especially recently, but it won't make a huge return because it's an anachronistic gameplay style. At the time, prerendered backgrounds were the most impressive thing that could be mustered but today we can generate whole open world games. That's how the gaymes industry sees it anyway. It's like why FMV games aren't big anymore, but their influence has been left on the other games
I'll be honest I don't play new games, most of the new shit looks meh to me. I remember a stupid one where the twist was that the character's sister killed herself for being lesbo
man, i remember really wanting to play it back in the day
recently i got it on gog, it was kinda meh honestly
It's hard to keep the tension up in a horror game. the first level in the farm town was the best part of the story and goes downhill from there.
I'm gonna sound weird for this but I felt the silent hill series was like a point and click game in gameplay. Sure you don't actually point and click on shit but the emphasis was on the environment. even the fixed camera angles felt like the point and click screens.
>Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
No. Unfortunately compared to other genres that had their golden eras end in the early 2000s, adventure game's decline came even earlier in the mid 90s with the fmv fad and crude attempts to make early 3d work adventure games.
>Why they can't make a comeback
There are new ones getting made, it's just that it will never be a mainstream genre again, when you can get other genres on your computer, and most of the point and click audience moving towards hidden object games, simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
I've literally witnessed my mother and older sister go from adventure games to hidden object PC games, and then just ending up playing June's Journey every day, it's sad.
Keep in mind I said "most of the audience" (as in the dullards) not "The core audience" which still plays adventure games, including point and clicks
I play HOB games occasionally, but that doesn't stop me from also playing P&C adventure games. I recently played True Fear Forsaken Souls Part 2, and also Secret Files: Tunguska. Maybe it's the fact that the hidden object games are the only non-indie commercial variety of point and click games that didn't devolve into social-slop games like The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us?
They're a relic from a bygone area; these games covered certain appealing presentation and storytelling traits that were not compatible or possible with other types of games during that era.
Also it's shocking nobody has recommended Clock Tower yet.
>Why they can't make a comeback
There are new ones getting made, it's just that it will never be a mainstream genre again, when you can get other genres on your computer, and most of the point and click audience moving towards hidden object games, simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
>when you can get other genres on your computer, and most of the point and click audience moving towards hidden object games, simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
No, it's because they provide more immediate gratification and dopamine boosts. They're also far easier to make so there's a lot more of them to choose from. I would also argue that most of the point and click audience moved away towards regular adventure and horror games, like Visage, Call of Cthulhu (2018), Sherlock Holmes - The Devil's Daughter, and the various Telltale-like games.
>Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
And late 80s, but yes. Great games made right up till the late nineties, even if the decline was evident by 96ish.
>Why they can't make a comeback?
The reason they had a golden age was because major publishers bankrolled them. That business model just isn't as effective with the current tech and expectations. They were popular because they made a lot of money (in PC game terms at least) for a while, but this was before the advent of fully 3D and more interactive environments.
If you want to do a P&C now with a major studio, the question will now always be 'is it playable with a controller?' followed by 'and where is the multiplayer combat so that we can sell customisable clothing to 10 year olds who want to show off to their friends?' Before you know it, it's a 3rd person action adventure.
People still make them in smaller projects, as
>Why can't they make a comeback
Because you're not buying the indie projects that are currently being sold.
[...] >when you can get other genres on your computer, and most of the point and click audience moving towards hidden object games, simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
No, it's because they provide more immediate gratification and dopamine boosts. They're also far easier to make so there's a lot more of them to choose from. I would also argue that most of the point and click audience moved away towards regular adventure and horror games, like Visage, Call of Cthulhu (2018), Sherlock Holmes - The Devil's Daughter, and the various Telltale-like games.
says. There are also loads of projects here, some of which are amateur efforts and some of which are full games: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/ - AGS is also is a useable tool if you're half decent at writing and art and want to try your own.
It's unlikely though unless there's a massive change in the zeitgeist that they'll have the heyday they had in the 90s.
Also - this should go without saying, but if you don't like that people aren't making the games you like, but also pay no money at any point for those games or games like them, decent developers won't make them.
A lot of the success with these kinds of games on PC was also that until the early 90s, PC just wasn't equipped to do fast scrolling action natively, ergo 2D action games on PC were fairly limited in what they could do. As people developed ways to do decent smooth scrolling 2D on these machines, and as the hardware got more capable, AND as the mentioned 3D games really started get rolling (Wolf3D and Ultima Underworld came out 1992), that stuff increasingly uprooted the point & click genre.
Didn't die overnight, in fact many very excellent ones would come out through the mid 90s, and probably because the genre had its established audience already, with games with genuinely high production values and good execution, but it was really starting to fade by the late 90s. For example, Blizzard had put quite a few years into an animated point and click game set in the Warcraft universe, but they finally decided to shitcan the game late in its development because they felt "it was outdated and wouldn't sell."
Even in these sunset days however, you still saw some superb titles, like Grim Fandango.
Much later on, you did actually get some games which carried some of the style of these games, such as A Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead, by Telltale Games. They're not 100% like an old LucasArts or Sierra point & click adventure, and maybe you weren't a big fan yourself, but for a time they were fairly popular.
Telltale games bear a passing resemblance at best to point and click adventures. They're devoid of anything resembling gameplay, and are purely linear stories masquerading as "choices matter!". David Cage games are far closer to actual point and click games, but they have awful stories and a similar level of disrespect for player intelligence, but at least they don't actively taunt you as much with "man if only you did something else..." only to find out there was no other path to begin with.
I also honestly wonder if the whole PC boom, and those scrolling limitations, weren't actually a by-product of NEC's total failure to launch the PC Engine outside of Japan. We're talking about full CD audio (with atrocious RAM limitations, obviously) in 1988 here. For me in the west at least, the first real voice acted game was a solid 5 years later, with DOTT. Had the west had a proper CD console like that so early on, maybe the market would've been a little different.
I will take your word on the Telltale Games, because I can only hazily remember some of the aspects and events from them from back when they were new (when the frick was that, 12 years ago?). I also didn't bother playing them myself, I would just be in the same room while my brother played them, and I'd mostly be playing other games during, or surf the web or working on stuff.
>Had the west had a proper CD console like that so early on, maybe the market would've been a little different.
Might have been somewhat different (more point and clicks on consoles), though the inevitable increasing power of PCs would still dictate heavily. Lots of disc space is very useful but won't allow you to catch up to the 3D games, 5th gen consoles around 1996 and 1997 could run a 1993 3D PC game like Doom, but performance was not the highest, and even with disc media they had to trim a lot from the game because you just can't load as much into memory as on a 1992 era PC.
>Even in these sunset days however, you still saw some superb titles, like Grim Fandango.
Superb game, but also widely touted as the terminal diagnosis of the genre, as famously Lucasarts were now no longer making 'point and clicks' - instead going with a more Resident Evil style control and interaction scheme.
Interesting for me that so much ink was spilled about Tomb Raider killing PnCs, but I didn't really hear many people talking about Resident Evil, which if you play Grim is a clear touch point in playing style (minus the combat of course).
That the recent remaster is so much more playable as a PnC though shows really that's still how they were thinking when they made it. I think with the Monkey Island games following that, they developed the idea of the 3D adventure more fully.
You still though had a couple of games like The Longest Journey, and Syberia that came out after Grim Fandango, they just didn't sell as well as the big multiplat blockbusters that sealed the direction of where the big boys were now going to invest.
>Interesting for me that so much ink was spilled about Tomb Raider killing PnCs
Vidya journos were always kind of harebrained, but it depends on where you were looking.
I'm reminded of Edge Magazine taking the contrarian position and decrying Doom for not being Ultima Underworld, which seems to have resonated with a certain minority of people who bitterly blame Doom and Quake for killing Ultima and RPGs as a whole (conveniently forgetting that it was more that EA raped the Ultima series to death, or that games like Fallout and Planescape Torment came many years later).
Quake also got some blame for killing point and clicks, and a lot of that came off as very "I am 14 years old and I am really smart." kind of shit, crying about how games like Quake, or for that matter Tomb Raider, were mindless games which required no thinking or mental participation from the player at all, when in fact those games demanded you to think on your feet constantly to actually make any progress.
>blaming Doom and Quake for killing Ultima and RPGs as a whole (conveniently forgetting that it was more that EA raped the Ultima series to death, or that games like Fallout and Planescape Torment came many years later)
Wow - that's a take!
My main touchstone article on this (because I was a fan of the mag at the time) was PC Zone, and I think they rightly noted that the trends at the time were pointing more towards actiony adventure. There's a more full article in one of their issues that goes a bit more full on with someone dressed as the Grim Reaper, I can't find which issue it's in, but this one sort of summarises some of the discourse at the time:
>Even in these sunset days however, you still saw some superb titles, like Grim Fandango.
Superb game, but also widely touted as the terminal diagnosis of the genre, as famously Lucasarts were now no longer making 'point and clicks' - instead going with a more Resident Evil style control and interaction scheme.
Interesting for me that so much ink was spilled about Tomb Raider killing PnCs, but I didn't really hear many people talking about Resident Evil, which if you play Grim is a clear touch point in playing style (minus the combat of course).
That the recent remaster is so much more playable as a PnC though shows really that's still how they were thinking when they made it. I think with the Monkey Island games following that, they developed the idea of the 3D adventure more fully.
You still though had a couple of games like The Longest Journey, and Syberia that came out after Grim Fandango, they just didn't sell as well as the big multiplat blockbusters that sealed the direction of where the big boys were now going to invest.
the chzo mythos games, their order is 5 > 7 > notes > 6
also art of theft is a pretty good spinoff, not a point and click or horror based but still fun
Yahtzee himself will tell you that most of those games are pretty rough, 7 Days A Skeptic especially, which he's most ashamed of, though I'll still give him props for actually making and completing basically full fledged games on his own as a young amateur, that shit is not trivial.
i just played through black mirror 1+2. gonna wait a bit before playing 3. loved them, great story, writing,pretty logical puzzles. quite slow paced though
The Last Door was surprisingly effective for the graphics it had. Great sense of dread throughout, really built up the reveals nicely, classic Lovecraftian/Poe-esque story.
Haven't played it but The Excavation of Hob's Barrow looks promising.
I never got the ending of Darkseed. It just sort of ends so quickly that I feel like I've missed something and got a bad end.
I really choose not to think about Darkseed 2 just because it feels disconnected from the horror of DS1, being definitive that the main character is just crazy and made all that shit up.
Personal Nightmare, HorrorSoft's first adult game before they turned into Adventure Soft.
Stay far away from the IBM PC version with 8 colors, you can emulate it on ST/Amiga.
There's a body plastered behind a wall in the Vicar's cottage. A neglected corpse from a house fire (pictured), and you find out that half the town is trying to end you as you try to solves the mysteries. Great horror game.
What does /vr/ think of Nancy Drew games? For me, they were always pretty silly, but still kinda atmospheric despite that back in the day. Some puzzles are pretty legit as well.
How has Ecstatica not been mentioned yet??? OP it has a kind of ugly but totally unique ellipsoid graphics engine that is probably no worse than partial 3d point and clicks of the day. It has a sequel too but never played it.
Relax, Mikey-boy, relaaaaax~
Does Maniac Mansion count? (Genuinely asking, it's got a couple effective jumpscares and may be creepy here and there in a YMMV sort of way despite the tongue in cheek tone)
Counts in my book. Same as Day of the Tentacle.
I posted this topic a long while back - unfortunately there is not a lot
man, i remember really wanting to play it back in the day
recently i got it on gog, it was kinda meh honestly
Bros...
Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
Why they can't make a comeback?
>Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
Yes
>Why they can't make a comeback?
Like all retro genres there are plenty of indie games that do this especially recently, but it won't make a huge return because it's an anachronistic gameplay style. At the time, prerendered backgrounds were the most impressive thing that could be mustered but today we can generate whole open world games. That's how the gaymes industry sees it anyway. It's like why FMV games aren't big anymore, but their influence has been left on the other games
>Like all retro genres there are plenty of indie games that do this especially recently
Any one that's horror or mystery?
I'll be honest I don't play new games, most of the new shit looks meh to me. I remember a stupid one where the twist was that the character's sister killed herself for being lesbo
It's hard to keep the tension up in a horror game. the first level in the farm town was the best part of the story and goes downhill from there.
I'm gonna sound weird for this but I felt the silent hill series was like a point and click game in gameplay. Sure you don't actually point and click on shit but the emphasis was on the environment. even the fixed camera angles felt like the point and click screens.
Most of them. They appear like a mystery at first, but then turn into horror as you play them.
unavowed is a really good one
Stasis Bone Totem. Best adventure game I've ever played
Yes. Try the deep sleep and don't escape trilogies. Excellent games
There's also the last door series if your attention span is longer
>Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
No. Unfortunately compared to other genres that had their golden eras end in the early 2000s, adventure game's decline came even earlier in the mid 90s with the fmv fad and crude attempts to make early 3d work adventure games.
>Why they can't make a comeback
There are new ones getting made, it's just that it will never be a mainstream genre again, when you can get other genres on your computer, and most of the point and click audience moving towards hidden object games, simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
>simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
Man, you're seething so hard.
I've literally witnessed my mother and older sister go from adventure games to hidden object PC games, and then just ending up playing June's Journey every day, it's sad.
Keep in mind I said "most of the audience" (as in the dullards) not "The core audience" which still plays adventure games, including point and clicks
I play HOB games occasionally, but that doesn't stop me from also playing P&C adventure games. I recently played True Fear Forsaken Souls Part 2, and also Secret Files: Tunguska. Maybe it's the fact that the hidden object games are the only non-indie commercial variety of point and click games that didn't devolve into social-slop games like The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us?
They're a relic from a bygone area; these games covered certain appealing presentation and storytelling traits that were not compatible or possible with other types of games during that era.
Also it's shocking nobody has recommended Clock Tower yet.
too bad about the remake
Hell yeah, brain the b***h with a two by four, make Rick Taylor proud!
>Why can't they make a comeback
Because you're not buying the indie projects that are currently being sold.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1507530/Stellar_Mess_The_Princess_Conundrum_Chapter_1/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/603870/A_Tale_of_Two_Kingdoms/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/815000/Tardy/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605320/Unusual_Findings/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794030/From_Lex_to_Rex/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2472550/Conquistadorio/
>when you can get other genres on your computer, and most of the point and click audience moving towards hidden object games, simply because they ultimately want to play I spy
No, it's because they provide more immediate gratification and dopamine boosts. They're also far easier to make so there's a lot more of them to choose from. I would also argue that most of the point and click audience moved away towards regular adventure and horror games, like Visage, Call of Cthulhu (2018), Sherlock Holmes - The Devil's Daughter, and the various Telltale-like games.
>Were the 90s the golden era of point n' click games?
And late 80s, but yes. Great games made right up till the late nineties, even if the decline was evident by 96ish.
>Why they can't make a comeback?
The reason they had a golden age was because major publishers bankrolled them. That business model just isn't as effective with the current tech and expectations. They were popular because they made a lot of money (in PC game terms at least) for a while, but this was before the advent of fully 3D and more interactive environments.
If you want to do a P&C now with a major studio, the question will now always be 'is it playable with a controller?' followed by 'and where is the multiplayer combat so that we can sell customisable clothing to 10 year olds who want to show off to their friends?' Before you know it, it's a 3rd person action adventure.
People still make them in smaller projects, as
says. There are also loads of projects here, some of which are amateur efforts and some of which are full games: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/ - AGS is also is a useable tool if you're half decent at writing and art and want to try your own.
It's unlikely though unless there's a massive change in the zeitgeist that they'll have the heyday they had in the 90s.
Also - this should go without saying, but if you don't like that people aren't making the games you like, but also pay no money at any point for those games or games like them, decent developers won't make them.
A lot of the success with these kinds of games on PC was also that until the early 90s, PC just wasn't equipped to do fast scrolling action natively, ergo 2D action games on PC were fairly limited in what they could do. As people developed ways to do decent smooth scrolling 2D on these machines, and as the hardware got more capable, AND as the mentioned 3D games really started get rolling (Wolf3D and Ultima Underworld came out 1992), that stuff increasingly uprooted the point & click genre.
Didn't die overnight, in fact many very excellent ones would come out through the mid 90s, and probably because the genre had its established audience already, with games with genuinely high production values and good execution, but it was really starting to fade by the late 90s. For example, Blizzard had put quite a few years into an animated point and click game set in the Warcraft universe, but they finally decided to shitcan the game late in its development because they felt "it was outdated and wouldn't sell."
Even in these sunset days however, you still saw some superb titles, like Grim Fandango.
Much later on, you did actually get some games which carried some of the style of these games, such as A Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead, by Telltale Games. They're not 100% like an old LucasArts or Sierra point & click adventure, and maybe you weren't a big fan yourself, but for a time they were fairly popular.
Telltale games bear a passing resemblance at best to point and click adventures. They're devoid of anything resembling gameplay, and are purely linear stories masquerading as "choices matter!". David Cage games are far closer to actual point and click games, but they have awful stories and a similar level of disrespect for player intelligence, but at least they don't actively taunt you as much with "man if only you did something else..." only to find out there was no other path to begin with.
I also honestly wonder if the whole PC boom, and those scrolling limitations, weren't actually a by-product of NEC's total failure to launch the PC Engine outside of Japan. We're talking about full CD audio (with atrocious RAM limitations, obviously) in 1988 here. For me in the west at least, the first real voice acted game was a solid 5 years later, with DOTT. Had the west had a proper CD console like that so early on, maybe the market would've been a little different.
I will take your word on the Telltale Games, because I can only hazily remember some of the aspects and events from them from back when they were new (when the frick was that, 12 years ago?). I also didn't bother playing them myself, I would just be in the same room while my brother played them, and I'd mostly be playing other games during, or surf the web or working on stuff.
>Had the west had a proper CD console like that so early on, maybe the market would've been a little different.
Might have been somewhat different (more point and clicks on consoles), though the inevitable increasing power of PCs would still dictate heavily. Lots of disc space is very useful but won't allow you to catch up to the 3D games, 5th gen consoles around 1996 and 1997 could run a 1993 3D PC game like Doom, but performance was not the highest, and even with disc media they had to trim a lot from the game because you just can't load as much into memory as on a 1992 era PC.
>Interesting for me that so much ink was spilled about Tomb Raider killing PnCs
Vidya journos were always kind of harebrained, but it depends on where you were looking.
I'm reminded of Edge Magazine taking the contrarian position and decrying Doom for not being Ultima Underworld, which seems to have resonated with a certain minority of people who bitterly blame Doom and Quake for killing Ultima and RPGs as a whole (conveniently forgetting that it was more that EA raped the Ultima series to death, or that games like Fallout and Planescape Torment came many years later).
Quake also got some blame for killing point and clicks, and a lot of that came off as very "I am 14 years old and I am really smart." kind of shit, crying about how games like Quake, or for that matter Tomb Raider, were mindless games which required no thinking or mental participation from the player at all, when in fact those games demanded you to think on your feet constantly to actually make any progress.
>blaming Doom and Quake for killing Ultima and RPGs as a whole (conveniently forgetting that it was more that EA raped the Ultima series to death, or that games like Fallout and Planescape Torment came many years later)
Wow - that's a take!
My main touchstone article on this (because I was a fan of the mag at the time) was PC Zone, and I think they rightly noted that the trends at the time were pointing more towards actiony adventure. There's a more full article in one of their issues that goes a bit more full on with someone dressed as the Grim Reaper, I can't find which issue it's in, but this one sort of summarises some of the discourse at the time:
https://archive.org/details/PC_Zone_Issue_071_1998_Dennis_Publishing_GB_christmas_edition/page/n31/mode/2up
>I can't find which issue it's in, but this one sort of summarises some of the discourse at the time
Found it: https://archive.org/details/PC_Zone_63_May_1998/page/n111/mode/2up
>Even in these sunset days however, you still saw some superb titles, like Grim Fandango.
Superb game, but also widely touted as the terminal diagnosis of the genre, as famously Lucasarts were now no longer making 'point and clicks' - instead going with a more Resident Evil style control and interaction scheme.
Interesting for me that so much ink was spilled about Tomb Raider killing PnCs, but I didn't really hear many people talking about Resident Evil, which if you play Grim is a clear touch point in playing style (minus the combat of course).
That the recent remaster is so much more playable as a PnC though shows really that's still how they were thinking when they made it. I think with the Monkey Island games following that, they developed the idea of the 3D adventure more fully.
You still though had a couple of games like The Longest Journey, and Syberia that came out after Grim Fandango, they just didn't sell as well as the big multiplat blockbusters that sealed the direction of where the big boys were now going to invest.
the chzo mythos games, their order is 5 > 7 > notes > 6
also art of theft is a pretty good spinoff, not a point and click or horror based but still fun
Yahtzee himself will tell you that most of those games are pretty rough, 7 Days A Skeptic especially, which he's most ashamed of, though I'll still give him props for actually making and completing basically full fledged games on his own as a young amateur, that shit is not trivial.
i just played through black mirror 1+2. gonna wait a bit before playing 3. loved them, great story, writing,pretty logical puzzles. quite slow paced though
The Last Door was surprisingly effective for the graphics it had. Great sense of dread throughout, really built up the reveals nicely, classic Lovecraftian/Poe-esque story.
Haven't played it but The Excavation of Hob's Barrow looks promising.
Amber: Journeys Beyond and The Dark Eye
tbh it's just nice to have a non sport, non sim, non abstract game that doesn't revolve around combat.
Gabriel Knight 1 and 2 are must-plays.
Survival Horror was unrionically the genre evolution of point and click adventure horror games.
I never got the ending of Darkseed. It just sort of ends so quickly that I feel like I've missed something and got a bad end.
I really choose not to think about Darkseed 2 just because it feels disconnected from the horror of DS1, being definitive that the main character is just crazy and made all that shit up.
This game had me stumped on the first screen
Clocktower series
Alone in the Dark
Riven
Dreamfall/The Longest Journey
The Dark Eye
Garage: Bad Dream Adventure
Gadget: Invention, Travel & Adventure
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Personal Nightmare, HorrorSoft's first adult game before they turned into Adventure Soft.
Stay far away from the IBM PC version with 8 colors, you can emulate it on ST/Amiga.
There's a body plastered behind a wall in the Vicar's cottage. A neglected corpse from a house fire (pictured), and you find out that half the town is trying to end you as you try to solves the mysteries. Great horror game.
What does /vr/ think of Nancy Drew games? For me, they were always pretty silly, but still kinda atmospheric despite that back in the day. Some puzzles are pretty legit as well.
How has Ecstatica not been mentioned yet??? OP it has a kind of ugly but totally unique ellipsoid graphics engine that is probably no worse than partial 3d point and clicks of the day. It has a sequel too but never played it.