A community for fans, devs, and general aficionados of the adventure game genre. This includes IF/parser games, point-and-click games, puzzle games, walking simulators, and whatever else you want to call these. To us, they're simply adventure games.
Here, I'll start. When I was 8 years old, my parents went to a dinner party and plonked me down in front of the host's computer so I'd stay out of their way. The game they booted up to keep me occupied was Space Quest II. Little did they know what impact that would have on me...
It's funny to read comments bashing King's Quest 3, because freak show over here (me) got into adventure games because of KQ3.
Before my psychotic parents got rid of it for being occultic, and replaced it with Space Quest 1 (not a bad exchange, I must say) I loved KQ3. I never got far in it, but it was just this open world for me to explore. The fact that wizard guy could just poof in at any time just captivated my imagination and made it feel like someone other than my character was out in the world doing things. It made the world feel much bigger than it was and it captivated my sense of wonder.
King's Quest III: "occultic." Here, have a game that starts out with a bloodbath aboard a spaceship instead. Good priorities. 😂
@SQHistorian Adventure for the 2600. Probably the worst port, but a compromise for the hardware.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was a bit older.
Sam & Max: Hit the Road!
To this day, it's one of my favorite games of all time. I haven't played it in a while, so thank you for making me remember! I'm definitely going to go for a new playthrough when things settle down here.
I remember my childhood in Brighton, When dear old dad would bounce me on his knee, He'd say "son there is nothing as exiting, As exposing beasts to inhumanity!"
Oh my god I just remembered Sam and Max had cd audio. I used to listen to that song off the cd loads!
Ha ha same here!
Sam & Max taught me more clever multisyllabic words than school ever did.
I got to play Zork in 4th grade on the single C64 in the classroom. Was obsessed with that computer. I beat Zork with a couple classmates and help from the hints book. The teacher gave me a physical Zorkmid coin that came with the boxed game, I still have it somewhere. Zork got me so hooked on computers that it was all I wanted to do.
I had a hard home life, my dad was an abusive addict. I lived in fear of his seemingly random behavior, one day he would be overjoyed and another miserable about everything. The computer was predictable, if it didn't work right, it was because I did something wrong. The teacher saw how much that computer meant to me. He taught me what he knew about BASIC programming, he gave me the manual. I'd sit in my room and read it cover to cover, trying to understand everything without having a machine to try it on.
One day near the end of the year, the teacher pulled me aside and told me that the school was getting rid of some computers, and that I could have one. I think they were getting Apple II's, so he put aside a VIC-20 for me. I had to get my mom to drive me to school on a weekend and the teacher met us there. In hindsight, I don't think he had permission or anything.
Sorry for kind of getting off the topic
@SQHistorian Good ole Leisure Suit Larry.
Still remember "buying" a pirated copy on two white 5.25” inch floppies from a local computer *store* 😂
I think the first point n' click adventure I played was Maniac Mansion (for the NES!) at a friend's house.
But really what got me into them was Monkey Island. I had an Amiga 500 and we got some games from a friend who had recently got a PC. among them were 4 (I think?) disks labelled "The Secret of Monkey Island", and - dammit Ron - I was immediately intrigued by The Secret.
Monkey 1 was one of very few games I bothered to actually come back to and eventually after many months complete by myself as a kid.
Good day, Troels. My first PC game ever was King's Quest III, on the IBM PC. That started my love for PC gaming and adventure games in particular.
Haha! We were just talking in the other reply thread about how if KQ3 had been our first adventure game, we'd probably never have gotten into adventure games in the first place. 😂 Seriously, that game was (and still is) brutal! How did you cope with that?
Hint books. Those wonderful, overpriced little books that required you used a special yellow highlighter to reveal the answers. And the Sierra hint line, if it existed at that time.
Honestly, I was just so blown away by the "3D graphics" that I didn't mind its brutality. For me, that was just part of the game. Maybe these games are what helped me to learn patience and diligence.
Lol, KQ3 was my cherry popping first time playing an AG too.. And i didn't cope with the parser coming from console (NES) and having limited english skills at the time (and lack of concentration due to ADHD probably didnt help either),😂 but the NES got shadowgate and deja vu, so those are the ones that finally got me into adventure games
Full Throttle!
That's going back a ways... I think the first one for me was King's Quest 1, actually. "KILL SNAKE WITH SWORD" was far beyond what I could type in the amount of time I had to type it, but the idea of moving around a screen interacting with the world to solve problems was utterly intoxicating.
The second one was Leisure Suit Larry, which I probably should not have been allowed to play but I was the only one who knew that at the time. Perhaps fortunately I never got very far in it, but the boss key made me laugh hard enough to make it worth it.
It wasn't until somewhat later that I encountered the Space Quest series, which I really got into. I actually completed some of them!
It must have been either a copy of Skipper & Skeeto 4 or Voodoo Kid that we had gotten with the old Compaq my mother bought through work. Later I played Pink Panther: Passport to Peril that we had borrowed from the library.
That said, I didn't become aware of Adventure as a genre until I was 13 and the adult at my after-school computer club put The Curse of Monkey Island on a projector and we all played it together. That was my gateway drug, as soon after I played around with a front-end for DOSBOX to play the first two Monkey Islands and Sam & Max at a LAN party.
Having missed out on the golden age of adventure games helped create the drive that is currently fuelling my preservation efforts at The Royal Danish Library.
The first one I played was Les Manley Search For The King. I was around 8 and we got it from a family friend who gave us a box full of floppies. I remember being amazed and thinking "you can do anything in this game".
I later discovered it was a sorta ripoff of Leisure Suit Larry, but in my opinion a better game.
I've yet to play those. I played Rex Nebular, the "Leisure Suit Larry in space," and it was... not good. I have half a mind to do a very scathing video about it at some point.
For me, it was the original King's Quest. Like you, my dad was looking at a way to keep my brother and I busy.
The original King's Quest — as in PC Jr, or the DOS conversion? Either way, I would imagine KQ1 kept you guys busy for a loooooong time.
It did keep us busy on the fun DOS conversion
I didn't play it until a couple of years ago when I did my video on it. I imagine I would have had a lot more fun with it if I was a kid and had all the time in the world to explore the world. Sadly, my first KQ game was KQ3, which stopped you from having any fun every 2-3 minutes with the sudden appearance of a bossy wizard.
I didn't play that until 18 when I bought the King's Quest collection. I think if that had been my first experience, I wouldn't have ventured into the adventure games world at all.
Somehow my friend from school had gotten wind of the "bye bye wizard" cheat code, and we STILL couldn't get anywhere in the game. I'll take falling off a space station to my death, thanks. 😂
The Cliffs of Illogic!
😆
That being said, I do plan on making an text adventure game along similar lines.
Planet Fall by infocom. I worked backwards to Zork. The mystery was so enticing to me!
I'm not entirely sure my first game counts as adventure, maybe more as a platform adventure, but for me it was back in probably around 1996 or 1997. I didn't have a computer at home, and during lunch break at school I joined the computer club. We had only two or three computers there that could have graphics and one of the games we could play was Prince of Persia. The second game I played there was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
I wouldn't say PoP is an adventure game, it's just a platformer with a simple story (like super mario) though Fate of Atlantis is an amazing first game to pop your adventure game cherry to
Fate of Atlantis was quite nice and challenging, especially when I could only play less then two or three hours a week. I've only finished this game years later.
Sorry for going off-topic since I know this isn't the main subject of this post, but I've been playing quite a few adventure games since I got a steamdeck, being bedridden this has really changed my life. TheBlackwell series and other wadjet eye games being some of my favourites. Currently I'm playing Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars. I've played a lot of games I couldn't play when I was younger like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or Beneath a Steel Sky to name a few.
I'm a dad of young kids and the SteamDeck has basically re-enabled gaming for me, and is actually getting me to pay attention to my embarrassingly large backlog.
Played Return to Monkey Island on it when that came out.
The first time i ever saw an adventure game, i was too young to really comprehend what it really was, i saw my brother playing Zak McKracken, and it seemed "grown up and boring" to me, but what made me realise the magic of what adventure games are, was watching my cousin play monkey island on the amiga, and i remember he was playing the part where you use a rubber chicken with a pulley in the midle to go to hook island.. he had to go back and forth on the wire a few times because the sound it made had me in stitches.
First AG i really played (i think) was Kings Quest 3, but at the timez me having mediocre english, and being more used to my NES, which didn't require me to type in english and just had four directions and 2 buttons, i only dabbled a little bit, but the parser put me off..
Then i was bit by a radioactive shadowgate and deja vu on the NES, (which are first person point and click games that actually kinda work on the console system,) and it finally awoke my true adventure gamer powers, and have loved them ever since.
My sister and I used to play as much as we could from Purple Moon: Secret Paths in the Forest, Rockett's New School, and so on. And look at me, now I'm working towards getting the Rockett games supported in ScummVM, haha. So, if I had to pick one to answer the question, it'd be Rockett's Tricky Decision which got me into adventure games.
Putt-Putt and the various Disney Animated Storybooks were lots of fun, too, I have fond memories of those. (As you can see, I grew up in the era of 1990s CD-ROM edutainment)
But the game that made me realize the true potential of what you could do was Riven. I borrowed my friend's CD-ROM set when I was in 6th grade or something (a box of 3 or 4 discs, that's how big the game is) and I was like, holy crap, this is better and even more immersive than Myst. Riven is how I fell in love with the whole Myst universe.
The Secret of Monkey Island is the first one I can remember playing. I also remember watching my dad play Police Quest 3 as a kid.
Monkey Island 1
King's Quest 4 was the first game I remember playing. I was 3 years old. On a meta-level, Adventure or Dungeons and Dragons.
kings quest 2
Oregon Trail.
...
I'll show myself out.
You have died of dysentery...
I loved that this was required at my gradeschool computer lab class. Good memories!
Technically Leisure Suit Larry was the first adventure game I played when I was 3, but I was just walking back and forth in front of the bar because I didn't know what a text parser was. I think the game that actually got me into the genre was Myst, as divisive as it may be. I loved playing it with my family and exploring that world.
Secret of Monkey Island on a Tandy 1000 SL
The first adventure game I bought and played was an Infocom interactive fiction ... I think it was Stationfall. Before I had briefly played Magnetic Scrolls' Fish! at someone else's computer. Fell in love with text adventures and started collecting them, I have a few of the Infocom folios as well (sadly not the Starcross saucer). The first graphic adventure I remember playing was King's Quest IV.
These games, along with later games like Monkey Island, had a huge influence on me, I learned programming to write adventure games myself but spent more time writing adventure game engines (both text and graphic ones) than actual games, and today I'm a software engineer (not in the game business).
Holy crap, you sent me down a rabbit hole and a trip down memory lane. I remembered the cover of the first CD game I ever played but couldnt come up with the name, so I just read through all Point n Click adventures wikipedia knows off, looking for a bright green background and a weird clown on top of it.
It was Toonstruck! Never finished it, but it was my first PnC, so I guess that counts.
The first game that got me sold on adventures was Deponia and generally all of the Daedalic games.