Favorite non-Lucas point-and-click adventure games

New Point and Click Adventures I have enjoyed:

• Fran Bow
• Dead Synchronicity
• Stasys
• Deponia 1, 2, 3
• Machinarium
• Samorost 3
• Broken Age
• The Last Season Chapter 1

Old Point and Click Adventures I have enjoyed:

• Simon the Sorcerer 1 & 2
• Broken Sword series ( especially the first one )
• The Longest Journey
• Sanitarium
• Gabriel Knight 1
• Toonstruck
• Darkseed
• Syberia 1 & 2
• Discworld Noir
• Runaway series
• The Black Mirror series
• Larry Series
• Beneath a Steel Sky
• Secret Files: Tunguska

I agree, I was also surprised by how good this game is and by how the community of adventure gamers mostly overlooked it. To me, it had the right features to become a more known adventure game, maybe even one of the most appreciated.

What do you mean exactly by “openness”? If you mean “quantity of things that can be done in parallel”, the first games that come to my mind are Day Of The Tentacle and Simon the Sorcerer. I agree about the fact that there are not many of them.

I forgot to add The Whispered World to my list, but I enjoyed it. I didn’t like its ending very much, but there is nothing intrinsically bad about it, I just don’t like that specific kind of “narrative mechanism”.

The story plays and important role for me, I’m sure that sooner or later I’ll play Kathy Rain as well. Its graphics design also inspires me a lot.

I never played Hollywood Monsters but I played its remake: “The Next BIG Thing”.

The characters were interesting and funny, I enjoyed playing it. It reminds me of one of the brainstorming ideas that Ron and Gary had about the story of their next game, the one related to cryptozoology.

1 Like

I’d already managed to sneak in my list of the P&C adventures I played fairly recently (in order of release) and I found all of them enjoyable enough. The best from the list (and the best ever!) must be Memoria, however. That was the first ever game that touched me deeply, and made me cry at the end. That alone qualifies it for instant #1, but it’s also executed very well. If you speak German, I highly recommend the developer commentary from the fantastic Kevin Mentz (after you played the game, of course!).

As for older adventure games: I liked Legend of Kyrandia, Simon the Sorcerer, the first Discworld game. Afterwards I kind of turned my back on the genre (the Lucasarts stuff aside). The first one I really enjoyed again was Tales of Monkey Island. Shortly after that I replayed MI 1 and 2, and must say I liked Tales more than MI 1. My humour must be different now than it was at age 12 :-).

Me too, though it was my wife’s DS ;-). Two more remarkable DS games, that fit the category were Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and its sequel, Last Window: The Secret of Cape West.

Day of the tentacle is quite small compared to MI2. Think about the three islands, and all the rooms and buildings you can get into. I reckon that’s still unmatched. Simon the Sorcerer is in my list… there are quite a few good adventure games I haven’t played yet. But I might wait until my kids are 6 or 7 and play together.

2 Likes

I bought Tales a few years ago in a Steam sale, but I have yet to play it… so much to do and so little time…

1 Like

I liked Gold Rush a lot. But I’ve always been facinated by the topic and the three ways to travel through the US made the game longer than the usual Sierra Adventure game.

I’ve recently replayed the remake of it and wasn’t quite as fascinated though … cause dying at every corner just ain’t fun :smiley:

Also I remembered a lot of the puzzles as I went along so it wasn’t as much of a challange.

A small German Studio has made a Gold Rush 2 now (already availble on Steam) but I’m waiting on my boxed version. Curious to see how it is … don’t have too high expectations though … especailly after playing Thimbleweed.

I played it more… wow, this game rocks. It feels like playing Indy3. They managed to recreate that sensation. Beats anything I played from Wadjeteye.

The only real problem is the artists have trouble with perspective, but you get used to it.

Here ya go!

1 Like

I recently posted a picture of my Point-and-Click like adventure games for the 8 Bit Commodore 64:


I have to say that all of them had and still have their own charme even today (maybe with the exception of Roy of the Rovers).
That being said, of the PC adventures I also still love the early ones despite their (in part severe) issues with regard to logic or playability:
"Future Wars" (a very nice story, truely beautyful art by Éric Chahi, downside: quite some pixel hunting and missing path finding)
"The Lure of the Temptress" (a very ambitious concept with all characters minding their own business. Yet, nice graphics and interesting engine (telling NPCs what to do for you, which was barely used, however)
"The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes" (great graphics, superb mood, I got a bit tired of iterative talking to NPCs about objects)
"Cruise for a Corpse" (I just love the setting, graphics. Also some modern elements of game control like quick travel etc).
Ah, and of course our own point-and-click adventure :wink:

2 Likes

I enjoy the first game – and how is the second one?

I was merely referring to ‘The Case of the Serrated Scalpel’ here, admittedly.

There are some of my favourites:
The Longest Journey
Broken Sword 1+2
Gemini Rue
Sanitarium
Samorost (the whole series)
Book of Unwritten Tales

There are enough good DRM-free games out there being able to occupy all the spare time for the rest of my (working) life.
Games with DRM can bite my shiny metal ass, I will never support such crap again.

1 Like

Yes, if we measure openness by the number of locations, than MI2 beats DoTT hands down.

But if we measure openness by the quantity of different tasks that the player can execute in parallel, my impression is that DoTT could have more. It seems to me that it gives the player more things to do, even if the characters have less places to go.

Well, TWP has a lot of hotel rooms. :stuck_out_tongue:

The final quantity of locations depends also on whether you consider each library book a location in which the player can do something useful.

2 Likes

Why are you doing this to yourself man. Why…

Did I miss something important?

I don’t know. I hope not.