Does anyone know anymore? They MUST comply with the 3 requirements at the top.
And I am thinking about adding a 4th: Must be published for sale. So the list don’t get filled with tons of half finished games somebody made as a hobby.
I also made the page so that people who google for example “Games similar to Monkey Island” might stumble upon that page and discover among others, this great game.
When I first read your post I thought that, for sure, there were way more that 12 games with those characteristics but actually I can’t remember of any other popular PnC adventure game in which there were a good amount of textual verbs always visible on screen.
I’ll tell you if another game will come to my mind.
The number of such games is very small indeed. Interesting!
I’ve always appreciated verbs interfaces because they are very precise. In other interfaces (such as coin interfaces), several different verbs were replaced with a simple “use”, in order to reduce the complexity. In my opinion, this is not necessarily advantageous, because you cannot differ between “push” and “pull” there, for instance.
In TWP (spoiler here!!), you can “push”, “pull” and “use” the trampoline. This would have been impossible, if there was only a “use” button.
Yes, indeed for me games with visible text verbs has a certain charm too, that I do not get with coin interface or icon for the verbs. Which is also why I was overly happy to stumble upon Thimbleweed Park by accident sorta.
I don’t think games with icons as verbs fit into that list for that reason.
Dirty is a german fan game (I guess these days you would call it indie) for the C64 that came with an issue of a german Commodore 64 magazine in october of 1991.
Mostly considered a Maniac Mansion knockoff (look at the character sprite: black hair, blue clothes. It´s Dave) the game is really obscure today and I have no idea how I´d like it today, as there is no way to play on modern hardware or even look up a video of it, it´s not even mentioned in most databases of Commodore 64 games. All due to the way it was distributed at the time. I couldn´t even remember it´s name for the better part of 20 years.
I would still however like to mention another german “magazine game” released in the same magazine as Dirty by the name of Brubaker.
It uses symbols instead of verbs but not like a coin interface but more in a fixed menu bar and everything else fits(except it´s first person and you can die). On top of if it has similar themes as Zak McKracken, as it features Stonehenge like megaliths and easter island Moai and the like.
I wouldn´t know because that page contains exactly zero information and it looks a little shady on top of it. I mean look at that top 10 on the right! Sheesh!
I am a bit unsure about Borrowed Time. It has the userinterface, but does not seem to meet the Point’n’Click part (as in click in the 2D world for example to move the char around. Seems like Maniac Mansion mixed with text adventure.
Bud Tucker in Double Trouble meets the requirements, adding to list.
Flight of the Amazon Queen does not have the nice text verbs.
Yes, I have played several Wadjet Eyes and I was sure that at least one of them (maybe the old ones) had a verb interface, but I checked and I was wrong. I think that’s interesting that I have associated those games with a verb interface even if they never used one.
My hypothesis is that having played mainly LucasArts games when I was a teenager, my image of what an adventure game is includes a verb interface and now I remember having played many games with that interface even if in reality I played only some Lucas ones and Simon the Sorcerer.
Another game that I remembered had a verb interface was Flight of the Amazon Queen but, again, no. It uses icons.
That’s true, but a developer would design only puzzles that are compatible with the interface that he has chosen.
The developer is aware that it will not be possible to execute some tasks with the UI that has been chosen. But he also knows that alternative interfaces wouldn’t be able to accomplish things that can be done with the interface that the game will use.
Yes, it’s basically a text adventure but it allows selecting verbs and objects with the mouse.
Not sure why so many people insist on walking characters in these sort of games though…
You seem to clearly differentiate between having verbs in text form and not (icons).
e.g. listing Simon the Sorcerer 1 but not 2. Why is that?
I decided to make the list of Point’n’Click games.
Then I realized that the the list was must larger than I anticipated and dropped the idea of making a list.
Then I saw the Google Talk interview with Ron Gilbert, and him talking about finding out what the magic behind those old games like Maniac Mansion was.
I then realized that for me personally it actually was heavily tied into the userinterface, which is probably why I have played very small amount of Point’n’Click games since the classics. Even though I loved the genre, I mean its more than 20 years ago, but the feeling I had when completing Zak McKraken I still can remember.
I then started making the list, and it became clear to me when playing Thimbleweed Park that icons for the verbs would not have been the same. So I removed games like Simon the Sorcerer 2 from the list.
Maybe that makes it my own list of personal preference for Point’n’Click games, but I hope not.
Edit: I might still make another list of games below that has icons for verbs. A bit daunted that I have to look through screenshots of 100s of games to find them though.
You can do this very easily by giving the object two clickable areas, and choosing either “Push” or “Pull” as the default action. We’ll use “Push” as an example. If you “Use” the left side of the object, it pushes to the right. If you use the right side of the object, it pushes to the left.
