Not necessarily. It rather might be a matter of the story and the general style of the game.
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Yes, I agree. But a game with non-pixel graphics could attract even more players, especially the younger ones.
Arriving late to the party…
Why then are they remaking all these animated classics as life action movies with, apart from Malificent, no creativity or risk taking, which just make them look like high-school replays (albeit at million dollar production budgets)? The list goes on and on- 101 dalmatians, cinderella, jungle book, Pete’s dragon, beauty and the beast, alice in wonderland,…
In the realm of Lucasfilm games, there have been special editions of MI and MI2 already “recently” and MI3 looked like a Disney animated movie when it came out, so they probably consider making a life-action remake instead.
Watch it, buddy! You mean “classic C64 graphics”. Like the classic Disney animated movies, before they went CGI and 3D
In terms of MI3a being accepted/successful (which might be two separate things) I think an important issue is the huge time that has passed since MI2. As much as I love MI1/2 and the other classics and replaying them, putting another game in that same part of my brain labelled “fond memories & nostalgia” is not something that can be enforced.
I’d love the idea of playing Elaine in a MI3a though (see also ending of MI2’s literal cliff-hanger).
In terms of the form of MI3a, as long as the story and humor are kept, it can be text adventure for all I care.
Literally. It’s not like Clint et al are making an actual living right now??
I don’ think it’s just pixel art. Steward Valley sold several million copies. Pixel-based platformers and RPG sell very well. Again, I think it’s a stigma of the genre (maybe the pixel look doesn’t help, but I don’t think it’s “the problem”). I just don’t think people like PnC games due to the puzzle design. It’s not about finding a solution to a problem, it’s about finding the one (or two) solutions the designer thought of, while all the other logical ones you thought of don’t work. It’s why a game like Limbo works. Mostly, only one solution works, but due to the physics, it doesn’t feel arbitrary. Other puzzle games work because there is logically only one solution. Fans of the genre don’t mind this, but a lot of modern gamers do. This kind of puzzle design taken to the extreme is what killed PnC games in the 90s.
I think you can get around this in a narrative game (Kentucky Route Zero, etc), but then it’s not a Point-and-Click adventure anymore, and after all, this whole conversation is about arguing semantics.
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Even in MI, I recently had to say to my 6 year old son (who loves it by the way): “great idea, try it!” although I knew it wasn’t going to work. But that was part of the fun when we were kids and our imagination wasn’t restrained by insight in the game engine’s limitations or the feeling you were playing a “guess-the-programmer’s-solution”.
As for some examples:
Blowing up a damn with gunpowder, a blazing hot sun and a spyglass. (Idea of my older daughter). Even I thought that was the actual solution, on several occasions in 1995, 2013 and now.
Keeping the nose of the totem pulled down by tying the pieces of rope around the cannonball.
Only when they tried to jump to get the rope from the hanging corpse, I told them “it’s not an action game, there is no JUMP verb”
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That’s right, I fully agree with you: Pixel Art isn’t the main reason. (I named FTL as another successful example somewhere above.)
But on the other side I’ve read too many comments complaining about “crappy” pixel graphics. So I deduce that if FTL or Steward Valley had better graphics they could even sell better. (But it would be interesting to see how much better. 
)
Here I don’t agree with you.
As I said above: I don’t think that something had killed PnC games. There were just crappy PnC games available so the players hadn’t even a chance to buy a good adventure game.
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Oh, yes, of course!
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I agree with you. The solutions must not feel arbitrary.
There were a lot of disappointing adventure games back then. Maybe these games just scared a lot of people away, who had never played a good adventure game before.
Nonetheless, I believe that there were some additional reasons why the point-and-click games became unpopular (in this regard, I listed some relevant aspects above already). Maybe pixel art is not a big issue, but the 3D graphics from the late 90s were for sure back then. An adventure game ought to look charming.
You may be right. Pixel art are very special and high-resolutions have some charm as well.
By the way, the Wadjet Eye games contain a lot of drawn artworks, which were down-scaled to such a low-resolution that the screens tend to look more fuzzy than typical pixel art would have done (example: Primordia). Maybe drawings are cheaper than pixel art, but this low resolution often feels too low for such drawings. I doubt that younger people are open-minded enough for such a fuzziness.
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For example?
Back then they hadn’t looked that bad as today and …
… Grim Fandango looked charming IMHO. 
But yes, most 3D graphics in the 90s and early 2000 looked sterile and crappy.
Yes, they just won’t buy games with pixel art, even if they would like the game.
Ron this is a bit of a rip on things Ken Levine once said about what about possible endless narrative but why not try approaching the P’n’C genre with a broader narrative element.
Making people genuinely react to the character, for example if a man in town has the key to a gate you need to get through, he asks you to do something for him, and he will give you the key, but if you refuse or fail to do so this annoys him thus he won’t have anything further to do with you, blocking off that route to get to your goal, unless you find another guy in town willing to steal the key for you in return for something else… etc
Have these characters all aware of each other and your relationships with them, and make it have a meaningful effect on how they interact with you, on the ease of your progress and also the over arc narrative
Then mixed with a more emergent gameplay element sort of sudo Hitman style RPG esque
Make the puzzles broader and solevable in a number of ways, maybe reward the player whom thinks of the most simple way to over come an obstacle.
@dangerouslee Holy shit that’s going to be expensive! One advantage that games that use “systems” (like Limbo) have is that you don’t have to hand code each situation. The system to do what you’ve described is called The Holodeck. See you in 2468.
There have been other games that have tried to do systemize narrative, and unless that narrative is combined with something else fun (like shooting or jumping), it’s really flat.
Also, in your example, why can’t I dynamite the door? Why can’t I hit him with the crowbar I just found? Can I spray him in the eyes with the spray paint I just found? My point is, there will always be some object that to the player should solve their problem.
It’s a hard problem. Not saying it can’t be solved, it will just take a lot of money.
That would be pretty funny, so yes you can 
Maybe instead of taking something not so popular and figuring out how to make it more popular, could try taking something already popular and then PnC-izing it?
Eg. take something successful like Machinarium which is reasonably close to classic PnC, and then make something like that, but just PnC-izing it a bit more…
I wouldn’t be so sure about point-click games being dead specially when we see a lot of indie developers releasing an increased number of games every year and there has been some quite successful ones even though they have terrible stories and characters like -Deponia- which had four games… BUT those have very appealing/modern looking graphics and simple to use UI.
There is also a market for very simple games like the hidden object games and some are tying some adventure elements in some way, and those sell well enough, so you don’t necessarily need to make action games to sell.
I think (and this is my personal point of view), that people didn’t connect with Thimbleweed Park in part because of the verb icons, I for one was almost put off by it because it felt like going way backwards and not in a good/fun way since the interface has changed and evolved quite a bit since then (there is a reason why we don’t start our cars by cranking a handle at the front anymore).
Also the theme was kind of what everyone has done already, -to solve a murder- it felt to be quite serious or at least it didn’t feel that would be that fun to play, so if you are given a choice between -becoming a pirate-, -save your girlfriend from the Addams family- or -to solve a murder- which one would you find fun?.
If you would like to do a pirate game now, for instance, It would be quite fun to play a pirate p&c game where you are the evil pirate doing lot’s of wrong to everyone and find yourself beaten by a novice pirate wannabe or by karma.
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I “kind of” liked MI4 up to a point, but I really hated the controls and the “Monkey Kombat” which you couldn’t skip, but also the monkey kombat kind of trashed or tried to ruin everything else monkey island and that wasn’t good at all, so, having an ending with a giant robot fighting a giant LeChuck in a pseudo mortal kombat match was a terrible, terrible idea.
Grim Fandango wasn’t praised by its controls either, but it was a brand new franchise, MI had three previous versions with a large following, but all of those shared a basic point click interface while the fourth one chose a radical new unfriendly interface.
IF someone on residualVM would add mouse controls like they did for grim fandango I would give it another chance for a replay, but so far is not a nice game to play.
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All of these are just ideas, it’s about execution. If I were to choose based on the ideas alone, the first two sound like something for kids, so I would go for murder.
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That’s one of the differences between “generic P’n’C games” and “THE P’n’C game”!
Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were absolutely super funny for this reason, the player could try to resolve the puzzles using logic, intuition, or things à la MacGyver.
But I’m probably of that generation where it was fun to think out-of-the-box to resolve a problem.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel that, nowadays, there is too much lazyness among people (players).
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Sorry for the late answer but we had this weird thing called “night” here in Germany that prevented me from answering in time.
I’ll start with an answer/comment to @dangerouslee and @RonGilbert:
You don’t have to allow the player every possible solution. Let him figure out what the developer thought! This is fun. Ok, Ok, it can be fun, because it depends on how good the puzzles are integrated with the story. (What the physics in Limbo are, is the story in adventure games.)
In addition you can make sure that the player gets on the right track. Chuchel is an easy example for that: If you get stuck for some time, a street sign pops up offering help to the solution. This is of course a little bit too obviously. But if a player gets stuck in a “real” adventure game, you could offer him more and more subtle hints. For example a character could offer more dialog options that gives more and more hints. The player can then decide for himself if he takes this additional help.
But believe me: It is fun to follow the ideas the developer had.
Yep! The Amanita Design games are a good example how to do it today. Their games are able to attract a lot of players and suck them immediately into the game. If you, for example, start with “Chuchel” or “Machinarium” you can’t stop playing. And this is exactly what I miss in modern PnC games.
Deponia is (just) a cash cow. Originally it was planned as one single game.
It looks old-fashioned but as others said in this forum already (somewhere ) it is surprisingly intuitive. But indeed: If we talk about a mass compatible interface, I wouldn’t choose the SCUMM style either.
No. (It’s a common problem that we grown-ups underestimate new generations.)
Well, I think the 3D hype was very disadvantageous for the genre. 3D worked very well for shooters and racing games, but you cannot compare adventure games with shooters or racing games. Also, the GrimE games had bad controls.
I think it depends on the game. Pre-rendered 3D graphics often looked quite good already in the late 90s, but I disliked the look of the real-time rendered characters in Escape from MI. Simon the Sorcerer 3D looked very bad, I think. Nowadays, there are games with more realistic graphics. Observer looks quite good. Though, in Tales of MI most of the places look even uglier than those from Escape from MI.
GF might have been the best-looking 3D adventure game from that time (aside from the pre-rendered settings in Blade Runner). But, even in GF there were places with a lack of detail: For example the interior of the ship. I just prefer detailed drawings or pixel art, since it looks more organic.
That’s true. I guess that this is not least because there are so many games available nowadays and the prices use to be so low that players intend to play so many other games as well. Having so many other games in their mind makes them more impatient. Another reason might be the fact that kids use to have more spare time than working people have - and I assume that the average adventure gamer has become older.
Furthermore, it depends on how immersive a game is. Nowadays, many people are just spoiled by amazing first-person 3D graphics and have little relation to 2D games or platformers. Moreover, A story about three kids planning to rescue a girlfriend uses to be very simple and might therefore be a bit more accessible than a story about five different characters having different motivations and sorrows.
That’s true. I played all of them, as I like humorous adventure games. When I played the first three games, I thought that they became better by and by. All in all, it was fun, thanks to several jokes, but a lot of solutions feel too arbitrary and the UI is very limited. I recently played the fourth episode and I think it was rather disappointing, especially in terms of puzzle design.
When it comes to funny point-and-click adventure games with good puzzle design, TWP is the most recommendable game from the recent years, in my opinion.
I think the coin interface might be the best choice. If you intend to create a point-and-click game for the masses, Curse of MI ought to be your role model.
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Yes, this was a disaster in several terms.
I don’t think that this is true: The “wow” effect of better 3D graphics isn’t that big anymore like in the late 90s and early 2000s. For example racing games are already foto-realistic. It’s hard for new racing games to top that. On the opposite especially Minecraft with the low-res graphic is very popular.
This limitations make the game more boring, because you are only able to combine an object with an object. At the end you try everything with everything.
Yes, I fear that this is true. But I would use a modified version of it.
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