What was/is the appeal of old-style point and click games?

[Thaluikhain]

So, way back in the old days of floppy disks, you have games in which you went along, picked up various items, and had to use bizarre troll logic to use them and the game kept trying to make you fail.

One of the more infamous examples of this being King's Quest 5. There's a part where you are tied up, with no way to escape, unless you had previously found a boot while wandering round a desert (without dying of thirst, apparently), and later thrown the boot at a cat chasing a rat. If you don't, you'll get up to the section where you get tied up, and have no idea how you are supposed to progress.

I never saw the appeal of those games. Nowdays, I've played a few, but this is in the age of online walkthroughs being easily available, and I tend to end up giving up on trying to play the game, and just following instructions from the walkthrough. I've read people who enjoy finding the answer to a puzzle they've been stuck on for ages, but that's just frustrating for me.

However, these games got made in large numbers for a while. Was this because they were cheap and easy to make, or was there a demand for these games and an appeal I'm just not getting?

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I have a theory that I just made up when I saw this thread title.

I think it was the pre-cursor to the open world adventure.

Most games at the time were platformers that had enemy AI that took a lot of the memory, so you couldn't have a sprawling world that you could program in.

So what do you do if you wanted to show a fantastic world that seemed to be able to be interacted with? Take out the enemies. Use that programming space to give meaning to the world. Make people use their brains (if the puzzle followed logic).

Point and Click games were all about the World and how the story fit into it. You couldn't get that with Robocop, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario Bros... you were too busy trying to beat an arbitrary clock while doing precise jumping.

Now why did programmers make them in such large numbers? I almost hazard that they were indeed easier. Learning about programming, I think it would be much more simpler to program "If Player = get*item 2*'fn':{Fn open Bluedoor}" for a point and click game than all of the platform heights, pitfalls, enemy placements, enemy movement ai, abilities, power ups, jump heights, moving platform routines, and running timer of just ten seconds of a Super Mario Level

 

[CaitSeith]

An appeal your are just not getting. These PC games were meant for thorough exploration full of trial and error (that and stats-heavy RPGs were the staple of hardcore PC gaming back in the 80's and early 90's). Later they were made more accessible (or "dumbed down" as hardcore game enthusiasts called it) by not having unwinnable situations (like KQ7 or pretty much every Lucasart adventure game).

 

[CaitSeith]

snip

Nah! You had RPGs and JRPGs to fulfill that role. Old adventure games were meant to challenge the brains (sometimes in a unfair/sadistic fashion), not to scratch the "interactive world" itch.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

snip

Nah! You had RPGs and JRPGs to fulfill that role. Old adventure games were meant to challenge the brains (sometimes in a unfair/sadistic fashion), not to scratch the "interactive world" itch.

Huh. I always saw Rpgs to make my character better. The worlds were always a backdrop to getting my dope ass spells.

Daily reminder, I was a kid in the Bronx during the late 80's/early 90's who was obsessed with dope ass spells. It's a miracle I got out of that situation alive.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Point & Click games allowed you to do lots of different things with a single control scheme. Especially in the old days you were limited in what kind of story or experience you could have in a game by the mechanics you used. P&C games allowed you to be able to talk to people in a town, figure out a puzzle in a temple, and defeat a giant bear without needing several control schemes built into one game.

Keep in mind that Sierra is a really bad example for these kinds of games because screwing you over was a trademark of theirs. Not all P&C games would put you in an unwinnable situation, my first P&C game was Full Throttle, made by Lucas Arts, which is a much more friendly experience. The games always had a problem of potentially being too obtuse with what you needed to do, which is why modern P&C games have hint systems built in to alleviate this issue.

If I were to recommend a modern one then The Inner World or The Whispered World, would be the ones I suggest.

 

[Richard Kain]

Point and click games lived and died on the quality of their content. The engines behind them rarely changed, so everything hung on the art, animation, puzzle design, and especially the writing. All of my fondest point-and-click games had really great writing. Many of them also had really great humor. While many disdained the Sierra-style titles, I always loved them. And my favorite series was Space Quest. It had the sci-fi trappings that I loved so much, and a fantastic sense of humor.

While many gamers hated the loss of progress that Sierra-style adventures often forced on the player, I always found that this kept the games tense. While the Lucas-Arts approach was more forgiving, it was also toothless. The Sierra style was better for building atmosphere and suspense. This is part of the reason why the Sierra games frequently explored multiple genres, while the Lucas-Arts games leaned heavily on comedy. Comedy lent itself well to the no-risk puzzle style of the Lucas-Arts school.

As far as the appeal, I can't really say whether they are your thing or not. Some types of games just don't appeal to some people. King's Quest 5 was indeed a prime example for forced back-tracking. There are tons of ways for you to screw yourself over in that game, and force yourself to re-play enormous chunks. (an hour or more, even with skipping through dialog) And yet, I've played through that game multiple times. The art in it is fantastic, even today. The tone, music, and themes make for a magical experience. And of course, it is always a ton of fun to watch someone else play it. Especially if they don't know what they're doing, and end up falling into some of the traps that you are already aware of.

If you want to try one of those classics, I would strongly recommend King's Quest VI. The sixth entry in the series is the best, play it and you'll understand why. Certain clever puzzle decisions reduce the amount of backtracking, and the puzzles in general make more sense and have more organically seeded clues.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

The appeal was complexity limited to technical innovation. One of my favourite games is The Longest Journey, if only because it subverted many of the tropes of the adventure game genre itself. What with an interesting story, interesting world(s) and a fantastic non-heroine that inspite of all her accomplishments discovers she was simply an incidental factor in the over all narrative and is likewise bummed out by that.

Imagine going through a myriad of soul-crushing trials, each step allowing you to accept your thought-of fate in your inevitable eternity of incarceration in order to save all of existence ... all to discover that you were never meant to be that person, merely a tool for another?

And it's great.

But 'point and click' never really died ... at least for me. And adventure games like the Tex Murphy series (though not technically point and click) are amazing experiences still to go through. Though that series itself nullifies a lot of the 'game ending events' that can happen on really old 3D adventure games whereby doing one specific thing literally breaks your game progression.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

I have a soft spot for classic point n' click adventure games, even though i never played a Sierra title... or maybe BECAUSE of it, from what i've read about those.

But, to the point, there were couple of reasons:

- Accessibility. They don't require agility, or fast reflexes like most action oriented genres, and focus on puzzle solving instead.
- Story. Back when "games needed a story as much as porn needed plot" they were quite heavy on that.
- Graphics. I'm mostly thinking about Lucas Arts titles, but linearity allowed to polish these titles and make them look better than less linear games.

 

[Dalisclock]

But 'point and click' never really died ... at least for me. And adventure games like the Tex Murphy series (though not technically point and click) are amazing experiences still to go through. Though that series itself nullifies a lot of the 'game ending events' that can happen on really old 3D adventure games whereby doing one specific thing literally breaks your game progression.

It still hasn't Died. There's a number of new P+C Adventure games being made. Check out Wadjet EYE games, which channels a lot of the old Sierra/Lucasarts style aventure games.

But yeah, adventure games were about story, puzzles and world building. Sometimes humor as well(ie the monkey island series). It was less about "Do I have good reflexes" and more "Can I figure out a solution to this puzzle?", though some games did like to test your reflexes as well. Sometimes sadistically.

And then you had Hybrid games like the Quest for Glory series, which was an RPG combined with an adventure game and did both pretty well.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

It still hasn't Died. There's a number of new P+C Adventure games being made. Check out Wadjet EYE games, which channels a lot of the old Sierra/Lucasarts style aventure games.

But yeah, adventure games were about story, puzzles and world building. Sometimes humor as well(ie the monkey island series). It was less about "Do I have good reflexes" and more "Can I figure out a solution to this puzzle?", though some games did like to test your reflexes as well. Sometimes sadistically.

And then you had Hybrid games like the Quest for Glory series, which was an RPG combined with an adventure game and did both pretty well.

Blackwell Saga, right? Yeah, I've been meaning to play it. Quest for Glory is one of my favourite game series, as well. That being said they're not young. Like 1988? The Forgotten Realms adventures like Pool of Radiance are younger than QfG. I will say that QfG did a lot of things right to break free of Sierra's own self-styled glut of adventure games. Hell, even its own glut of games that have the word 'quest' in the title ...

What the hell was wrong with gamers? This problem was bigger than just videogames, also. HeroQuest in 1989 ... Advanced HeroQuest in '93, Warhammer Quest in '95...

 

[EvilRoy]

A couple people mentioned this stuff I think, but just to kind of strike on it further - in the 1980s games didn't have stories so much. Most game stories were relegated to manuals or easy to miss readme files - the first zelda/mario games had some kind of story going on, but they were barely present within the game itself.

Point and click adventures were a new wave of games that heavily featured story and writing - and they were basically intended for PCs which was a pretty new market at the time. Early PCs didn't have specialized graphics hardware like consoles/cabinets did at that time, so they had a hard time producing the silky smooth movements the NES was known for by the end of the 80s. Seriously.

 

[Bad Jim]

One of the more infamous examples of this being King's Quest 5. There's a part where you are tied up, with no way to escape, unless you had previously found a boot while wandering round a desert (without dying of thirst, apparently), and later thrown the boot at a cat chasing a rat. If you don't, you'll get up to the section where you get tied up, and have no idea how you are supposed to progress.

That sort of thing is bullshit, and always was. I have never heard anyone seriously try to defend it. But most puzzles in most games were reasonable. And games in other genres had their own kinds of bullshit, watch the Angry Video Game Nerd and you'll see.

I've played a few, but this is in the age of online walkthroughs being easily available, and I tend to end up giving up on trying to play the game, and just following instructions from the walkthrough.

You have to solve some puzzles yourself if you want to enjoy it. It's not a disaster if you have to look up some solutions, but if you find yourself looking up everything, either show some discipline or find a less bullshitty game. I recommend the first three Monkey Island games, which aren't entirely free of bullshit but fairer than most, and quite funny.

However, these games got made in large numbers for a while. Was this because they were cheap and easy to make, or was there a demand for these games and an appeal I'm just not getting?

Every kind of game was cheap to make back then, but someone was obviously buying them. I think it was because there was very little storytelling in other genres back then. Even in JRPGs you wouldn't spend much time advancing the plot, you'd mostly be fighting. In point and click adventures everything you did was advancing the plot in some way, even if a lot of it was silly.

Then CDs became a popular format and the massive increase in data capacity made it much easier to add cutscenes, audio dialogues and exposition in general. And then the point and click adventure started to decline as other genres got better at storytelling.

 

[Dalisclock]

It still hasn't Died. There's a number of new P+C Adventure games being made. Check out Wadjet EYE games, which channels a lot of the old Sierra/Lucasarts style aventure games.

But yeah, adventure games were about story, puzzles and world building. Sometimes humor as well(ie the monkey island series). It was less about "Do I have good reflexes" and more "Can I figure out a solution to this puzzle?", though some games did like to test your reflexes as well. Sometimes sadistically.

And then you had Hybrid games like the Quest for Glory series, which was an RPG combined with an adventure game and did both pretty well.

Blackwell Saga, right? Yeah, I've been meaning to play it. Quest for Glory is one of my favourite game series, as well. That being said they're not young. Like 1988?

The blackwell Saga is excellant(though the first game is a bit meh...but it's also pretty short so it's easy enough to deal with). Unavowed is in the same universe with a small amount of crossover and is good in it's own right.

There's also a number of other games, some more published then developed in house but I don't think I've disliked any of them. Probably the most rough of any of them was Gemini Rue and I still enjoyed it. Even the Shivah was worth a look, despite being kinda....different(there aren't many games where you play as a Rabbi and are about Jewish Culture...actually, I'm pretty sure that's the only one).

The QFG series was 1990's, which I admit is rather old now. I keep forgetting the 1990's was 20 years ago because that's when I grew up. I keep meaning to boot it up again, especially with some of the spin-off projects, such as Quest for infamy and the one about the adventurers school that just came out a month ago.

 

[Dalisclock]

That sort of thing is bullshit, and always was. I have never heard anyone seriously try to defend it. But most puzzles in most games were reasonable. And games in other genres had their own kinds of bullshit, watch the Angry Video Game Nerd and you'll see.

Then CDs became a popular format and the massive increase in data capacity made it much easier to add cutscenes, audio dialogues and exposition in general. And then the point and click adventure started to decline as other genres got better at storytelling.

Lucasarts adventure games were actually developed with the philosophy of not pulling the same stupid BS that Sierra routinely did. If you could die, it was usually pretty obvious that it was because you did something stupid. It was pretty much impossible to get yourself in a no-win situation. They routinely took jabs at Sierra for this very reason. The exception being some of the really early games like Zak McKraken and Manic Mansion(both of which could get you killed/stuck).

Don't get me wrong, Sierra made some fine games, but they also made some sadistic, awful puzzles. And then there was Codename:ICEMAN which was basically a giant FU to players everywhere for it's entire play length. Oh? Did you not check your ID card the guard gave back to you right after he gave it back to you, revealing he gave you the wrong one? Did you only figure this out hours later when you actually needed it again and have no way to go back for the real one? Sucks to be you. Hope you enjoy replaying half the game, part of which requires you to win a RNG mini-game where save scumming gets you a game over for cheating. Eyup.

When CD's rolled around it didn't do adventure games any favors considering adventure games started trying to insert movies into everything and it rarely paid off since they turned more into "click on the right spot to play a movie" and the acting/effects budget was rarely high for any of these. Adventure games going to 3D was a relief to pretty much everyone but the damage was done.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

The appeal to me was in the worlds they built, characters, and how they were weaved so well together with a mix of fairy tale, mystery, suspense, drama and even horror to an extent. Like EvilRoy and Richard Kain said, it was down to the art and writing primarily to stand out and bring a story to you through this medium, which at the time I played them, was mostly just shooting, sports, and platformers.

I'm not gonna defend the backtracking because yes that was total crap shit, and I have my own experience to relate:

Spoiler: yet another example from King's Quest V

There's one part where you have to throw a pie into a yeti's face so he falls off the mountain, otherwise he just grabs and eats you. Earlier on, you meet a starving eagle in the cold, who you can help. If you've done everything right up to that point, you can feed him the pie, or a leg of ham (or eat it yourself). If you fed him the pie, then congratulations, you just played yourself. No way of knowing this. Of course, you could ignore the eagle, and also screw yourself over later, in another not-to-be-continued scenario, reload game please.

My favorite was the Hero's Quest series. Each one so unique to the other, from the small medieval English towns, to Arab cities and deserts, North African jungles, and Russian forests. That was my first experience with RPG elements in an adventure game. Not to mention the sense of humor, which was a mix of sarcasm, culture references, and the predicament of the protagonist (somewhat like Space Quest, but still unique). The puzzles also made more sense, and offered different ways around depending on which class you played as or which skills you built up.

That series, along with all the other Quest games, will always have a soft spot in my heart.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

The blackwell Saga is excellant(though the first game is a bit meh...but it's also pretty short so it's easy enough to deal with). Unavowed is in the same universe with a small amount of crossover and is good in it's own right.

There's also a number of other games, some more published then developed in house but I don't think I've disliked any of them. Probably the most rough of any of them was Gemini Rue and I still enjoyed it. Even the Shivah was worth a look, despite being kinda....different(there aren't many games where you play as a Rabbi and are about Jewish Culture...actually, I'm pretty sure that's the only one).

The QFG series was 1990's, which I admit is rather old now. I keep forgetting the 1990's was 20 years ago because that's when I grew up. I keep meaning to boot it up again, especially with some of the spin-off projects, such as Quest for infamy and the one about the adventurers school that just came out a month ago.

Haven't played Unavowed, and I haven't even heard of Shivah. Have played Gemini Rue... I--yeah? It was pretty good. Adventure games seem to be having a bit of a renaissance with the rise of digital distribution. Whicch is nice to see. And don't worry, I'm a Reaganaut brat myself.

A true and proper Millenial.... young adulthood in one millenia, adulthood almost immediately in a new one. Yeah ... I'm quickly reaching that point where 'middle-aged' no longer feel merely like a buzz-term for 'getting old(er)'.