Miss the Old Days. Miss games like Myst,Alida,Shivers 1,Dracula, Riven,etc. Games with good story, Writing,and didn't have to jump/run or solve against a clock. Yes, I know. I am whining-but, there it is. There used to be a good selection of those types of games-you could almost look forward to one a month. I would look forward to buying a new 70 sheet,college ruled,spiral notebook to use for 'note-ing' for that game! Well, sadly those days are gone. If it weren't for Jonathan Boakes, Wm. Fisher, and the Barrow Hill developer(Matt ?)I wouldn't have a decent(from those guys a GREAT GAME)g, well written, atmospheric, game to look forward to playing. The Carol Reed games are fine (but not my fave-but very good. It doesn't take a lot of rain or smoke/fog to creat atmosphere. good writing is the key! the extra visual stuff is 'dressing'..a great sound effect for rain and some drops is sufficient-you don't have to be always in a downpour.(and it bogs down the pc unless is a pretty current one! Which most of us can't afford right now in this economy). I remember in Boake's first game-you saw the seaside area, heard the gulls and birds, heard the wind, the bouy bells,-noises you'd HEAR at/in a seaside area. I felt like I was There! AND also felt the spookyness.
Darn it! Here I am retired and now really have the time to 'get into' some good, long, well done games and the supply is almost gone. pfuii. Have taken to playing the 'casual' spooky IHOGS at bigfish but it is not the same thing. Besides which, for what I spend on those would buy 2 REALLY good games a month(long, satisfying, spooky, and/or mysterious)-so that's going to have to stop. The Agatha Christie games were a good idea to do-unfortunately(in my opinion) they weren't that well done. There have been a few others in the past couple years-Loath Nolder (the first one-great atmosphere-but did leave you hanging) and Scratches! However-not nearly enough really good games. Games that Grab you!. Well, guess that is way it is going...new, really good games far and few between. So very sad..but so thankful for the people who are hanging in there trying to bring us the really good games we want-and want to spend our money on and our Time -in enjoying them. I always look forward to a new game by the 3 developers mentioned at the beginning-I get my thermos of hot tea ready, my notebook and pen, my soup heated and sandwich made and for the next hours/days--well, can it be any better?? Just wish it could be more often!

It's funny because I remember waiting much longer for releases than I do now. I think we took longer to play them back then because there wasn't many places to get help (at least I did) and therefore it seemed like you always had something to play.

Ana

Hi and I would like to add to this thread. I too miss the old days of adventure games. The cartoon style games just don't do it for me. I have tried a few and now don't bother with them. Oh how I would love to see more games like, Tomb of the Pharoah, Temajen,(not sure I spelled that correctly) but you get the idea. Also I don't want to always download my games. I like getting the boxed version and looking forward to playing them at a later time. Please don't think I haven't enjoyed any games of late but not nearly as many as a few years ago. Anyhow thank you for listening to me. I hope that in the near future more games with be developed and published for us
adventure fans. The causual games are fine but I can only play so many hidden object themes before I find them tiring.

I was just thinking about this too. I keep looking for games now, it seemed like for a while they were everywhere! Now it's nearly impossible to find a good adventure game. Good luck going to any game stores, they don't even know what adventure games are (the last one I went to suggested LA Noir..I didn't enjoy it at all).

I tell them "you know like Myst" when Myst really isn't my favorite but everyone seems to know it. Syberia, The Experiment, Keepsake, Return to Mysterious Island, The Longest Journey were all amazing games, story lines you could really get into.

I think if I could find a game with the freedom of Skyrim (not necessarily fantasy), but as an adventure game I would be in gaming heaven!

My last time out asking about adventure games the guy at the store suggested LA Noir. I tried it. Nope. Not for me.

Not only do I not really care for cartoon-y games, I much prefer first-person games. They are next to non-existent these days. I've been playing some casual games, but again, they are mostly 3rd person, too.
I say "ditto" to all that was said by those who posted on this thread before me.

Are adventure games a dying genre?

I hope not, but I fear it to be true.

I haven't seen any death to the Adventure Genre. There are plenty of games being made.

Definitely not, Oregon_Duckie !!

Whilst I, too, prefer many of the older Adventures ( and replay them all the time ) in my opinion the genre itself is most certainly NOT dying.

I have many in my collection that I've not even started yet

I don't see that happening Oregon-Duckie.

Like many others here - I have a bunch of games on the shelf too I have not gotten to yet.

I am seeing new games all the time and by new I mean new to me - yep - older games I have not heard of til now and new games on the horizon.

I think they will be around a while.

Hi everyone. Just wanted to peek in because I feel the same way as Gamenut does. SIGH. I remember and will never EVER forget, that moment in 1995 when I loaded up Myst for the first time and had my eyes and my mind blown away by an adventure game for the first time. It was so pretty and being able to move around in the world was such a new thing, that I felt like I'd won the lottery that day! SIGH

I havent' felt like that in a long time--like alot of you guys I've enjoyed some good adventures along the way and am grateful to Matt Clark, Jonathan Boakes, etc. for their hard work and wonderful games. I just wish we had games of that quality and passion (or like the old Myst games) more often! I can't remember the last time I actually got excited before a game came out and was dying for it for months, except maybe Skyrim and that's an RPG.

Well, the good news is that I found all of the Myst games, including some that I either hadn't finished like Myst 3 or ones that I never started like Myst V. So ironically, for me this week, I've swung back to the beginning and am doing Myst games again. And you know, as I walked around in Myst V last night, I DID have a little shivery thrill thinking, "OMG how did they do this?" And I wanted to stay in age I was in and not leave. How cool to feel that way after such a long time of NOT feeling it! LOL

Just had to share---thanks for bringing this up---you guys have made me realize that I'm not alone with this feeling of loving and craving the feelings from the "old days" of gaming.

Tracy

So where do I go for games? If you look up "adventure games" on amazon you get a list of games that are not remotely adventure games. If you go to a game store they look at you like you're crazy. Stores like Target and Walmart that used to carry a few titles now have stopped altogether. Steam has a few Nancy Drew titles, but most of their "adventure games" aren't really appropriately labeled either.

Even the list of newly released games on here is pretty sad. I only saw a couple on the list that looked interesting at all. They seemed like they had cartoony graphics or graphics that were distractingly bad.

Not trying to be a downer or argumentative, I'm just really discouraged trying to find a new game.

Tracy, I know EXACTLY what you're talking about: I still get such a great feeling when I replay the original Myst and hear the music and sounds, and get to walk all over ALL BY MYSELF!

How far back and what type are you looking for, Oregon_Duckie ??

Have you already played most of the new Adventure releases of the last couple of years ??

Or are you restricting your search to a very definite type ??

Mary--We're definitely on the same page-glad to hear you feel the same way I do!

Tracy

Well I have Windows 7 and a lot of the older ones I've tried don't work. I haven't played the Aura series yet, but I'm actually excited to try those.

I'm finishing up Mystery Case Files and I enjoy those, I really haven't seen much of anything for the past two years that looks like an adventure game.

I don't care if it's fantasy or more realistic, but I prefer realistic graphics, better is better but it doesn't have to be great quality as long as they're not so bad it's distracting.

Story and mystery are important to me, and to a degree suspense but I don't like them overly scary. I can forgive a bad ending if the overall story is engrossing (i.e. The Experiment is one of my all time favorites, but the ending was terrible IMO).

Which ones don't work, Oregon? If you check the Glitches forum, you will find a thread called Windows 7 and Games with a list of many older games that work in Windows 7. We've found relatively few that won't work. Compatibility mode has gotten quite a number of them to play. If you have a particular game that you're having problems with in Windows 7 and it's not on the list in the thread, just post down in the Glitches forum and we can help you out down there.

One person's trash is another's treasure I guess. What is called cartoony here is what I have nostalgia for. I cut my adventure teeth on Sierra on Line, Lucas Arts and the Broken Sword Genre and those are the type of games that I have nostalgia for. Some of the current 3d person games are so well drawn and detail oriented that they are as good graphically as the myst type games.

Although I remember fondly the "old days" games, I revel in the advancements that have made and enjoy both those days and the current crop of adventures.

The first games I ever played were the Monkey Islands 1 & 2 and from there I went backwards to catch up on what I might have missed and then forwards to find more delights

A good story and a friendly interface have always been my priorities- irrespective of what type of graphics - and although I prefer 3rd person perpesctive I play 1st without any problem

And I agree with oldman .... "One person's trash is another's treasure"

I'm not saying that the cartoony ones are bad, I'm saying there aren't many anymore that aren't cartoony. I enjoyed the Sierra Games and Monkey Island, but I really am looking for ones that have the more realistic graphics. No offense meant.

Myst (and its clones) bore me to tears.

Hey, Oregon,

I'm sure no offense was taken. Personally, I'm going mad waiting for Testament. Care to join me? And don't forget, you can always contribute to the Tex Murphy kickstarter and get a brand new Tex Murphy FMV game this year if they meet their funding goal.

Have you played Society of the Serpent Moon? Lost Horizon? Black Mirror 2 and/or 3?

Gil.

It could very well be new adventure games are in the works, but have yet reached the crowing stage.

One reason new adventure games may seem absent could be due to the time frame HO/HOGs, and the like, are released. It seems a new HO/HOG is released each and every week.

Because the frequency with which these games are released, we may be expecting new adventure games to be released within that same time frame. How long was it between release of the older games? It wasn't a week, that's for sure.

For people like me who really like Myst-like games and really don't like other types (3rd person, horror, cartoony), the choices are non-existent. I haven't played an new adventure game since Rhem 4 and Slip Space.
Trends come and go, and I hope that 1st person fantasy puzzlers make a comeback.
For now, I've been relegated to casual games which just don't have the exploration and challenge that adventures have.

I'm 100% with oldman. Everyone has their preferences and for me the idea of a voluminous notebook would send me off to an RPG in short order! I loved Shivers and up to a point enjoyed the Myst games. I love some of Jonathon Boake's games and find others boring. Scratches and Barrow Hill were hits with me. But I also loved A Vampyre Story, Book of Unwritten Tales, Machinarium and most recently Botanicula.

Like Colpet says, trends come and go. Hopefully, there is something out there for everyone. It just seems that those who prefer the Myst-like games are in the doldrums right now.

I agree with Colpet. There aren't many first person puzzle-oriented games to look forwards to. We used to have games from Kheops. Before that we had games from Detalion (Schizm/Sentinel/Reah) and the Atlantis series from Cryo. We had the Dracula series from Index+. We had games like Faust, Ring, and the Pilgrim/Legend of the Prophet games from Arxel. We had the Riddle of the Sphinx games. We had Byzantine and Connections from companies that didn't normally make games. Even Sierra, more famous for their 3rd person games, published the Shivers games, RAMA, and Lighthouse. And of course there were the Zork games, the Journeyman Project games, and the Myst series. And there were a host of games from developers that didn't publish all that many adventure games -- Morpheus, Obsidian, 9: The Last Resort, Comer, Amber, Timelapse, and Titanic: Adventure Out of Time.

It's great that we are still getting some 1st person adventures like the Dark Fall games, Barrow Hill, Rhiannon, Scratches, and The Last Half of Darkness games, but it seems that the RHEM series is the only series that is NOT a horror/supernatural themed game. Not that I have anything against those, but there's a distinct lack of variety in the subject matter. The Nancy Drew and Carol Reed games aren't exactly Myst-like because of the amount of character interaction that is necessary, and the Nancy Drew series varies in gameplay quality (too many repetitive "chores" and dexterity challenges in some of them). Fortunately the Carol Reeds are more dependable, though their puzzles aren't difficult enough for some of us.

It's not like those who enjoy mainly 3rd person games that aren't "cartoony" have it much better. With publishers like dtp going broke, there will probably be fewer 3rd person adventures.