Adventure games

PC

Consoles

Handhelds

How appropriate, you fight like a cow.

Click on the ground to walk there, click on an object to put it in your inventory, click on a person to talk to them, click to solve puzzles. Who doesn't love point & click adventure games? Thanks to its writing, puzzles and humor, this genre was extremely popular throughout the 80s and 90s, but sadly kind of disappeared around the time when 3D action and online games became the next big thing. Recently the genre has experienced a small revival thanks to download services such as Steam and the efforts of indie developers. The following is a list of the best games the genre has to offer. Most of them are really old, but they have all aged very well thanks to their timeless gameplay.

Beginners, be warned! The puzzles in adventure games are not for those who can't think of creative solutions!

Note: many of these games can be played on ScummVM. To play Infocom's text adventures, use a Z-Machine interpreter like Frotz.

PC Games

The List

Cover	Title	Developer	Year Released	Description	Screenshot
	Bad Day on the Midway	Inscape	1995	Written, co-designed, and scored by avant-garde band / art collective The Residents. You are an entity that can posses the people at a carnival to discover the cause of the disease spreading throughout it. People will talk to the person who you posses and reveal their all to depressing back-story through songs featured on the album. I can't say much without giving away to much but it is a dark but loyal homage to the Residents twisted musical style and I highly recommend it to lovers of the adventure game genre.
	Back to the Future	Telltale Games	2010	A well-done sequel to the classic movie trilogy with Christopher Lloyd voicing Doc Brown and a guy who sounds so much like Marty voicing Marty that you'd never guess it's not actually Michael J. Fox. The creator of the films is involved as well. Lots of nostalgia service all around. It was released in monthly episodes, and the last one came out in the summer of 2011. The Steam release is slightly cheaper than on TTG's website.
	Beneath a Steel Sky	Virgin Interactive	1994	A classic adventure with a great comic book artstyle set in a dystopian future. Now freeware, can even be downloaded for Linux. The subtitles use ALL-CAPS on random WORDS all the time for NO PARTICULAR REASON.
	Ben There, Dan That / Time Gentlemen, Please!	Zombie Cow Studios	2008 - 2009	Two hilarious and silly indie adventures with MS Paint graphics filled with meta humor humour and references to old LucasArts games. Plays just like Sam & Max hit the Road and obviously took a lot of inspiration from it. You can get both at once for five bucks or just download Ben There, Dan That for free.
	Blackwell (series)	Wadjet Eye Games	2006 - 2014	An indie game series about a girl called Rosangela Blackwell, who is a medium and is being aided in solving ghost-related incidents by.. a ghost. A ghost called Joey Mallone. All five games are pretty great, with a relaxing New York City setting.
	Blade Runner	Westwood	1997	Amazing adventure that has aged very well. Same settings as the movie but with different characters, so you don't need to watch the movie to play this, but you'll enjoy all the references and visual cues if you have. Has multiple endings, great gameplay and a fantastic story.
	Botanicula	Amanita Design	2012	From the makers of Machinarium, another extremely charming journey through a bizarre world without words. This time it's an inventive spin on plant life. Can be beaten in a few hours by really observant players, but offers tons of atmosphere and many laughs. Also girls seem to love this game.
	Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars / Circle of Blood	Revolution Software	1996	Great classic adventure game about an American investigating a series of murders in Paris, which, of course, are related to something much bigger involving an ancient cult descending from the templars. Made years before all the templar/DaVinci craze. Serious story, but nice bits of humor here and there. The sequels get gradually worse, although the second game is still good. Apparently it picked up again after the 3rd or 4th one. Was ported to several systems, including the DS (see the list below).
	Day of the Tentacle	LucasArts	1993	Sequel to Maniac Mansion. One day the evil Purple Tentacle sprouts arms due to the effect of poisoned water and decides to use them to take over the woooorld. Bernard and his friends have to return to the mansion of Dr. Fred to stop him, travelling through time and helping the conception of the declaration of independence along the way. Considered one of LucasArts' finest pieces. Features full voice acting! A remastered version was released through most digital distributors in in 2016.
	Deponia	Daedalic Entertainment	2012	A Point-and-Click-Adventure that plays on a planet full of trash. Rufus, the main protagonist, dreams of escaping the planet's surface to live in the flying city Elysium that isn't polluted by rubbish. The game offers the puzzle style of The whispered world combined with a new story.
	Discworld (series)	Teeny Weeny Games, Perfect Entertainment	1995 - 1996	Based on Terry Pratchett's famous novel series. Follow the inept "wizzard" Rincewind and his living lugagge through a bizarre fantasy world, meeting trolls, dwarves and heroes while avoiding the reaper. The puzzles might become somewhat cryptic if you're not familiar with the novels. Both were also released on the Playstation, which might be easier to run depending on your PC.
	Discworld Noir	Teeny Weeny Games, Perfect Entertainment	1999	Like the names says, this game takes place in a very moody and dark (but still satiric and hilarious) version of the Discworld setting. Playing as private investigator Lewton, it's your job to solve a murder case in the city of Ankh-Morpork. Filled to the brim with film noir references as you'd expect from a Discworld title.
	Edna & Harvey: The Breakout	Daedalic Entertainment	2008	You play Edna who has to break out of a padded cell along with her stuffed animal Harvey and solve other riddles. It's a classical Point-and-Click-Adventure and based on a german diploma thesis. You find out the reason for your hospitalization via flashbacks. The game is Daedalic Entertainment's first work.
	Full Throttle	LucasArts	1995	It is 2040, and all motorized vehicles are being replaced by hovercars. The founder of the last motorcycle manufacturer has just been murdered. And you, badass leader of a biker gang, have been framed for it. Full Throttle features an amazingly simple interface and fast-paced action. Brilliant graphics and animation provide a strong cartoon feel, while the voice acting is powerful and cinematic. Players find themselves racing to the finish to help Ben find the bad guys. A remastered version was released through most digital distributors in in 2017.
	Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers	Sierra	1993	Gabriel Knight is a horror novelist and bookstore owner who has been haunted by nightmares. Hoping to write a bestselling book on Voodoo, Gabriel ventures out into New Orleans to do the research he needs. But over the next few days, he begins to learn the meaning of his dreams.
	Gemini Rue	Wadjet Eye Games	2011	Awesome sci-fi game. Think Beneath the Steel Sky laced with Blade Runner. Inspiring story, beautiful graphics, nice music, game flows perfectly, without too many stupid illogical puzzles. This is a game you'll want to finish in one sitting.
	Gobliiins (series)	Cocktel	1993	These games are somewhat obscure outside the French speaking community, but they are fun. Sierra got involved with it states-side and added the -Quest suffix to cash in on their fame. Hard, sometimes non-sensical puzzles but nothing like some of Sierra's games. Inventory/partner based puzzles with cute cartoony graphics and setting. Matching the game's bizarre style, Goblins III (Gobliiins) is actually the first game in the series (three protagonists), with 2 and 1 following. Got a 4th game very recently, but it's more of a fan-game and no one played it.
	Grim Fandango	LucasArts	1998	Set in a "day of the dead" themed afterlife, Grim Fandango involves a Film-Noir style plot revolving around a salesman and a conspiracy in the Department of Death, an organization that helps guide souls from death to their eternal rest. Well known for its excellent in story, art style, music, characters, and dialog, this 3D adventure game is considered one of the finest in the genre. A remastered version, that did away with the clunky tank controls and added an orchestral score, was released through most digital distributors in in 2015.
	I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream	Cyberdreams	1995	A disturbing game based on the short story of the same name. All of humanity has been wiped out by an insane AI, except for five people who are being kept alive to be tortured, killed and revived for hundreds of years. It is your task to prove to the AI that humans are better than machines in a maze based on every character's personality flaws. Now on Steam and GOG! "HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."
	Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis	LucasArts	1992	This is the fourth Indiana Jones movie. Shut up, Crystal Skull didn't happen. A brilliant adventure that offers great replay value by letting you play it through three different paths (action, puzzles and teamwork), changing around items, characters and places you visit. One of the few Lucas adventures where you can actually die, but it's only in obviously dangerous situations, no "you eat the apple and choke on it" bullshit. Available dirt cheap on Steam and absolutely worth it.
	Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit	Quantic Dream	2005	This is what Quantic Dream worked on before Heavy Rain. Parts of the gameplay have quick time events, but it's still adventure through and through. Overall, it has a really cool story, though beware in the last third of the game, the plot goes utterly balls-to-the-walls bananas and the tone changes so completely that you might legitimately start to wonder what writer was smoking when they wrote the last part of the script. This can, depending on your tolerance and taste, either be hilariously stupid or just annoyingly stupid. Still, there's lots of interactivity and suspense, making this a game classic.
	King's Quest (series)	Sierra	1984 - 1998	This is one of the dinosaurs of the genre. Started out in 1984, before the "point and click" part was invented. Thus, the first four games require you to type out text commands to interact with the environment. Cheap deaths and unwinnable situations everywhere, having multiple savegames is mandatory. AGDInteractive made (really good) unofficial remakes of the first three games. The series sadly died when Mask of Eternity was released and Roberta Williams had the dumb idea to make it an action RPG.
	L.A. Noire	Rockstar Games Team Bondi	2011	Although it's a game that probably won't win new fans to the adventure genre, L.A. Noire is a great experience start to end. The story is very well written and the characters are wonderfully fleshed out with basically HBO quality acting (Half the cast of Mad Men make a cameo). The look of old detective and crime films is perfect, the facial capture technology works and you even have choice to play the game in black and white. This is not GTA in the 40s, but it's not Mafia either - L.A. Noire stands on its own as an adventure game with driving and action components.
	Leisure Suit Larry (series)	Sierra	1987 - 2009	Very dirty series of games about a wannabe playboy who just wants to get laid and tends to get in trouble with mobsters. Similar gameplay to King's Quest, definitely not for kids. As usual with Sierra, the first three require to input commands, and the rest use a point'n'click interface. As usual, too, the first one was remade in point'n'click by Sierra. The whole series up until Larry 7 - Love for Sail is good, avoid everything after that like the plague. By the way, Larry 4 doesn't exist... It's kind of an inside joke.
	Loom	LucasArts	1990	Another more serious Lucas game and a big departure from the usual SCUMM engine games. The interface was rather experimental for its time and the gameplay revolves around magical melodies played on the protagonist's mystic instrument. Features a complex and epic fantasy story. Available for cheap on Steam. A hard-to-find version with background music and extra character portraits, but without voice acting, was released for the FM-Towns.
	Machinarium	Amanita Design	2009	An award-winning indie adventure about the tale of a little robot in a city made of machines. It's kind of similar to The Neverhood in the sense that puzzles are generally logic-based and that there is no spoken dialog. The artstyle is amazing and can best be described as a mixture of bleak, dystopian, industrial and completely adorable.
	Maniac Mansion	LucasArts	1988	Spooky and funny game from LucasArts' early days. You can pick three characters to play with and the game will be different depending on who you choose. Might look somewhat out-of-date compared to later Lucas games, but give it a chance anyway. Enjoy your chainsaw. Was included for free in the sequel, Day of the Tentacle.
	The Secret of Monkey Island	LucasArts	1990	One of the most famous and successful adventure games ever made, this one is considered a cult classic by many. Help the "mighty pirate" Guybrush Threepwood defeat the evil ghost pirate LeChuck, win the love of the beautiful Elaine Marley and uncover the titular secret of Monkey Island. Exceptional writing and humor, this game is a mandatory play for everyone who loves adventures everyone. Has a remake with modern graphics and voice acting on Steam. The artstyle is generally agreed upon to be ugly and the controls are fucktarded, but you can also switch to the original graphics and interface just with the press of a button.
	Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge	LucasArts	1991	Just like Monkey Island 1, but longer, funnier, and all around better. Considered by many to be the best Monkey Island. Get a job by tainting soup with a rat, kidnap two large animals for your twisted machinations, practice voodoo against your foes, and cause two huge explosions while stealing everything that's not nailed down. Like SoMI, it has a remake with redone graphics and full voice acting which is available on Steam and looks and controls much better than the first one.
	The Curse of Monkey Island	LucasArts	1997	The third entry in the Monkey Island series after six years of silence. Beautiful hand-drawn graphics and excellent voice acting add to the atmosphere and humor of the game and make it like a playable cartoon. Some think of it worse than the first two, others consider it their favorite. Not written by Ron Gilbert anymore, which caused a bit of a broken base and kind of ruined 2's ending, but screw the whiners.
	Escape from Monkey Island	LucasArts	2000	The first 3-dimensional and the weakest of the Monkey Island series. Still worth playing if only for completionist purposes. Has some nice references to the old games. Others will tell you this "references" are heresy. Your call.
	Tales of Monkey Island	Telltale Games	2009	After almost ten years, Guybrush returns, now under the direction of Telltale Games. This one was released in episodes, but the whole thing can be downloaded at once. It is without a doubt the darkest Monkey Island game (colorful dark, not grimdark, mind you) and people seem to put this somewhere between Curse and Escape as far as quality goes, but it's really much better than your average "revival of a 10 years old series" title, especially in the later chapters. Nothing in the game was made without Ron Gilbert's approval. Also on the Wii, but with awful loading times and FPS issues.
	Myst (series)	Cyan Worlds	1993 - 2003	Some of the best games in the adventure genre. The first two are must-plays, while the others are simply a good bit above average. If you're into the story, you should go ahead and play the other four games; there are also several Myst novels that greatly expand upon the in-game multiverse (yes, MULTIverse). Also considered some of the most difficult P&C games out there, mainly due to pixel hunting FUCKING HITBOXES and sometimes nonsensical puzzles. You have been warned, Riven awaits.
	Night in the Woods	Infinite Fall	2017	Very aesthetically pleasing adventure game where you play as a college dropout named Mae Borowski that returns to her hometown Possum Springs. There she reunites with her childhood friends: a goth crocodile lady, a manic ADHD fox and a computer geek bear. Explores themes like adulthood, mental illness, economic stagnation, the middle and lower socioeconomic classes. Developed by the same dude that made Aquaria. The gameplay itself is a mix between a simple platformer and talking to different characters (this game is mostly dialogue, so don't play this if you're not into that stuff).
	Normality	Gremlin Interactive	1996	A first person perspective adventure game with an interaction mechanic similar to Full Throttle, Normality is a surreal game that's one part cyberpunk and two parts Gen-X sensibilities. You play as Kurt Knutson, voiced by Corey Feldman, a rebelious teenager from Neutropolis, a deliciously 90s sci-fi police state, who attempts to defy the Norms and rise up a resistance against the rulers of this land. Viva la DOS.
	Planescape Torment	Black Isle	2000	Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. Although it's officially an RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate, in practice it plays very differently. The focus is squarely on the excellent story and dialog, and almost all combat is easily avoidable. When the story opens, you awaken in a bizarre morgue with no memory of who you are or how you got there. And to top it all off, it soon becomes clear that you are completely immortal. Now it's your job to go out into the surreal, often terrifying world of Planescape, and uncover some answers behind your past and your immortality.
	Puzzle Agent (series)	Telltale Games	2010, 2011	Two games very similar to the Professor Layton series on DS. You are Nelson Tethers, FBI Puzzle Agent. You are sent out to the small town of Scoggins to get the famous eraser factory going again, which has been shut down. In the course of the story, you find out that there's more going on in Scoggins than meets the eye. You meet spacemen, evil forest gnomes and a lot of crazy people obsessed with puzzles. In the second game, you return to Scoggins to clear up the mysteries that have been left at the end of the first game. Both games are a bit short, but well worth a try.
	Sam and Max Hit the Road	LucasArts	1993	A fucking awesome game based on the cult comic series. Follow the Freelance Police on their trip through the USA, solving the mystery of Bigfoot with lots of dirty humor. After being unavailable for many years, it was finally made available in 2014 through GOG.com
	Sam and Max: Season 1 + 2	Telltale Games	2007 - 2008	Not made by LucasArts anymore but still very solid adventure games. Both consist of several episodes that can be played on their own, but are slightly connected, kinda like a cartoon series. The episodes gradually get longer and better. The overarching plot of Season 2 in particular is one massive mindscrew involving time traveling and multiple subplots where stuff from the very beginning (even from season 1!) comes back much later, so definitely play it in the correct order. Season 1 episode 4 is free on Steam! Both are also on Wii but with the same problems as Tales of Monkey Island.
	Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse	Telltale Games	2010	The third Telltale Sam & Max game. Rather than consisting of several seperate episodes that are only connected by a general narrative like the previous entries, this one is a big story told through five chapters. Max ends up with psychic powers and the Freelance Police has to fight off invaders from another world. The interface is quite different from the minimalistic UI the first two seasons used, among other things you can now enter Max's mind to use his powers. The graphics also got a facelift. The darkest Sam & Max game yet, it gets quite eldritch in the later chapters.
	Sanitarium	Dreamforge Entertainment	1998	A creepy game about a man who wakes up in an asylum and has to figure out what around him is real and what exists only in his mind.
	Simon the Sorcerer	Adventure Soft	1993	Another great adventure that pokes fun at the fantasy genre. The average guy Simon has to visit dwarven mines, escape from the torture chamber of the goblins, talk to trees, trick a troll, duel a witch and defeat the evil overlord Sordid to become a real sorcerer. Has a number of sequels (some of them very recent), but none of them really stack up to the original.
	The Shivah	Wadjet Eye Games	2006, 2013	A Rabbi is losing faith in god and himself. His jadedness is scaring away his followers leaving his temple empty and in debt. Suddenly a former temple goer dies and leaves him more than enough money to save the temple! The rabbi does not feel right in taking "blood money" even if it means the temple will be saved, so he begins to investigate how the man died. A solid, well-written mystery story steeped in Jewishness without becoming a parody. There are achievements even without steam, director commentaries, and multiple save slots for multiple playthroughs. It's also dirt cheap at $5 or less if you snag it on sale.
	Space Quest (series)	Sierra	1986 - 1995	It's King's Quest in spaaaace and just as old. Still a classic and a great parody of science fiction tropes. Features just as many cheap and often hilarious deaths as its big brother series. I to III require you to type commands, IV and onward had a point'n'click interface, and the first one was remade using that system. An unofficial remake is being made for II, currently in beta testing.
	Syberia (series)	Microids	2002-2004	Maybe you've seen this in a shelf with the casual games at some stores and figured it was shit, but it's so far from it. This game's atmosphere and graphics are still beautiful by today's standards. It has a phenomenal soundtrack, settings and a touching story to boost, the ending of II being the only game that ever made this editor cry. This game just has it all. The puzzles are just the right difficulty, II being slightly harder than I. Made France but the English cast did a great job with the dub.
	The Dig	LucasArts	1995	A science-fiction story co-written by Steven Spielberg and dialogs by Orson Scott Card about a team of astronauts who end up in a strange world during a mission and have to find a way back to Earth. One of the more obscure Lucas games and definitely the most serious, with minimal humor but a great atmosphere and soundtrack. Now on Steam for a very cheap price. (Protip: Press Alt+S to turn off the pig disgusting pixel filter)
	The Longest Journey	Adventure	2000	What Funcom was known for BEFORE the atrocity that was Age of Conan. The sequel, called Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, is tarnished by subpar combat mechanics, but both have incredibly amazing stories with snappy, and often hilarious, dialogue to boot(Mostly in the first game). Be warned: The Longest Journey is as tragic as MGS3 and Mother 3; Dreamfall, even more so. YOU WILL CRY BITCH TEARS
	The Neverhood	Dreamworks Interactive	1996	A strange game set in a world made entirely of clay. Dialog is sparse and don't expect too much plot, but the puzzles are excellent and based on logical thinking rather than clicking every item around you. Has a literal wall of text that's thankfully entirely optional but reveals a lot about the world of the Neverhood.
	The Walking Dead	Telltale Games	2012	A fantastic adventure game set in the world of the comic book property with an original, excellent storyline that won all kinds of fucking awards. Available for just about every download service known to man (Steam, GFWL, etc) as well as Xbox 360 and PS3.
	The Whispered World	Daedalic Entertainment	2009	One of the newer Point'n'Click Adventures. It follows a hand-drawn artstyle similar to The Curse of Monkey Island, so it looks really beautiful. The plot revolves around a really, REALLY whiny and depressive clown who has dreams about the end of the world. It turns out that his dreams are actually a prophecy that tells him to save destroy the world. Available on Steam.
	Titanic: Adventure Out of Time	Cyberflix	1996	A charming little adventure game that takes place aboard the RMS Titanic. The scenery is supposed to be faithful to the original ship's design and the game contains a surprising amount of historically accurate Easter eggs. Like so many other games in need of intrigue, your main objective is to stop Hitler.....sort of. You play as a British secret agent and you have to uncover mysteries that will eventually play a large role in World War II. The game isn't too long, but it's a fun ride.
	Toonstruck	Virgin Interactive	1996	A classic Adventure featuring the voice talents of Dan Castleneta, Tim Curry, Dom DeLuise, Jim Cummings, Tress MacNeille and a FMV Christopher Loyd who's been sucked into a cartoon world. Filled with parodies of all types of cartoons, definetly worth a look.

Flash Games

Screenshot	Title	Developer	Year Released	Description
	Escape The Game	Interactales	2015	Escape the game is a humorous classic Point and Click Adventure referencing many classic games such as Escape from Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer or Sad & Max. You play Ron a snobby video-game reviewer who is trapped inside a game and the player is tasked with finding a way out either by escaping, breaking or beating the game! Link
	The Room: The Game	Tom Fulp	2010	Oh hai wiki. Hai doggy. I found this game, I thought you might like it, anyway how's your sex life? A fun flash adventure based on the infamous So Bad Its Good movie of the same name. Link