Point and Click Adventure Games!

[alias_sqbr]

This was started out as an email lilysea, who was looking for games like Broken Age, but if I make it a post I can share with other people and maybe get more suggestions! Also warning if any of these require hand and eye coordination or fast reflexes.

I love that there's this resurgence in the genre and that most of these are like $10 and playable on the Mac. I haven't included any visual novels because that's a different genre. Note that many of these are on sale right now on Steam!

Old game I liked but haven't played in over a decade:
Legend of Kyrandia 2: The Hand of Fate: Fun silly high fantasy with a female protagonist

Games I have enjoyed recently on the Mac:
Gone Home: Really good storytelling, very simple puzzles, you are a young woman coming home to an empty house figuring out what's up with your family. Currently one of the gayest games I've played :)
Broken Age: Charming, funny, and gorgeous intertwined story of two teenagers (one a black girl omg) in a fantasy/scifi setting. Story stops abruptly halfway through because the second half is still in production.
Myst: Updated version of the classic walk around puzzle game. Atmospheric and pretty.
The Blackwell Legacy (and the next 2 games in the series): Grumpy, cynical women reluctantly badgered into saving people with their psychic powers. Has some dark tropey stuff about ~madness~.

Haven't played but heard good things about, available for Mac:
Wolf Among Us: A prequel to the Fables graphic novels, you are Bigby Wolf solving a murder mystery. Lots of difficult decisions, some of which must be made quickly.
The Walking Dead: Zombies, if you like that sort of thing. (And good characters and stuff, apparently? But also ZOMBIES)
Kentucky Route Zero: Eerie road trip through abandoned parts of America.
Sam and Max Hit The Road: over the top dark humour shenanigans
Syberia: Art nouveua steampunk with female protagonist
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: What you'd expect given the title?
Machinarium You are a little robot making their way through a mechanised dystopia. I got bored and stuck on the puzzles but lots of people love it.
To The Moon: Bittersweet, about doctors helping dying people in their dreams. One of them is a woman?

The rest of these games aren't available for Mac, sorry Lily!

My ABSOLUTE FAVORITES a decade ago but they're not available for Mac:
Monkey Island: Hilarious tropey pirate adventure, very Pirates of the Carribean. Don't like the look of the new art but ymmv.
Gabriel Knight: moody supernatural murder mystery in New Orleans. Kinda racist in it's depiction of voodoo. Good Old Games has the original version with Tim Curry and the dated but more artistic graphics. Had a reaction time bit at the end I never got past, I vaguely recall hearing they may have removed that in the new version.
Gabriel Knight 2: BISEXUAL GERMAN WEREWOLVES. For a long time was the gayest game I had ever played, but it's all very Tragic Gay and even in like 2002 the graphics was super dated. The "piece together the ~secret history~ from real historical objects" puzzles were very well done in this and the next game.
Gabriel Knight 3: steals from all the same sources as the Davinci Code but makes more sense AND has vampires.

Haven't played but heard good things about, just Windows:
Lifeless Planet: You are a cosmonaut on a lifeless planet, figuring out it's secrets

Not currently available for modern Mac or PC:
Gateway: old game based on the Frederic Pohl scifi book. Haven't played myself.
Day of the Tentacle: old scifi humour I never had the chance to finish, an update is coming!
Ghost Trick: DS/phone game I have heard good things about. You are a ghost solving your own murder?
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: super fun legal trials and mysteries, DS/phone only.
Hotel Dusk: Moody noir murder mystery, DS/phone only.

Comments

[yalovetz]

Oh, thank you for this! I'm not much of a gamer, but have occasionally enjoyed point and click puzzle adventures. I will be checking some of these out. I've played and enjoyed Indiana Jones, Monkey Island, and Machinarium, but haven't heard of most of the others.

[alias_sqbr]

I hope you find something you enjoy!

[pedanther]

FWIW, the version of The Secret of Monkey Island with the ugly new graphics has an option that lets you switch back to the old blocky graphics instead, if you like the old graphics better. I haven't got around to playing the new editions of the sequels, but I'd assume the same is true of them.

PS. According to the official website, the Gabriel Knight remake has all new voices, because the old voice recordings hadn't survived in a usable form and the original voice actors were mostly too old or too expensive (or, in Mr Curry's case, both) to invite back.

[alias_sqbr]

(1) Cool!
(2) Aw :(

Thanks :)

[thedeadparrot]

+1 to Kentucky Route Zero. It's extremely American in a lot of ways, but probably not American in the way America likes to see itself but more like America in the way that it actually is, especially the places that don't get a lot of play on TV and in the movies. It's hard to encapsulate everything that this game is trying to do in a few sentences, but it's really special. Arty and literary, but not dense. Sensitive and beautiful and strange. Also incomplete, just as a warning -- they've completed 3 acts out of 5. They also release short free interstitial segments between acts, and Limits and Demonstrations is a pretty good demo for whether or not the game itself will be of any interest.

Wolf Among Us is pretty well constructed as a noir thriller, but it has very little work to do with the active solving of cases, a format that seems naturally suited for adventure games. Oh, and it has weird issues with the female characters. Not enough to sink the whole thing, but there's definitely problems. Some people say that the last few minutes saved it for them, but it didn't for me.

In terms of other multi-platform adventure games out there, here's a couple not on your list that I have played and reasonably enjoyed:

Gemini Rue - kind of a cyberpunkish mystery thing. Similar to Broken Age in that you switch between two main protagonists, but that's about where the comparisons end. The writing is a little clunky and self-serious, and the voice acting is nothing to write home about, but otherwise it works reasonably well. Almost entirely about dudes and their dude problems. There's only a few minor female characters.

The Shivah - A more proper murder mystery, and it has the distinction of not being speculative fiction in any way. I can't speak to how well it handles Judaism, but you play a rabbi and his religion plays a big role in the storyline.

[alias_sqbr]

Ohhh it's not finished? I might wait then. But otherwise it sounds good, thanks. pokes at other recs, yay for recs!

[cheshirenoir]

DotT is playable on ScummVM. http://scummvm.org/
If you can find the ROMs, there are DS emus that'd allow you to play PW:AA and Hotel Dusk on both PC and Mac http://desmume.org/
Gateway will apparently run fine under DOSBox http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=772&letter=G
Probably more work that it's worth, but thought I'd drop it in :-D
(Can you spot the emulator geek?)

[alias_sqbr]

I was thinking about whether that was something I could be bothered with, and remembered I actually did it! I played DotT on the emulator on this computer for a while and then...stopped for some reason I can't remember. I think maybe the emulator was a pain to run? Or maybe I just didn't like the game that much.

I've played Hotel Dusk and Ace Attorney before I got sick of the way DS games give me headaches, but if I find myself DESPERATE to play ghost trick will look into roms. Though I think it may be available for iPad, which I find more readable. HMMMMM.

Anyway, thanks!