Through the late 80’s and most of the 90’s, the appropriately named ‘point-and-click’ adventure genre gained massive popularity, primarily on home computers. Series like Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, Legend of Kyrandia and Leisure Suit Larry were staples and accounted for over 20 games between those series alone. By the 90’s, Lucasarts joined the fray and produced absolute classics of the genre like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and Full Throttle. Though by the late 90’s, their critically and fan-acclaimed masterpiece Grim Fandango didn’t perform as well as previous games.

Why did such a popular genre dry up and die so quickly?

Changing tastes

Image:3Drealms

One of the things that made point-and-click adventure games popular was that they were able to present impressive experiences and rich stories on the limited hardware of the era. Games like the aforementioned looked great, sounded great and gave you a lot to do.

But its pretty clear as to why this genre was DOOMed (not subtle at all, right)?

The mid 90’s saw an explosion of first-person shooters on PCs, starting with Wolfenstein, but by the mid 90’s the market was flooded with first-person shooters like Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic, Blood, Rise of the Triad and Dark Forces. By the late 90’s, we had arena deathmatch games like Quake and narrative driven FPS classics like Half-Life.

If the dominance of action-packed FPS games wasn’t bad enough for the humble point-and-click adventure game, by the mid 90’s gamers became introduced to the new and addictive RTS genre which sunk us deep into Warcraft II, Command & Conquer, Dune II, Starcraft and Total Annihilation. With robust single-player campaigns, LAN-friendly local multiplayer and the introduction of Battle.net, these games took a lot of gamer’s time and focus.

With these dominant new genres taking over the market, the appeal of slower-paced point-and-click adventure games faded away. By the year 2000, the genre was essentially dead.

A small resurgence

Image:Thimbleweed Park![]

As gamers have aged and the market widened, we’ve seen some renewed interest in the genre. We recently discovered the classic point-and-click throwback Thimbleweed Park on the Switch (review coming soon) thanks to Limited Run Games and have been loving this return to form for some of the minds behind the early Lucasarts genre trailblazers. Grim Fandango recently received an HD remake, the Syberia trilogy has seen a re-release on the Switch and a whole slew of new genre titles are coming to the PC and other platforms this year.

Why the comeback? I assume that they’re seeing renewed interest for two reasons:

1.) Those of us who grew up in the late 80’s/early 90’s with these games are coming back around to experience this classic genre out of nostalgia.

2.) The prevalence of touch devices like the Nintendo Switch, phones and tablets has exploded, and the point-and-click adventure game is absolutely perfect for these machines.

In conclusion

The point-and-click adventure genre produced some of the most creative and clever game design and narrative the industry has ever seen. The spark of resurgence in this genre we’re currently experiencing is a welcome return for both fans who grew up with this style of game and those of us too young to remember it. Here’s hoping that it continues to grow, rather than retreat back into obscurity after a short day in the sun.