I'm a filthy casual looking for good adventure games

[Nonomori]

Hello, Escapist. Let's talk about pointing and clicking stuff, shall we?

First of all, after poor experiences with titles like Anna and Machinarium, I'm afraid of absurdly contrived puzzles. I'm the type of person that wouldn't use a guide or hint system to save my life. If I can't find the answer on my own, the game will be probably left unfinished for pure stubbornness. "Someday I'll try again", I lie to myself. "There has to be a way to open this door with bubblegum and a toothbrush... hey, what's that hanging from the chandelier? A cabbage? Now I'm getting closer".

To be honest, I don't know much about the genre, what it stands for, or what are the games that have aged gracefully. I just really liked the recent Telltale's stuff and The Cat Lady, and know I'm more and more interested. Funny enough, those games were criticized for having easy puzzles or simply accused of not being "true" adventure games, but I actually liked how grounded it felt at times.

Recommend me adventure games with reasonable puzzles and nice stories. Thank you very much.

 

[thetoddo]

Sam and Max (pretty much any of em)

If you've got a PC, any PC, the Space Quest and Police Quest games are great if you can get past the fact that they have aged horribly, police quest more than space quest.

 

[shrekfan246]

Er, a word of warning about Sierra's Quest games is that they tend to love dicking the player over in ways you'd only know if you've played the game before or are using a walkthrough. There are items you need later in the games that you can completely miss, deaths that happen out of the blue which you would have to be able to predict to avoid, and the puzzles can be brain-bendingly absurd. They're high-class as far as old adventure games go and their stories are pretty neat, but you might be better served looking into the 90's LucasArts adventure games instead, since many of them were created with the design philosophy of going directly against the randomness of Sierra games. Things like Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, etc.

Sam & Max and Monkey Island also have more modern renditions made by TellTale.

 

[veloper]

Play Blackwell 1 & 2 (but 3, 4 not so much). The first two games fit the requirements. Easier than machinarium, but not too easy. Also a decent story and nice characters.

 

[Weaver]

Ceville! I loved it and I feel like I'm the only person who played it

 

[scorptatious]

Personally, I recommend I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

Very unique game with great writing that mixes well with the puzzles in the game, which do actually have some semblence of logic to them. I'll admit though, the final level was just nuts in how it's designed. But I can forgive the game for that due to the context.

Granted, I don't have too much experience with point and click adventure games beyond that game and watching Retsupruae play games like Dark Seed 2 and King's Quest 5. The latter of which has a puzzle that, by the looks of things, is only solvable by trial and error or meta game knowledge. i.e. using the item in question, dying to it, reloading, then use it to solve the puzzle.