Adventure game facts for kids

An adventure game is a type of video game or computer game. Gameplay in adventure games is mostly exploration, solving puzzles and finishing stories. Some adventure games also have combat systems so the player can fight enemies like in an action game, beat 'em up or role-playing game, but many adventure games have no fighting in them at all. The first adventure game was Colossal Cave Adventure in 1975.

In adventure games, the player usually acts through a character in the story. This character sometimes has a history. For example Roger Sams in Bad Mojo is a sad insect scientist and Alexander in King's Quest VI is a prince trying to rescue a princess. Other player characters have almost no history. In Myst and Zork, the game does not even give the player character a name. Other characters and the game's voice call the player "you."

Adventure games can be played on computers, for example PCs and Macs. Adventure games can be played on consoles, for example Playstations and Xboxes.

Many adventure games are called point-and-click adventure games because the player uses a computer mouse to click on things on the screen. Not all adventure games do this. In the 1996 game Bad Mojo, the player can only use the computer's arrow keys. In the 1977 game Zork, the player must write commands using the keyboard.

Because they are about exploration, adventure games usually have an interesting world setting. Some games have art with painted graphics. Others show off the newest image-making technology, for example Myst. Other games, like the early Zork games, had no graphics at all. The Zork games told the player what was happening using words.

Some famous adventure game series are Myst by Brøderbund, Monkey Island by LucasArts, and the King's Quest and Quest for Glory series by Sierra on-line.

Images for kids

• 

  A computer terminal running Zork (1977), one of the first commercially successful text adventure games

• 

  The Whispered World (2009) is an example of a context-based point-and-click adventure game using high-definition graphics and animation.

• 

  The Stanley Parable (2013) is a first-person walking simulator set in an office building.

• 

  A common layout for a visual novel game

• 

  Telechrome^type output of Will Crowther's original version of Colossal Cave Adventure.

• 

  Mystery House for the Apple II was the first adventure game to use graphics in the early home computer era.

• 

  Myst used high-quality 3D rendered graphics to deliver images that were unparalleled at the time of its release.