G2A.COM G2A News Features 15 Most Popular Point and Click Adventure Games [2020]
Action-focused games are fun but sometimes it can feel refreshing to play a game that is slower, more casual, and requires a bit of mind stretching and perceptivity instead of fast reflexes or grinding for hours to find the perfect gear for your adventurers.
Today we’ll talk about some of the best point and click adventure games you can play right now.
Let’s start with a game that serves as a sequel to an excellent production focused on an epic adventure in a fantasy world full of beautiful places and fantastic creatures, including gnomes, elves, and ogres, all mixed together with a good dose of humor and pop culture references.
Book of Unwritten Tales 2 is a classic point-and-click adventure where you will need to look for useful items and speak to newly met characters in order to solve puzzles and progress the story further. What makes the game unique is its fantasy setting and first-class humor, but one should not also forget about the voice acting that turns flat characters into memorable and charismatic ones. Gameplay-wise there is also some uniqueness, as you will often be able to control multiple characters – for some puzzles teamwork is crucial.
The Book of Unwritten Tales 2
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Although technically not the freshest title on the list, this classic humorous adventure should not be omitted when talking about the best and most popular point-and-click games, especially considering the fact that it received some remaster love recently.
Grim Fandango was originally released in 1998 and since then managed to obtain a cult status – and not without a reason. The story of a Department of Death employee tasked with helping a certain spirit to safely reach its final destination met with huge praise from both players and critics alike. It’s certainly worth noting the game’s focus on funny dialogues and puns, as well as the inspiration being drawn directly from Mexican culture, mainly in form of calaca death figures.
Grim Fandango Remastered
The Wolf Among Us is not a usual point and click adventure as you know it – you won’t need to figure out how to creatively combine and use items you find throughout the game. Instead, it’s more of an interactive movie with a strong emphasis being put on dialogues and player choices.
The game draws a lot of inspiration from classic fairy tales and it mixes beautiful and colorful fantasy worlds with dark and often overwhelming reality – expect to meet a lot of popular fable characters, including Snow White and Three Little Pigs, in their more mundane form. Plot-wise, you will be playing as a sheriff of Fabletown, Bigby Wolf, tasked with solving the case of a recent murder.
The Wolf Among Us
Telltale Games has more titles like The Wolf Among Us under its belt, but because we don’t want to favor one particular company on the list, we will only mention one more as we believe it rightfully deserved to appear here – a game that fueled the company and allowed it to spread its wings.
The Walking Dead game is loosely based on the comic series of the same title – it takes place in the same fictional universe but most characters are new and unique to the game. The story focuses on the character of Lee Everett, an honest man charged with murdering his wife’s lover. He is tasked with protecting a young girl named Clementine, for whom he will serve as a father figure throughout the game. She will remember most decisions you make, so keep that in mind and set a good example.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead series
Let’s take a break from serious games and explore a more humorous side of the point & click genre. Deponia would serve as a perfect example of such game – the first of the Deponia trilogy marks the beginning of a fantastic adventure filled with goofy dialogues and ridiculous situations.
Deponia is a classic point-and-click game, where your wits will be tested to its limits – sometimes finding a solution to the problem requires thinking out of the box and resorting to creativity. Not every puzzle or item combination will make sense at first sight, which encourages experimenting but it’s made in a way that doesn’t feel frustrating at all – listening to the protagonist’s thoughts as he comments on your tinkering skills may lead to some unexpected bursts of laughter.
Deponia: The Complete Journey
This one is an example of a game made with love and high attention to detail. Not the longest game out there, but difficult puzzles that don’t hold the player’s hand can add some extra hours to the complete playthrough time.
Primordia is a classic game that returns to the point & click roots and is even stylized as such. Retro graphics and puzzles that require stretching wits to its limits combined with one of the best sci-fi stories written in the recent years resulted in giving birth to a game to which players willingly come back even if they completed it several times already. What makes the title stand out from the crowd is the fact that puzzles can have more than one solution, which is not something we see very often in this genre.
Primordia
It’s not exactly a point and click adventure game because adventure is usually associated with traveling and exploring. Right? Wrong. This game proves that even playing the role of a simple border-crossing immigration officer who sits all day in his boot can be an unforgettable journey in itself.
The title “Papers, Please” pretty well describes the gameplay. Your job here is to simply check papers of anyone who wishes to enter the glorious country of Arstotzka. Check if the document is not expired, if all the data is right, if it’s not fake, and so on. But don’t be fooled – what might look like a simple and repetitive game quickly turns into something more. Soon enough you will inevitably face numerous moral choices where you need to choose between helping strangers out and being loyal to the country. You need to make money in order to pay the bills and feed the family, so sometimes the choice is not so obvious – will you value the lives of others more than your family’s?
Papers Please
If you like dark and spooky settings with a fair bit of supernatural elements, then Black Mirror would be an obvious choice to play. The final part of the trilogy concludes the story of the Gordon family and the curse that haunted its members throughout the years.
Black Mirror III once again focuses on the character of Darren Michaels who this time tries to find the source of his unsettling visions and nightmares. His search for answers will inevitably lead to confrontation with evil forces possessing the titular Black Mirror Castle, and it’s your job to help Darren fight his demons and survive the encounter. Just like in most classic point and click adventures, your job will be solving puzzles, looking for clues and items you can make use of, as well as talking to other characters who may give you some important information.
Black Mirror 3 Final Fear
There is also something for cyberpunk fans on the list. Technobabylon met with huge praise from players who often gave the game credit for its beautiful pixel art and puzzles, making the title a one-of-a-kind experience.
The game takes place in a futuristic city ruled by artificial intelligence that controls most of the city’s systems and acts as the governor. The story revolves around a mysterious murder, and one of your tasks will be to solve the case. Soon enough you will find yourself caught in the middle of a bigger conspiracy – as you get some of the answers, more questions will arise. You will be able to play as one of the three protagonists, each having its own complex matter to deal with. It’s definitely one of the must-play games, even if you’re not into the adventure point and click genre.
Technobabylon
Oxenfree is a truly original game – it has watercolor graphics that was often mentioned as the game’s main strength, an intriguing story that includes paranormal phenomena, chill and relaxing music, and extremely fluid conversations.
The game tells a story of a group of teenagers who came to a local island where they accidentally unleashed a mysterious power, forcing them to find out what it is and how to stop it. What makes the game unique is the lack of cutscenes and the fact that you can freely move your character around all the time. Implementation of talking mechanics also deserves a mention due to how fluid and smooth conversations are – while talking with other characters, speech bubbles appear over your head. You can choose one once the others finished their lines, or you can interrupt them which sounds very realistic. You can also remain silent if you wish – actually, there’s even an achievement for that.
Oxenfree
Night in the Woods combines simple yet distinct art style that is pleasing to the eye with narrative-heavy gameplay, so if you are looking for an adventure game with an addictive story that will absorb you completely for several hours, this one might be worth giving a shot.
The game tells a story of a mentally-ill college dropout, Margaret “Mae” Borowski, as she reunites with her old friends in her hometown city, Possum Springs, inhabited by zoomorphic people and other fantastic creatures. She finds out, however, that one of her friends went missing, and it’s your task as a player to help her solve the mystery behind his disappearance. Gameplay-wise it’s a title that puts a strong emphasis on dialogues but also has some interesting puzzles and minigames blended in, so you surely won’t complain of boredom.
Night in the Woods
Thimbleweed Park resembles old retro adventure titles in terms of visuals, as well as gameplay and interface. Join Ray and Reyes, an FBI team, as they try to solve the case of a recent murder.
Although the game touches a rather serious topic, it quickly becomes clear that developers didn’t want to create a heavy and overwhelming atmosphere – humorous comments are being thrown left and right, turning the seemingly grim title into a more casual and bright experience. It’s worth noting the game’s interface that consists of several buttons, each representing a simple action such as “talk to”, “look at”, or “use”, and an inventory that holds found objects. This creates quite a complex system that favors logical thinking over the trial and error approach due to the sheer number of possible combinations you would need to try before hitting the right one.
Thimbleweed Park
Not exactly a traditional point and click title, but we already made a few exceptions to the rule, so what’s once more? Use the unique opportunity given by the game to become a lawyer and stand up for innocents’ rights in this anime-influenced adventure.
Ace Attorney franchise is based on an anime series of the same name. The games included in the bundle are not new but they became widely popular lately and it’s not uncommon to see them “memeized”, probably due to making their appearance on Steam in 2019. There are not a lot of games that allow players to fight prosecutors in court instead of fighting monsters on the battlefield, making the title a very refreshing experience. Each case will require you to prepare during investigation phases by finding clues and evidence and then use it all in court. You will also need to cross-examine witnesses in order to find contradictions, hopefully leading to a righteous judgment.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy 3
If you love reggae, you might be interested in checking out The Journey Down – a game that managed to create a perfect Rasta atmosphere. But there’s no time to sit and relax, as you have an important mission to do.
Although it would be a huge oversimplification to say that The Journey Down is just Grim Fandango with African roots instead of Hispanic ones, it’s hard not to see some similarities in terms of graphics, humor, and how unique the characters are. Funny and sometimes even silly dialogues appear more often than not, reminding you of the laid-back nature of the game. Story-wise you will be tasked with uncovering the fate of the protagonists’ long-lost father, but the first chapter focuses on dealing with more important matters first.
The Journey Down: Chapter One
The final game on the list is probably exactly what you think it is, but don’t judge the book by its cover. Before you say that idle games are boring and not your cup of tea, just give this one a try and you might be surprised how good and deep it actually is.
The Longing combines point-and-click adventure with an idle game, so it does something that was probably not done before or at least wasn’t that successful. This indie title puts emphasis on exploration, but everything here takes an awfully large amount of time, from digging and navigating through caves to walking and even reading real books that are available in the game. The main mission is to simply wait for 400 real days for the king to wake up – this can be, however, sped up by finding certain items during play. The game is a unique experience in itself and will leave you asking some serious philosophical and existential questions.
THE LONGING
Adventure games are almost as old as gaming in general, but first titles were drastically different from the modern ones, mainly due to technical limitations of the old hardware. Point-and-click was just another step in the history of genre’s evolution – what once was presented in a purely text-based fashion, where commands were typed manually on a keyboard, later received graphics and a graphical interface that allowed players to click to move their character around and interact with the environment, making playing a lot more convenient as well as immersive.
Point-and-click adventures have a lot in common. Usually, you will be tasked with exploring various locations, talking to people in order to get some valuable information, and finding items you could later use to solve certain puzzles or other riddles. But it’s not always the case, as it was shown on the list above – sometimes developers are trying new things and approach the genre differently in their efforts to deliver a fresh and unique experience that will hopefully impact and shape future generations of games. As a result, we get memorable jewels, such as Papers, Please or Oxenfree, but traditional point-and-click adventure games are also always a welcome sight.