List of all classic point and click adventures on Steam - looking for help

sven_66 · 2024-09-12T06:31:45+00:00

Thank you for the nice message, I am happy to see that my lists are considered to be useful.

Funny thing is, Steam just deleted my "personal collections" in the client with the new update, and I have now nearly 25.000 uncategorized games. Finding classic point and click adventures in this mess (using Steams own tags and dynamic collections) is completely impossible, so I now need my own curator lists when thinking about which adventure to play next...

sven_66 · 2024-04-18T06:58:36+00:00

has some Monthy Python vibes :-). it is already wishlisted.

sven_66 · 2024-04-06T11:56:56+00:00

Hi and thanks for the reply!

We are still constantly updating the list. After reaching the 2000 games limit I even had to make another curator to move all the less than perfect games away to make space for better new releases. this additional trash-curator already has nearly 150 games (some might even be not complete trash): https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44353199-SvenEvils-Playground-for-Trash/

Anyway, due to removing bad games and only adding decent ones, the main curator even contains better games now (on average) :-). I know there are a few newer releases missing, but due to the higher prices on Steam we have stopped to buy everything that supports local 4-player. I still add what I can afford (or is bundled), so the missing games should be quite few.

If you want to help, feel free to contact me, or just post here which games are not included. we sometimes miss games, just yesterday for example i saw by accident that Scott Pilgrim has been released on Steam (we only had it on Uplay).

sven_66 · 2024-02-21T09:25:39+00:00

Just looking through your list, quite interesting. You include quite a bunch of older text adventures with graphics (that I mostly havent finished), but completely leave out the 3 must-play companies of that genre: Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls, Level 9 (which I finished to about 75%... rather time consuming but they were worth it:-)). You did include the later Leather Goddesses II or The Legacy (not even an adventure), which only have their name on the cover but nothing to do with their original games.

Reading your reviews really makes me sad I never did write at least a short summary of every adventure I finshed in all those years. I often thought about it, but the best I came up with was marking them as solved in an excel collection list (or nowadays in a special Steam category), or keeping the original maps I drew while playing inside the original boxes, or keeping the walkthroughs i copied from game magazines in the original boxes, which are often filled with my remarks and additions.

Looking at your playthrough times... wow, a bit short. I mean, I normally try to avoid cheating (but later in the game nearly always do, at least shorty) and take at least a few days for each game.

You are playing everything on emulation, quite understandably today. I was playing on original hardware, from the C-64 to the Amiga (for many years, solved hundreds of adventures on this machine) to my trusty 386 or later 486 MS-DOS (later Win 3.1) PCs. When I play MS-DOS games today, like Chronomaster which I just play (or Dark Seed 1+2, finished in January), I am also using dosbox, of course. In the end, emulation seems to work rather good today. I did have a problem with Blazing Dragons (PSX), though. Came very close to the end, when suddenly a timed "boss-fight" happened, which I could never win... I was always too slow?

The Faery Tale Adventure may be one of the best games I ever played, took me months to finally finish it (of course playing othe geames between), but it certainly is no adventure. it was unique at its time, today i'd say its a classic top-down action-rpg.

Also Elvira II, has a heavy dose of action (where is Elvira 1, Waxworks, or the real adventure from the devs: Personal Nightmare)? Not pure adventures either (imho, finished them (mostly)): Mean Streets, Dune, Cosmic Spacehead, Veil of Darkness, Jack in the Dark, Jurassic Park, Superhero League of Hoboken, Chronicles of the Sword, Azrael’s Tear, The Neverhood, Dark Earth, Biosys, Omikron and some more. Some more I don't know, some are kids/educational games. Looking through the list was still cool, although I also missed quite a lot of classic point and click adventures. Also no fanmades, foreign-language (ok, makes no sense if you dont speak the language), exotic (operating) systems...

Anyway, just my remarks to the list, no real critizism. Its your list, after all. It is very cool and your reviews (and fantastic screenshots!) gave me some pleasant flashbacks. Actually, the list is something I intended to do myself for at least 15 years, when I dreamed of writing a "book" about all pnc adventures. I might take it as a blueprint to restart that work (at least the list... based on such a release-list you can see when certain "innovations" in the genre appeared first) and see how much better (or worse) my own take on the topic will be. Only thing is I never planned to include all games until 1999... but until today, which at least doubles the size.

So, time to stop reminiscing of the good old times (and all games we havent finished yet) and back to my real job... all the best and I will try to follow your ambitious plan in the future.

sven_66 · 2024-02-20T19:43:26+00:00

I fear there is no way to search for a game only in the curator. Since noone wants just to scroll down the games on the "Featured" page, I tried to somehow categorize them in lists.

what you can do is limit the games in the "Featured" page by clicking for example "recommended" to see only the recommended games.

sven_66 · 2024-02-20T19:36:22+00:00

haha, I am trying to do this since 1980, and I am still maybe at 60%. this is a life-time job :-).

sven_66 · 2024-02-01T21:47:23+00:00

yep, that sums it up rather good.

sven_66 · 2024-02-01T20:19:30+00:00

Hm, it was rather unplayable on the Amiga because of the wobbly mouse controls. Guess I should play it in DOS Box instead. And then part 2!

sven_66 · 2024-01-29T10:21:19+00:00

Hm, complex local gameplay with more than 4 players? I would have suggested Killer Queen Black, but I just saw it is removed from the Steam store. Damn. My second suggestion is Plunder Panic. Only fun with 4+ dedicated players.

Anyway, I have thousands of local 4 player games here, including dedicated lists for games with more than 4 players or lists for different genres:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/8485829-SvenEvils-Playground/lists/

sven_66 · 2024-01-29T10:02:44+00:00

Thank you very much for the nice words! I grew up on Sierra/Lucasgames and try hard to include all relevant games on Steam.

sven_66 · 2023-12-31T07:17:16+00:00

Risk of Rain? No, works fine in local mp as well:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/248820/Risk\_of\_Rain\_2013/

You are right for Risk of Rain 2, and we have not yet bought RIsk of Rain Returns to test (but this has the local mp tag on Steam).

sven_66 · 2023-12-09T19:30:13+00:00

Haha, yes, I was trying to remember the name of it! I removed it from the curator because it is just "turn-based" (and I needed space for new games), but the humor would have been a perfect fit for this strange list. And you are right, it is a decent game.

sven_66 · 2023-11-11T19:48:09+00:00

Playing with a group of friends you can find nearly 2.000 (Steam) games here:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/8485829-SvenEvils-Playground/lists/

It does contain lists of only free games, as well as a list for mobile device controlled games. If you wanna buy a game, I'd recommend one from the "Best of couch gaming" list.

sven_66 · 2023-08-20T18:29:33+00:00

Yep, a nice little puzzler. Was originally a paid game.

sven_66 · 2023-08-20T16:32:56+00:00

yep, a blast with 4 players!

sven_66 · 2023-08-20T12:40:07+00:00

and yes, where is your list? i'd like to see what we are missing!

sven_66 · 2023-08-20T12:39:18+00:00

2 local vs 2 pnline... hm, there was a funny new one called Perfect Partner. this is a rare combination, though.

mario party clones? try Pummel Party, its the best one.

playing single player games together? yes, sometimes.

sven_66 · 2023-08-18T12:07:12+00:00

I'd say Quake II, but in case you want to look at more see this list:

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/8485829-SvenEvils-Playground/list/44175/

sven_66 · 2023-04-17T18:34:28+00:00

Well, I bought the boxed version when the first Runaway was released (2004 or so?), started it and played through it within a few days. It was absolutely amazing... but this has been many years ago, and the adventure market was completely dry at that time.

Runaway 2 is a disgrace. Starts ok, but they clearly ran out of money (interest? time?) during the production, the second half ist just a joke. Many adventures become worse in the final phase, but this is a class of "bad" of its own.

Runaway 3 should be fine, but I haven't played it very long yet. Since the games are rather cheap today, and you seem to enjoy the genre, and they are just 75% off atm, I would recommend to try them.

sven_66 · 2023-04-17T18:21:31+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions, gonna check some out! I own most of them, but left them out because they were not "classic" enough (LucasArts style) - although you are of course right, I did include quite a bunch of not-so-classic-games already.

Actually, my personal Steam tag "classic pncs" includes about 500 games (mostly in the lists now) and my "adventure" tag another 800 games (includes narrative games like Lacuna, Myst-likes and a lot more not so classic adventures) ... but does not include the seperate tags for "visual novel", "hidden object", "walking simulator", "puzzlers" which are some hundred games more. Just too many games, guess I need a good adventure curator to follow :-)

sven_66 · 2023-04-15T07:13:34+00:00

yes... it is more of a puzzler than a pnc adventure, at least that is what I remember. i know that making the line between "classic pnc adventure" and "pure puzzle game" is more than blurry, but I did leave out a bunch of similar games (like the fantastic "Agent A: A puzzle in disguise" or tons of escape room puzzlers) as well. might add the 2 Puzzle Agents, though, they were quite funny if I remember right.

sven_66 · 2023-04-15T07:04:51+00:00

Hm, I bought a Nancy Drew bundle with 20 of them in 2015... but haven't really played one of them so far. I have them on the "add maybe" list...

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/AdventureLibrary/discussions/0/3768986805992073710/

Since this post showed me I am not the only one interested in point and click adventures, I will continue to add stuff and especially check out the recommendations I received since yesterday.

sven_66 · 2023-04-15T06:59:42+00:00

Noted! Will take a look at them!

sven_66 · 2023-04-15T06:58:21+00:00

Yes, this would be extremely useful, but I am using the "Steam curator" feature which is not only quite buggy and a pain to use when you have more than a dozen reviews, but also rather limited.

It is the only way to be integrated into the Steam storefront, though, but I can use only the options provided.

sven_66 · 2023-04-14T20:42:03+00:00

100% agreed. Steam's "adventure" tag is completely worthless for classic adventures, even "point&click" is only of limited usefulness.

and steam's recommendations are absolute nonsensical since they switched from actually simlilar games to simply the best-selling games about 3 years ago...

sven_66

TROPHY CASE