Point and Click Adventure Games For Beginners

H

Heliocentrical

Well-known member
This is a genre that I really haven't given a chance and I'm not sure if I like it or not. Most of my experiences with them involve me trying to figure out how to progress for about half an hour and then quitting when I'm unable to. Are there any Point and Click Adventure Games that have extremely simple puzzles with no moon logic?

 
Wanted to suggest Night of the Rabbit, but remembered the broken flow of the game...

Also wanted to suggest Professor Layton, but it's not on PC...

And you definitely know about Puzzle Agent...

Dammit

 
Are there any Point and Click Adventure Games that have extremely simple puzzles with no moon logic?
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That's like asking for a multi-player FPS game without hats! Might as well be playing a different genre.

But yeah, I'm also kinda coming up short on good game choices, outside of Puzzle Agent...

Machinerium is fun, but can still be pretty moon logic-y....

I'm also a fan of the Deponia series, but that gets very moon logic at times, so that's a no-go....

So, yeah. This looks to be a surprisingly difficult request!

 
Broken Age has little to none moon logic, and its puzzles are pretty simple. Also, its plot isn't completely nonsense and dialogue isn't cringe worthy, and major parts of it were done by big-name actors such as Elijah Wood and Jack Black.

I've heard some good things about Contradiction: Spot the Liar! but I haven't had a chance to play it yet so I can't personally recommend it.

During the DOS days I've used to play Simon the Sorcerer and its sequel, and I don't remember much of them - but I do think of them fondly. You have a verb list and an inventory and they generally parody fantasy stories that have long been made into movies, so even if it isn't part of your folklore - you'll get it.

On the whole, though, it's really hard to recommend adventure games, as the two most prominent publishers of the golden age had forced bad design staples to elongate game time:

-Sierra had you die at least once to beat the game, going down an unbeatable path after making a trivial choice.

-LucasArt had moon logic, at least one moon logic puzzle per game. Also other forms of padding (farming for insults in The Secret of Monkey Island).

Even nowadays companies that make primarily adventure games (like Simogo) employ a lot of moon logic, with most of the effort going towards a stylized design and a cryptic story to keep you going. That being coupled with most adventure games that effort is directed towards the puzzles have generally little hype and a small advertising budget, so it's hard to find one that works.

I haven't checked either since I don't like the source material, but long running adventure game series include The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew Adventures. They are probably doing some things right.

 
It's a worthwhile genre to dive into Helio, especially if you find that your recent gaming has been lacking a little narrative depth. I probably don't need to tell you to ignore the bargain basement PC shelves in stores groaning under the weight of so-called "hidden object" games - those things are dung from the devil's own arse.

I'll be the first to admit that I keep banging on about this particular franchise but if you are serious about getting into point n' click fare you really could do much much worse things with your time than play the first two Broken Sword games, or maybe start with the slicker recent title in the series Broken Sword 5 - The Serpent's Curse. All of the games in the series are pretty self-contained despite the recurring cast of characters, given that each story revolves around some nefarious world-ending/epoch-shattering conspiracy. It isn't vital to play the earlier titles to enjoy latter installments. I'd avoid the third and fourth titles unless you fall in hopelessly head-over-heels in love with the setting like I did, because although I'm pretty much incapable of hating anything starring George Stobbart and Nico Collard at this point, the three-dimensional gameplay and graphics of those two was unwarranted and appallingly shoddy.

More importantly and pertinently to your original post, the puzzles are largely conceptually sound and a far cry from the "attach a kipper to a cannon ball and drop it into a candyfloss machine in order to get a sugar-coated kipper-ball to feed to the river troll at the docks so he lays an egg filled with magic ruby monkeys" of other zanier point n' click games.

 
I've been watching a playthrough of the Blackwell series recently, seems pretty good from what I've seen.
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I've not played any of the Blackwell games, but if Wadjet Eye have had anything to do with it they are probably pretty decent. They are a rather underrated developing team.

 
If you're looking for something creepier and more atmospheric than my previous suggestion, yet with plainly deductive and entirely reasonable puzzles and investigative elements, I'd recommend Dead Secret by a studio called Robot Invader.

 
I would suggest some of Daedalic Entertainment's for production quality (not necessarily easy puzzles in all cases, as TheTron said about Night of the Rabbit, but I still enjoyed that one immensely), I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them, although some are easier than others.

Specifically for easy play: The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav (based in the same universe of the German RPG Das Augur Schwartz). I am not an expert at Point and Clicks, and I wasn't by the time I played this game (which was if I remember correctly my 3rd Daedalic Point and Click game). I was able to play through 85% of the game without once having to look something up, which impressed myself since usually I suck at making big logical leaps, but then it may be the case that most of the game doesn't really stray too far into outlandish logic. Its certainly doesn't come close to Rama in terms of alien complexity of logic ever. I also found the art style to be very good (as I do with most Daedalic games), the writing to be humorous when it wants to be and serious when it needs to be, and overall a pretty solid game.

Its sequel, Memoria, was also good, but its puzzles are definitely harder and require more insane leaps of logic than Chains of Satinav. The story's still good though, just don't fuck up like I did and trying playing Memoria first, you won't understand the start of the game at all or who some of the characters are. Luckily I realized Chains had to have come first and stopped to beat it.

The Whispered World (by the same devs) is another good one, though late game has some pretty damn hard puzzles.

The Deponia series is a wild ride and full of Black Comedy if you're into that sort of thing, and I really enjoyed it, but its puzzles can range from ludicrously easy to somewhat challenging to WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!? in terms of a sliding scale.

The Sherlock Holmes series is a mixed bag. I really enjoyed Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper and The Awakened was . . . interesting (yeah, let's go with that), and I'd argue they have a steadily increasingly difficulty in terms of puzzle challenges, it starts off fairly easy and then gets hard towards the end.

 
Definetly Monkey island franchise. While some puzzles can be hard to figure out, you can NEVER run yourself into dead end with no way out or get yourself killed.

 
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