I just had a look at the website of the wonderful people at TellTale Games, a company that is one of the few still believing in good storytelling and the adventure genre. As you have probably realised by yourself, adventures have not been featured very intensely for the last years. Big companies like LucasArts shutted down all adventure projects like Sam and Max 2.
Now it seems to me that this genre is coming back again…
I’ve told you about Fahrenheit (which has a great way of storytelling but it can still be improved) and I just had a look at “Bone” the current game from TellTale. It’s in 3D and it looks awesome in a comic style way. It has the typical adventure point&click style and some mini-games for ‘recreation’. You can download it from their site and unlock it on-line if you like.
Apart from that I’ve been watching the people of AmeGames who are working on another great-looking adventure called “A Vampire Story”. I’m into vampires a litte bit (watch littlevampire.yodahome.de btw) and I really think that game will revive the good old adventure. If you think the style looks familiar be informed that the Amegames people were all former LucasArts members (“Monkey Island 3” I’d guess). I’m really looking forward to that game.

And there is a third one. You probably know “The longest journey”, it was a huge success and I have played it again recently, it’s such a cool piece of software. And there will be a sequel to it called “Dreamfall” that will be out soon. It’s also in 3D and maybe it’s not quite an adventure because there maybe more action in it than there was in TLJ. I still hope it will do it’s best to show that good storytelling is all – whether it’s in movies, books or computer games. I’d really wish to see more innovation in this direction. In my opinion we have enough games where to shoot at each and everything and far to many games where you can drive some kind of vehicle through the landscape (that was the impression I got at the GamesConvention). Some publishers still need to understand the reason why people go into the movies and buy dvds…
So (with Fahrenheit) that makes two from Europe and two more from America. We should really expect the adventure genre to flourish once more… Help them by buying their games!

http://www.telltalegames.com/home
http://www.amegames.com/
http://www.dreamfall-game.de/