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The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games

Steve Jarrett (Editor)

4.63 · Rating details · 48 ratings · 7 reviews

A visual celebration of one of the most loved genres in gaming history, The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games is a sumptuous 460 page, hardback coffee table book packed with the very best pixel art and classic scenes from the most defining games of this genre. It will also contain extensive and exclusive interviews with the key developers, designers and artists behind ...more

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Hardcover, 477 pages

Published August 11th 2018 by Bitmap Books (first published August 2018)

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Jan 01, 2019 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: games-computer-retro

This is a worthwhile add to any retro-gaming book collection. It was a slow burn to read through all the developer/artist interviews, given that it's an oversized hardcover filled with tiny font (in fact, I had to order a stronger pair of reading glasses specifically to tackle this one).

Like many books of this ilk, it had me regularly running off to YouTube to watch gameplay from point 'n clicks I had always meant to play, as well as quite a few I hadn't heard of.

Loved the bits from Douglas ...more

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Apr 05, 2019 German rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books

More like 4.5/5, since it's an awesome book but has some minor flaws.

Point and click adventures are probably my favourite game genre, so as soon as I learned about this book I ordered it, and it hasn't disappointed me at all. In every page one can notice the authors' love for the genre and the attention to detail that has been put into this work. The book covers the history of point and click adventure games from 1984 to 2017, with stress on the 90s - on a rough estimate I'd say about 65% of the More like 4.5/5, since it's an awesome book but has some minor flaws.

Point and click adventures are probably my favourite game genre, so as soon as I learned about this book I ordered it, and it hasn't disappointed me at all. In every page one can notice the authors' love for the genre and the attention to detail that has been put into this work. The book covers the history of point and click adventure games from 1984 to 2017, with stress on the 90s - on a rough estimate I'd say about 65% of the book focuses on what is often regarded as the golden age of the genre. This history is presented chronologically by alternating high quality pictures (full page or even spreads) of the games and interviews of variable length with the people who worked on them, most of them well-known names for any adventure gamer. Sometimes these interviews contain anecdotes or fun facts that are already known by the fans, but also a lot of lesser-known details that provide the reader with a quite accurate idea of how it was making those games. It is interesting how this double concept pictures/interviews reflects the two ways in which the title can be read: while the pictures show the actual art featured in the games, the interviews describe the art of crafting them.

However, the book has two main flaws too.

The first one has to do with the format of the interviews. After reading a few of them, one can start noticing that many questions are the same ones, and since some of these people worked on the same games or in the same company, many replies are quite similar. In the same vein, often one can get the impression that the interviewers didn't want to deviate much from the initial set of questions, so even if an answer hints to an interesting story this is ignored and they continue asking as originally intended. Also, a couple of times it is possible to find a question that had already been answered, when the interviewer didn't expect it, in the reply to another previous question.

The second one has to do with the selection of interviewees and games. For instance, many interviewees mention Sierra's founders Ken and Roberta Williams, but none of both is interviewed. A bit the same with the Two Guys From Andromeda. I guess that it's not that they were forgotten but rather that they couldn't / didn't want to be interviewed. One cannot blame the authors for this then, but still it's a pity, especially considering that towards the end some of the interviewees, or their interviews, are very weak. However, some omissions in the selection of games are harder to justify. I guess that nobody will expect to find all the games they played decades ago, but several classics from the 90s are missing: Infogrames' Shadow of the Comet (interestingly enough, the fantastic Alone in the Dark, which is an adventure but far from the point and click concept, does appear), at least a MicroProse's adventure, any Sierra's FMV such as Phantasmagoria or The Beast Within... And while in the 00s adventure games were "dead" compared with the previous decade, it was mostly the games from Microids, Frogwares, or Pendulo, that kind of sustained the adventure market, but only the first Runaway by the latter is mentioned. I honestly can't understand how Daria's Inferno or The Adventures of Fatman got chosen over Syberia. Or that no Blackwell game is named either.

Anyway, a must read for any adventure gamer. ...more

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May 05, 2019 Magnesus rated it liked it

Disappointing in comparison with other positions from Bitmap Books. Interviews follow the same scheme and the interviewer doesn't react to what the interviewee says, the choice of people is a bit random and the first part reads like an ad for Thimbleweed Park. Some games are missing, some have very little coverage (Gobliins only has art from the first game for example) - I would love it to have less interviews, more screenshots, more games and more anecdotes and trivia (like previous Bitmap ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Facundo rated it it was amazing

I bought this mainly for the pictures, thinking it was going to be a nice book to have around and skim through now and then. But it was the interviews where I found the most value: interleaved with the games, progressing in chronological order, they make up a nice history of the genre (and, in a way, of video games and computers in general).

Having played so many of these games, part of the joy of reading the book was challenging the decisions of the authors, thinking what games or interviews I ...more

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Feb 12, 2019 Matthias rated it it was amazing

Beautifully made and packed with interviews and blown up screen shots of games from another era. What's not to love. ...more

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Sep 10, 2019 Peer Lenné rated it it was amazing

Wunderschön aufgemacht und höchst informativ. Ein Muss für jeden Fan des Genres.

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Dec 12, 2018 Henrique Lage added it

Si el asunto es dar una visión general desde la nostalgia (Sierra, Lucasarts) hasta la actualidad (Telltale, Wadjet Eye), cumple con creces: las entrevistas son interesantes, aunque a veces un tanto repetitivas (queda claro que, efectivamente, las oficinas del Rancho Skywalker eran muy bonitas y todo el mundo las recuerda con cariño) y aunque podría centrarse más en el diseño de mecánicas detrás de esos juegos (no es el caso) o, al menos, de concept art, la verdad es que es un repaso muy ...more

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