“You Can’t Use That Here” – A Love Letter to Point-and-Click Games
Point-and-click games were huge for decades, but you barely see them anymore. It’s time we return to this beloved genre.
An interesting thing happened to me today. I realized I had forgotten about one of my favorite genres of video games: the point-and-click game. More traditional adventure games like King’s Quest, Maniac Mansion, or more modern spins like Until Dawn or the Phoenix Wright series.
For sake of this article, point-and-click (PAC) games will be any game where the primary action of the player is searching around for objects to click on in order to move the story forward. This is a pretty broad definition, but it’ll work for now. Remember: PAC is a genre just like anything else. You can have PAC puzzle games like Myst. You can have horror PAC games like Five Nights at Freddy’s. Or Adventure PAC games, which is what most people think of first.
Point-and-Click Games are Unique
My first step into PAC games was Myst. I recall when it came out in 1993, it was huge! No one had ever seen a game like this before. While I had been playing Mortal Kombat II and Aladdin, Myst was something completely different. It was slow, careful, and mysterious. At the time, it was way too complicated for me. I’m not that old after all. But it helped me realize not every game had to be action-packed.
Fortunately for me, it wouldn’t be long before I found a similar game much more my speed. Day of the Tentacle is a goofy, silly, romp through space and time. It’s also a puzzle game, like Myst, but with a very different approach. While Myst‘s puzzles were very mechanical (figuratively and literally), DotT‘s puzzles were more realized within cartoon logic, which is much more my speed.
A Different Kind Of Strategy
Point-and-Click Games are, at their heart, strategy games. It’s up to the player to think about their current situation and the resources they have available to them. Using this, they use logic and often a bit of luck in order to solve each obstacle as it arises.
But rather than other strategy games like Total War or Civilization, you can’t generate these resources. Depending on the rules of the PAC game, you might not get a second chance to use that resource if you use it incorrectly. Point and click games require a level of logical and critical thinking that you simply can’t find elsewhere.
The Future of Point-and-Click Games
This whole article is not trying to say PAC games don’t still exist. They do, but they haven’t really been flung into the modern gaming space as other genres have. More often you see the semblance of the mechanics within other games. The fall of Telltale games was sad, of course. But what that said to me was a lack of pushing the genre forward. I love the Telltale games, but they are mostly mechanically pretty similar.
- Arrive at destination.
- Scan mouse around the screen to find item.
- Talk to person for a clue about item.
- Use item to progress to next destination.
- Repeat.
Why not break this mold with some of the modern techniques and features? Imagine an open-world point-and-click version of L.A. Noire, which has a lot of point-and-click elements. But what if you could freely explore a whole city, rather than only set destinations? L.A. Noire is great, but I would really like to have seen them lean harder into the exploration and discovery of the interrogation aspect.
For a genre of game that was so strong for the entirety of the 80s and 90s, it’s sad to see it dwindle. There are still flickers of pointing and whispers of clicking in various games here and there. But I would love to see a dev studio really lean into it and bring back a modern version of this once beloved genre of games.
