Definition

Components of an adventure game	Citations
Puzzle solving, or problem solving.	[1][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
Narrative, or interactive story.	[1][5][6][7][9][11]
Exploration.	[1][5][7]
Player assumes the role of a character/hero.	[1][5][8]
Collection or manipulation of objects.	[1][5][6]

The term "Adventure game" originates from the 1970s computer game Adventure,^[5][6] which pioneered a style of gameplay that was widely imitated and became a genre in its own right. The video game genre is therefore defined by its gameplay, unlike the literary genre, which is defined by the subject it addresses, the activity of adventure.^[1]
Essential elements of the genre include storytelling, exploration, and puzzle solving.^[1] Adventure games have been described as puzzles embedded in a narrative framework,^[7] where games involve "narrative content that a player unlocks piece by piece over time".^[12] While the puzzles that players encounter through the story can be arbitrary, those that do not draw the player out of the narrative are considered examples of good design.^[13]

Relationship to other genres

Combat and action challenges are limited or absent in adventure games,^[1] thus distinguishing them from action games.^[7] In the book Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design, the authors state that "this [reduced emphasis on combat] doesn't mean that there is no conflict in adventure games ... only that combat is not the primary activity."^[5] Some adventure games will include a minigame from another video game genre, which are not always appreciated by adventure game purists.^[1] Of course, there are some games that blend action and adventure throughout the game experience.^[14] These hybrid action-adventure games involve more physical challenges than pure adventure games, as well as a faster pace. This definition is hard to apply, however, with some debate among designers about which games are action games and which involve enough non-physical challenges to be considered action-adventures.^[1]
Adventure games are also distinct from role-playing video games that involve action, team-building, and points management.^[7] Adventure games lack the numeric rules or relationships seen in role-playing games, and seldom have an internal economy.^[1] These games lack any skill system, combat, or "an opponent to be defeated through strategy and tactics."^[5] However, some hybrid games exist here, where role-playing games with strong narrative and puzzle elements are considered RPG-adventures.^[15] Finally, adventure games are classified separately from puzzle games.^[7] Although an adventure game may involve puzzle-solving, they typically involve a player-controlled avatar in an interactive story.^[1]

Puzzle-solving

Adventure games contain a variety of puzzles, such as decoding messages, finding and using items, opening locked doors, or finding and exploring new locations.^[16] Solving a puzzle will unlock access to new areas in the game world, and reveal more of the game story.^[17] Logic puzzles, where mechanical devices are designed with abstract interfaces to test a player's deductive reasoning skills, are common.^[1]
Some puzzles are criticized for the obscurity of their solutions, for example the combination of clothesline, clamp, and deflated rubber duck used to gather an item in The Longest Journey, which exists outside of the game's narrative and serves only as an obstacle to the player.^[18] Others have been criticized for requiring players to blindly guess, either by clicking on the right pixel, or by guessing the right verb in games that use a text interface.^[19] Games that require players to navigate mazes have also become less popular, although the earliest text-adventure games usually required players to draw a map if they wanted to navigate the abstract space.^[1]

Gathering and using items

Many adventure games make use of an inventory management screen as a distinct gameplay mode.^[1] Players are only able to pick up some objects in the game, so the player usually knows that only objects that can be picked up are important.^[1] Because it can be difficult for a player to know if they missed an important item, they will often scour every scene for items. For games that utilize a point-and-click device, players will sometimes engage in a systematic search known as a pixel hunt. Games try to avoid this by highlighting the item, or by snapping the player's cursor to the item.^[20] Some items are featured very often in various adventure games, and have many uses. Two examples are a rope and a crowbar.^{[citation needed]} Some items are used as part of running gags, for example being used in many absurd situations far from their original intended purpose.^{[citation needed]}
Many puzzles in these games involve gathering and using items from their inventory.^[16] Players must apply lateral thinking techniques where they apply real-world extrinsic knowledge about objects in unexpected ways. For example, by putting a deflated inner tube on a cactus to create a slingshot, which requires a player to realize that an inner tube is stretchy.^[1] They may need to carry items in their inventory for a long duration before they prove useful,^[21] and thus it is normal for adventure games to test a player's memory where a challenge can only be overcome by recalling a piece of information from earlier in the game.^[1] There is seldom any time pressure for these puzzles, focusing more on the player's ability to reason than on quick-thinking.^[17]

Story, setting, and themes

Adventure games are single-player experiences that are largely story-driven.^[22] More than any other genre, adventure games depend upon their story and setting to create a compelling single-player experience.^[1] They are typically set in an immersive environment, often a fantasy world,^[6][9] and try to vary the setting from chapter to chapter to add novelty and interest to the experience.^[1] Comedy is a common theme, and games often script comedic responses when players attempt actions or combinations that are "ridiculous or impossible".^[1]
Since adventure games are driven by storytelling, character development usually follows literary conventions of personal and emotional growth, rather than new powers or abilities that affect gameplay.^[1] The player often embarks upon a quest,^[10] or is required to unravel a mystery or situation about which little is known.^[8] These types of mysterious stories allow designers to get around what Ernest Adams calls the "Problem of Amnesia", where the player controls the protagonist but must start the game without their knowledge and experience.^[23] Story-events typically unfold as the player completes new challenges or puzzles, but in order to make such storytelling less mechanical new elements in the story may also be triggered by player movement.^[1]

Dialogue and Conversation Trees

Adventure games have strong storylines with significant dialog, and sometimes make effective use of recorded dialog or narration from voice actors.^[1] This genre of game is known for representing dialog as a conversation tree.^[24] Players are able to engage a non-player character by choosing a line of pre-written dialog from a menu, which triggers a response from the game character. These conversations are often designed as a tree structure, with players deciding between each branch of dialog to pursue.^[1] However, there are always a finite number of branches to pursue, and some adventure games devolve into selecting each option one-by-one.^[25] Conversing with characters can reveal clues about how to solve puzzles, including hints about what that character would want before they will cooperate with the player.^[1] Other conversations will have far-reaching consequences, such as deciding to disclose a valuable secret that has been entrusted to the player.^[1] Characters may also be convinced to reveal their own secrets, either through conversation or by giving them something that will benefit them.^{[citation needed]}

Goals, success and failure

The primary goal in adventure games is the completion of the assigned quest.^[26] Early adventure games often had high scores and some, such as Zork, also assigned the player a rank, a text description based on their score.^[27] High scores provide the player with a secondary goal,^[26] and serve as an indicator of progression.^[27] While high scores are now less common, external reward systems such as Xbox Live's Achievements perform a similar role.^{[citation needed]}
The primary failure condition in adventure games, inherited from more action-oriented games, is player death. Without the clearly identified enemies of other genres, its inclusion in adventure games is controversial, and many developers now either avoid it or take extra steps to foreshadow death.^[1] Some early adventure games trapped the players in unwinnable situations without ending the game. Infocom's text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been criticized for a scenario where failing to pick up a pile of junk mail at the beginning of the game prevented the player, much later, from completing the game.^[28]