Adventure games have long been a beloved genre of video games, including some of the earliest and most memorable titles. Turns out, they're also a good entry point for people interested in real-world games like escape rooms to find their way in the complex and often unfriendly video game industry.
These five games go beyond bringing escape rooms to the world of video games -- they expand on the theme by adding in linear narrative structure and introducing characters with stories and goals of their own. While these additions might take a game further away from familiar escape room territory, they make great springboards into the rest of the adventure game genre.
Jenny LeClue: Detectivu blends genres of interactive novel and adventure game, with enough investigation puzzles to appeal to escape room fans. Players guide young detective Jenny LeClue as she tries to solve a murder, free her mom from suspicion and uncover the secrets her small town is hiding.
Through really compelling mechanics, Jenny LeClue: Detectivu brings standard detective tropes of lock-picking and interrogation to life in ways that feel real and don't get old. Fans of puzzles and escape rooms will find her object-searching quests familiar, but the way that these are drawn into the narrative adds a fresh flair. Jenny LeClue: Detectivu is the perfect title for escape room fans looking to take on a little more structured, linear narrative while retaining the fun of logic games.
The Nancy Drew games from Her Interactive are a perfect video game transition for escape room fans. They rely heavily on solo exploration and environmental puzzles, embracing many familiar mechanics. Perhaps the best starting point in this series would be 2015's Sea of Darkness. This game follows Nancy on an Icelandic adventure, searching for a missing Captain and a legendary pirate treasure in an icy village preparing for a festival.
Sea of Darkness features many logic puzzles that iterate on familiar ideas like Minesweeper and Sudoku puzzles but contextualizes them in a pervasive Icelandic setting. Players will also have to talk to many different characters and suspects related to the town and the missing Captain and learn a little Icelandic along the way. The combination of traditional adventure-game, object-interaction puzzles alongside some more mundane logic puzzles will make Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness a great adventure game for escape room fans.
Her Interactive has released one Nancy Drew game after Sea of Darkness -- the long-awaited Midnight in Salem. This new game updates the graphics and user interface to tell a really compelling story, but the more classic playstyle of Sea of Darkness will be immediately more appealing to puzzle fans and is a better Nancy Drew game to start with.
Myst is the oldest game on this list, but perhaps the best choice for puzzle fans. In fact, Myst almost defines the puzzle adventure game genre. Its release in 1993 set the bar with complex, often obtuse puzzles that build off of its signature aesthetic so perfectly that even with '90s CD ROM graphics (and limited available help) it became an instant success.
Players are dropped onto an island devoid of human life and tasked with recovering pages necessary to restore the linking magic to let the island's creator set things right. The main island includes a series of puzzles that all lead to unusual and unique worlds that contain their own sets of adventures. Through a number of subsequent updates and rereleases to smooth out graphics and make the point-and-click navigation more palatable, Myst is certainly still a game worth playing -- especially for escape room fans.
A more recent addition to this list, Call of the Sea is a 2020 puzzle adventure game that draws heavily on Myst-style exploration and puzzles. Players are searching for their husband who has gone missing while trying to find a cure for their rare condition. Throughout the game, players learn more about the island they're exploring and the mysterious nature of their disease.
Where Call of the Sea truly excels is its atmosphere and ambiance, creating a truly immersive game whose puzzles are built neatly into the island context. While the area to explore is much larger than any traditional escape room, Call of the Sea reproduces the pervasive themes of these real-world rooms while building them into a larger narrative structure.
The Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games provide another detective-style entry into the adventure game genre. As with Nancy Drew or Jenny LeClue, players assume the detective identity and solve cases by exploring, finding clues and interrogating suspects. In Crimes & Punishments, Sherlock attempts to thwart the actions of a terrorist cell through six self-contained mysteries.
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments ends up feeling like a connected series of escape rooms, requiring players to find clues and piece them together in order not to escape but to catch the culprit. With some unique mechanics for linking pieces of evidence, a rich connective storyline and some traditional adventure game investigation, it's an ideal video game for escape room players.
Each game on this list would make a perfect adventure game for fans of environmental puzzles, investigative work and interesting narratives. Without the need to memorize stats or metas or worry about skills in aiming, these adventure games still provide hours of entertainment and high polish. In fact, they're perfect not only for fans of escape rooms looking to scope out the video game space -- they're great for anyone looking for a good, immersive story.
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