Adventure

The adventure game is one of the oldest and most long-standing of all gaming genres. They are not necessarily games which feature the protagonist going on the dictionary definition of an "adventure"; the genre's name is instead derived from the 1976 game ADVENT (a.k.a. Colossal Cave Adventure or simply Adventure) - which is widely regarded as being the first ever adventure game - rather than from its actual mechanics or themes.

Adventure games tend to heavily focus on narrative (which can be either a formal or abstract narrative) and often feature some kind of exploration or puzzle solving - though this can vary from subgenre to subgenre (for example puzzle solving is not common in an interactive movie). However, the games lack direct action or platform jumping mechanics, which is where they differ from action-adventure or narrative based platformer games. The games also lack the team management, levelling-up and statistics of the RPG. Though adventure games can feature "mini-games" of other genres - these only make up a small proportion of the actual game.

Although there have been some successful adventure games on consoles and handheld and mobile systems (particularly in recent years), adventure games are most strongly associated with PC and home computer gaming and have found most of their success in those markets.

Adventure games' popularity peaked in the west in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the companies LucasArts and Sierra becoming the genre's most famous proponents, before becoming more of a niche genre after the rise in popularity of action-adventure games in the mid-1990s helped lead to its decline in the west, though the rise in popularity of the indie gaming market as well as the success of games such as The Walking Dead and Heavy Rain saw the adventure game's popularity rise again in the early 2010s.

The adventure game and particularly the visual novel have remained popular throughout in Japan and East Asia however - where the genre makes up a large proportion of the PC market.