Evolution of the Genre
The First Adventure Game
"Colossal Cave Adventure" (also known as "Adventure" or ADVENT), created by William Crowther in 1976 and expanded by Don Woods in 1977 is almost indisputably recognized as the first entry in the Adventure Game genre.
It was an interactive story where the player would key-in commands in a reduced set of English verbs and nouns such as "GO EAST", "LOOK", or "DRINK POTION."
The First Visual Novels
When it became feasible to add graphics to these games, the genre split into two: "Text Adventures," and "Visual Novels."
The first Visual Novel, the Portopia Serial Murder Case, in 1983, was released on the PC-88 in Japan. This still included typed commands (this time, in Japanese.)
This first Visual Novel included other unique features such as a "Magnifying Glass" which the player could point to an object in the scene to attempt to investigate it, and a "Telephone" system in which they could dial numbers to have additional interactions.
With its success, Portopia was ported to several other computer systems and consoles. Some had numeric keypads, joysticks, and eventually, in the case of the NES, game pads. To adapt to these other input devices, rather than keyboards, the system of typed commands was converted into a series of menus.
The First Point-and-Click Adventures
While ports of Portopia eliminated the typing aspect, Enchanted Scepters (1984, for Macintosh) was the first truly Point-and-Click adventure, created with the intention of using a mouse pointer to click and perform actions rather than typing commands.
Déjà Vu (1985, for Macintosh, with a NES port the same year) was the first Point-and-Click adventure designed for use with a Mouse to become extremely popular, however the NES port was forced to employ the game pad in lieu of the mouse, which that platform lacked.
The Golden Age of Point-and-Click
Point-and-Click games continued to be very popular through the 80s and 90s. Two more titles from ICOM Simulations (Shadowgate and Uninvited), numerous entries from Sierra Games (the Kings Quest Series, Space Quest Series, Leisure Suit Larry Series, Police Quest Series and many, many more), as well as many popular titles from LucasArts (Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam and Max, plus many more.)
With the availability of CD-ROM technology on PCs, extensive video and 3D animation were incorporated into some games, with the first notable example being Myst in 1993.
Many Point-and-Click Adventures relied on less text. Some incorporated element of other genres, such as hitpoint and battle systems from Role-Playing Games, or an increasing emphasis on character statistics and time management, evolving into the Dating Simulator sub-genre.
With the increasing diversity of Point-and-Click Adventure games, Visual Novels, with their reliance on dialogue, a limited set of command choices, and often the acquisition of inventory or clues, became a distinct sub-genre within the broader category of Point-and-Click Games.
The First Kinetic Novels
Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet (2004) was the first Kinetic Novel. While billed as a Visual Novel, it completely breaks from the genre by having no choices or interactivity. With no alternate paths, it has more in common with a traditional literary novel, and isn't actually a "game" by any traditional sense. It certainly doesn't fit into the Adventure Game Genre. You can play it, but only in the same sense that you can play a film.
This format has been used by many story-tellers since, and continues to be extremely popular to this day. It is a simple way to tell a story visually with a much smaller budget than what would be necessary for an animated or cinematic works.
Like Planetarian, other works of this type are often referred to as Visual Novels, but they have very little in common with Portopia or the decades long roots of the genre, and should really be considered as a separate genre of entertainment product, although many of the same technologies and tools may be employed to produce them as those used to produce traditional Visual Novels.
A Step Back to Look at Novels
Going back to the beginning, as far back as the late 1960s, writers had begun to experiment with interactive storytelling in the form of printed media.
In 1969, Edward Packard conceived of and wrote a book titled The Adventures of You on Sugarcane Island, although it wasn't accepted and published by a publishing house until 1976.
In 1979, Bantam Books began publishing the incredibly popular and long-running "Choose Your Own Adventure" series. This series passed along to Random House in 1999. Packard contributed many titles to the series.
In 2010, Simon & Schuster published several of Packards books under its "U-Ventures" trademark.
Triple-A Studio Adventures Games
In the 2010s, traditional Adventure Games had a resurgence with big budget studio productions such as Quantic Dream's "Heavy Rain" "Beyond: Two Souls", and "Detroit: Become Human."
There have also been more recent entries marking a return to classic form, but with a substantial dose of modern sensibilities applied to improve the user experience. One such example is Darkside Detective by Spooky Doorway.
Where does Ren'Py fit in all this?
Ren'Py is an easy to use tool for creating a limited form of Visual Novel, made easy to deploy on a variety of platforms.
It is excellent at narrative and dialogue, showing visual scenes, and allowing basic "slide-in" and "fade-in" animations, background music, sound effects, and even text to speech narration.
It also makes it easy to incorporate multiple-choice menus, much in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
It has been used for thousands of Visual Novels, not to mention thousands of Kinetic Novels that also leverage it as a way for creative artists and writers to express themselves.
But, with all of its strong points, Ren'Py's core system is lacking easy access to some of the hallmark features that originally distinguished the Visual Novel genre in the 1980s, and the broader Adventure Game genre.
Fortunately, it incorporates the Python programming language into it, giving game authors the ability to leverage this more technical aspect in order to extend its features. While this opens the door to more possibiliies, implementing such additional features in a high quality way is a huge amount of effort to put into a single title, especially for someone who is primarily an author or artist, and is only using Python as a means to an end.
Introducing Adventure for Ren'Py
This is where Adventure for Ren'Py comes into play.
The goal of "Adventure" is to provide all the tools you need to easily implement all of the features of classic Visual Novels as well as other Point-and-Click Adventure games.
And, the upcoming series of articles on this blog will show you how to do this, in an easy to follow, step-by-step way.
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