The Adventure Game Database strives to be the a catalog of all graphical adventure games designed for a personal computer on the Internet. We strive for simplicity in look, high searchability, and comprehesiveness in content. We are thankful for MobyGames and IGDB.com for their database of games that allows this site to gather information and also for Steam's API functionality that makes cataloging Steam games so much easier.
To achieve this goal, we attempt to live by this mission statement:
Support the adventure game genre by providing unbiased, accurate, and complete information on adventure games and ensure potential players can find the games they wish to play based on their own personal preferences and needs.
This means that we desire to collect as much information on as many adventure games as possible and take no stance on the value of the game. While we many provide a meta rating for the game based on user or critic scores, the AGDB will not review or comment on a game's value
We strive for accurate and complete information and allow users to submit corrections to game information.
We strive to ensure the information availble allows potential players to find games based on personal preference and needs. This includes ensuring that certain accessiblity tags linked to games that can help players with disabilities find them and play them.
What is an adventure game?
While we strive to be inclusive, we must define what qualifies as an adventure game in term that make them able to be categorized. To this end, each game is individually reviewed and determined whether it meets the qualifications. We believe that adventure games must have several aspects:
- A NARRATIVE that is being experienced.
- PUZZLES that need to be solved.
- The ability to EXPLORE the game environment.
- The PLAYER is ultimately in control of the narrative.
A Narrative is essential for any adventure game, as part of the experience when playing an adventure games is experiencing the story. How this narrative is presented to the player depends on the game. Some games may have the player search for the narrative via voice logs, diary pages, etc. while other games may use cutscenes and other more obvious methods to present the narrative.
Puzzles are an aspect that set adventure games apart from other game genres. Puzzles can have a large variety of forms, but puzzles make the player think about their actions. Puzzles can include the traditional inventory puzzles from classic point-and-click adventure games, but their are so many different ways that puzzles can present themselves, from dialogue puzzles, logic puzzles, environmental puzzles, and even choice based puzzles that involve player making difficult choices.
Exploration allows the player is experience the game world in some way on their own. This can be as simple of having multiple room that a a player can move between, having a world/city map, or allowing a player to explore a single room or house. Exploration can tie into the puzzles because many times a player will be to figure out where to go and what to do based on clues and by exploring and understand the game world, it assists the player with these puzzles.
Player Control is an aspect that is rarely talked about, but something that sets adventure games apart from RPG and other Action oriented games. The player, and not the in-game character, is expected to solve puzzles, navigate the game world, and drive the narrative along. That may be via solving puzzles, making choices, or simply by exploring the game world and finding the pieces of a puzzle without being guided by the in-game character. When the problem presents itself, the player is expected to solve the problem, as opposed to the in-game character telling the player what to do.
Who is responsible for this database? This database is the hard work of TacoAdventure who has been working on collecting this information for several years and finally decided to make this frontend for the public to search and find adventure games. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out on Bluesky (@tacoadventure.net) or Discord (tacoadventure).