The first adventure games – Colossal Cave Adventure, Hunt the Wumpus and commercial Zork – were text-based and used parsers (interpreters of text input by the player) based on control verbs. With the development of computer technology and graphics subsystems, text-based games were superseded by the more visual and easy to control (but also much more limiting to the player) graphical quests.

Later, fans of text games revived the genre of interactive fiction (sometimes called “text quest”) by creating virtual machines to work with the files of various games. An example of such a game is the browser game Tale. Nowadays, text quests are most often found as mini-games as part of large games being released.

Graphic quests

The first graphical quests appeared for 8-bit home computers in the early 1980s. However, they only became truly “graphical” when the text-based interface was abandoned and the so-called point-and-click (i.e. pointer control via keyboard arrows, joystick or mouse) was introduced in 1985. Some of the popular games in this subgenre are the Monkey Island and Space Quest series.

Puzzle quests

In puzzle adventure games, the main focus is on solving any logical problems, puzzles, for example, in the form of various mechanisms available for examination by the player; in this case, the number of puzzles is very large, and the narrative may be schematic or absent at all. A prominent representative of the subgenre is the game Myst (1993), and later puzzle quests imitating it have been described by game reviewers as “Myst-like” quests.

One subgenre of the puzzle quest subgenre is the “room escape” quest, in which the player is tasked with leading a character out of a locked room using some items in the room.

Visual novels

Visual novel is a text-based quest characteristic of Japan, in which a story unfolding in the form of text is accompanied by static, rarely animated images. The degree of interactivity in such games is usually low, and the viewer is only occasionally required to make certain choices with the help of menus, in particular, to choose an answer option in the dialog. Visual novels are extremely popular in Japan, occupying a significant portion of the Japanese PC game market. Popular visual novels often become the basis for screen adaptations in the form of anime or manga releases.

Walking Simulators

In The Stanley Parable (2013), the player is only allowed to move around and interact with a small number of objects.
The term “walking simulator” describes narrative games with intentionally simplistic gameplay where setting, atmosphere, and story are prioritized. The expression “walking simulator” was originally used as a pejorative, emphasizing the primitive gameplay of such games, but over time has become neutral and acceptable. Such games may not be classified as quests – they often lack puzzles and other elements characteristic of the genre[7]. Often such games are not even possible to lose – they offer the player to simply move around the game world and look for interesting objects like books, audio recordings and the like, allowing to move further in the narrative.

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The second factor is linearity. Linearity is a property of a particular level, not of the game as a whole (for example, the Fortress of Mystery level in Doom is completely linear and relies on one tactic, namely the property of different monsters to fight each other; the Unholy Cathedral level, on the contrary, is an example of non-linearity).

Linear levels are levels that are traversed in one possible direction, and the player is only tasked with the combat itself (in a canonical shooter) or a “combat mission”. Non-linear levels can be traversed in many different ways, a large number of rooms are available for visiting in any order, and the player is required not only to explore the level in order to navigate it, but also to determine the most tactically advantageous route for himself. Often some rooms in non-linear levels are not necessary for “clearing” at all, for example, the canonical and at the same time consisting mainly of non-linear levels shooter Wolfenstein 3D had in its labyrinths about half of the rooms, clearing which brought nothing but a small amount of ammunition and prize points; in Doom also often met this kind of rooms, which do not bring the player much benefit, but are taken into account when calculating the percentage of killed monsters and collected, even if low-value, items.

Since most of the levels of a single shooter are usually made by a single author team in the same style (exceptions can be, for example, collective mods), the terms “linear shooter” and “non-linear shooter” are quite correct in most cases. Thus, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, System Shock and many more modern games can be spoken of as non-linear shooters, while Quake 2, Half-Life 2, Bullet Storm and many others can be spoken of as linear. “Non-linearity” in many cases is just a publicity stunt, simply put, a false claim by developers. Also, some games are so loaded with puzzles (for example, Hexen), that with formal linearity (the general order of traversing rooms is strictly set by scripts), navigation and solving puzzles make up such a large part of the gameplay, that it is impossible to call Hexen linear after all.

Third-person view

The above examples refer to the first-person shooter (FPS) subgenre. Later on, the category of third-person shooter (TPS) was also “sprouted” from it. In the first case, the player observes what is happening “from the eyes” and can leave the character’s body only at the moment of in-game screensavers. Authors use this method to make the player associate himself with the character (this remark applies to all first-person games). Accordingly, when playing a third-person game, the player sees the character’s back in front of him and controls him as a detached hero. Such games, for example, include Max Payne and Hitman. Some shooters combine both approaches. Examples of such combinations include The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, in which some of the character’s actions are displayed in third-person; and Splinter Cell games, starting with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, in which players are divided into two teams in network mode, and depending on their choice, the view of the character can vary. Another example is Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Battlefront II and Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, where the player can freely (in most cases) switch from one mode to another right in the course of the game (by pressing a special key).

Number of players

Shooters can be single-player video games (single-player video game, one person participates in the gameplay, all other game characters are controlled by the computer) and multiplayer video games (multiplayer video game, players play the game together, similar to the single-player mode, or compete with each other on special levels). If among the single-player games in this genre at the moment non-linearity is “out of fashion”, then multiplayer shooters always offer levels, at least having several passages between the areas of appearance of players, respawns, or even a more complex graph of connections between rooms. Counter-Strike is a prime example of a network shooter in general and one that fits this description in particular. Sometimes maps for modern multiplayer games offer the player large open spaces, such as in Battlefield 1942, which allows you to bring together in one battle a large number of infantry and a variety of military equipment. It is quite obvious that in multiplayer mode, where tactics and deceptive techniques are essential for victory, linearity is unacceptable in principle.

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Many games of this genre are characterized by unrealistic, drawn cartoon graphics. Characters of such games are often fictional creatures (for example, dragons, goblins) or anthropomorphic animals.

Platformers appeared in the early 1980s and became three-dimensional toward the end of the 1990s. Some time after the genre was formed, it got this name, reflecting the fact that platformers focus their gameplay on jumping on platforms as opposed to shooting. It is true that many platformers feature small arms, in games such as Blackthorne or Castlevania, for example. The latter served as the basis of the metroidvania subgenre.

Major representatives of platformers include Commander Keen, Magic Pockets, Baby Jo in “Going Home”, Bumpy`s Arcade Fantasy, Rick Dangerous, Adventures of Lomax, Electro Man, the Prince of Persia series, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ratchet and Clank, Rockman, Super Mario, Rayman, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper, LittleBigPlanet. Many of these started in the 1980s and continue to this day.

Some items, called power-ups, grant the player-controlled character a special power that usually runs out over time (for example: force field, acceleration, increased jump height). Collectibles, weapons, and power-ups are usually collected by simply touching the character and require no special action on the player’s part to use. Less frequently, items are collected in the hero’s “inventory” and applied by a special command (this behavior is more typical of arcade puzzle games). A similar genre of computer games side-scroller.

Opponents (called “enemies”), always numerous and heterogeneous, have primitive artificial intelligence, trying to get as close to the player as possible, or do not have it at all, moving in a circular distance or performing repetitive actions. Coming into contact with an enemy usually drains the hero’s life force or kills him altogether. Sometimes an enemy can be neutralized either by jumping on its head or with a weapon if the hero possesses one. The death of living creatures is usually depicted simplistically or symbolically (the creature disappears or falls down off the screen).

Levels are usually full of secrets (hidden passages in the walls, high or hard-to-reach places), finding which greatly facilitates the passage and fuels the player’s interest.

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