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This accessible academic textbook chronicles the legacy the adventure game genre has left behind on the contemporary gaming landscape. A generation of designers grew up playing these games, which are rarely studied today as a comprehensive body of work, and their DNA lives on not only in the work of contemporary auteurs but also in the form of dozens of daughter genres, from visual novels to walking simulators to escape rooms to puzzle platformers. We make the case that the genre has always been defined by outsiders, from the hackers who birthed it in the 1970s through to the queer and radical makers reinventing it in the 2010s. We also consider its potential to impact the next generation of games, from mixed reality’s de-emphasis on action through the reinvention of the form in games like Kentucky Route Zero and Her Story.

Published by Bloomsbury Press. Hardcover release: February 2020. Softcover release: 2021.

Publisher’s Website – Amazon – Review

Chapters 2 and 4 expand on material originally written for my disseration.