A game where you hover your mouse (or finger in this case) over a [noun] and you click on it to grab it or learn more about it. If you have ever played Spy Fox or Putt Putt then you know what I am talking about.
In 1984 a new kind of adventure games emerged following the launch of the Apple Macintosh with its point-and-click interface. First out was the innovative but relatively-unknown Enchanted Scepters the same year, then in 1985 ICOM Simulations released Déjà Vu that completely banished the text parser for a point-and-click interface. In 1987 the well-known second follow-up Shadowgate was released, and LucasArts also entered the field with Maniac Mansion - a point-and-click adventure that gained a strong following. A prime example of LucasArts' work is the Monkey Island series. Another famous point-and-click graphic adventure game was Hideo Kojima's Policenauts (1994). In 1988, popular adventure game publisher Sierra Online created Manhunter: New York. It marked a major shift for Sierra, having used a text parser for their adventure games akin to text adventures. Graphic adventure games were quick to take advantage of the storage possibilities of the CD-ROM medium and the power of the Macromedia Director multimedia-production software. Games such as Alice (1990), Spaceship Warlock (1991), The Journeyman Project (1993), and Iron Helix (1993) incorporated pre-rendered 3D elements and live-action video, as seen to good effect later in Blade Runner (1997 video game). By 1993, Myst represented a major milestone for graphical adventure games. It featured a first-person viewpoint and reached 6 million sales, making it one of the best selling PC games of all time. The genre has since seen a relative decline. Reasons for the decline involve the ability for computer hardware to play more graphically and gameplay advanced action games such as first-person shooters, and the advent of online gaming where players can play against other gamers online. Such online features are irrelevant to adventure gaming. The popularity and sales of these games have made publishers less inclined to fund development teams making graphic adventures for fear of bad sales. Recently however independent users have created many smaller graphic adventure games in Adobe Flash, such as the series Johnny Rocketfingers, which is one of the most popular point-and-click in Flash on the Internet or the series The Several Journeys of Reemus by Jay Ziebarth. Many of these challenge the player to interact with objects in an environment. These form very short and basic point-and-click adventure games. A popular sub-genre is known as escape the room games. The graphic adventure genre has seen a rebirth with the introduction of new videogame hardware like the Nintendo DS, and Wii, that allows the gamer to interact with the game in new and innovative ways. These new play styles were naturally intuitive to the method that adventure games are played, and as a result many developers have developed new graphic adventures for these platforms. Recent examples of graphic adventures include Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure for the Wii, Ceville for the PC, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars for the Nintendo DS, as well as games developed by Telltale Games, founded by former LucasArts employees. Their games include Sam & Max Save the World and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, and the Monkey Island revival, Tales of Monkey Island. (wiki)
Haha, I completely forgot about Spy Fox! Best games that Humongous Entertainment ever made. Used to play the crap out of them as a kid. I still even play them a bit now! I'm even waiting for a sequel lol. Luckily the first 2 I think can be played through ScummVm, but I'm not sure about the 3rd one (but that really doesn't matter, the second one was the best and the third was the worst one.)
