Frequently Asked Questions
The most-asked questions about adventure games of the 2010s, part 4.
What does Part 4 of this fan encyclopedia cover?
Part 4 focuses on the narrative-exploration adventure games of the 2010s—titles where the core loop is walking through a handcrafted world, discovering story through environmental detail and dialogue, rather than solving discrete inventory puzzles. It spans roughly 2013 to 2019 and includes works from both indie studios and smaller AAA teams.
Which studios are most associated with this era of adventure games?
Key names include Night School Studio (Firewatch, Oxenfree), Giant Games (What Remains of Edith Finch), inkle (80 Days, Sunless Sea), Compulsion Games (Disco Elysium), and Mobius Digital (Outer Wilds). Telltale Games also contributed significantly before its 2018 corporate collapse.
Where should a newcomer begin if they have never played a 2010s adventure game?
Firewatch is the most accessible entry point—short, linear, and immediately atmospheric without demanding any puzzle-solving. What Remains of Edith Finch works well as a second pick if you want something more emotionally intense and structurally varied.
How is this 'narrative exploration' style different from classic point-and-click adventure?
Classic titles like Monkey Island or the Gabriel Knight series center on inventory management and logical problem-solving to advance the plot. The 2010s narrative-exploration wave largely removes the inventory mechanic, replacing it with free movement, environmental discovery, and branching dialogue as the primary player verbs.
What was the biggest industry moment for this genre during the decade?
The 2016-2017 cluster of acclaimed releases—Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, Oxenfree, and Unravel—arrived within roughly twelve months and collectively shifted critical discourse toward treating short, story-driven interactive experiences as a legitimate art form rather than a niche hobby.
What recurring themes appear across the games covered in Part 4?
Grief and memory, the tension between isolation and human connection, and the idea that understanding a place or a person requires you to slow down and look closely are the three most common threads. Many titles also treat the act of exploration itself as a form of processing loss.
Did any single game define the 'walking simulator' label, and is that term still used?
The phrase was popularized around 2013-2014 following Gone Home and The Unfinished Swan, and it stuck in casual press coverage for a few years. Most developers and fans in this space now prefer 'narrative adventure' or 'interactive fiction' because the label undersells the design and writing work involved.
What made Disco Elysium (2019) stand out among 2010s adventure games?
It replaced the traditional silent protagonist with a 24-skill internal dialogue system, letting the player's own fragmented mind argue with itself in real time during conversations. Its release capped the decade by proving that a text-heavy, RPG-structured narrative could win Game of the Year against far larger-budget titles.
Are the games covered in Part 4 still available to play today?
Most titles—Firewatch, Oxenfree, What Remains of Edith Finch, Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds—remain on Steam, GOG, and major console storefronts. A few Telltale episodes were temporarily delisted during the studio's 2018 bankruptcy but were restored to digital stores after LUCASART acquired the IP in 2020.
What legacy did this wave leave for adventure games after 2020?
It normalized short, single-player, story-first interactive experiences as both commercial and critical successes, directly paving the way for titles like Spiritfarer and the broader 'cozy narrative' sub-genre. It also established that a team of fewer than twenty people could produce a genre-defining adventure.