Section
History: the 1990s
The years when point-and-click adventures were a mainstream PC genre: the studios, the formats, the design conventions that took hold.
Why adventure games from 1990 to 2010 still work
One technical reason and one design reason explain why old adventure games still play today while many games of the same era broke: a durable content format, and a pace that does not depend on reaction time.
From text parser to point and click
The move from typed commands to clicking: why the command line was replaced, which series mark the milestones, and what was lost as the interface got simpler.
The two studios that defined the 1990s
Two opposing design schools in the 1990s: one prioritised hard puzzles where failure was possible, the other prioritised story and freedom from dead ends. That difference still decides which games you like today.