Game questions

What are adventure games?

Adventure games are all about stories, exploring worlds and solving puzzles. This article will give you a more elaborate description.

Can you recommend some good adventure games?

Have a look at our Top Games page or our recent reviews.

Where can I download commercial adventure games?

Our partners at GOG have a catalog of over a hundred popular adventure games available for purchasing and downloading.

Can you give tech support for [game X]?

We don't make or publish games so we can't provide tech support for games (so please don't e-mail us asking for it!). We recommend you contact the tech support desk of the company that published the game. If that doesn't work, you might try posting a request for help on our forums.

For support for purchases made at GOG, visit their website.

Where can I buy classic or hard-to-find adventure games?

Yard sales and thrift shops are your best bet. As for places online, you might have luck at eBay, CD Access or Amazon. There's also GameTZ, a community designed for trading used games.

Where can I download freeware adventure games?

There is an active community of freeware adventure game developers. For more on freeware games go to the Freeware section of this site. Some companies offer old games online as freeware. For instance, you can get Beneath a Steel Sky legally for free at ScummVM. It's important to note that although we support the preservation and availability of older games, it is illegal to download "warez" or "abandonware". You will find no such links on this site.

Where can I find walkthroughs or game hints?

GameFAQs has walkthroughs for many games. If you prefer to get specific hints that won't spoil the game for you, we recommend checking out Universal Hint System.

How can I get an old game to run on my modern computer?

We recommend two programs for enabling old games on current-day systems.

ScummVM is an emulator that will play many old adventure games on a range of modern platforms. The project started out by supporting all LucasArts adventure games, but eventually expanded to include support for Flight of the Amazon Queen, the first two Simon the Sorcerer games and Revolution Software's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2.

DOSBox is a general-purpose tool that allows you to simulate a DOS environment on many current platforms including Windows, Linux and MacOS X. It should help you run an old adventure game in most cases.

(There are two emulators specifically designed for running classic adventure games from Sierra On-Line, namely FreeSCI and Sarien, but both are still in early development stages.)

Site questions

Can I trust your reviews?

Adventure Gamers has earned a strong reputation for editorial integrity and independence, which we work hard to maintain. Check our editorial policies for details.

Is your editorial content influenced at all by advertisers?

We keep a very strict 'seperation of church and state' between editorial and commercial matters. We never let advertising money influence our editorial process. A more detailed answer can be found here.

How can I easily keep track of site updates?

There are several ways to be notified about new articles and adventure game news:

Use our RSS feed (more RSS feeds & how to use)
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Can I reprint and/or translate articles from Adventure Gamers?

You cannot copy our content (articles, images, etc.), or make translations thereof, without explicit and advance written permission. Contact us if you want to reprint an article somewhere and we will review your request.

We are very protective of our copyright and regularly scout the web for copycats. Any articles copied and/or translated with our permission will explicitly state this on the page, along with our copyright disclaimer. Any page that doesn't include this notice is violating our copyright.

Printing or copying an article for personal or educational use is allowed under fair use. (This includes printing out single copies, saving an article on your harddisk or publishing brief attributed excerpts, but does NOT include re-publishing articles on a public web site, magazine, etc. without explicit permission.)

Again, you cannot copy and/or translate our articles without our explicit permission. Please stick to this rule.

Why don't you have a review of [adventure game X]?

If it's a recently published title, chances are we are still playing it and our review will appear soon. We're constantly working on expanding our collection of classic reviews and your suggestions on what to review next are always welcome.

Why don't you have a review of [action-adventure game Y]?

A few exceptions aside, we don't review action-adventure, RPG, pure puzzle or other hybrid genres. Although we enjoy these types of games, we want to be focused on adventure games. Check our editorial policies for details.

Can I send you a review or article I wrote?

If you want to apply for a position on the staff, feel free to drop us a line. If you have any sample material � great. We also have a reader review forum where anyone can post reviews freely.

How does the Hype-o-Meter work?

The Hype-o-Meter on our home page shows a ranking of ten upcoming games that people are excited about. As the name implies, it is far from any sort of scientific measure. The rankings are determined based on a combination of forum polls, reader feedback and the assessment of the Adventure Gamers team of preview material and press demos. The Hype-o-Meter is never a measure of quality, it is a measure of the buzz on upcoming games.

Forum questions

For questions about the forums, please read the forum FAQ.

Also see these threads: Need game recommendations? Come on in... and Familiar ground: Popular threads & Recurring themes