Retro Gaming Hacks

Create Your Own Adventure Game

Use Adventure Game Studio to make a classic point-and-click.

Hey, remember point-and-click adventure games? I sure as heck do. Classic series like Sierra’s King’s Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, and of course LucasArts’ Monkey Island and Sam and Max, were the reason I counted myself among the PC gamers in the nineties. The genre never had to die, but die it did as Sierra and Lucas quit producing adventures after games moved to 3D and the market for hand-drawn games dried up.

And so, the point-and-click became pointedly retro. But hope is not lost. If you’ve read Gaming Hacks (O’Reilly), you’ve learned how to run classic LucasArts adventures on your modern-day PC. And in this very book you’ve already seen how to run your classic Sierra games on your Game Boy Advance [Hack #47] . But what if all these retro puzzlers aren’t satisfying your need for adventure? Well, have you ever thought of making your own?

“Nonsense,” you say. “I have no programming knowledge whatsoever.” Maybe so, but this hack is dedicated to proving that you don’t need it. As long as you’re a relatively intelligent individual (and you must be if you’re reading this) you can use Adventure Game Studio (AGS) to create your own point-and-click adventure in whatever style you please. And the program will even distill your game down to a single executable file so you can distribute the game freely (or commercially, if you really think you have something people would pay for). In this hack we’ll ...