It’s often tricky to distinguish between action games and adventure games. Their key qualities are different yet still blend well together, which confuses the matter even more.
If you want to understand the two genres better, here’s a quick guide into what makes each tick. It’ll help you put your titles in clearer categories, as well as learn to explain for yourself how action games and adventure games are different.
What Are Action Games?
Here's how you can tell what an action game what an action game is like.
1. Action Games Challenge You Physically
As the name suggests, action games are more active. Your involvement in each story is dynamic, focusing particularly on combat, whether you’re using guns, swords, or tactics.
While you might encounter puzzles and calmer side quests now and then, the ultimate goal of this genre is to challenge your hand-eye coordination, reaction time, and ability to overcome obstacles under pressure.
2. Action Games Have More Moving Parts
God of War and Call of Duty are good examples of how exciting and complex action games can be. Compared to adventure, a lot more detail goes into the graphics, gameplay, and controls.
Some developers try to make their plots just as strong, but seamless movement from one level to the next is the priority. Think of MMOs and Battle Royales. If they weren’t action games, they wouldn’t be half as fun for players and designers alike.
3. Your Character Can Die in Action Games
Playing action games isn’t just about completing quests and beating time limits. You’re also helping your character survive the whole ordeal. This extra pressure is a key feature that sets action games and adventure games apart.
The challenge of staying alive adds to the thrill, too. The difficulty of video games increases as you progress, and some titles demand your full attention to overcome certain battles and enemies.
It puts your skills to the test and gives you a sense of fulfillment when you win. However, you can end up feeling worn out, especially when playing something very stimulating.
What Are Adventure Games?
1. Adventure Games Challenge You Mentally
There is some action in adventure games, but it’s not as immersive. That’s because the focus of this genre is on the interactive story, not the combat.
So, an adventure game will draw you in with its plot and only progress as you solve its challenges. These can be actual puzzles or a combination of actions and items you need to use in order to fix something and move forward.
2. Adventure Games Tell a Better Story
Developers of adventure games want you to enjoy the world they’ve built, including its characters, narrative depth, and graphic design. Classic examples are the Myst and Syberia franchises.
Even if you don’t always see the protagonist, you get involved in their journey and surroundings. Without combat and the constant threat of death, you just calmly enjoy it all and progress at your own pace.
3. The Controls for Adventure Games Are Simpler
In action games, you usually hammer away at your keyboard or controller, struggling through each battle sequence. Since adventure games are just stories, you rarely need more than a few buttons to move around, look, and pick things up.
In fact, text-based adventure games to play on your browser are quite popular. The beauty of the genre is that your brain and imagination see more action than your fingers do.
It’s a calm but pleasant experience that makes adventure games quite different from action games. On the other hand, no extra thrill can become boring. That’s why the two genres joined forces: to cover gaps in gamers’ entertainment.
How Are Action and Adventure Combined in Video Games?
Once you understand the basic features of action games and adventure games, you can spot titles where they overlap. Action-adventure is the genre that brings the best of the two sides together.
The result is a combination of immersive gameplay, combat, character development, storytelling, and puzzle-solving. Some games around add role-playing elements to make up for the focus on a specific pre-made character.
The vast range of titles and combinations around does blur the lines, but there are still some fan-favorite titles like Tomb Raider and Fable that nicely represent what merging action and adventure video game design can produce.
Get to Know What Makes Good Video Games
Knowing the differences between action games and adventure games can make your life clearer, but they don’t tell you whether a video game is good or not. A lot more goes into working that out, from the gameplay to the difficulty system.
If the matter interests you as a gamer or developer, keep looking into the pros and cons of different gaming styles and features, if not whole titles.