The genre didn't end in the mid-'90s, though - despite a few claims otherwise - and some of the best iOS adventures are much more recent. HECTOR: Badge of Carnage (£2.99 per episode, iPhone; £4.99 per episode, iPad) isn't for the squeamish, the prudish, the under 18s (translation: under 18s whose parents see the iPad) or the easily offended, but it's still superb. It's like Bottom as an adventure game, or if a British Peter Griffin ever became a cop. Staggeringly cruel but blisteringly funny, it's just a shame each episode is pricey compared to other episodic games.
HECTOR still relies on old-school design though, and there's more to the genre than that. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Free, Universal) is a superb mix of adventure and puzzle game, in which you are a disembodied spirit with a single night to figure out the reason for your death. Quirky, and very, very Japanese in style, it'd be worth taking a gamble on… but you don't have to. The first two chapters are free, and offer a great introduction. The rest of the game is unlockable for £6.99.
For a more arty kind of adventure, Machinarium (£2.99, iPad) is tough to beat. It's another point-and-click conversion, but entirely focussed on in-world logic puzzles and experimentation. There's no dialogue at all, just gorgeous 2D animation that breathes incredible life into the all-robot cast, and tasks you with learning the rules of their mechanical city as you go along.
Finally, it's absolutely worth trying an episodic series that was still underway at the time of writing, but has already established itself as one of the best adventures in recent memory - Walking Dead: The Game (£2.99 per episode, Universal). Based on the hit zombie comic books and TV show of the same name, but with its own story, it's a tough game to describe. There are puzzles, and action sections that demand quick events (though little actual dexterity), but it's primarily a series about character and making decisions.
Who among your band of starving survivors most deserves your last scraps of food? Should you keep it a secret that your character is a convicted murderer? Do you avoid swearing in front of the little girl you've become a father figure to? It's a game that forces you to make hard choices, with those decisions being carried between episodes to savour the delicious regret over the whole tale.
