Why the Adventure Games are underrated

Updated: Nov 6

Doctor Who has had a presence beyond the TV series for a long time with novels, comics and audios expanding the Doctor Who universe. However, it has consistently had a very rocky road in finding much popularity and success with video games. The concept and principles of Doctor Who have been difficult to make work with popular gameplay mechanics and genres. This means there have been a lot of failed experiments like Return to Earth, the Eternity Clock and the Edge of Reality. It's possible that the ever-changing nature of Doctor Who has made the reality of a seasoned product very difficult, with the time it takes to create a worthy video game. The Adventure Games however, are for me a solid success and provide an ideal blueprint of what a Doctor Who video game should be, and yet they seem to be forgotten. You have the basics of Doctor Who transformed into interactive storytelling in a very loyal way. So why are they underrated? Let's take a look.

The Adventure Games are hardly the most sophisticated games you could find, even by 2010 standards, but from my viewpoint they are very enjoyable and immerse you into the Doctor Who world. Unfortunately, there is no longer any legal way to play them, but I did manage to download them from a dodgy website.

I think the biggest success in the Adventure Games is the strong connection and working relationship between the game developers and the Doctor Who production team. You don’t just have Matt Smith and Karen Gillian voicing the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond, but the episodes are written by two Doctor Who writers and you have the involvement of Steven Moffat and the executive producers of the Matt Smith era. City of the Daleks, Blood of the Cybermen, the Shadows of the Vashta Nerada and the Gunpowder Plot were written by Phil Ford. He co-wrote the Waters of Mars with Russell T Davies, wrote some of the best episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures and would go on to co-write Into the Dalek with Steven Moffat. There’s also Tardis, written by James Moran who wrote the Fires of Pompeii and a few episodes of Torchwood. The Adventure Games feel like they have an understanding of Doctor Who as a property and its fundamental aspects which need to be replicated for a video game. It has the feel and essentials of Doctor Who as a natural part of it. The tone, styling and structure of Doctor Who is felt vividly and automatically emerges within the episodes. There is an effort to recreate the episodic formula of Doctor Who that is successfully felt and interwoven. The fact that you have episode writers crafting the story, dialogue and the backbone of the thing is a massive strength. You have creatives at the helm who understand Doctor Who and have talent in crafting Doctor Who centric storytelling. This is automatically going to result in something that feels very naturally Doctor Who because you have the creative energy of the series running through the games and the basic bread and butter of what defines it.

A problem Doctor Who games often run into is that the Doctor isn’t an action hero; they are a pacifist and are opposed to violence which can make gameplay challenging. Recent video games have avoided this problem altogether with games like the Edge of Reality where you don’t play as the Doctor and simply help them in their adventure and quest. However, I think this misses the point of the appeal of a Doctor Who game. Part of the fun is that you want to play as the Doctor and companion and wield the Sonic Screwdriver and Tardis. To deny a fan of that is missing the point of a Doctor Who game.

The Adventure Games don’t totally solve this problem, but they manage to work around it efficiently, so you can still play as the Doctor and Amy with satisfying gameplay. I’m not a video game expert or enthusiast, so my interest in the Adventure Games is going to be more about the Doctor Who angle of things rather than the gameplay. However, I was still engaged with the experience and enjoyed the adventure of playing as the Doctor and Amy. I like the way it's framed as if you’re playing through an actual Doctor Who episode which influences the approach to the whole thing, and it feels like it was the right choice for a Doctor Who game at this point. The gameplay avoids the Doctor using guns and weapons and everything in gameplay is in the spirit of the series. The playthrough mainly involves solving puzzles and problems, fixing things, fetching, building and collecting items, exploring the environment and dodging enemies. I’m not going to pretend the gameplay is overly complex or groundbreaking, as it doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before. However, it still has an engagement, puts your brain into action and can be challenging at times. I do think some parts can be rather repetitively frustrating. The puzzles especially could have done with a lot more variety, but this does improve as the games go on.

My favourite part of the gameplay is the dodging enemies aspect. Whether you are playing as the Doctor or Amy, you can feel great fear running through you in these parts. Navigating around Daleks, Vashta Nerada and even Sontarans and Rutans later on is thrilling. It creates a spine-chilling tension and fear inside you and an alive mixture of complex emotions. It takes the tension, fear, danger and adventure of Doctor Who and puts you in the middle of it, which is great. You feel the consequences and danger of running into the Daleks and it’s a very immersive feeling. The games also naturally step up these dangers in a way that feels constantly challenging and involving. The gameplay is simplistic, but you are still interested in getting to the next point of the story and intrigued by the episode overall. The biggest weak point is in the voice acting, this is a craft of its own and it's clear at this point Matt Smith and Karen Gillian are very inexperienced with it. Karen Gillian still brings a lively energy, but Matt Smith has a very toned-down performance which lacks urgency and the Eleventh Doctor ends up feeling very boring as a character.

City of the Daleks is the first of the games which was written by Phil Ford. It's understandable that these games wouldn’t have the most complex stories in the world, especially when it comes to launching them. It's also understandable that to begin with you would focus on popular aspects and villains and as such the Daleks launch the games. City of the Daleks has a very basic plot, but it’s a simple and very well-told story with clear and precise stakes. I like the time travel plot of the Doctor and Amy landing in 1963 only to discover it in ruins and the whole of earth history having been rewritten. The changing of time and altering of history makes the cost and consequences of the Daleks very severe and catastrophic. It's simple but has high stakes. You have an intriguing story that unfolds naturally involving the Dalek Emperor taking control of the Eye of Time as the Daleks plan to rewrite history and change time on a huge scale. The Paradigm Daleks were rather under-used in the TV show so it's lovely to see an extended prominent use of their design and I love the use of Skaro as the primary setting and inclusion of the Emperor Dalek. City of the Daleks manages to balance its simplistic high stakes story with its mix of recognisable Dalek things and elements for the gamer to interact with. You want to be wandering around Skaro, facing off against the Emperor Dalek and getting involved in time travel plots. The story is well suited to the game's purpose. If it was a TV episode, it would probably feel too generic, but as an interactive vehicle, its priorities are well placed.

Blood of the Cybermen is again written by Phil Ford and continues to pull on familiar and iconic elements with the Cybermen as the main villains. The story involves the Doctor and Amy answering a distress call from an arctic base of humans slowly being transformed into Cyberslaves as the Cybermen are discovered waiting under the ice. I think Blood of the Cybermen is the weakest of all the Adventure Games. I like the setting of the story a lot. I like the feel of the Doctor and Amy wandering around a scientific research facility. It homes in on the base under siege spookiness and confined and isolated setting, which Doctor Who thrives under and there is some solid gameplay and exploration of the base itself. However, the story itself becomes a victim of the modern use of the Cybermen. They also feel much easier to avoid than the Daleks in gameplay with their overly slow movement and don’t have much of a threat or scare to them to enhance the story or gameplay. The Cybermen aren’t as strong of a fit for a generic Doctor Who story as they seem to be. Blood of the Cybermen has the same basic structure and gameplay as City of the Daleks but doesn’t deliver in quite the same way.

What I love about the Adventure Games, though, is that they were given the room to advance, grow and evolve. When making a Doctor Who game, you are naturally going to focus on recognisable aspects like the Daleks and Cybermen. In a single game, there is a single plot, so there isn't much opportunity for further showcase and development of different villains and storylines. Like when I discussed Doctor Who stage-plays, a Doctor Who video game can easily become very generic because it's not really about the story itself but the aspect which is exclusive to it with its interactivity. This can be very limiting as the games rely on recognition and, as a result, you have a lack of variety with the same generic villains constantly recycled as antagonists across various projects. There isn’t a lot of creative freedom to explore different types of stories when it comes to Doctor Who games.

This is the strength the Adventure Games have. With a few different episodes, you can draw fans in with the Daleks and Cybermen, and also have room to showcase more variety.

Tardis is written by James Moran and takes place entirely on the Tardis itself, which is a great opportunity for gameplay storytelling. The story of Tardis involves the Doctor, and the Tardis stuck in a space riptide whilst an evil entity escapes imprisonment on the Tardis feeding on the time energy of others. There is a very defined threat which develops, but you have a simple story like most of the Adventure Games. This is by design, as the whole thing is, a fun and pleasurable excuse to operate the Tardis and explore. You have an engaging enough story with the way time is utilised and use of the Chronomites but it's designed around the video game form of storytelling. The interactive elements really come to life and add an extra level of engagement in this entry. Being able to fly and operate the Tardis is a highlight and a thrill and the drawing room is a treasure trove of nostalgia for fans. The problem is that Tardis can’t possibly make full use of the concept with its limitations. What you get is fun but quite limiting as you only get access to the console room and the drawing room, and you want the opportunity to roam and explore the vast extent of the Tardis. It's an ideal story for a video game, but with budget limitations, it does feel like the concept is restrained.

Phil Ford returns to write the last episode of the first series of the Adventure Games with the Shadows of the Vashta Nerada and its definitely the highlight of the first series. The story involves the Doctor and Amy in the middle of a sea base in the 23rd Century as a bunch of deadly Vashta Nerada have taken over as they must help the remaining crew to survive. It feels like everything has been taken that worked about the first three episodes and progressed. I really love the eeriness and the isolated and confined setting of the story. The Vashta Nerada were a fantastic creation by Steven Moffat, and they are strongly fitted to a story set on an underwater sea base. There is something very eerie and sinister about the Vashta Nerada in that environment that feels refreshing. It also brings out effective gameplay by involving you within the story. It places the danger and childhood fear, which the Vashta Nerada concept preys on directly on the gamer in a way that feels horrifying. The sequences of avoiding the diver suits and outrunning darkness personifies the scares Doctor Who provides, translated into an interactive form of storytelling. It homes in on a darkness and scariness which feels important and valuable to Doctor Who video game storytelling. You also have more of a layered story with intrigue, character conflict and the use of backstory and the integration of a historical myth with science fiction logic which I admire. Having had time to develop itself, the Adventure Games became more willing to tell more developed stories, resulting in a more engaging experience.

The Adventure Games returned in 2011 just after Series 6 with a much longer and elaborate story titled: The Gunpowder Plot, once again written by Phil Ford. The story involves the Tardis colliding with a spaceship when leaving Lio Dynasty, China, causing dimensional lesions. This leads to the Doctor, Amy and Rory this time trying to stop the Rutans and Sontarans use of a doomsday device, all during the internal Catholic plotting of Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby to blow up Parliament. You have a more developed and broader story with the Gunpowder Plot and, as a whole, a more extensive and complicated gaming experience which is more rewarding as a result.

It's clear they had time to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the stories and gaming mechanics of the first series of Adventure Games and used that as an opportunity for learning and development with the Gunpowder Plot. The 1605 setting is a huge benefit and enhances the story a great deal. Doctor Who has always been a great vehicle for a historical drama. With a game there is a great opportunity to be able to explore 1605 London and its given a real sense of texture. I like the way history is integrated into the gaming experience with the gamer being able to talk to and interact with the people of the 17th century. You can learn about the attitudes and conflicts of the time, the poverty of the period, the aftermath of the plague and the root of the beliefs of the scheme to blow up Parliament and kill the king. You have essentially an effective interactive educational tool which gives you excellent historical insight into the truth of Guy Fawkes night, which feels true to the intent of what Doctor Who was meant for by Sydney Newman. The way the gamer is given the room to roam and explore the environment the Tardis has landed in is very special, and realises the potential of what a Doctor Who game can be. There are goals, objectives and an interesting story which unfolds with surprising twists and turns, but the environment and setting the story takes place in makes the gaming experience. Characters like Guy Fawkes, Black Rod and Charlie are effective characters with attitudes and motivations defined by the period, and well-crafted in both story and gameplay.

You’ve also got the fact that a conflict between Rutans and Sontarans on screen is something fans have wanted from the TV show for a long time. It's unfortunate we still haven’t had that, but it's fun and delightful to experience it in a game. There is a lot of enjoyment in the sequences where you play as Rory going round taking out Sontarans and Rutans. The Gunpowder plot integrates history, a well-developed story and gameplay in a way which I consider a major success. It's unfortunate the Adventure Games ended at this point because they could have built upon things further.

After the Gunpowder Plot, the BBC moved its priorities onto other Doctor Who gaming objectives with projects and games that mostly failed. However, the Adventure Games have been undervalued because, for me, they present a lot of what you want from a Doctor Who game. The interactive feel and exploration, the well-crafted storylines, and the sequences of evading enemies lands on something important and memorable. The Adventure Games capture the essence of Doctor Who and transforms it into a gameplay story in a way that has been missed in other games.

I have no doubt that modern gaming would have what it takes to make a fantastic Doctor Who game in the right hands. I don’t think Doctor Who’s ultimate gaming success has emerged yet. However, future games should still take some hints from the Adventure Games. An open world game of free exploration with a focused scare factor would be a wonderful starting point. It should maintain the essence of a Doctor Who story but with interactivity at the centre.