The Quest for Serious Sex Adventures: A Structural Analysis of Puzzle and Humor

Classic adventure games have long been observed to carry a strong streak of comic excess, from the hacker humor of the original Adventure to the technical jokes of text adventures, the witty design of point-and-click titles, and the genre's later self-reflexive parody. This extended abstract asks why humor is so characteristic of the genre and what that implies for the treatment of sensitive themes such as sexuality. The argument is a three-step chain: classic adventure games rely heavily on puzzles for their challenge, puzzles and jokes operate on similar structural principles, and it is therefore logical for designers to favor humor as a thematic component. The first premise is accepted as established in existing scholarship, so the contribution centers on grounding the second.

The theoretical basis comes from a wide review of puzzle theory, spanning early riddles, analog puzzles, and modern videogame fiction puzzles. A unifying feature is a dual structure: one side open to exploration and observation, the other reached through deduction and interpretation. Riddles consist of an encoded text and a revealed solution whose union dissolves the tension that gave the riddle its purpose. This is set beside humor theory, where set-up and surprise, the rule of three, the "pull back and reveal" formula, and puns all hinge on an incongruity or turning point that resolves in a punch-line. The satisfaction of a completed joke parallels the completion of a riddle that ceases to exist once solved. Danesi's suggestion that the puzzle instinct resembles the instinct for humor supports the analogy, as does the claim that videogame puzzles work best when thematically coherent with their narrative.

The authors conclude that players and designers who enjoy puzzle solving should also value the hermeneutic resolutions of comedy, which explains the genre's comic treatment of its themes. This also offers a way to understand gaming's perceived "lack of seriousness" while leaving room for critical engagement through comedy. Sexuality in puzzle-heavy adventures, they suggest, tends to surface through humor within the puzzle-riddle-joke structure. Examples include 2064: Read Only Memories, the Deponia series, the Leisure Suit Larry series, and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. The work was partly funded by the Academy of Finland project "Sexuality and Play in Media Culture."