10 Telltale Games, Ranked from Good to Awesome
Find out which Telltale adventure games are good, and which are great.
Telltale Games debuted its very first game in 2005: a stylish poker simulator called Telltale Texas Hold'em. Who could have guessed that 13 years later, the company would be nearly synonymous with adventure games?
The modern Telltale formula works as follows: Take a beloved pop-culture property, come at the story from a sideways angle, develop a point-and-click adventure game with light puzzles and a lot of meaningful dialogue choices, split it into five-ish episodes, and release the game over the course of a few months. The formula has worked wonders for everything from The Walking Dead, to Fables, to Borderlands. We've ranked our 10 favorite Telltale series, starting with the good and working our way up to the unforgettable. (They'll remember that.)
Credit: Telltale Games
Game of Thrones
While the second season of Telltale's Game of Thrones may or may not happen, the first was pretty solid. Tying in with the TV series rather than the books, Telltale's Game of Thrones casts you as five members of House Forrester — a minor house in Westeros, allied to the Stark family. Playing as three Forrester sons, a Forrester daughter and a Forrester squire, you'll experience major events from the TV show from a new perspective and make choices that determine your house's fate. You'll even cross paths with characters from the show, voiced by their original actors, including Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen and Margaery Tyrell.
Credit: Telltale Games
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
It's incredibly hard to explain the appeal of Homestar Runner to people who were born before the early '80s or after the mid '90s. This outlandish cartoon, animated entirely in Adobe Flash, relied on a combination of bizarre jokes and colorful characters to create a kind of offhand, semi-sincere comedy style that really made sense in the early era of internet memes. In any case, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People captured what made Homestar Runner so much fun. Grumpy luchador Strong Bad parodies some of the greatest games in history in an adventure that includes everyone from Limozeen to Trogdor the Burninator.
Credit: Telltale Games
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent is one of the only Telltale games that's not based on a pre-existing property. Instead, the game tells the story of Nelson Tethers, the only FBI agent involved in the agency's esoteric (and fictional) Puzzle Research Division. Tethers is on a quest to determine why a factory that provides erasers to the White House has stopped production, and to find out, he'll have to solve math puzzles, logic puzzles, jigsaw puzzles — if there's a type of real-world puzzle that also fits in a video game, you can be pretty sure Tethers will encounter it. The tongue-in-cheek humor is what really sells the game.
Credit: Telltale Games
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series
Guardians of the Galaxy was a fun movie, but it was a little by-the-numbers. That's the last thing you could say about Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series. This adaptation doesn't follow the canon of either the movie or the comics exactly, but that turns out to be a good thing. It means that, as early as the first episode, the game can pit Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Drax the Destroyer and Groot against Thanos himself — with unexpected results. True to its superhero roots, Guardians of the Galaxy is a bit more action-packed than the average Telltale adventure, and it's got a killer '80s soundtrack, to boot.
Credit: Telltale Games
Sam & Max Save the World
Longtime Telltale fans probably remember that the company first got some mainstream love when it restarted a few beloved LucasArts series, long thought defunct. Sam & Max Save the World was the first such continuation, followed by Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space and Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse. These zany point-and-click adventures followed private investigators Sam (a very professional-looking dog) and Max (a hyperactive rabbit … sort of) as they tackled everything from street crime, to mad scientists, to ancient Egyptian curses. Like the original LucasArts games, the mix of humor and smart puzzles makes for a memorable adventure.
Credit: Telltale Games
Tales of Monkey Island
A decade after the decidedly uneven Escape from Monkey Island, Telltale took control of the legendary LucasArts series and gave us Tales of Monkey Island. This five-part episodic series put players back in control of Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate. Once again, undead pirate LeChuck stood between Guybrush and his wife, Elaine Marley-Threepwood — and once again, the only way to save her was by solving a whole series of convoluted puzzles all around the Tri-Island Area. The game's episodic structure made each installment feel breezy, while the music, voice work and graphics were all beautifully done, as usual. Unfortunately, the series is on an indefinite hiatus again.
Credit: Telltale Games
Tales from the Borderlands
Borderlands is a series of loot-driven first-person shooters with relatively robust RPG mechanics. That doesn't exactly scream "point-and-click adventure adaptation," but somehow, Tales from the Borderlands is one of Telltale's very best projects. On the remote planet of Pandora, players take control of Rhys, an employee of the evil company that runs the planet; and Fiona, a con artist who's trying to exploit said company. The two characters wind up working against, and with, each other to further their own goals, and then face down an even greater threat. Tales from the Borderlands has one of Telltale's most ambitious narratives and some of its most beloved characters.
Credit: Telltale Games
Batman: The Telltale Series
There are approximately 50,000 reimaginings of Batman's early years already; did we really need another one in the form of a point-and-click adventure? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Batman: The Telltale Series does what no Batman game had ever done before: make it fun to play as Bruce Wayne. You'll spend half the time beating up some of Batman's most memorable foes — including Two-Face, Catwoman and Penguin — and half the time outsmarting them as only a billionaire playboy can. The story is suitably dark, as Batman squares off against a new villain, Lady Arkham, who wants to drag the Wayne family name through the mud and punish Bruce, in particular.
Credit: Telltale Games
The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead is the series that arguably elevated Telltale from a good developer to a great one. Taking place concurrently with the hit Image comic series, The Walking Dead follows a relentless young survivor named Clementine from her childhood into her teens. Taking control of a variety of characters, the games strike a delicate balance between interpersonal drama in safe zones and intense danger out in the zombie-filled wilderness. There have been three seasons of The Walking Dead so far, and because your choices carry over from game to game, you'll have to make them very carefully. Your decisions determine who lives and who dies — and whether they stay dead.
Credit: Telltale Games
The Wolf Among Us
Bill Willingham's Fables is high in the running for the best comic book series ever written, and The Wolf Among Us lives up to that high reputation. In a story that takes place before the Fables comics, you'll take control of Bigby Wolf, sheriff of Fabletown. This New York City enclave is where displaced literary, mythic and folkloric characters have settled after losing their homelands, and the Big Bad Wolf himself has to settle their disputes, lest they reveal their existence to the mundane world. The Wolf Among Us is an amazingly stylish noir murder mystery that looks and sounds like it leaped off of Willingham's pages. Come for the unforgettable characters; stay for the clever twists on old stories.
Credit: Telltale Games
Marshall Honorof is an editor for Tom's Guide, covering gaming hardware, security and streaming video. After hours, you can find him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on classic sci-fi.