Should I choose 2d or 3d for this type of game?

Hi. I'm brand new to Unity and have been researching a lot of Unity basics. I'm trying to arm myself with as much information as possible before beginning a project. I'm an experienced software developer but have never worked Unity or practised game development.

The type of game I'd like to develop is a point-and-click game. Examples of the type of game I mean would be:

• Monkey Island
• The old Lucas Arts Indiana Jones games
• The Dig by Lucas Arts again
• More recently, Machinarium

The main stumbling block I have right now is very basic, should this be a 2d or 3d game? Something that these games have in common is that they're not simply 2d platform scrollers - characters can navigate in the z axis, between the foreground and background. That fact makes me think it should be a 3d project. But the fact that the game looks so two dimensional makes me think it should be a 2d project.

Advice on this would be much appreciated. I'm not only interested in hearing what might be easiest but what is actually the ideal / best-practice approach for a project of this type.

 

That was an illusion in these games. You can learn how it's done here:

Also if you want to make point and click, this asset worth its price I believe. It can help you immensely.

So, advice. In my opinion, it's not something that other people (us) can decide. It's you decision. It does not really influence the story (or limited ways), but it influences the game play and the feeling greatly. Your job as a game designer is to decide these things and hopefully you will end up with a game people will enjoy.
There is no wrong decision here. Your choice is can be wrong in relations with other decisions, but it's not inherently wrong.

There are a ton of 2D P&C games out there and another ton of 3Ds. You really have to choose knowing the other parts of your game design. Which one fits more to the theme, the characters, your technical limitations, your skills, etc.

 

Thanks for your response @Lurking-Ninja, that video looks very useful.

 

It doesn't really matter. All games in Unity are 3D. The 3D/2D setting just determines a few basic defaults. Namely the scene camera, the default camera settings, and the default import settings on images. All of this you are going to be playing with and change multiple times during your game.