Point and click adventures

The Syberia series is fun - a bit dated but definitely interesting. If you like puzzles, Safecracker is a must. I echo kudos for Machinarium, Botanicula, Sam & Max, the Puzzle Agent series and Book of Unwritten tales and maybe even the Myst series, though it's a bit esoteric ;-)

I can highly recommend the Black Mirror series. The story is one of the best ever in an adventure, if you like horror/mystery you should give it a try. It's from 2003, so the gameplay might not be that perfect (by today's standards). The sequels are from a different developer and are more fun to play.

Grim Fandango is also an example for a great story, has a very unique visual style and characteristic Lucas Arts humor.

I loved the Blackwell games personally, nice and quick, but fun and have a good story. I'd also second the recommendation for the King's Quest series. You can get the collection for $20 on Steam and that gives you 7 games, and they aren't short games, it only tends to go as low as $15 during the seasonal sales though. Keep in mind that the games were made in the 80s and 90s though, the graphics are a bit dated and some of the controls are as well. That and anything Sierra is going to be among the most difficult of the genre. Maniac Mansion was also pretty fun, I remember playing that one on the NES.

Also something else you might enjoy is hidden object games. They are of a similar vein, but somewhat more heavy on the puzzles and ability to spot hidden stuff. If you want to try one, I'd recommend any of the Midnight Mysteries games, the whole series is pretty awesome and a good example of that genre, though you just missed a good sale on them.

I just finished the Blackwell series today, coincidentally. If you liked Primordia then you'll probably really enjoy Blackwell as well. They are short but when put together as a series they're pretty satisfying. I'm now looking forward to the next chapter that's supposedly coming out this fall.

Try the Hector Badge of Carnage series

Check out the great Zack McKracken fan-made sequel!

No it's not on Steam, but it's freeware ;)

• Blackwell Games
• Still Life 1/2
• Syberia 1/2

LucasArts games, Broken Sword. The Longest Journey is a usual recommendation, but I haven't played it yet.

The best are telltale games imo, especially the walking dead, what a masterpiece. Back to the future together with monkey island. The old monkey island games are good too. Runaway series, broken sword series(especially the forst two games). Still life(only the first game). The genre is dead, not many games come out these days. And there's that old game discworld 2 missing presumed?, it's great too. Disworld noir is good too.
That's all the good adventure games i've played.
Oh i forgrt dreamfall the longest journey, another masterpiece.

I really enjoyed Blackwell games, you should try them out. I'd also recommend Resonance, Gemini Rue, Deponia series and Cognition series from newer titles, all of them are really good.

Best:
-The Longest Journey
-Dreamfall
-Gabriel Knight 1-3 (I like 2 best)
-Broken Sword 1-4 (maybe 3 is best, dunno)
-Syberia 1&2 (the problem with these games is that nobody actually cares about mammoths)
-Still Life (a bit sucky characters but otherwise fine)
-Moment of Silence (great atmosphere!)
-Fahrenheit

Other games:
-Resonance (all right)
-A New Beginning (not so good voice acting but otherwise fine)
-Art of Murder (nothing special imo, bad voice acting)
-Monkey Island games (okay but aged and the stories aren't really interesting imo)
-Paradise (haven't played yet)
-Memento Mori (haven't played yet)
-Post Mortem (haven't played yet)
-Culpa Innata (haven't played yet)
-Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (haven't played yet)
-Black Mirror 1-3 (haven't played yet)
-Gray Matter (haven't played yet)

Then there's older games like Loom, The Dig, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Beneath a Steel Sky, Space Quest, Police Quest, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Lure of the Temptress, Hero's Quest, Dragonspere, Return of the Phantom, Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb, Codename: Iceman and Zak MacKraken.

When you finish The Longest Journey, hurry and finish Dreamfall. Because Dreamfall Chapters is on its way! (:

Blackwell is absolut fantastic! I played them not long ago and it was a wonderful experience, I can only recommend the blackwell games!

diablo series.

Deponia, Chaos on Deponia, Edna & Harvey: Harvey's new eyes and of course all of Telltale Games.

They have the Tex Murphy series on GoG. Highly reccomend those! Future downtrodden detective Noir with some really wacky humor. Was the epitome of the live aciton point and click adventure done right to me.

Deponia & Chaos On Deponia, Broken Sword Saga, Edga & Harvey, and Telltale games however they are not only point and click.

McPixel.

Saga broken sword, saga deponia saga runaway, saga the longest journey, saga monkey island and other sagas xD

Mata Hari, Ceville and Alter Ego aren't mentioned before as far as I have seen.

+1 to all mentions of Grim Fandango, my favorite game of all time.

Monkey Island series, 1 and 2 are the best, but 3 and 4 are still well worth it.

Broken Sword series, 2 is my favourite, i still havent got round to playing number 4 yet :(

The Dig, I love this game.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, This is one of the games which made me fall in love with this genre. You can play the game through 3 different paths all to get to the same ending.

Day of the Tentacle, it took me long enough to find out about this game but as soon as i started playing i fell in love with this quirky and classic game.

Loom, is a very good game, one of the older and simpler point and click game, but still a fun experience.

Sam and max hit the road, Again one of the others whichsold me to the genre, the original sam and max game and a classic!

Beneath a Steel Sky, I have only played the first hour or so of this game but i love it so far, apparently it is one of the classics like monkey island. (you can get it free on GOG)

I cant believe we have gone this far into this thread without mentioning Grim Fandango!

Other notable mentions are:
Zac mcKracken series
Indiana jones and the last crusade
simon the sorcerer
Discworld series
Blade runner
Full throttle
Flight of the amazon queen
The longest journey
syberia
Gemini rue
A new beginning

The Blackwell games are excellent, I really recommend you to get them.

And because I see nobody has mentioned them, The Whispered World is another great adventure game. And The Night of The Rabbit came out recently, and it looks gorgeous. Check them out.

I noticed there are few (if any) mentions of some of the good, free, point and click games available on the web itself, try looking up "Alice is Dead", "Reincarnation", "Morningstar", or perhaps "The Infinite Ocean" just to name a few.

Here's a page filtered to just games with the tag "point and click" on a favorite site of mine.
Kongregate - Point and Click Games