In Adventure Games, the problem usually stems from something or someone very important being missing or stolen/destroyed/kidnapped/dead. It is usually up to you to resolve said conflict through sleuthing and sometimes localized conflict.
When the sleuthing involves discovering clues, interrogating witnesses and tracking down leads, you are using real world problem solving. This is used in every Adventure Game, no matter how many puzzles it has besides. Still Life was an almost perfect example of this, barring a few really obnoxious examples of deliberate puzzle placement. And that lock picking puzzle? Devious, but irritating. Lose it! (just a suggestion
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When the sleuthing involves matching up one jar with one lid and carrying them to multiple locations and clicking them on anything that looks/sounds suspicious and that hopefully correlates with the symbol on the jar, you are playing a Puzzle Game.
Now mind you, that example happens to come from one of my favourite such games, so believe me, I'm not knocking it outright. However, that game really had very little to offer inthe way of plot progression outside of eventually stumbling across the series of clues that help you unravel the mystery behind the disappearances (although you still have to bottle the last couple of the Ixupi or DIE, sucker!).
There are devices and items in the real world that are without a speck of doubt puzzle devices in nature. Applying a certain level of puzzle logic to unlock the mysteries they protect is a perfectly rational approach to resolving that sort of problem.
As well, there are devices tha are not working properly, or that cannot work without the proper access code. Using a clever system of inventory experimentation for the former, or word play and cipher work on the latter, is also a rare but acceptable means of resolving the problem inherent in the devices inoperability... assuming you couldn't just use the key, read the manual, or reconnect the wires to the carburetor in a perfectly logical fashion.
Instead of these, we get a series of oddly shaped objects that are for some reason scattered across several miles and hidden in safes, chambers and around corners in labrynthine mine cart tunnels, which can be combined only in one place using a set of plans you had to hunt to find, and which then may or may not stop the villain from switching brains with a missing human scientist. Very cool idea. Loved the game. But a hand gun would have been so much more sensible. Or, to favour the spirit of Adventure Gaming, collapsing a tunnel and locking the creep under a tonne of rock would have been perfectly acceptable.
When you wrap your game around a premise that is little more than a plot summary bulked up by set pieces requiring mechanical (rube goldberg doohickey, sliding/turning/pushing mechanism), logical (as in pattern recognition, number games, word play, etc) or sequential puzzle logic, you put up barriers between immersion in the story, the belief in the environment, and all audience members but those who truly relish the experience of cracking the puzzle.
It's not that puzzles are bad. They can be quite fun on their own. But they absolutely dominate all but a few Adventure Games, whose stories and pacing suffer abominably in the interim. Casual members of the audience, who may want to experiment with interactive storytelling but who do not possess a stellar puzzle logic faculty, will be completely put off, and will abandon the genre altogether. There are a lot of these people, and they want to play too. But you won't let them play unless it's by your own very narrow standards of what a good Adventure Game should be.
For those who love Puzzle Games or who ar perfectly happy with the mix, this is only a problem as the tide turns away from puzzling and more towards real world problem solving exercises. They find themselves crying foul, and disparaging attempts to make Adventure Games that don't cater to Puzzle Game enthusiasts. They insist that all Adventure Games are de facto Puzzle Games, even though most (but not all) will admit that most Puzzle Games are not truly Adventure Games, in terms of the level of narrative focus.
See, this genre has become a schoolyard, with Puzzle Game enthusiasts dominating the conversation. They continue to denounce any attempts to make Adventure Games that don't cater to their style of problem solving and story resolution. But like any other form of activity or expression, the styles change, the rigid modes of older systems become obsolete, and the medium moves on, with or without the original audience.
I have enjoyed Puzzle Games, and as long as they keep making good ones, I'll keep playing. But meanwhile, I want to see what game devs can do with a solid, multifacetted plots, convincing environments and interactions, and lots of interactive items we can use to devise our own solutions to much more reasonable problems.
The only thing we ask in Adventure Games is that we streamline the overly complex control schemes of anything that doesn't operate strictly by point and click (though they should always have that functionality available for the impaired), and should have as little or no mandatory combat or atheltic gameplay. If you're going to include these things as playable features rather than triggered cutscenes, this too should be strictly optional.
And if you're going to integrate Puzzle Game logic into the story, make it fit the story, not the other way around, and sort out the difficulty level issue before you send innocent n00bs into the fray (most likely with their walkthroughs in hand, which I consider an automatic design flaw; if your audience needs a walkthrough, you haven't done your job as a storyteller).
However, some folks will always insist that these things are supposed to be extremely mentally challenging, so to those people I say: check these boxes for preferred puzzle types 1-9, and the preferred difficulty level (light, moderate, heavy). Timed puzzle is a separate option entirely.
When game devs sort out this particular problem, then you will have yourself a great storytelling medium that is open to everyone who still wants to play these games. Fewer dialogue clues for the Puzzle Gamers, fewer puzzles for the story people. And/or Action and combat for those who check those boxes as well.
Yes, I know the technical requirements of such a thing are easier said than done. I've done my homework. However, the time is coming when this won't seem like a pipe dream, and it won't be long, either. But you won't get your vote in if you refuse to have anything to do with the innovation of the medium. Hide behind your old game collections and the world will pass you by, with no more thought to your gameplay style than they do to those lovely people still playing graphical and text adventures with a text parser.
Okay, I've said my piece. Apologies to those who feel offended. No offense was intended. And to those who disagree with some or all of my points, you have that right, and I won't dispute your right to feel that way. Even though you're wrong.
