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What are some of your favorite adventure games they did something different than the norm? Could be in terms of story, mechanics, aesthetics, etc. It could even just be a particular aspect of a game you don’t necessarily think is great overall.
Some of mine are:
LOOM for eschewing an inventory and using music to interact with the world rather than typical puzzles.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for the system of finding contradictions in witness testimony. It’s one of the best forms of interactive mystery solving anyone’s created.
Heavens Vault for the language deciphering puzzles. It really captured the feeling of learning a language in game form and made the puzzle solving tie into the game’s deep lore.
There are so many. Here are three:
The Dig - well written SF, with a darker, more grown up tone. I wish they would have done more like this.
The Witness - amazing in its design, style, depth and puzzles. A masterpiece.
Sam & Max: Hit The Road - I dig the humor, I can laugh out loud. The same applies to ‘This Time It’s Virtual!’, it’s just more physical.
Blade runner- randomized human or replicants. More detective work than regular inventory puzzles.
Contradiction- much like ace attorney your finding contradictions.
Full throttle- you use your fist and feet to solve puzzles
Journeyman Project 3: Although being able to impersonate NPCs and morph into their appearance isn’t THAT unique, it was still (as far as I know) the first time it had been done, and I loved it. It’s an easier game in the scheme of things compared with Myst etc, but I breezed through the game in a few consecutive sittings.
Spider and Web: Hard to say much without giving spoilers, but the way the story is told and how it utilizes the medium of text adventuring in a way that couldn’t have been done in a graphic adventure is brilliant.
Gabriel Knight 3: Not my favorite GK overall but the independent camera totally changed the experience, making exploration way more fun and interesting than it would have been with any other control scheme. At the time I thought it was a game-changer and if I’d known in 2022 that no other games had adopted it I’d have been shocked.
And to comment on the other choices above: A big fat YES to Loom, The Witness and Contradiction 
AKA Charo
Love this.
First game that comes to mind: King’s Quest III: To Heir Is Human. Graphic adventure narratives have grown increasingly complicated and I think this game was an important step in that direction. Where the first two games give you a clear objective. Your starting position directly relates to your goal, you only have to figure out how to get there. KQIII just gives you the circumstances of some unassuming protagonist(and a lot of punishment). It has an interesting character arc that can still hold it’s own compared to adventure games of today.
Spider and Web uses adventure game mechanics in an unusual way. It flips things over, switches the use of actions and conversation, telling, recounting, teaching and learning.. I’m being vague even for my standards, but it’s something you really have to experience for yourself. I’ve already said too much. Please get me out of this chair.
The Colonel’s Bequest is beautiful. It’s also somewhat dysfunctional. It gets pretty problematic in places and it’s dated in most other ways as well, if you want to be cynical about it. The particular art style, the measured and minimalist suggestions you’re being watched - probably largely due to technical limitations. But this game seems to get how to work with what you have. It uses dithering and other pixel tricks the way late 19th century painters used colour theory and it perfectly fits the atmosphere and theme of the game.
In Edna and Harvey you can combine every single object with every single object or person and get a unique response. Hats off to the developer! An astonishing feat, considering the vast number of items, people and rooms.
The use of time in many different ways in The Longing. Never seen anything like it.
The game mechanic in Her Story. Searching an archive for new videos by entering words or phrases.
The unique sliding-panel puzzles in the beautiful and magical world of Gorogoa. And there aren’t many games that deal with the meaning of life.
Exploring floors, cooking areas, toilet seats as a cockroach in Bad Mojo. Cockroaches don’t speak and they don’t carry an inventory around but that didn’t stop the developers from creating great puzzles.
I also fully agree with Planet’s Loom, meteor’s The Witness, and Charo’s Spider and Web.
Butter my buns and call me a biscuit! - Agent A
Return of the Obra Dinn for the unique deductive mechanics and Ghost Trick for the whole “altered destiny” gameplay. Ironically, in both cases the idea is pretty much the same (travel back in time to few moments before the person in question had died), only it is handled differently.
PC means personal computer
Do there exist good up to date p&c adventures making nice usage of the EGA palette?
Gorogoa was packed but short. I would have loved a handful of games like this (3-5), each one telling a different story. Daedalic used painted high resolution graphics since over a decade. They also released a weird little adventure called ‘Journey of a Roach’. Being a roach, you rotate the whole scene a lot, like, a lot.
If you’re new to VR, I’ll recommend another two:
Shadow Point - an adventure with a unique riddle mechanic (obtaining objects, including some portals, and casting proper shadows matching given outlines), also telling a story. I played a couple of times through the game. Sadly Coatsink’s Jurassic Park tanked for me but maybe they’ll return to a similar concept one day.
Time Stall - a fab concept, different scenes on a spaceship, at some points things go wrong, time slows down (almost halts), according to each level you try to fix things (protecting the captain and its bots) within a given time before it goes back to normal, and action, in case things did not end well, retry or find alternatives.
I don’t have any VR equipment. Is it worth the money?
There’s a surprising amount of diversity in graphics made with 16 colours and countable pixels. I can’t think of a game that uses the characteristics of EGA as well as The Colonel’s Bequest. The use of contrast, impressionist use of colour, rather than approximating realism, or going full cartoon - which is perfectly fine with EGA, but not quite as interesting as what Sierra did with The Colonel’s Bequest.
The Crimson Diamond , still in development seems inspired by The Colonel’s Bequest, mixed with a bit of King’s Quest IV. Loom is pretty (if you like blue). The Snail Trek games fully embrace the cartoony nature of saturated colours and abstraction that comes with low resolution graphics and they’re good-natured fun.
I can also recommend https://cosmicvoid.itch.io/.
In my opinion VR is the best thing since hardware accelerated 3D gfx. (In a traditional 3D gfx sense affordable realtime raytracing with reasonable power consumption will be another big step.)
Depending on what you want, you can spend a few hundred to a few thousand dollars/euros. A pleasing entry level is the Quest 2. If you can get one, the PS5 plus PSVR2 will be interesting or you get yourself a PCVR based solution, where, depending on what you buy exactly, the price and experience varies accordingly.
There are a number of very good games already around. The problem is, that new content is coming out rather slowly but the situation will improve. This year there will be a number of interesting new releases already. When the hardware gets better and cheaper, the installed user base increases which again leads to more productions etc.
Some people have, at least in the beginning, problems with motion sickness. Some get used to it rather quickly, others need some more time or don’t feel fine with todays hardware. You need to find this out on your own but normally people get used to it. The experience is intensive, you feel like being there. With the right content it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
That’s a great recommendation; you’ve sold me on the idea, now I just need more money.
I’ve seen VR sets in the local thrift store, might risk the gamble.
Wouldn’t be my first rodeo with VR, though! I participated in an experiment with VR: it made me feel like I was playing NORMALITY inside my mind.
Enjoy your ride! 
@hardware
Try to get a reasonable gear as otherwise you won’t enjoy it as much as you could (low resolution, low refresh rate, too heavy). Hardware will always improve and get outdated after some time but I would invest into a solid base and spare some bucks on the software, if you have to, first.
@software
Generally PCVR content (like on Steam) is slightly cheaper than on consoles (which includes the Quest 2). It’s the typical PC vs. console thing: more expensive hardware but cheaper software vs. cheaper hardware but more expensive software, there exist exclusives and so on. You might end up buying games from different platforms, some are cross-buys (like working on Quest 2 and PCVR) others you need to buy more than once, in case you want to switch or run multiple devices. Check out the stores to get a feeling and look out for sales.
With a reasonable PC (primary GPU, then CPU) you can go for PCVR. With a tight budget and an underperforming PC a Quest 2 might be the better solution with a PS5+PSVR2 lying in between (also a cheaper PS4 PSVR can be enough). Btw. the Quest 2 is mobile, you can take it to different places. It depends on what you have, can afford and want to play in which quality. Some games look (almost) the same on Quest 2 as on a beefy PC, others look dead due to less complex lighting and so on. There are a couple of further aspects but without making it sound difficult, inform yourself a little bit, try to get your hands on some hardware and be excited or at least feel sick.
Heavens Vault for the language deciphering puzzles. It really captured the feeling of learning a language in game form and made the puzzle solving tie into the game’s deep lore.
I haven’t played HV, was this ‘deciphering’ different than how the numrals were deciphered at Riven?
The game for me would be Nelly Cootalot The Fowl Fleet. I really like the game. Particularly when we played it as a CPT.
However, what sets it apart for me is the art direction/graphic design. The developer, who I believe did the game as a sole project, obviously had more than a passing familiarity with Chuck Jones. Jones was one of the greatest, if not THE greatest animation directors at Warner Bros Studios. When I first played Nelly, I saw Jones’ fingerprints all over it. The use of asymmetrical lines when outlining a building’s exterior is one example. The use of color blocks that don’t perfectly align with the outlines that are supposed to contain them is another. Maybe they’re on YouTube, but try to watch a few Pepe Le Pew cartoons, and the influence Jones’ style had on Nelly is unmistakable.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
I wish I’d thought of Karlok’s Gone Home and especially Gorogoa - both involve highly innovative approaches.
Love this.
First game that comes to mind: King’s Quest III: To Heir Is Human. Graphic adventure narratives have grown increasingly complicated and I think this game was an important step in that direction. Where the first two games give you a clear objective. Your starting position directly relates to your goal, you only have to figure out how to get there. KQIII just gives you the circumstances of some unassuming protagonist(and a lot of punishment). It has an interesting character arc that can still hold it’s own compared to adventure games of today.
I never finished it (too difficult for me) so I didn’t know the bit about reaching your goal. Does the player do most of that or is the game more or less linear?
The Colonel’s Bequest is beautiful. It’s also somewhat dysfunctional. It gets pretty problematic in places and it’s dated in most other ways as well, if you want to be cynical about it. The particular art style, the measured and minimalist suggestions you’re being watched - probably largely due to technical limitations. But this game seems to get how to work with what you have. It uses dithering and other pixel tricks the way late 19th century painters used colour theory and it perfectly fits the atmosphere and theme of the game.
Interesting. I don’t know much about color theory but looking at screenshots I can see the link with impressionism.
AKA Charo
Heavens Vault for the language deciphering puzzles. It really captured the feeling of learning a language in game form and made the puzzle solving tie into the game’s deep lore.
I haven’t played HV, was this ‘deciphering’ different than how the numrals were deciphered at Riven?
I haven’t played Riven so IDK how it compares but I can explain how it works in Heaven’s Vault so you can tell for yourself.
You come across ancient texts or objects with inscriptions which will prompt a screen like this:
You’re given a symbol or phrase of symbols with a list of potential meanings to choose from. You’re meant to make an educated guess based on the context of the archeological sight, what item an inscription is on, or other elements of the story. When you assign a symbol the correct meaning sometimes the player character will remark that she thinks it’s correct. Other times you’ll need to get the help of a fellow researcher to confirm or disconfirm your selection.
That’s basically how it works, and like with real languages that use pictographic symbols, there are repeated elements from one character to another which form different compounds. So overtime your understanding of the ancient language builds as you’re able to carry the previous knowledge you’ve accumulated over to your new translations.
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