Mindboggling adventure games?

[Shape]

Hey. I've recently started to play adventure games, and very quickly realized that I love the darker, more psychological ones. Sanitarium, Gemini Rue, Primordia, Cat Lady, Downfall etc.
I was wondering what do you guys think about deep philosophical thoughts and hardcore plot twisting in games and what games did you find to be the most engaging in these elements?

 

[Vikter]

Pathologic is good. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is an amazing game, and based on an amazing short story you should read after you play it.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Pathologic is good. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is an amazing game, and based on an amazing short story you should read before you play it.

Fixed.

 

[Gragt]

Pathologic is good.

If you can play it in the original Russian because the English translation is terrible. Hopefully the new version will fix that and also improve the gameplay. The Void, by the same developer, is great.

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is an amazing game, and based on an amazing short story you should read after you play it.

Hardly. The short story is probably one of the Ellison’s best work, but it is merely good and not great in any way. The game, also written by Ellison, is awful. It fails as an adventure game as none of the puzzles are compelling, a few nonsensical in a bad way, and the story—or stories?—is an innocuous mess, larded with forced symbolism, far from what its champions usually describe. On the positive side though, some parts are so bad (the whole concentration camp arc, Ellen confronting her rapist) that they’ll elicit some hearty laughter, and I would easily recommend the game had it all been done in the same way; sadly the rest is a plain honest bore.

 

[Luckra]

Harvester might interest you.

 

[Whisky]

Harvester might interest you.

This. If you have not heard of it, play it and just go into it. It's...interesting.

 

[Jasede]

Maybe you would like Dark Seed. It hasn't aged too well, mind you.

 

[Astral Rag]

If you want to try them out you will want to use Virtual PC + Windows 98

 

[abnaxus]

Schizm.

 

[jfrisby]

 

[MRY]

It really depends what you're looking for. To me, that seems like a very diverse set of games in terms of how they play, as well as exactly what kind of "dark" we're talking about. If it's mainly story and mood you're interested in, lots of people liked To the Moon, which is psychological and dark. To me, the game is like Wittgenstein's duck/rabbit picture: at times it seems like a very engaging piece of melodrama, at times it seems absurd and terrible. But it's cheap, and well-loved, so it wouldn't hurt to check it out. There's also Resonance, which seems of a piece with Gemini Rue, though perhaps not so dark visually. Lots and lots of interactive fiction games if you're willing to go that route.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Maybe you would like Dark Seed. It hasn't aged too well, mind you.

And looping dialogue in the beginning can drive a sane person to madness if you miss the required room.

Spoiler

For a second I thought that those were bugs of PS1/Saturn version.

 

[Jaesun]

I keep praying we will get a Culpa Innata II, but we won't.

 

[Fowyr]

Anchorhead. It's IF, though.

And Dreamweb. You can't spell "mindboggling" without Dreamweb.

 

[JudasIscariot]

If you can play it in the original Russian because the English translation is terrible. Hopefully the new version will fix that and also improve the gameplay. The Void, by the same developer, is great.



Hardly. The short story is probably one of the Ellison’s best work, but it is merely good and not great in any way. The game, also written by Ellison, is awful. It fails as an adventure game as none of the puzzles are compelling, a few nonsensical in a bad way, and the story—or stories?—is an innocuous mess, larded with forced symbolism, far from what its champions usually describe. On the positive side though, some parts are so bad (the whole concentration camp arc, Ellen confronting her rapist) that they’ll elicit some hearty laughter, and I would easily recommend the game had it all been done in the same way; sadly the rest is a plain honest bore.

I've heard that the German translation was also a good one, at least according to our resident Germans on the GOG forums

As for mind-boggling, I would also suggest Knock-Knock made by Ice Pick Lodge. The back story about the game is quite mind-boggling on its own :D

 

[SCO]

Resonance, if you haven't yet, though i admit it made me butthurt because of its 'climax' that undermines most of the narrative. Also 2 timed sequences may make you rage quit.