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So, I love first person adventure games and I cannot lie. Having recently beaten ASA - A Space Adventure (which was really good!), I've been wondering if there any other good but really obscure Myst/Riven-like games out there. Old or new, doesn't matter. Any recommendations?
I've played most of the more well-known ones, including stuff like Lighthouse: The Dark Being, Dark Fall, Outcry/Sublustrum, Dracula, Timelapse, etc. I'm mostly curious about indie games and games that are really really obscure (but at the same time interesting enough to be worth playing for an adventure game fan).
I remember recommending you "Byzantine: the Betrayal", have you tried it? Despite the derpy ending, it's quite good.
Also, take a look at games published by The Adventure Company, like "Egypt 1156 B.C." and "Versailles 1685", they are quite solid as well, if a bit too history-heavy...
I don't think it qualifies as either indie or obscure (as I recall this was a fairly decently budgeted production), but my favourite Myst-like was a game called Obsidian, it came out in 1997 and I played it to completion that same year. It's been ages since I've seen it so I don't remember much, but I do remember the puzzles were really good, and the story was pretty decent as well.
Yeah, I've played Byzantine; it didn't win me over completely but it was good enough. I've played Obsidian too.
I'll put Inca and Egypt/Versailles on my to-play list (now that I'm looking at it, I already have Egypt and Versailles on there, I've just been overlooking them for some reason).
Coktel Vision actually made a whole bunch of first person adventure games in addition to their more famous Gobliins games, which predated Myst and the concept of a "Myst clone". They weren't really about exploration though, they were more like a linear series of screens viewed from first person perspective. Also, some of them were erotic.
Inca sucks donkey balls and i cannot lie because both incas were part of my fondly remembered 'abandonware' golden disk i got for a penny on the 90's.
I owned RAMA (and never completed it ohoho).
Last game of the 'style' i played was the last 'cryo' game, Salammbo. Weird game. I'd expect it to be easy as fuck to a experienced adventurer, except its got short, but annoyingly tight timed sequences. It's also a butchering of a Flaubert book, if you swing that way. Its also got a somewhat cheap '3d painting' effect with distorted fov to simulate screen transitions (no i don't know how it works) that can get pretty pixelized.
I had to quit Schism because I honestly had NO idea about a very early puzzle. After a few years I tried again but failed at the same time. Shame, because the premise of the game looked nice.
For some older obscure first person adventure games, you can check out the World Builder games. World Builder was an adventure game creating software for the Mac in the late 80's. You can find a bunch of user made games here. A lot of them were a mess, but there are some pretty good ones too, like the ones made by Ray Dunakin (Ray's Maze, A Mess O'Trouble, and Another Fine Mess).
Not sure if it's obscure or not, but another game-ish thing I remember from the mid-90's was Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel. I haven't played it in a long time, but I remember it being like Myst if there was no particular purpose or sense of winning.
I don't think it qualifies as either indie or obscure (as I recall this was a fairly decently budgeted production), but my favourite Myst-like was a game called Obsidian, it came out in 1997 and I played it to completion that same year. It's been ages since I've seen it so I don't remember much, but I do remember the puzzles were really good, and the story was pretty decent as well.
Holy shit Obsidian, that game takes me back. My friend had this game, and we played through it together, but we got stuck on one part. We weren't sure if we were retarded or if the game was bugged in some manor. I remember the art being outstanding and lots of atmosphere.
No mention of Scratches? It's a bit more recent than most Myst-likes. It's a horror game that does a shockingly good job at creating a really good atmosphere without relying on many outright scary moments. The plot is open-ended too and in a good way (Unless you play the terrible semi-sequel that comes with it.). The only downside to it is that one or two puzzles are really awful, one of which* is absolutely impossible to do without a guide.
*
The painting one where you click on the crystal ball. There's so many paintings in the game that examining them all fully is just unreasonable.
Have you tried Starship Titanic, by Douglas Adams? It's pretty difficult, if not overly ambitious (and has some Monty Python guys in it as well). I haven't ever seen it mentioned anywhere, though I enjoy giving it a playthrough every few years.
And I don't know if this exactly qualifies as a Myst clone, but Destination: Treasure Island is rare but quite good. The company that made Treasure Island have also made several other FPS adventure games, though I haven't played any others so I can't say how good they all are. I bought Safecracker, but haven't ever gotten around to playing it. Though AdventureGamers score the games all better than average.
I love the discussion of Inca in here, haha. That games is such trash. The concept of flying your ancient Incan Millennium Falcon in outer space and shooting down Spanish Conquistadors in their spacefaring galleons is something that I will never forget.
I hated the things with a vengeance and I hold the popularity of Myst at fault for nearly killing the Adventure genre (among other things like the obsession to "go 3D" and consoles).
But I think I might be able to enjoy some of the new First Person Adventure/Puzzle games coming out end of this year or during next year, there certainly seems to be some sort of resurgence:
Also, a lot of them are coming with Oculus Rift support and make exploring the 3D spaces and worlds all the more exciting, I've been playing Kairo for a few hours and it's interesting, although some of the spaces are rather depressive since they make you feel like wandering around a big Mausoleum.
So, I love first person adventure games and I cannot lie. Having recently beaten ASA - A Space Adventure (which was really good!), I've been wondering if there any other good but really obscure Myst/Riven-like games out there. Old or new, doesn't matter. Any recommendations?
I've played most of the more well-known ones, including stuff like Lighthouse: The Dark Being, Dark Fall, Outcry/Sublustrum, Dracula, Timelapse, etc. I'm mostly curious about indie games and games that are really really obscure (but at the same time interesting enough to be worth playing for an adventure game fan).
Crooked Bee, I'll take the liberty to elaborate on that. RHEMs are like "the insane German genius" versions of Riven. They consist of two intersecting parts: exploration and puzzles. The exploration part is absolutely godlike: the 1st and 3rd RHEMs are probably the most complex you can get in terms of level-design in an adventure. They are extremely intricate and convoluted - and they build up to some fiendishly difficult navigational puzzles (where you need to build a very complex route through all the ingame machinery by setting half a dozen of mechanisms in exactly the right way in order to get to the other side of that door to see what's written on its other side - the pinnacle of all that being, of course, the secret puzzle from RHEM3). The second part of RHEMs gameplay are the puzzles (akin to the two megapuzzles from Riven but more numerous) - and, frankly, a significant amount of them is not very good (some of them are just extremely tedious busywork, almost all of them are straightforward to the point of being plain uninteresting, and those few which are not, operate on some kind of wonky dream logic or some extremely obscure hints
the worst offender being the 4th RHEM
). Long story short: exploration is awesome and a strong contender of being the very best in genre, puzzlework is pretty decent although leaning to being cumbersome and either really straightforward or WTF?! kind of obscurity (pretty rarely, though).
As to individual entries, the first RHEM is the best one, I think (the most exploratory and intricate, only 5 megapuzzles, the easiest navigation due to low res and large hotspots, did let you skip videos, also, some fuzzy Riven-reminiscent low-budget visual style with all the sunny weather and dithering and stuff). My favorite game in series.
The second one is uglier (all taking part in underground in contrast with sunny RHEM1 and RHEM3), much more claustrophobic and much more puzzle-oriented. Though, ironically, it's the only game in series I managed to complete without hints. Also, freaking unskippable cutscenes (those elevator rides, hnnnng), and kind of a nifty ending. Oh, and that's the entry where it kinda started to go downhill in terms of clarity of navigation (in RHEM series 99% of time it's immediately obvious where you can and can't go; however, in some scenes the game lets you to look up and down - and the only way to know whether you are allowed to look up/down is to actually try it; in RHEM1, up/down was strictly optional - so it was OK; however, in RHEM2 and onwards, it's specifically required in order to complete the game - so that's the "trial and error" mechanic right smack in the very core of the game, which is pretty damn detrimental to the clarity that was in the first game). Oh, and about puzzles. There are much more puzzles here, and each megapuzzle has its own "sector" in the labyrinth, so the level-design kind of splits into those very loosely connected chunks, which makes level design much less convoluted compared to the first RHEM (which had less megapuzzles and, thus, larger and more intricate level chunks). The difficulty of puzzles themselves is pretty pumped up compared to the first RHEM (dat
labyrinth with doors
), but they still manage to stay fair (although they do require all the attention you can muster)
The third RHEM is sunny once again. In turns of level-design, it's closer to RHEM2, and the puzzles are pretty considerably toned down compared to it. However, there is a fiendishly difficult multi-part navigational "secret" puzzle, which is probably the hardest thing in the entire series. Also has some weird and underdeveloped keyboard controls (nobody ever used, I'm sure). Overall, my second favorite game in series.
RHEM4 is a pure puzzlefest with level-design dumbed down to the extreme (the map system completely absolving navigation of any challenge it could still have) and some of the puzzles being extremely questionable. I consider it to be the worst game in series yet (and by far).
Agassi, regarding RHEM5, various web sources cite RHEM 1 Special Edition, RHEM 5 and La Musica as being currently (2012-2013) in the works by Knut Muller (with La Musica being due to be released on December, 1). Don't know anything beside that though.
Crooked Bee, well, regarding Detalion games I'd very much rather recommend Mysterious Journey 2: Chameleon and Realms of Illusion / Sentinel: Descendants in Time (both - on NOLF2 engine). At least they have the puzzles that are just cumbersome and horrendously integrated, not the ones that don't give you any information/feedback and require you to fully unleash your telepathic abilities in order to complete the game (I personally consider Schizm to be the worst of all the 4 games mentioned gameplay-wise, thanks to extreme amounts of backtracking with all those unskippable videos and crappy puzzle design). Also, the locations are much tighter and don't have, like, millions of doors that are opened but which you can't go through just because. Also, Realms of Illusion has a pretty damn decent story which contextualizes typical Myst-clone gamedesign tropes pretty well - and even has one really decent (and decently voiced) character.
Also, REAH has nice electronic music and Schizm, Chameleon and RoI/Sentinel have some memorable Gaudi-inspired visual design and dream-like atmosphere. Also, in case of Schizm, DVD-version is mandatory.
Then you will be pretty glad to learn about a certain game called Prominence, which is due to be released "pretty soon".
Also, I assume, you've played "Mission Critical", right? If not - go and play it right about now.
Also2, I second
despite it being pretty questionable (to put it lightly) gameplay-wise.
Also3, did you play Istvan Pely trilogy (Majestic: Alien Encounter, Symbiocom/Syn-Factor, ZeroCritical)? The reason I ask is because Symbiocom has an absolutely mindblowing last chapter (even more so considering it was done by a team of only 3 persons), which is so much worth suffering through the game (and ZeroCritical is just wonderful - although it doesn't fit this thread being a story-based third-person dialogue-based adventure). However, I need to warn you - Majestic and Symbiocom are horrendous gameplay-wise (the gameplay itself being an inventory-based FPP adventure).
any other good but really obscure Myst/Riven-like games out there
Well, there is Alida (again there is a DVD version of this game), which is basically a one person's five-year attempt by some Australian musician to create his own version of Riven (with giant guitars and aliens!). However, I wouldn't exactly call it "good". The texturework and sound-design are extremely impressive. Like, no joke, I can see where those 5 years went. But the puzzle design is... hnnnnnnng... it's not as bad as Schizm's (although the game DOES require you to be a freaking psychic) but the contrast with Riven and, especially, RHEM1 is just really, really stark.
Did you play 1953: KGB Unleashed (yes, the title is cheesy and stupid, whatever, the original title is Phobos1953 anyway) made by the same guys? It's almost on par with Sublustrum (despite being shorter, less artsy and having an absolutely WTF? ending segment - BTW, it's a MUCH creepier game compared to Sublustrum, especially considering one particular scene). Also there is a 15-min Process "game" created by a former member of Phantomery team.
Also, about interactive movies. Ever played Gadget: Past as Future? Now, THIS is a work of art if I ever saw one. No gameplay to speak of though, one easy "puzzle" in the entire game (however if you decide to play it - you NEED to play it yourself, not via YT, this inability to anythings besides what game explicitly TELLS you to do is one of the staples of this game's atmosphere).
What else? Star Heritage and Transition don't have English translations... Well, Traitor's Gate is supposed to be really damn good - haven't played it though. Also, apparently, there was a pretty interesting PSX game called "Book of Watermarks" - this may be worth a look as well. Oh, and you've already played Azrael's Tear, Morpheus and Journeyman's Projects, right?
About recent/upcoming exploration puzzlers - go and play Antichamber, now. Also, there are Kairo and demo of FRACT. Also2, upcoming The Witness game by JonBlow of Braid fame. Also Reset (gameplay trailer coming soon).
Also, going offtopic for a bit, if you don't ming some third-person adventures and the like with really strong exploration puzzler themes, I'd recommed a Russian game called FullPipe (for starters, watch Maximov's cartoon 5/4 via youtube, then - these MTV trailers for the game; the game itself is an invetory-based exploration puzzler with extensive item bartering, it's really well done despite having some instances of moon logic; also, be advised, that the official game's site has some info on various ingame creatures and whatnot, although I really recommend reading it AFTER the game's completion) and (gasp!) Fez.