[SavantIdiot]

There's a certain sense of loss I feel at playing a game that cannot be cheated. In the mid-80's playing interactive fiction there was no way to get help unless you could convince your parents to buy you invisiclues. You had to solve these games the hard way: on your own. Sure, there are games like that today but they require hand-eye coordination or grinding, not involved word-puzzle solving and thinking in many different ways.

I still play interactive fiction every November when the IFComp publishes its games[1].

[1] https://ifcomp.org/

[soylentcola]

All of my Infocom games were on bootleg floppies that came with the second-hand Commodore 128 my dad bought for the family when I was a kid. Thankfully at least Zork included some photocopied maps and manuals buried in the pile of papers and user guides that also accompanied the computer.

Still a bit sad that "Hitchhiker's" wasn't in the box of questionable disks we got, but "Planetfall" seemed to be inspired by the story (at least the beginning when you're on the ship, ducking Ensign Blather and trying to avoid death in a safety webbing).

[capableweb]

There are plenty of games today (probably more than in the 80s) that are all "thinking" based with puzzles, that doesn't require a lot of coordination nor grinding. Myst, The Witness, Obduction and The Talos Principle comes to mind, but I'm sure there are more.

[SavantIdiot]

Of course.

Gadget was fun, and Riven was spectacular. Let's not talk about Myst 3, though. :)

Same with Grim Fandango (getting glottis to puke was epic) and Monkey Island.

But they appeared in the time of the internet & yahoo search. Sure Myst was ~1995, but the rise of having answers a click away existed with these games.

[crocsarecool]

Yes! I love the story with video games - it’s the main draw for me, especially as I get older. It often feels like the plot is held up by having to go do six mundane tasks. I’d be happy having a game where you just walk around and talk to people. Have it almost be like a book, but with the added extras of art and music. Maybe there’s a genre for this, and I just don’t know how to look for it properly.

[alisonatwork]

Outside of VNs (visual novels) and IF (interactive fiction) which has already been mentioned, these sorts of games may also be described as walking sims or narrative adventures nowadays.

Some mainstream studios you might want to check out are Dontnod Entertainment (Life is Strange, Tell Me Why), Red Thread Games (Draugen, Dreamfall Chapters), The Chinese Room (Everybody's Gone to the Rapture), Campo Santo (Firewatch) and Fullbright (Tacoma, Gone Home). There is tons of quirkier experimental stuff on Steam and Itch too. Note that some walking sims are more about exploring the environment and there isn't much dialog, while other ones feature more conversations. Dontnod tend to be more on the conversation-y end if that's what you're after.

You could also check out point-and-click adventures, which are a direct descendent of IF. They require a bit more puzzle-solving, but the pacing is often very good in modern (post-2005) games and it's a nice way to experience dialog-heavy stories. A good place to start might be older releases from Daedalic Entertainment or Wadjet Eye Games, perhaps.

[JeremyReimer]

These are all great examples. I would add "Adios", which came out recently, is short and bittersweet, and has some of the best writing I've ever seen in a video game.

[jerf]

I think you're looking for the "visual novel" genre.

By accidents of history, visual novel as a genre is strongly correlated with anime aesthetics and tends to focus on certain story genres that may or may not interest you. However, there's no fundamental reason for this, any more than there's a fundamental reason why "cartoons" in the US became strongly associated with "for children".

Quality is definitely also mixed, as the bar for entry of this style of thing is low. But that also means there's the sort of vibrancy and experimentation you get when there's virtually no "commercial market" functioning as a taste-maker by overwhelming all the smaller groups with big piles of money and raising the consumer's expectation of quality beyond what they can compete with.

[lupire]

It's the "interactive fiction" genre.

[thaumasiotes]

"Interactive fiction" is another term for text adventures; they have no art and they do have puzzles. Were you thinking of "visual novels"?