Why did the thinking man genre die?

And Portal 2 was critically acclaimed and a financial success and also cultural phenomenon. Come on, you aren't seriously going to sit here and tell me Portal 2 was some sort of flop, are you?

Isn't there a Net Storm sequel/inspired game coming out soon? Could swear I saw something similar earlier this year.

Boomer general?

Just played Myst and Riven for the first time this month. Shame that Myst gets all the love, Riven's much better.

Myst is the worst of the original four, most people who have played the series put Riven and Exile above Myst at least.

Is Exile worth playing? I know it had a different dev team.
Unrelated, but I actually didn't hate the waffle iron puzzle as much as everyone else seems to have, it wasn't too hard to solve conceptually, but seeing where the domes are on the 3d topography is fucking impossible, poor execution of a great idea

>i really miss the neo-rennaisance aesthetic of early-mid 90s games.
fuck. i know this feel too well, and i wish i didnt.

Exile's fantastic

>seeing where the domes are on the 3d topography is fucking impossible, poor execution of a great idea
You know you can rotate and zoom the map right?

Outer Wilds came out this year

Nobody remembers games that took the deal, user.

Thinking men died.

rotate, yes. zoom, no.

You zoom in on island quadrants, but it's not like you have finer control than that.

Still, if you rotate it, it's pretty easy to make the domes out, if you know that's what you're looking for.

Oh yeah I knew you could zoom in on island quadrants, I thought you meant further than that. Idk I had trouble seeing them, maybe I'm going blind.

I know. it's sad, I really loved that game, both the old alpha version and the new release which I pirated. and the new one is even better, in my personal running for goty

Can somebody redpill me on this game?

Is it difficult? Is it deep? Is it fun?

Worth getting once the deal expires?

Things like Factorio are thinking men's game though.

normies

>tfw the best point n' click adventure was made in 2005 and still hasn't been topped

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I enjoyed pic related

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Because people would read up the solution for a puzzle when they get frustrated. The internet killed it together with people's tolerance for drawn out enjoyment rather than instant gratification.

its fun if you can resist not running to the internet for help and solve everything yourself. most people give up after 5 minutes and just "play" it with a guide.

Portal puzzles were fucking easy though. There are harder puzzles in Nintendo games.

myst really isn't that hard. once you figure out the tower and the keys the books tell you the exact solutions to the puzzles.
there is no real extra information to confuse you.
the only bullshit moments are the clock tower and the maze.

now riven
fuck that game.

Besides Hypnospace and Outer Wilds, have any of these other puzzle solving/detective games come out this year (or are scheduled to come out)?

Portal isn't any harder than Myst lmfao, unless you're a fucking idiot, which you are.

read any long-form review/analysis of The Witness to find out why. the one by the Anodyne guy is especially peak cringe, look it up. nobody wants a game that provides a sublimely artistic audiovisual experience while making you actually think, everyone apparently wants bog-standard walking sims that tell you how to feel about something instead.

Ya I did too, it's very much the same. Had only trouble with color coded puzzles as I'm colorblind. Needed a guide maybe 2 or 3 times.

Sounds fun, will check out

Is myst really a 'thinking mans game'? Most of the puzzle answers are just written in a book or on a wall, the ones that aren't are very simple (bar one or two). I'd argue that Portal and Portal 2 are much more consistently difficult puzzle games than Myst. Not the sequels though, they have actual puzzles.

Adventure games never died

yeah man definitely. I will, if I don't forget to, lol. in the meantime, play it now. do not spoil anything, not that there's a huge twist but literally every discovery you make via a wiki or forum post is robbing yourself of an experience in the game. then come back and make a thread about it

The Witness and The Talos Principle exist, user

low IQ FPS like DOOM killed it

Thanks, will do.
I found witness kinda dull. Is Talos Principle more like Riven or more like tye Witness?

Those are just sudoku tier puzzle games
La Mulana is what you're looking for, OP

Pretty much this sadly

it's definitely worth a play, but it's not quite on a Myst and certainly not on a Riven level
another good option if you haven't played it is Quern

not him
I haven't played Witness, but Talos Principle is more like Portal in that you get a series of puzzles that introduce a mechanic, then gives you more complex variations that mix and match those designated mechanics
however, I will say that Talos Principle's end game has an interesting twist on this
it has a somewhat interesting story
definitely worth a play

Myst's puzzles, at least in my opinion, are more interesting and rewarding because they're woven into the world you're exploring
portal 2 does a better job of setting this up over the original, but still has too many "test chambers" for my taste
and while you can learn from the books in the library, you can also trap yourself in an Age and be forced to figure out everything from scratch

>but still has too many "test chambers" for my taste
This is a fair point. I like the test chambers, but there's absolutely a reason everyone loves the old aperture part of the game. I'll be honest though, as much as I love Portal 2, I wish we'd gotteb F-STOP instead. I've already played with portals, and I want to know what else that team could come up with conceptually.
>and while you can learn from the books in the library, you can also trap yourself in an Age and be forced to figure out everything from scratch
in some cases, but you have to read the books in order to get to some of the ages. I think Riven does a better job of what you're describing with environmental puzzles and worldbuilding.

Talos Principle is your standard "put boxes on buttons and redirect lasers" type of FPS puzzle game, but with a few decent twists on it and an interesting setting to explore.

If you can stand bland modern day MMO gameplay, I'd highly recommend The Secret World for its puzzle missions alone.

can we all agree that zelda puzzles are barely even puzzles? I always see the mentioned and it pisses me off to no end.

Video games have a huge problem with retards who don't actually give a shit about the quality of the product, but rather will buy it just because it is popular. That's why you see people unironically playing vanilla skyrim or minecraft. They don't understand why those games got popular and just know they are popular, so they'll play them and tell everyone they like them despite them not really liking them at all.

>enter room
>camera moves to puzzle
>camera moves to solution
>annoying sidekick tells you what to do in specific order
>camera shows puzzle and solution again
What are you talking about? Zelda puzzles are obtuse and impossible to figure out.

Portal is one of the easiest puzzle games of all time did you even play it?

90% of retards will drop a game if it makes them read. Also Riven is a brainlord game.

I didn't really like the setting or the controls.

We moved to zachtronics games

I wish I like zachtronics games but they barely feel like games to me, just programming simulators. People love them though, so what do I know?

Very good puzzle game, the difficulty is just right were the puzzles aren't easy nor is the game utter bullshit.

>portal 2 does a better job of setting this up over the original, but still has too many "test chambers" for my taste
Portal 2 is mostly "hunt the white spot".

The first one is kind of meh but most of the others besides 5 are pretty good. Very cool environments, with amazing world building. The puzzles are pretty well integrated into the world, and there is pretty fleshed out lore.

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These dudes make some pretty unique ARG-style games. They weren't the kind of puzzles I'm used to seeing in vidya, but they're definitely thinking man's games.

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at least there are plenty of good, older ones. it'd probably take a couple years of puzzle-only gaming to make it through all the sokoban and drod levels alone.
and myst hardly requires thought. it's mostly attention to detail.

That game was considered EXTREMELY dumbed down at the time of its release. It was handhold-y as fuck compared to almost every single other adventure game that had ever been made before it, and arguably most other games that existed at the time. It was basically seen as the original "casual game".

This thread basically confirms that in 20 years Yea Forums will be filled with kids saying that "no game is as strategic as Fortnite anymore".

>Is it difficult?

It literally tells you the solutions to everything.

>Is it deep?

ZERO depth.

>Is it fun?

Kinda. The otherworldly-ness of the setting is the best part. It really is a "world-based" game.

>compared to almost every single other adventure game
Other adventure games were full of bullshit that could hardly be considered logical thought. That's why it's important to call Myst and Riven puzzle games instead of adventure games.

youtube.com/watch?v=55U2MlcRvbU

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that's a very important distinction. I love Grim Fandango's story as much as the next guy, but god damn some of the puzzles don't even make sense after you've solved them. Sometimes devs after the fact would apologize for puzzles only following the logic of the dev, and nobody else (day of the tentacle making it rain puzzle comes to mind). Myst, for its shortcomings, does not do this.

>puzzle games instead of adventure games.
why?

Because when people think 90s "adventure games", they think of "click every pixel until you find the right one" or gems like "steal a stranger's clothesline, put bread crumbs in a canal so a seagull comes down and happens puncture a flotation device in the exact right way that the air escaping propels it to within your character's reach, then use a golden ring to connect two electrical wires in an apartment building together to power a water pump that loosens a clamp, steal the clamp, then go to the subway, tie the clamp to the float, blow the float up so it opens the clamp and when it deflates it closes the clamp, then try to throw it down onto the tracks so that when it deflates, the clamp grabs a key that you can't just go grab yourself"

But when you hear it's a puzzle game, you know everything will have a reasonable, logical solution.

It's more alive than ever

what game holy fuck

I wanted to like obduction but it was a serious let down.

I just follow the starry expanse blog for realRiven now

I tried to play Myst once. I couldnt stomach it. It made me feel so nauseated and so sick that i had to turn it off. I can play all sorts and feel fine. Even fucking Portal with all its flipping is fine. Not fukcing Myst though

space quest maybe?

You mean Quern

Kek, that's Longest Journey.

Not nearly as famous as the disguise puzzle from Gabriel Knight.

Zachtronics begs to differ.

The Longest Journey. That isn't even the one that had me stumped the longest, but I don't remember the other ones as vividly. There was one involving a pizza box that so many people overlooked or thought was bugged that they decided put a hint for it on their official website.

Is there a cool comfy online community for thinking men who like thinking man games? I don't even mind about fedora tipping and memeing as long as it's not mean spirited or icky. I need friends and people to talk about old pc games.

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Spacechem's cool, but TIS100 and Shenzen are literally just programming.

wish we could have a Yea Forums server

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There's literally nothing stopping you. I know plenty of Yea Forums autists who love factorio. I can't imagine enjoying it with more than 5 or so people though.

well there's the whole "all i have is a mid tier laptop" thing

idk, if you find one let me know. Maybe a general on /vg/?

IQ has been dropping 10 points per decade.

i want this thread to live, we never talk about this kinda game on here

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I'd put Riven then Lufia 2 as my favourite puzzle games. After that I'd just play something like picross; either the gameboy ones or SNES has a bunch. Then it's downhill until you are playing Puzzle Quest.

I was thinking something like IRC or discord server. Not too crowded and not full of obnoxious assholes. Place to talk about old pc games and even play old multiplayer games together. I may have to host my own server like that if I can't find one.

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It has puzzles analogous to Portal in that all of them share a consistent(ly great) mechanic that gets added to and gets gradually more complex, but it has a fully fleshed out world to explore. It also has a demo, uniquely, so you should definitely try it out, easily as good as Portal though comparison is pointless, I think I liked it more even if I've yet to finish it.

Shit dude, people must've been incomprehensible super geniuses back in the dark ages.

thanks, will check it out

I found an absolutely beautiful website that has a lengthy list of puzzle and adventure games, good for finding obscure ones.

mrbillsadventureland.com

>go to that site
>first thing I see is a memorial message for his dead wife
>first link is to a list of their favorite games they played together

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I want a game like Destiny with the shooting, progression, exploration and junk, but the action is broken up with puzzles like this. I love to just stop and think every now and again.

I think the genre's at a disadvantage because once you beat the game, it's very difficult to replay, as most of the gameplay is figuring things out, and it can take a long time to forget a good puzzle. Basically, the better a puzzle in a puzzle game is, the less fun a replay is.

I still occasionally replay portal just because I love the mood so much, but it's starting to run out of steam. Know the puzzles too closely.

I'd love to see more games like where action is mixed with actually good puzzles, but the inherent problem with that is games that are pure action are immensely replayable, while puzzles, by the nature of having a single, concrete solution, inherently aren't.

That's true. I have a few achievements in Talos Principle I haven't got because I'd have to replay through the whole game and I just don't see the point when I've 100%'d the puzzles themselves, including the optional stuff. That said, I still have 40 hours played in it, which is more than most modern singleplayer games. For comparison's sake, I put around 55 hours into the entire Batman Arkham franchise playing through them each once, and 40 hours into Ace Combat 7 playing through its campaign 3 times and trying out its multiplayer before it died.

The fuck are you talking about it never died, it was niche back and its niche now. There games like this today.

Dude, Myst was a massive success. It was the best-selling PC game of all time up until the release of the Sims. Myst and Doom brought PC gaming to a much wider audience

Name three.

>Why did the thinking man die?

Social elements discouraging critical thinking.

it's a shame that by their nature, puzzles in an action game make the game less replayable. The only way to change it is by having a randomized puzzle room in pre-determined dungeons (just as an example), so that the game always has new puzzles on replay. The issue with this is that it only allows for 1-room puzzles, which would be very limited and most likely wouldn't be as high quality as puzzles made to be the one-and-only puzzle for the dungeon.

I tried to ask those but docotrs say I cant breath so well that far up my own ass.

Destiny actually does have genuinely hard one-solution puzzles for raids and rare items and stuff. I just looked up a guide for them because I'm a lame dude, but I loved that they were there. They can be pretty abstract, too
>to open this case, input the code that you figure out by counting the amount of enemies spawning on each side of the room in this one mission
>nothing tells you this you just have to figure it out

It didn't, it just went indie-only.

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Another example.

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Played this with my wife. Amazing game! It's just the right amount of a challenge. Lovely ambient music. Will warmly recommend this game.

you can tell where he started the game is all spaghetti then he started being more neat over on the left side

>This late into the thread
>No mention of Return of the Obra Dinn

Based.

i played about 5 minutes and my eyes couldn't handle any more, it hurts to look at. watched some on youtube though, seems like a cool game

Baba is You is my game of the year

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