/vr/ - Retro Games

There are hundreds of such games. Some of my favorites are by a company named Telarium. Scott Adams also made a bunch.

I don't really see much of a distinction between Sierra text-adventure games and LucasArts point-and-click sorts of games. These days Telltale has taken it into basically interactive-story mode because it's too easy to look things up on the internet, but they're still fun to play - the Sherlock Holmes series of games (not by Telltale, there are numerous such developers) is especially fun to play through.

One of my favorites as a kid took place in early 20th-century London. You're a reporter for a failing newspaper. A woman was found murdered with a jade hairpin in a faraway rural bungalow, and the husband is missing. Immediately as the game starts, a reporter for a rival newspaper is found dead under similar circumstances in Victoria Station.

You have to explore the city, question potential suspects, sit in on hearings, follow leads and figure out the mystery within a week. Asking questions takes time, travelling to new locations takes time, observing conversations between characters takes time, and characters often move around (you can also tail them if you like). This means that the gameplay revolves around careful budgeting of time, rather than pixel-hunting or exhausting every conversational option.