Well if you look at it that way…still in combination with the limited inventory (which is a thing I generally dislike and one of many reasons why I prefer Silent Hill over Resident Evil) it creates dead ends. And that´s not a good thing. But the story and especially the ending twist is beautifully dark.
It would be very silly with unlimited inventory, just think how much trash the player would carry! I agree this design might be a problem, but from my experience with Dreamweb I don’t remember any dead end I would get into. So it was either my luck or they actually got this part right.
The dead end might occur when you don´t pick up an important item and take an unimportant one instead and can´t go back to the important one later on. Anyway the timed events where you have to shoot fast also occur later and up to a certain part I don´t think you´ve been clued in that this can happen. Again, I think it´s a flawed game but the delivery as a whole is absolutly gorgeous.
For anyone curious what we´re talking about:
Thanks. Dreamweb seems viewed completely from above, without any depth. Not that great. But the upside is that this one seems to have puzzles, whereas “To The Moon” hasn’t… it’s a walking simulator with some minigames. Too bad. I really like the rest, i.e. graphics and story.
So much fun!
(one of the best game songs ever, for me)
Do you feel the same way for some Zelda games with that kind of view? I played a few of them and the super-colored “manga” style didn’t prevent me from enjoying the gameplay.
I never saw this video of them, it’s great! 
Years ago my cousin described to me this game as a pinnacle of storytelling and I knew that the game became quite famous for this same reason. Unfortunately I played it only a little bit and I regret that. It’s time to finish it. Thanks for remembering it to me.
Don’t let these screenshot fool you. It’s a game mainly based on narrative. I would also say that for many people it was a very emotional experience.
There is also an upcoming sequel:
What about a simple Zelda game? They have both puzzles and exploration.
If you don’t like combat-heavy segments, you could play some kind of RPG focused more on exploration, simple puzzles (find this object and give it to that guy) and simulation of some activity, like Stardew Valley, which is focused on agriculture:
I like them! I played all for the wii, gamecube, and nintendo ds. Especially for the DS, there were nice puzzles.
I don’t consider “find this object and give it to this guy” a puzzle. This dreamweb seems more like what I am looking for
That´s only the tip of the iceberg of what puzzles the Zelda games have to offer.
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If you exclude a release, you aren’t pressure free. With this your mind says: “Ah, you won’t release it anyway, so why add this feature?”
If you build a prototype like Ron, you should build it for fun and see where it goes. Yes, typically the prototype won’t be released (except you are using the evolutionary prototyping development method) but it or your experiences could be the base for another game. A good example is Superhot that started as a prototype and evolved into a whole game. So never say never. 
AFAIK “To The Moon” was the game of the year on Metacritic.
Thats right, I am just not a fan of childish manga style games… if I think hard, I remember 18 years ago I was playing Silver game, that I liked and that was the last one of that genre.
Oh, I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised because it matches quite well with the aura of narrative masterpiece that I’ve observed around it. It’s also a quite short game, which should motivate me to raise its rank in my personal what-to-play-next list.
I understand. As I wrote elsewhere, the visual style can have a strong impact on how a game is perceived.
OK, this won’t match your definition exactly but it’s a game I like:
It has some elements of common p’n’c adventures (story, 3rd person), but mostly it’s top-down, but instead of exploration & puzzles it’s observation & planning robberies: The Clue!
It plays in London, for some people this is every exotic…
I’m not a fan of manga style either but I like those oldschool-Zelda like games. Because of their pixelated look they don’t have that style to me.
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Looks interesting!
I agree when they first went 3D they choose a way to cutesy apporach on the character design. But they went a bit darker on some later games like Twilight Princess. But I don´t recognize much manga style in the early pixelated games.
Same goes for the Castlevania games and especially their box art. In early games they based their box art on american fantasy art, starting from Symphony Of The Night they went total manga style and never looked back since.
There’s something about this format that surely allows you to build and test if stories work quite easily? I’ve always thought that even something like Skyrim should start off internally in this format. If it works with 2D graphics, it’ll work in a fully rendered 3D world… but it’s much easier and cheaper to start in 2D.