A friend of mine got the computer game Scratches, and particularly enjoyed it. Apparently it has very little “action,” i.e. no hack and slash battles. It’s rather creepy and requires a lot of figuring things out - finding clues and solving logic puzzles, that sort of thing. She’d love to find more games like that, so I turn to my panel of experts. Any ideas?
The “Myst” family of games: Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelation, End of Ages, and Uru.
Just make sure she’s ok with being left alone on an island with a disembodied hand. 
It’s part of a whole genre called “adventure games”. It belongs to a particular subset, the first person adventure games. The Myst games are the same type.
I prefer the third person adventure games. There’s a lot of classic games there. I think the most recent highly regarded on is The Longest Journeyl
Sanitarium was pretty fun. 'Cept for the giant bug stuff.
Yep, that’s an excellent game, although the graphics show it’s age by now.
The two Syberia games are reasonably modern and pretty good.
Thank you all for your help! I’ll forward this info to my friend. Further suggestions will be welcome. Personally, I’m playing RPG computer games these days - specifically Neverwinter Nights. I’m having a grand time! And that one came from you guys too. So thanks again.
If your friend is looking for more adventure games in the same area as Scratches, they would probably really enjoy Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Dreamfall has received a lot of critical acclaim and was released recently, so it should be easy to find at most stores. Furthermore, it is pretty much considered similiar to Scratches but much better from a gameplay standpoint. Enjoy.
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is a sequel to the above mentioned The Longest Journey. I’m playing it right now, and it’s fun, once you get the control scheme figured out.
A person after my own heart, I love the genre of adventure games. As for games like scratches to recommend:
[ul]
[li]The Delaware St. John games [/li][li]The Gabriel Knight Series These are older and not in production anymore, but fun none the less. There is a lot of help out there for getting the games to work on XP machines. [/li][li]Jack the Ripper [/li][li]Almost any game by Microids. Syberia one and two have been mentioned. Road to India is fun. I haven’t played Still Life or Postmortem, but I’ve heard good things about them. The Microids games that I’ve played do not have the quite the creepy feeling that Scratches did. [/li][li]Dark Fall and Lights Out . Play at night for a creepy good time! [/li][li]There’s a Cthulhu game out, Necronomicon , but it’s more dark (as in hard to see) than creepy. [/li][li]Mystery of the Druids [/li][li]Dracula Resurrection and The Last Sanctuary [/li][/ul]
I’m currently surrounded by games at the moment, I’ll see if I can come up with anything else.
Also, your friend might want to look at www.gameboomers.com they have a zillion reviews for games. I’ve found someone there who has the same taste in games as I do and it makes purchases that much easier. Also, they have help or links to help for games that don’t work on XP. For your RPG interest, they also have a section for those games (aka the dark side). 
I agree with the Myst games. The big problem for me is that there isn’t much character interaction and I enjoy that in games.
Happy Gaming! 