Vapourware Adventure games with the most in-depth/unintuitive interaction mechanics?

[rusty_shackleford]

Newer games tend towards context-sensitivity and making them as "intuitive"(read:simple) as possible. Therefore, I'm looking for the adventure games that went out of their way to make their games as unintuitive and obtuse as possible.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Newer games tend towards context-sensitivity and making them as "intuitive"(read:simple) as possible. Therefore, I'm looking for the adventure games that went out of their way to make their games as unintuitive and obtuse as possible.

Like text parsers?

 

[Jasede]

How about Millenia: Altered Destinies?

Complicated, opaque adventure based on time travel with completely concealed mechanics and deep text adventure dialogue trees.
This little-known game is about seeding alien species in a galaxy, then raising them all to about equal power by guiding them during their evolution. You mainly interact with the game by talking to the race representatives and helping them make long-term decisions, or messing with the timeline (for example by giving them an invention they invent earlier, or by removing an invention from the timeline.)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How about Millenia: Altered Destinies?

View attachment 29292

Complicated, opaque adventure based on time travel with completely concealed mechanics and deep text adventure dialogue trees.
This little-known game is about seeding alien species in a galaxy, then raising them all to about equal power by guiding them during their evolution. You mainly interact with the game by talking to the race representatives and helping them make long-term decisions, or messing with the timeline (for example by giving them an invention they invent earlier, or by removing an invention from the timeline.)

Looks great, I love experimental mid/late-90s games.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I feel like this probably isn't going to get many good answers because usually games fail in one way completely unintentionally. For instance, something that came to mind, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative, isn't intentionally obtuse. Its just unintentionally obtuse. Its parser, in trying to be realistic, instead just requires you to keep a reference card open at all times just so you can actually communicate in-game. Also, the Macintosh version has an awkward mix of parser and menus. So if you type "take phaser" the person you were talking to takes the phaser, you instead need to use the menus to do things with items. Also, its in real-time and you have to walk across the entire length of the Enterprise, like 44 rooms of you typing west.
Curse of Enchantia, Emmanuelle and Psycho all supposedly have shit control schemes, but that's mostly just a side-effect of them being shit.
Real-time text adventures that aren't Star Trek also tend to be quite obtuse, specifically The Hobbit, which makes it very easy to get stuck in a state where you're completely screwed over. Not a text adventure technically, but on Amiga, A Personal Nightmare has you on real-time, it registers your inputs/actions slowly, and you have action scenes where you have to deal with a vampire chasing after you. But if you play it in SCUMMVM or the DOS version, it isn't really that obtuse.
There are probably a lot more that are just kind of obtuse, but not enough to be all that infamous for it, like Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet.