i played Blue Ice a few months ago and this thread made me think of it. is a regular point n click puzzles adventure game but instead of having a player character you play as a sort of unspecified semi omniscient force that reads ppls minds and manipulates stuff in a house which seems to be frozen at multiple points of time at once, depending on the room. bizarre effect that just intensifies the general insanity:
tarotica voo doo feels like an edge case where there’s technically a player character, but instead of directly controlling it you move a cursor around a little floor plan and manually select which rooms to “activate” (i.e. the P.C. is in them), which hotspots to inspect, etc. . it often blurs the line between being a cursor and representing ur character’s movement w/out an actual avatar.
Earlier this week, I introduced my little niece to VR by showing her Astro Bot. In that game, you as the player do have an avatar and you sometimes manipulate the world independent of the little eponymous robot running around (who constantly acknowledges you). You can sometimes see yourself in reflections.
The smaller robot’s story is clear, but it’s not so clear how the player robot came to be involved. Have you always followed the small robots around? Did you just happen to come across them as they were attacked?
But wait, the robot isn’t actually the player. There’s one more layer, since some of the tutorials show that robot while others show an obvious human head or finger that the robot doesn’t possess.
The biggest mystery of all, however, is the lack of PSVR2 support for Astro Bot 2. Do they just not want anyone to buy their hardware? I probably would have just for that game, though it wouldn’t have been a wise purchase.
rimo cocoron is in a similar area although maybe too “active” for this question. it’s sort of a point and click adventure where your interaction is mostly making people notice objects and things in little clockwork worlds. you don’t have an diegetic, in universe avatar you are more like a user interface for the concept of inspiration
