Playing offline games with another person

I've been playing Myst Online with a friend but we would like to try something else. Extensive searching has revealed there are no other adventure games (at least what I could find) that are playable online with one or more people. I did find a co-op adventure game called We Were Here and we do plan on trying it.

Has anyone ever tried playing a single player offline game with another person(s) who are separated by distance? If both of us have the same game on our pc we would play at the same time and agree to stay in the same area so we could each work on the same puzzle at the same time, helping each other out using voice chat to describe what we see or do. If anyone has done this how did it go? And what adventure games would be best for this type of play? I'm thinking a linear or partially linear game based more toward exploration and puzzles rather than one with lots of dialogue/deep storyline would be more suitable.

Even if you haven't done this suggestions as to what would be good for this type of game play would be very welcome.

Hmm... I haven't actually done this, I tended to play adventure games with my sister when I was younger and my wife when I was older, and expect to probably play them with my kids in a few years. However having recently watched a few Let's Plays of my own game and found myself nearly shouting at the screen telling them what to do, it seems like it should be possible if the image quality is decent. You could video chat with the image locked on the game screen and just talk about it as if you were sitting next to each other.

I think the classic style games would work well with this but also you want to make sure you avoid ones where you have to pixel hunt a lot, that would be annoying. I would suggest something like either the Monkey Island games or The Dig (which isn't as funny obviously but has fantastic atmosphere). Or the TellTale Sam & Max games should be good for that. Let me know how it goes if you try it!

Thanks CaptainD for the suggestions but my friend and I played those games when they first came out and at the time we helped each other by email which was a bit tedious. We're looking for something more current.

I actually think the pixel hunt ones would be quite suited to this, two heads better than one type of thing. I should add that it's adventure games we are looking for not HOGs or their hybrids.

Well I would suggest my own game but that would be a bit cheeky

How about Lost Horizon? Really loved that one. Or Ceville? Have you played Primordia yet (or pretty much any of the Wadjet Eye Games releases, they're all good / great). Or just browse the Adventure Game Studio game releases and pick a freebie - the Apprentice games are good, Patchwork is short but quite wonderful, ooh or what about A Tale of Two Kingdoms Deluxe? That might fit the bill perfectly.

Go ahead suggest your own if you think it might fit the bill. Meanwhile I'll check out the others you have listed.

Well if you like comedy, science fiction and old-school adventure gaming, you might just like my game. Here's the link to check it out:
https://captaind.itch.io/captain-disaster-in-death-has-a-million-stomping-boots

I'd be most interested to know how your online collaborative adventure game playing goes anyway!

I did find one that would work quite well. The Eyes of Ara. I'll let you know how it goes although it may be awhile as my playing partner is away for 2 weeks.

Thanks for the link to your game. Sounds like it may be fun. Perhaps I'll try it on my own.

You might want to check out Sarien . They allow you to play single-player Sierra classics but, you can "see" other people in the same location and chat with them through an interface. Kind of a neat idea and fully licensed as well.

I think we have done that here before - a few people decide to play together and agreed not to get too far ahead of each other.
We "talked" as we went and my recollection is it worked quite well.
I think we might even have played one of the lauded worst games ever-The Scroll aka Daughters of Serpents. Now there is a blast from the past!

Yes, I've done a few "community plays" too and they can be a lot of fun.

"I think we might even have played one of the lauded worst games ever-The Scroll aka Daughters of Serpents."

Oh, I remember that game SO well !! Once played never forgotten

Its definitely burned into ones brain

I was once part of Double Fine Game Club where we streamed adventure games every Saturday. One person played and the others watched and commented in the chat, that was quite fun. Double Fine Game Club is no more unfortunately, was a bit hard to find people to stream I think.

Something I haven't tried, but it sounds like it is just what you want -

GOG has a support program called Galaxy - it keeps track of what games you have downloaded, and includes a CHAT feature. They say it lets you stay connected with friend while playing a game -

Another way to connect would be with Team Viewer - you could actually watch your friend as she plays; or TeamSpeak allows you to talk person to person.

Team Viewer is free for personal use.

Thanks everyone. I'll check out all the links provided.

Sarien - games are bit old. I played them about 20 years ago and they were hard to see then and given that my eyesight hasn't improved over the years..........:-) But it's a great idea. Maybe they will add some newer ones.

Gog Galaxy - it seems to be for games which are online games. My friend and I have voice chat set up already thru Discord.

Team Viewer - I will delve a bit deeper into this one. My hesitation with this app is I have to allow access to my pc by my friend and vice versa. But it does sound promising.

The "low tech" way would be for both of you to be playing the game while you're on the telephone with each other. It takes minimal understanding to set that up, and it's certainly easier to talk over the phone while you're playing than use a "chat" or email. Of course you need a phone service that doesn't charge by the minute -- probably a wired phone.

We have been playing Myst Online using Discord and it works quite well. As my playing partner is in another country using the phone is not a good option.

I'm reporting back as per your request. We decided to play Lilly Looking Through as you have to solve each screen before moving to the next plus there is minimal dialogue and very little inventory to deal with. Using Discord we would tell each other what we were doing, looking at etc although there are a few items in the game we didn't know what they were so we described what they looked like and where they were located. When one of us got stuck the other was usually able to figure out what to do next. We both considered our gaming partnership a success. Our next game will be either Tiny Echo or Chuchel. After those have been played we plan on trying one where the game is open world (looking at the remakes of Monkey Island 1 & 2 for this) but we have agreed to stay in the same area and only change areas when we are both ready to move.

Yes! Jasper (former 'Boomer, but don't know if she still is active) and I played ALL our Adventure games this way for years, long before there was any in-game chat available. We'd talk about which game to buy, then we'd pick one, load up and play. We stayed "together" in the environments, gave each other hints about puzzles, etc, but did all this by email. It was SO much more fun to have a playing partner that it was hard to get excited about playing a game alone. We even met up a couple of times in person, although we live quite a distance apart.

We've lost track of each other over the past year due to a number of reasons, and I haven't played another full-on Adventure game since.