You're viewing a single thread.
So, while INFRA already does fully exist, I'd love to see more games like it. It's really hard to describe what INFRA is without major spoilers, but if you've played it then you probably know what I'm talking about.
It's like... take the new Chernobyl game and remove literally all the death states, then fill it to the brim with easter eggs, lore content, secret rooms and pathways, challenging logic puzzles, stuff like that. INFRA ticked all those boxes for me and I have yet to find a game like it.
Every game that I've looked at and been recommended as being "like INFRA" always has some major flaw or some concession that really sets it apart from the original game. INFRA is pretty much all about exploring your surroundings to uncover the plot of the game and even change some of the story if you're vigilant enough about the puzzles. You can literally complete the game just as a walking sim while doing fuck-all, but I think most players will find the intrigue of the story interesting enough to be almost coerced into going down the other fork in the road, so to speak. Like there are sections in every chapter where you have to use your knowledge in civil engineering to repair some sort of machinery using intermediate logic puzzles, but you're always able to just skip it. However, completing these puzzles allows you to unlock the story as the puzzles require exploration. Hope that made sense.
I wasn't expecting to see INFRA mentioned but it's one of my favorite games for a lot of the reasons you mentioned! It really had a sense for exploration and environments to tell more of the story. And it really is part puzzle game without having any single gimmick like other first person games. It reminds me a lot of Half Life 2's puzzles (which makes sense since INFRA was also built in Source as far as I can remember).
I'm really itching for more expansions or games like it. Not sure what happened to the DLC they were working on, but there were some groups working on mods.