What features attract you to purchase a game before reviews come out. We all have done Pre-orders or contributed to Kickstarters or purchased a game the day it was released. What is it about those games that caught your eye?

Example - developer, genre, art style....

Ana

Based on what they produced in the past, I'd be interested in games made by the following...

Jon Boakes (Dark Fall, Lost Crown)

Matt Clark (Barrow Hill)

Knut Muller (RHEM)

Cyan (Myst, Riven, Uru)

Detalion (I wish Detalion would update Schizm for newer operating systems and/or make a new Schizm game)

Presto (makers of Myst III)

Whoever made Shivers 1, I'd like another game like that.

Point and click detective adventure games with voice acting.

Mainly a good story and a friendly interface AND if it's coming from a developer whose games I've enjoyed in the past, that could count too

Mad has jut written the reply I was going to make.
Plus a game whose storyline or treatment is so completely unique such as Echo - secrets of the lost cavern or Lost Horizon.

I am usually drawn to a game by the look of the screen shots before the game comes out. The appearance of a game in the pictures tells me a lot.

Screen Shots and Previous Games by the Developer.

Screenshot, real actors, story and mechanical puzzles
Previous games by developer, but it's not so important. Sometimes certain developers riding the wave of success, but after that, no longer produce anything special. Except special cases

Existing Walkthrough (most important!)

favorable review
mouse controls

I wait for the reviews, favourably the Boomers reviews before buying, particularly after Lost Horizon 2

A well thought out interesting story with a touch of humour as a bonus.

Good voice reproduction coupled with speakers who can handle the dialogue.

My ears perk up when I see first buzz about a '1st person puzzler' or a 'Myst-style' game. Gameplay needs to be mouse only.
Good spacial, mechanical and logical puzzles. Solitary exploration, ideally in a peaceful setting. If it is a developer I trust - Knut Muller, Matt Clark, Cyan - all the better. Reviews don't mean a lot, unless the reviewer has the same taste as me.

Point and click
Large inventory where you have to put things together.
Scary Scary story line !

For Kickstarter it's a trusted publisher/developer.

For other games it's seeing the trailers and screenshots.

Games from a developer/publisher with a known track record for quality software.

If the game has a decent story and is more puzzle heavy and much less dialog - even if there is NO dialog - gets my vote.

Good graphics that don't require a super computer to play.

Point and Click interfaces.

Fun inventory usage and even the "combine this to make that" type of inventory.

Games like we used to see in the "old days" before the developers got lazy and ran out of ideas. ( another thread on this ??? )

I think Shivers was a Sierra game.

Sierra no longer exists. It died after a hostile takeover over 15 years ago.
http://www.nodontdie.com/al-lowe/

But the individuals who developed Shivers are probably still around.

Thank you Jenny for the link. I knew most of the information but the nitty gritty on the hostile takeover was new to me. I really miss Sierra On Line and their loyalty to their customers. They had the best return policy I've ever seen. If you don't like the game just return it and the only thing they asked was to tell them why you didn't like it.

Games with a strong story line/strong characters. A lot of characters to speak and interact with. My favorite examples include the TLJ series (especially the original and Chapters), the Gabriel Knight series (especially GK2), Culpa Innata, Grim Fandango, The Lost Crown, The Walking Dead, Life is Strange and The Cat Lady.

Any 3rd person adventure game by Ragnar Tornquist, Jane Jensen or Jonathan Boakes would be an instant buy for me.

Any 3rd person point and click in general will at least get my attention. I've also grown to like/appreciate keyboard control a lot more over time, even though it felt like going "backward" to me when I first played Grim Fandango. My RSI will flare up occasionally when I use the mouse too much, and keyboard control is a relief from that. However, I far prefer using the arrow keys, and I get annoyed when I'm forced to use WASD, as I find it more awkward.

Exploration is one of my favorite features of a good adventure game as well. Seeing new environments, getting to know the player character by their comments on objects/scenery around them, experiencing the beautiful graphics. My favorite area to explore in any game is a new one, Propast in Dreamfall Chapters. It's huge, in depth, and Zoe has many interesting comments on everything around her. Even though Dreamfall Chapters' episodes have only improved as they've been coming out, no new area of the game has quite captured that level of environmental immersion for me.

Good puzzles. I'm a story gamer first and foremost, but I do agree that many current story strong games lack the puzzles the older equally strong story games had. Dreamfall Chapters makes up for this in environment (and I think the bot puzzle in episode 3 was really good), and Life is Strange makes up for it with optional character interactions. However, some games just streamline too much. Particularly TellTale lately. Much as I still love their current games, I think the original Walking Dead was their peak and will probably always be. It had their best story and at least some descent gameplay to go with it.

Beautiful graphics. Some of my favorite games don't have the prettiest graphics, and some of the prettiest games aren't my favorites. Either way, it's nice to stare at beautiful screens and take nice screenshots to save. Some of the best looking adventure games for me are Dreamfall Chapters, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, Life is Strange, The Dark Eye Chains of Satinav and its sequel, Memoria, Blues and Bullets, Gray Matter and The Night of the Rabbit. I also think The Lost Crown is especially beautiful with its black and white screenshots with splashes of color. There are other especially beautiful games as well, but these are the first standouts I thought of.

Something where the subject matter sounds interesting. Sometimes I don't know until I play the game whether or not I'm going to like it. Some things that don't sound interesting to me turn out to be very good games. But it helps if the subject matter interests me to begin with.

I like games with very little action and good stories.

I also prefer to use the mouse rather than the keyboard, even though some of my favorite games are controlled with the keyboard. In that case, I get venus to control the character, and I use the mouse when needed and make the decisions.

Great responses! THanks, all!

1. Quality of the games made in the past by the developer.

2. Word of mouth or a review of the game.

3. Good cover art on the game can catch my eye too.

Venus and I have the exact same tastes and we love the same games for the same reasons. She said all I would have said.

I could add a sense of immersion that brings escape from reality, especially atmospheric outside scenes with rain and wind, like Sinking Island and Overclock for examples.

Also a sense of moving on, from places to places, from environments to environments, like Syberia and Amerzone.