EDIT: Anyone played The Experiment? It's on sale at Gamersgate:
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-112/the-experiment-112
I've actually been playing it recently and working on a review. Might as well post it now, though I haven't finished the game (I'm close though):
"The Experiment" isn't a particularly good adventure game, but it has some interesting ideas that give it an immersive world and an intricately told story, with a unique spin on what it means to be an adventure game player. In the hands of a better interface and gameplay design, it could be a stellar game. But it's not without its frustrations.
The game centers around Lea Nichols, a scientist who wakes up aboard the research station at sea where she'd been working, to find that the ship seems to be deserted and things must have gone a bit haywire, and she needs to find out exactly what and how she can get off the ship. It's a familiar adventure premise but it works well here, and the unfolding story is interesting, if a little surreal.
What makes this game so interesting is that you don't control Lea directly; rather, you control the ship's surveillance system which is able to monitor up to 3 different cameras independently, as well as operate the ship's systems and functions and access the ship's database. You're in the role of the benevolent watchman or hacker, able to see what's going on from a safe distance and manipulate the systems to help Lea, without communicating with her directly. Lea talks directly to the camera and tells you what she needs you to do, and you guide Lea around the ship by activating objects on the overhead map, which makes Lea move to anything that lights up. This sounds a bit abstract and it takes some getting used to at first, but it works. It also eliminates pixel-hunting, because you know that everything Lea can interact with is marked on the map.
You also spend a fair amount of time reading through the other employees' notes and emails, which fill out most of the backstory. Every employee has a password that you need to find, but it's easier than you might think to find them because almost everyone on the station had a deep distrust of one another, leading most of them to try to hack each other's passwords and pass them around. In many cases, finding one person's password reveals three of the other employees'. No wonder things went to shit. The emails also suffer from being obviously translated from another language--it's not incomprehensible at all, but there's a stilted and uniform quality to the writing that takes you out of the story a little.
The camera system is interesting and adds a feeling of voyeurism and power over the game, but it's clunky. It's often difficult to get your bearings, especially when entering a new room, and find and position a camera pointing at the thing you want to look at. Some cameras will automatically track Lea or focus on important objects, but there's far more manual manipulation than is enjoyable. Also, every camera window is independently sized and movable, which is good in that you can customize the interface to your liking, but bad in that it means you're essentially moving windows around a lot.
The game is severely hurt by several boneheaded design decisions. Lea is an abominably slow walker, for one, and while there isn't much backtracking, when there is it's agonizing. Another is the inclusion of some bizarrely obtuse sequences, such as a frustrating late game sequence in which you navigate a bathysphere underwater through narrow corridors using rotational controls. Doing this with a first-person camera would be hard enough; doing it mainly by looking through the handful of stationary cameras dotting the passage is worse. Thankfully there's no way to die (although Leah will incessantly warn you that the sphere is about to collapse) but it completely stops the game in its tracks. Plus, on my first run I got the thing stuck in a wall 20 minutes in, necessitating a reload.
If you're patient and willing to put up with a clunky interface and some frustrating puzzle sequences, then I think this game has enough interesting elements and a compelling (albeit weird) story to be worth $5.
Some screenshots:
