What are some great games that require you to bust out a notebook and pen?

Return of the Obra Dinn

I sketch out factory designs for Satisfactory

Tunic!

The "final" puzzle took a whole page of paper. It was brilliant

The following games all typically do not hold the player's hand. They are to varying degrees, some give you a map and/or journal, some do not.

• TES III Morrowind
• King's Field 1-4
• Snatcher on SEGA CD
• Dark Souls 1-3, Demons Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring
• Ultima Underworld
• Silent Hill 1-4
• Shadow of the Colossus
• Tunic
• Super Metroid
• Hollow Knight
• Rain World
• System Shock 1,2

The Witness

Lots of diagrams

The last game I recall breaking out pen and paper for was Tunic. You can definitely beat the story without, but the later puzzles call for it.

Myst was my answer even before reading your post, so I would say the rest of the series. Also Quern, in the same genre. Maybe The Talos Principle if you like puzzles, though I don't remember reaching for my notepad while playing.

Animal Well.

Her Story is a detective game that starts with you sitting at a computer, not even knowing what mystery you're supposed to investigate. You have to search through the computer's database for police interview footage to figure that out. Then you have to figure out the answer to the mystery you think you need to solve. The interview clips have a lot of details for you to track and link together. I had to make a big chunky note for this game and even had to implement a system to keep track of the likelihood of the statements.

If you want more point and click adventures, try the Submachine series, which was originally in Flash but now remastered as a ten-game compilation called Submachine: Legacy. The developer trained as an architect, so you get to admire intricate, hand-drawn architecture porn. It starts off as a typical 00s Flash room escape, until you realize it was all a… hallucination. You realize that you're actually going to explore a vast, utterly lonely underground world as you try to track down the only person who seems to know how to get out. Teleportation and parallel universe travel come up a lot in the series, so keeping notes will be useful. Incredible dark ambient soundtrack, too.

I hear Lorelei and The Laser Eyes was specifically designed around the idea of the player using a physical notepad to help solve the puzzles. Recently released and reviewed strongly, you should check it out if not already on your radar.

My most recent such games were Her Story and Return of the Obra Dinn.

During Her Story I ended up with an A5 sheet full of keyword ideas I wanted to search the recordings for.

Obra Dinn had me draw multiple iterations of a ship deck while trying to figure out who was likely to sleep in which hammock :D

I usually wrote a lot of scribbles for Stardew Valley, at least when trying to go for perfection.

Heaven's Vault feels like it should have its own journal, but it really didn't.

Sid Meier's Pirates! could use a notebook at points or at least scrap paper.

Tunic

Elite Dangerous

Death Stranding

Elite: Dangerous, because every time I tab out of the game to check INARA for the closest outfitting or something there's about a 30% chance of it crashing and becoming unlaunchable until I restart my computer. Hence writing system names down on paper before launching the game.

Morrowind, Factorio and Stardew Valley

Probably not what you're looking for, but Elite Dangerous. I'm about to print out pictures of the controls just to teach myself to use them.

I would bet others like EVE Online for the bill better.

Honestly it was really handy to have a pen and paper around for Elden Ring for me. There was just so much I wanted to keep track of so that I could come back or to make connections. But it’s also a very acquired taste kind of game to go through!

Riven is one of my favorite games and IMO the best of the Myst series of games. My recommendation is Outer Wilds, which doesn't necessarily require real life note taking although you could. However it is a fantastic puzzle/exploration game that is easily on par with Riven, and will hit that same vibe of learning more and more about the world and using that knowledge to progress. Trust me, its very worth it. Also get the DLC too!

Star Trek: The Next Generation, for Sega Genesis certainly fit this criteria.

Three very different games I actually took notes for :

La Mulana. In the "modern" version you have limited memory space to save some of the many texts you find, but you'll need more than that to solve the puzzles anyway. Good luck trying to scribble the weird pixelated symbols on your notes, too.

I play Shin Megami Tensei games with notes to optimize fusions, when I have a particular demon in mind and I want them to inherit the right skills. Later games let you see fusion results, but only one step ahead.

And then there's spacechem. I love Zachtronics games in general, and all the following ones tend to be progressive in difficulty and let you experiment from a good enough solution to better solutions. As the first, less refined one, spacechem is special. Before long it needs planning and calculations to even get something that works.

World of Xeen

For the hardest dungeon you have to solve a crossword puzzle. In the game you can read a long story that contains all the answers but the puzzle is in a huge labyrinth far away from that story and it would be too tedious to change back and forth between the two.

The manuals of the games (it's actually two games combined into one even larger game) have dedicated blank pages for notes at the end. I also had the way to the boss of the second game written down there.

Back then it was quite common for RPGs to have space for notes in the manuals.

If you liked riven you might like the witness.

The legend of grimrock 1,2. I have pages of notes and a hand drawn map on gridpaper for them!

Steam Workshop 😭

Fairune 2 and Submachine: Legacy were the last two where I needed to take notes.

For Submachine, I was mainly writing down coordinates of locations where I figured I could come back to use an item later, or information from signs that might be useful in a later puzzle.

For Fairune, I had to make multiple maps on graph paper to keep track of all of the things I wasn't sure how to solve or needed to come back to with new items.

I have also been writing down some numbers for System Shock, but I haven't finished that one yet, and I'm not sure if the note taking will need to be any more extensive.

Subnautica, if you want a map, you have to start triangulation and drawing

Love that your example was riven. Was my first thought on the title.

The myst games, their newer game Obduction, the Talos Principle. Those puzzle games all are awesome and take some pen and paper.

Escape from mystwood mansion, the house of da Vinci are a couple others that feel the same way.

Less adventure, more “must optimize!” games like Satisfactory, Factorio are other games that require me to bust out pen and paper or at least a website, spreadsheet or calculator.

Void Stranger is a relatively recent one. It's a Sokoban style puzzle game with layers of puzzles and a ton of hidden depth.

It took me 50 hours to feel like I beat the base game and I haven't even touched the post-game content they added after release. I have a folder full of text files with notes and clues and puzzle attempts and one of the best puzzles involved taking several screenshots and stitching them together in an image editor.

La Mulana is another one to check out. It's a metroidvania heavy on puzzles and exploration that's actively hostile toward the player. It's an exercise in frustration and every inch of progress is measured in blood. Every bit of information is important, and there's a lot of information to untangle. I haven't come close to beating it yet and my notes from just the first few floors are extensive.

Nobody said Myst or Nethack???

Dungeon Master

Still got my notebook as a kid with the spells like ZO KATH RA still around my parents house

Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall the Non-Unity edition. Where you're going to have to remember some locations, characters and whatever else to get by.

And just any old-time classic RPGs from the 80s and 90s, who didn't hold your hand.

Shenzhen I/O

https://store.steampowered.com/app/504210/SHENZHEN_IO/

Rhem is a myst-like which will probably require multiple journals.

Hah, I actually just busted out pen and paper for Dragon Age Veilguard, although it was to compare companion stats, and nothing to do with the story.

EverQuest - especially in the classic era (99-02) fit this for me. The quests were delivered through unsaved text interactions with no quest log type feature - epic weapon quests were notorious for requiring detailed notes, notably prior to any walkthrough websites being available. There were also no maps and players were compelled to draw their own for zones and dungeons. I filled multiple Franklin-Covey (sp?) leather journals during my adventures and look at them with much nostalgia.

Return of the Obra Dinn. Indie darling puzzle game where you are an insurance adjuster working on a recovered ghost ship. Very thematic and satisfying to take notes by hand

Edit: whoops someone already mentioned it

I've wanted to do this for awhile with a RPG - you might have convinced me to do this on the next one I pick up.

Honorable mention fir Outer Wilds, cause taking notes and keeping track of things you learn is critical to the gameplay, but the game actually provides an excellent UI already it already.

Also, Elden Ring and other FromSoft games are a contender, cause when you meet a random NPC that says like 3 lines of dialog and doesn't repeat them, you're gonna have trouble remembering any of that 20 hours later when yoy meet them again.

Funny you mention Riven, that was my first offender too way back in the day.

Recently, it's mainly with KSP and Cities:Skylines for planning stuff while I don't have access to the game.

In-person tabletop RPGs. My group have been playing 1st Edition AD&D and a compact, modernized version of D&D Basic/Expert called Old School Essentials.