VISUAL NOVELS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE TERRIBLE AT PUZZLES

Point and click adventures != visual novels.

Visual novels have close to none puzzles. I'd give them a shot, there are plenty nice titles out there. Although there are few stunning titles among the freebies

As for point and click adventures .. it's in their nature. Why else would you need to interact with all of your environment? I unfortunately don't know about any involving close to non puzzle-solving. I'd be interested in that myself

Edit: Okay, should've refreshed. Some good freebies out there are
- The Knife of the Traitor
- Jurassic Heart (to have this one out there)
- CaveCaveDeusVidet
- This is Where I Want to Die
- The Adventures of Prince Ivon
- Doppelganger: Dawn of the Interverted Souls (a warning: this one's massive! ~ 20 hours if I remember correctly)

I've been on a visual novels kick for a couple years now, love them! It's hard to beat the legit Japanese ones, like Higurashi When they Cry, Umineko When They Cry, Fate/Stay Night, Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate, Sakura Taisen series, Never7, Ever17, Remember11.

There are some slight differences between styles of VNs that you may need to know though, if you're serious about getting into them.

Straight-forward visual novels usually have choices involved, with alternating routes leading to different endings. Sometimes this means having good ends, bad ends, and true ends, while other times they'll just be *different* ends.

Kinetic Novels are VNs with no choices involved and no altering paths involved. It's pretty much just a novel with the pretty pictures to help the story along. The most famous of which are the When They Cry series (includes Higurashi, Higurashi Kai, Umineko, and Umineko Chiru). They're actually my favorites, though they take a long time to get from the cheerful and boring day in the life scenarios to the chilling and gore-filled climaxes. I actually prefer kinetic VNs because very few VN writers are able to pull choices off well imo. My MAFIOSI novels are kinetic novels because of this (also available on this site).

Eroge, you will probably want to stay away from. They're just pure hentai VNs, with very little in the way of story. My advice is to avoid at all costs. Some popular VNs unfortunately do have some hentai in them though, like Fate/Stay Night and the Muv Luv series, so you have to be careful and do your research before trying one. Imo, sex scenes can really drag down what was really a pretty good story (an example being Fate/Stay Night), not just because they aren't normally handled very well, but they interrupt the flow of the story and really feel out of place (at least, in every case I've come across).

OELVN stands for Original English Language Visual Novel. These are mostly indie made VNs that were created by Ren'Py, a VN making program. There are a few of these on this site, as mentioned above.

There are also some great VN/RPG hybrids, which simply contain elements of visual novels in them. Sakura Taisen is a popular one, although only the 5th one has been translated to English (I played the rest using an English guide). Record of Agarest War is another example, though it's hard as hell and I don't really recommend it.