Real games are difficult, goes this argument: you can die in them; you can take “real” actions (i.e., shooting and loot collecting, not walking or investigating). Real game heroes are powerful and effective.
Outlandish: I wholeheartedly disagree with this take on games. I believe that a game doesn't have to be complex or even hard to be considered interesting. Different people have different views on what's considered interesting: there are people who'd prefer easier and light hearted games.
What kind of exploration, then, do the worlds of walking simulators support? Contrary to expectations, these games are rarely just about exploration. There are a few exceptions: Proteus (2013) is a joyful exploration of a shifting island purely for its own sake, and experimental games like Césure and Lumiere (both 2013) place the player in explorable abstracted spaces of light, color, and shadow (Reed 2013). But the most famous and successful walking simulators are best understood as explorations not of environment, but of character. Just as the environments in first-person shooters exist to support action-packed combat, the environments in most walking sims are designed to be platforms for understanding and empathizing with characters. In games like Dear Esther, Virginia (2016), What Remains of Edith Finch (2017), and many others, 3D game worlds come to be understood as metaphorical spaces offering windows into the minds and stories of the people within them. Sometimes this is made literal as part of the game’s fiction (as in the 2014 games Mind: Path to Thalamus and Ether One, both about entering an environmental representation of another character’s mind) but more commonly we understand this reification as(p. 126)working in the same way experimental films signify abstract meanings with concrete visuals, or the reality-bending conventions of magical realism or unreliable narrators creating layers of truth in literature.
This argument can definitely be backed by my own prior experiences. Whether it’s Gone Home or other similar games that I've played and seen–some with horror and mystery aspects–I never truly explored the environments simply for the sake of exploring my surroundings. Rather, I was always driven by a sense of curiosity to unfold the mysteries surrounding my character and the others around me.
However, there is a drawback to the maze orientation: it moves the interactor toward a single solution, toward finding the one way out.
I sort of disagree with this "single solution idea" with the maze concept, because when I imagine mazes I imagine mazes with multiple paths that lead to the exit(s) or the treasure, as there might even be multiple exits. I think the agency in mazes lies in the different challenges each player experiences as they explore various paths that leads to a way out, not necessarily bounded by the common goal of getting out of the maze or finding the treasure.