Honestly, I have no clue.
Though some people use them to tell stories.
There was this one japanese town I went to that had 4 houses, all were owned by identical looking characters. The town was designed so you start in the middle near a bunch of perfect peach trees and a really nice looking town complete with the Jacob's Ladder flowers, the farther you go the town starts getting decrepit, and the houses change, the first one is really nice, the second one is sort of confusing, the third is a slum on the outside but a library, and the fourth, which is in an area of town covered in weeds, garbage, spoiled turnips and dead trees, is the first house as if it had started falling apart. And you're supposed to find a swimsuit to go to an isolated patch of ocean, where a grave lies. Dig it up and there's a skeleton.
After that there's not much left to do, and the "Story" was lost on me since everything was in Japanese.