No. You don't actually see your character with the exception of in-game cutscenes.

STALKER?

There were actually three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. Just saying. :-)
That's how you search for Oasis in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. And it took me quite a while to figure that the sparkling "veils" mark the way you need to go to get out of the "looped" room.

Your turn.

Well yeah, I could have asked 'Is it one of the STALKER games' and you could have said 'Yes' and then we coudl have sat here working out which one but at that point we might as well move on IMO

Annyway

I defeated the blue wall-face boss at the cliffs but couldn't work out where to go next, apparently I also need to find a boss I must have missed back in the strange orange land through the sea portal at the beach before I can get all 3 keys

Yep!

Secret of Mana?

Nope

The main quest is to collect lots of trading cards, I need 36 to unlock a gate, for some reason
Oh and after much googling I found that I couldn't open up the dungeon entrances I needed in the orange land 'under' the sea until I'd freed the worms by bashing the collars that were keeping them in place (I didn't realise they WERE worms - thought they were big, red, deflated sausage balloons!)

Is it a recent indie game? Sounds either like that or a console game, like an old NES game or a GameBoy game.

It's a resent-ish indie game that's like an old console game, yes
It's influenced by one console series in particular but I think there are some influences from others
Nope, not that one!

I just remembered to check this thread out again and when you said collecting cards I remembered a game I started to play a while ago. Is it Anodyne?

Yes, yes it is!
Zelda-like with Earthbound levels of WTF

Your go!

So I just got to this village but almost everything is frozen. So how should a find a transport here? Ah there seems to be someone alive and actually working on my transport. But I never expected it to be a submarine. So the only thing I need to do now is catch some eel and the journey can start.

Oh damn, I'm 100% sure that I've played this game but I'm so tired atm that I can't recall the name... was is Driftmoon perhaps?

Yep you are right :D Seems like it was an easy one. So did you like it? I am just at the part I described and I think it is a neat little game.

Ah, so my memory works fine despite my tiredness, good to know ;) I really enjoyed this game, it's not an epic scale RPG but it's very well done and enjoyable to play.

EDIT: new one:

OK, so I'm a guardian and my job sucks. I'm ordered to guard an entrance to a chamber where an important meeting is being held and blah, blah, blah, boring politics. But it didn't turned to be boring after all... assassins! I jumped into action killed a bad guy but then I got poisoned and paralyzed. I'm in a hospital now. It turns out that the poison is very nasty. It will mutate me, I'll get stronger because of it but eventually I may lose control over myself, so I should better find a cure.