Please consider WanderSong. It’s a small game and was made with so much love. Games can have a huge variety of plots and environments. But the vast majority of games, regardless of what they are about, are actually about victory. You’re a space dwarf mining for minerals, but the game is all about mastery and winning. You’re a dragon-kin with magic shouts, but every quest is about achieving a victory over a challenge. And so on.
I would say that WanderSong is not a game about victory. It’s a game about happiness. The character, the mechanics, the plot, the environments; they all serve first to explore the meaning of happiness. There’s nothing else quite like it. You can find it here.
Just want to emphasize how wonderful of a game Wandersong is. Nothing in your list makes me point and go “if they liked X, they’ll like Wandersong”, but it’s just a really good smaller-y game. Heavily story driven, with a little bit of puzzle-platforming. I have 10.4 hours of playtime in it on Steam, so including some AFK time and some post-game fucking about, it’s probably a 6-8 hour play.
How far did you get into Subnautica and what turned you off about it? I understand it’s not for everyone. It can be a little bit obtuse in the way it gates your progress behind radio transmissions, and if you don’t find the right blueprints your journey can be made much harder or easier respectively. I’ve been replaying it recently and I can see how it’d be hard to get into. One thing to note is that as you advance a lot of the annoyances of finding food, water & power to upkeep everything get eased through different technologies, so you slowly get more freedom from the grind, and the story is worth seeing to the end. In fact every new tech makes the game easier and faster and opens up the world that much more, either by making it easier to traverse long distances or go deeper, or carry more, etc. The early game is slow and frustrating in comparison.
I could cosign a bunch of suggestions already, but Outer Wilds is one of my favourite games of all time. I’ll try to explain it without any spoilers: It doesn’t gate your progress behind anything but your own curiosity and acquired knowledge. It also gives you a sense of freedom that you get from fully simulated physical movement in space. It is also deeply emotional and if you’re halfway to the end wondering, “How could they possibly stick the landing on this and end it well?” the answer is just trust, omg it’s so good. You can’t really experience it twice - it’s designed such that when you possess the right knowledge, you can finish the game extremely quickly, but also to do so you must truly understand and master the ideas you are being taught - so you can only experience it again by watching blind let’s plays. I’ve watched 4 so far and each one was a moving experience watching the person go through their own process of understanding over many, many hours.
If you like platformers, Teslagrad is a beautifully illustrated and impeccably designed metroidvania which I’ve played through many times. All the story is delivered through puppet shows rendered within the levels themselves and gorgeous collectible cards. They’ve just released a remastered version with a number of QoL changes that I’ll be playing again, and the sequel is out. I believe they’re still available in a Fanatical bundle right now.
The metroidvania that got me into the genre is actually a free game by the maker of Celeste, from many years ago. It’s called AnUntitledStory and I’ve played it through many times. Some quite hard platforming challenges but the whole aesthetic is extremely cute, and as you’d imagine from the dev of Celeste the controls are crisp and precise.
Hollow Knight is another incredible metroidvania/souls like. You play as a bug in the ruins of an ancient civilisation of bugs and it is quite haunting. Again, amazing aesthetic.
And if you want something chill instead, I’d go with Spiritfarer. You build your boat and travel the spirit world helping souls on their journey to the afterlife, except each soul is unique and has their own personal needs and closure you help them achieve before they’re ready to pass. Most importantly you can pet your cat whenever you want, which every game should have.
Wow, thank you so much for this! So much in this I wanted to see, I really appreciate the time you took!
I adore diving. I actually moved around the world for 11 months to teach diving after my PADI IDC. So you’d think Subnautica would be tailor-made for me.
It just didn’t really explain what I needed to do. I don’t need my hand held in games, but by the time I figured out what I needed, the realization was a whole lot of upkeep and ‘menial tasks’ to progress. If that makes sense. I couldn’t pass the early game to get to the story and progress. This is all on me, but I never enjoyed Minecraft, so that whole genre is maybe not for me. I wish I did, it looks so lovely.
Abzu though, that was amazing!
I’ve got Outer Wilds downloading right now. I keep reading and seeing comments and posts telling me how much I’ll love it, so I have to have faith (like Dutch kept telling me -_-), thanks for reminding me about this one. It seems quirky and to have its own style, I think I’ll like this!
(P.s. is Spiritfarer harrowingly sad? I see a lot that this game needs a box of tissues and a teddy bear nearby when playing through, that’s why I haven’t jumped to it yet!)
Outer Wilds is a masterpiece, but based on this comment about Subnautica, be warned that it also doesn’t make clear what you’re supposed to do. Unlike Subnautica though, there are no menial tasks to keep up with once you figure it out.
Just don’t be afraid to check a walkthrough to give you a boost if you need it (but also don’t rely on one, the joy of exploration and discovery is the best part!).
I mean, fair enough. If you don’t like grind then Subnautica isn’t going to be for you. A lot of these grindy games I use as podcast games - I listen to stuff while I’m doing the boring bits, then when shit gets real I pause the sound to focus.
Again, you can get past some of the grind, but if you don’t enjoy the process to get to that point it’s maybe not worth it. Even once the worst grind is gone… I mean there’s still grind. The actual story is pretty fascinating, it’s all about conservation and responsible stewardship and working with the ecosystem and not against it. Oh and also you’re virtually a slave in a hypercapitalist company town structure.
Anyway, I think Spiritfarer is very bittersweet, although I would consider myself very at peace with the concept of death, so I understand others may feel differently. If you’re a big crier it will definitely do that for you. A big theme is letting people go when it’s their time. I played it on a week when I was particularly sick and didn’t have the energy to do something more active, and it was the perfect thing for that time for me. I personally think it’s very wholesome and healing in many ways. The ambience is very soothing, you spend time tending your gardens on the ship and keeping everybody happy whilst you travel. One of the things they sometimes need is hugs. It never feels like a grind imho, but again I’m happy with minecrafty/subnautica type games. I have to admit I haven’t finished it, it was very much an experience limited to that time I was sick, which is weird. I’ll have to try it again.
Ooh enjoy! Outer Wilds is one of my favourite things, ever.
Counter-point to ConstableJelly (they’re not wrong, play however you enjoy, this is just my opinion) - DO avoid guides even when stuck.
The whole game is about figuring things out, looking at the info you have from different angles, or heading out in brand new directions to see if any new discoveries will tie in with where you’re stuck. Looking something up will rob you of that discovery and maybe other ones that tie in to it.
There’s a great subreddit for the game that is set up with very specific rules to avoid spoilers. You can ask questions there, and people will expertly nudge you in the right direction based on what you’ve already discovered and figured out. There are communities here also but I don’t think they’re set up in quite the same way yet (especially as spoiler tags are not reliable in Lemmy yet across different apps etc)
You can definitely do it without resorting to any of the above, but if you get so stuck you’re going to drop the game, I’d say ask in that subreddit. Or, feel free to DM me! I’ll help you without ruining anything as best as I can.
I finished Assassin’s Creed Valhalla recently and it drove me up the wall all the time. I mean well over 100 h playtime.
And the game would sit there after every start and wait for me to “press any key”. And only after a keypress it would start checking for Add-ons which took ages. Why couldn’t it have done that already?
Plus the intro videos I had to replace with empty files because no-skip.
I’m okay with it, as long as it doesn’t turn into the cesspool the same community “on the other site” was.
I guess harsh criticism of particular games are better served on their own communities instead of badmouthing them gratuitously for non-players.
As disclaimer for personal bias, I play Genshin and PGR (and I’m satisfied with both), and I’m not fond of games like Nikke and Blue Archive. Even then, I’d rather never shit on Nikke and BA, and have more nuanced discussions.
Both for gameplay and character designs. I don’t know much about the plot or pull rates, so I’m not judging on that. BA’s community also doesn’t have the best image from the outside in regards to "character appeal preferences ", but I try to limit myself to what I can judge based on my own personal experience only.
When I Gacha, I prefer to find the specific community surrounding it.
I suggest starting the community you want to see and posting your accomplishments as you go. This is coming from someone who misses their mobile game community.
It’s too bad the review copies were delayed, but I’m glad reviewers are taking their time with it. If this level of positivity continues I feel like BG3 will be a serious GOTY contender
They’re all big companies. They’re all shitty somewhere. If you want to play something just play it. I find the worst of them are also making games that don’t interest me in the slightest, but even Activision put out the Tony Hawks Remaster and EA put out It Takes Two so I was all over them.
If you spend all your time worrying about shitty companies, you’ll be living in a cave eating moss. It’s OK to lament the state of things and then do them anyway. It’s on the workers to unionise and shaft the management back, because without them there’s no product and no money.
It is very similar, but you don’t need to know anything to start playing. Just a basic understanding of turn based RPGs. The rest will come with playing the intro tutorials.
Nah, games should be fun and stressing over what happens behind the scenes distracts from that. Do I know Acti-Blizz have major issues, yes, does it stop Diablo 4 being fun, nope.
The only notable thing about the game is that it’s extremely pretty. So I say start it again, see how much this prettiness matters to you on this new TV, and then decide whether to continue.
Pretty sure the PS5 drive can’t actually read CDs, so that’s the PS1 library and most early PS2 games gone right way, even though they can be emulated pretty easily. The PS3 should be possible, but they haven’t bothered when you can play it streaming.
I guess the awkward truth here is that there’s no real business need to have it. Most of us into retro games will have a way to play them already, either via PC emulation or old consoles. And if you show a Gen Z kid some of the horrors we used to enjoy on PS1 (although I maintain Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf is an underrated classic), they’d run screaming back to Fortnite and CoD.
It would be nice to have it, but nobody is not buying a PS5 because they can’t run Terracon. They’re still selling them as fast as they can make them, even with the economy in shambles.
I remember when Sony announced they were stopping production on backward compatible PS3s. I ran out and got one, because I still had PS2 games I wanted to finish. The BC PS3s were more expensive than their non-BC counterparts. And the PS3 was already an expensive machine.
I think I played 2 or 3 PS2 games on it. And never with consistency. Plus, these older games looked terrible on modern HD screens. And frankly, I was more interested in playing current gen titles. For example, I got a PS5 so I could play FF16. Not so I could keep playing FF15 or FF13. It really ended up being a real waste of money to buy that more expensive PS3.
And many of the games eventually re-released on other platforms: PSP/Vita, Steam, Switch, later-gen consoles, etc. I play a lot of JRPGs, so that helps.
Backwards compatibility is something I really don’t care about. It’d be nice, I guess. But I still have my PS3 and PS4. If there’s something I really want to play, I can boot those up. Or just see if the game is available on Steam.
I do software development for work, so the game resonates with me intensely. Doing math to optimize input/output and refactor systems to obtain best capacity compared to the available technology. It’s great.
Satisfactory feels a lot more like other open world games. Not that it’s actually comparable to skyrim, but it is kinda shifted in that direction. There is value to go exploring and find different things or useful areas which can help you progress. Satisfactory has a huge map with a to of beautiful places to explore and build on, but the map is not random generated, so the replayability is a bit limited for the base game.
Satisfactory is a lot slower on progress and never reaches the “endgame” of Factorio, i.e. you won’t get a swarm of drones and slap down huge blueprints to harvest whole areas and the factory will probably not be as “refined” and structured. You get small blueprints so you can easily make parts of production lines.
An obvious point is also that Satisfactory is 3D. So you have a whole extra dimension to use for production lines, and the game features several components which allows you to make use of walls, ceilings and additional platform levels to refine your lines.
But even though the game has very different visuals and several different aspects, they hit that same sense of satisfaction with constructing systems with maximum output and see things work. I highly recommend trying it, although you might want to consider waiting for the full release (which is TBA, but speculated to be “soon”).
The Blaster Master Zero series is a trip down memory lane and a fun romp. Excellent nostalgia feels if you ever played the original.
The horizon games have been good for both storytelling and gameplay.
Firewatch, while much too short, tells a moving story about the isolation that loss brings.
The Stanley Parable is one giant Easter egg with I finite replayability.
I’m a huge fan of “sky children of light” when I’m stressed out.
The free just cause games on PlayStation are kinda meditative in their own way, allowing you to fly across the countryside in a wingsuit.
I’ve also played BOTW, but am fairly disappointed in the lack of challenge. TOTK however, I am looking forward to.
Finally, Control. It has sweet gameplay, a cool story, a creepy as hell atmosphere, and links all the Remedy games together, all of which is love for the same reasons as I love Control. Of all the games I am looking forward to, Remedy is giving me the most antici…
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