What kinds of games might you recommend with deep worldbuilding and interaction that aren’t RPGs?
I like worldbuilding and stories, and I like when they’re mixed with the interactivity of games, so RPGs seem like they should be a natural fit. Problem is, I dislike the stat-heavy, grindy progression of many RPGs.
I enjoy point & click adventures and visual novels but they’re often more limited in their interactions. What kinds of game might I be missing combining the two?
I am gonna give a recommendation out of left field a bit, and answer The Last Federation a game from the developers of Tidalis, oh and AI War.
https://arcengames.com/the-last-federation/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/273070/The_Last_Federation/?curator_clanid=32938991
You play the last surviving member of a species that used to rule the galaxy with terrifying advanced technology and weapons. Eventually your species fell and became wiped out by the other species that were being subjugated. Now there is a power vacuum and these other minor powers are battling to becoming the new empire. Your job as a lone alien with an extremely powerful ship (in a small battle, not powerful against an entire civilization of warships) is to try to balance the scales in an evolving conflict between political/military actors and create a peace that learns from the foolishness of your species ultimate mistake.
Very interesting way to make a 2d tactical space combat game and I love how your job isn’t to conquer the universe like Stellaris, your job is to push and nudge in just the right places to stop full on a galactic war.
You may enjoy Control, I personally couldn’t get past the rather uninteresting gameplay and mechanics, but the lore and snippets of story you find scattered around are something else
That’s interesting. Did you stop early on? I guess if you just know it as a basic shooter it’d be boring, but once you start incorporating powers it really expands a lot, imo.
I think you’re right, I was about to “leave” the early parts of the game, I had already unlocked some powers but not leveled them up too much, I should really try to get back to it though, despite feeling a little bored when playing, I just can’t forget the aesthetics
A tip, don’t bother leveling up melee, it’s a pretty useless power unfortunately. Throw everything into the launch ability, plus health/energy whenever you feel you need more.
I was also going to recommend Control, it’s my favorite game of all time. The world building and lore is fucking fantastic!
Arkane’s immersive sims are fantastic. Dishonored 1 and 2 and Prey (2017). Brilliant worldbuilding and interesting stories that you can interact with. I don’t think either is particularly stat heavy or grindy, but I have an extremely high tolerance for that sort of thing so maybe my perspective is skewed.
These are solid suggestions for sure! I still need to get around to the rest of the Dishonored series past the first and finish Prey.
Immersive sims I think are pretty close to what I might be wanting, but they’re unfortunately not that common, and some have RPG elements I don’t find enjoyable. The Arkane games you mention pretty much avoid them last I checked though, and I dig’em for it
Yeah, I also really enjoy immersive sims. Shame that there’s not more of them. I will mention that Dishonored 2 is somewhat hit or miss with people. I think everyone tends to agree that it’s at least decent, but how it holds up to the first game is a pretty divisive topic in my experience.
Hmm let’s see. So the Subnautica games are survival games with a lot of exploring, uncovering mysteries, finding logs, figuring out what happened to you, the alien civilization, the ecosystem, etc.
If you like Obra Dinn, recommended elsewhere in this thread, The Case of the Golden Idol has some similar energy of looking at scenes and solving who’s who and what’s what and how this person died.
Chants of Sennaar is a game where you decipher fantasy languages and learn about the peoples that speak them while progressing up a tower and solving puzzles.
Viewfinder is a surreal-perspective puzzler with lots of narration and backstory from the characters
Sable is an exploration game with puzzles to solve, in a fancifuil sci-fi desert world with towns and NPCs and crashed spaceships to explore
The old Escape Velocity trilogy (though nowadays you’ll need a classic Mac emulator to play them) are top-down ship captain games where you fly your ship around, trade, fight, do missions, usually have multiple storylines going on at once, lots of planets, ships, stations, factions, etc. The modern game Endless Sky is explicitly molded on the EV series.
Sunless Seas and its sequel Sunless Skies have some similarity to EV mechanically, but with a lovecraftian, steampunk aesthetic to the world, and lots of world-building.
Beyond Good and Evil is a third-person action game that has good plot, characters, and worldbuilding, and there are updated versions available that run on modern hardware.
Bastion is an isometric action game a little like Diablo in the combat mechanics but with no numbers for you to worry about. Explore the aftermath of a most peculiar apocalypse and discover the world that was and the peoples who lived there. Good characters and worldbuilding.
I know it technically claims to be an RPG, but Disco Elysium plays more like a visual novel really. It has none of the grindy, stat-heavy progression that seems to turn you off of traditional RPGs.
It uses the interactivity of the video game medium as an important part of its storytelling and presentation, however, and has an incredibly deep lore and very interesting world building.
You might like Shadows of Doubt. It’s a procedural generated detective game where you have to solve murders. The entire city is generated, every npc has their own routine and you can pretty much go anywhere. There’s sneaking, hacking, talking, etc.
It’s still in early access, but it’s already a lot of fun.
I think I may have it wishlisted, so I’m definitely trying to keep an eye on it. Waiting till it’s fully released so I don’t feel compelled to play it more like pseudo-QA and enjoy it less though
Thanks for the suggestion!
Some of the classic RTS games perhaps, like C&C or Starcraft? They tend to be story driven and the most stats you tend to care about are “do I have enough resources” and “do I have enough units?”
You say visual novel, I say “slay the princess”. It is real good.
Ultrakill is avery different game but it is not a rpg snd the lore gets real biblicsl later on
The world of Northern Journey looks really rich to me, it is bot a rpg. The only caveat is that it şs a gsme that I am planning to play not one that I hsve played so can’t comment on how good it is
You’ve basically just described any of the Telltale games.
Visual novels with action usually limited to QTEs.
Unfortunately company is no more, so what they have out is all there is.
The Myst series has some pretty deep world building, especially in the later games.
The STALKER series.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. You’re severely limiting yourself if RPGs are a no-go for you.
Have you explored text adventures / interactive fiction? They’re even more niche than VNs but there’s some good ones out there. I remember liking Worlds Apart back when I played it. (15+ years ago…
o___o)One of these days I should go dig back into them again.
I have, a little, and have enjoyed those I’ve played, but I’m also fond of more visual art in games, so on the text heavy front I lean towards point and click adventures and visual novels more.
However like yourself, I tend to think I should play more of them, see what they experiment with and push boundaries on.
Btw you might check out The Trackless if you like interactive fiction. It mixes some light text parsing with a 3D adventure game, making for a unique experience.
you might check out Trackless if you like interactive fiction
Thanks. I’ll check it out.
BTW, I thought of another game that might be of interest to you. Have you seen Not for Broadcast? It’s an unusual game where you play as the controller in the studio switching between multiple video feeds of actual actors presenting the news on TV. You get to make choices about what to show, what to cut, and what ads to play in your broadcast – which affects the world in an exaggerated fashion. The game timeskips to show you how things play out over the years. There’s some distractions that make it a bit more gamey than a VN but you can turn most of them off if they’re too annoying, I think.
It sounds kinda familiar, but I don’t know if I have or not. I’ll have to look into it!
I’m also bookmarking Worlds Apart to check out later, so thanks for both suggestions!
Have you played Ixion?
It’s a space-city builder that is story rich and your choices affect the gameplay and story. I normally don’t like city builders, but Ixion drew me in to the point I called off work one day to finish it.
It’s not stat heavy, it’s a one and done type of game. I really liked it.
