cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/16885686

Outer Wilds changed my life then Tunic changed it again

Edit: Game Recommendations by the people in the comments:

And some game recommendations by me to add on to the post:

  • Taiji
    • A 2D puzzle game where you slowly unravel how to solve each different element of the puzzles, eventually culminating in a massive puzzle gauntlet. Basically identical in concept and execution to The Witness, but still very much its own unique and fun game.
  • The Golden Idol
    • A puzzle game where each level you must examine a scene to figure out exactly what happened, eventually piecing together the full story over several levels. Don’t let the art style put you off, it’s an incredibly well done game. Most similar to Return of the Obra Dinn in concept.
  • Stories: The Path of Destinies
    • an action RPG with a branching choice-driven storyline, but not every story has a happy ending… You’ll piece together the true story over multiple playthroughs and eventually find the one true path. It wasn’t a particularly life-changing game but it was still a lot of fun and worth checking out if it sounds interesting!

Games listed in the image, for those who want a straight list instead of looking at an image:

  • Heaven’s Vault
  • Outer Wilds
  • Tunic
  • Return of the Obra Dinn
  • Chants of Sennaar

Additions from commenters on this post:

  • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    5·
    8 days ago

    Nobody ever talks about the EXTREMELY underrated game “The Forgotten City”. I went in completely blind (and on ket for the first 20 minutes, maybe go in blind but not on ket)

    What a crazy fucking experience. You’re trust into this insane, beautifully built world, and you need to learn the rules. You die a lot, and that’s okay—like in other games, you come right back from the start with the knowledge you’ve learned about the world and its Rules.

    Go play it now, person reading this comment. Don’t look at any reviews or screenshots. Just start playing it like I did, and I promise you when the game ends, you’ll wish you could wipe it from your mind and play for the first time again.

    Edit: I’m glad this got a couple upvotes. Please trust me. Go play it right now. Don’t look anything up, don’t read about it. Just play it. For some people this might have an impact: I got this advice from “Yahtzee” in the middle of a Zeropuncuation review. He didn’t elaborate—just said it’s one of his favorite games and elaborating would ruin it. My partner and I turned off the vid, did a couole bumps of K, and dove in. Incredible exigence, please just go get it and olay it yes

    • Echolynx@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I just finished TFC recently and it’s easily a top favorite of all time. Stunning art and music, great philosophy, thought out characters, and a brilliant mystery plot… it seems miraculous for it to come out of a such a small, dedicated team. You would think it would be an impossible endeavor.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      3·
      8 days ago

      “maybe go in blind but not on ket”

      Good advice for many games, I reckon.

      I don’t know why, but this cracked me up. Perhaps it’s because I also sometimes enjoy gaming while intoxicated, and thus I know that sometimes it adds to the experience, and sometimes it just makes things harder for myself (not tried gaming on ket though. I’m weirdly impressed, because I can’t imagine it)

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        Thank you for your sweet words! Yeah the game thrusts you into a crazy situation and then a new world with special Rules. The ket helped me feel extremely confused and alone for the first part, which honestly is what the game intends. Then it wore off a half hour later snd when I came to my bearings, I was insanely interested in leaning about the fuckin amazing world they created. Please check it out, it’s tied with The Hex for “games I went into completely blind and the my blew me away holy dicks”.

        If you’ve got a couple bumps of ket on hand tho, the first half hour of The Forgotten City is like MADE FOR THAT hahaha

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        Also yeah specifically ket made it so much more confusing and alien, which is what you’re meant to feel. I don’t regret 20-30 minutes of ket confusion because nmdnnnfn fun, but I was able to figure The Place and The Rules out much more easily when I came back a half hour later hahaha

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.netEnglish
    4·
    9 days ago

    Noita is quite possibly my favorite game, and the Noita communities on discord and twitch are full of lovely people.

    One of it’s three developers is the same guy who made Baba Is You. In fact there are unused Baba Is You spells hidden in the game files.

    • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      So much this. Noita is an amazing game and after a few hundred hours, there’s still things I’ve not seen or done or really even understand.

    • PhilipTheBucket@quokk.auEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      I just started playing Noita recently… it’s an absolute banger. It’s solid gold. Creeping into the magical temple in the darkness is some of the most scared I have been in a video game I think in my entire life.

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
    3·
    9 days ago

    Have people already forgotten about Blue Prince? Should be near the top of the list in my opinion. While it does have some “traditional” roguelite meta progression the absolute lions share of the progress in that game is based on knowledge.

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      I enjoyed exploring the mansion. Solved a lot of the major puzzles, but the monotony of trying to put all the pieces together in on one day made me quit playing.

      • Whitebrow@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        Gets a lot easier down the road when you upgrade or get multiple copies of your blueprints and have the modifiers for which type rooms would appear more often

        Also helps to know what the requirements are to spawn certain rooms, makes it a lot more likely to get what you’re aiming for

        It is a bit rough early on I admit

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
          1·
          8 days ago

          For me i found the curve of RNG pretty smooth honestly, because while yes early on you are at the mercy of what you pull you also have so many different things to investigate at once that you’re always making progress on something every run - even though not always on the thing you intended to when setting out. And late game you’re afforded so much RNG control that it really isn’t all that bad.

          • Poik@pawb.socialEnglish
            1·
            8 days ago

            It took me twenty in game days to be offered :::small spoiler the foundation ::: after ::: medium spoiler repelling it after putting it outside with the monk blessing :::… I would agree with you, but I have really bad RNG. It needs a pity system of some sort… Even the later upgrades don’t cut it. ::: small spoiler I burned over twenty rerolls one day to finally get it to appear again. :::

            I know you don’t need ::: repeated spoiler the foundation ::: but that’s just to illustrate my luck.

            • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
              1·
              8 days ago

              Are you still using Sync by any chance? Heads up that that’s Reddit-style spoiler formatting and won’t display as actually spoilered on many Fediverse specific apps. Lemmy markdown for spoilers is:

              spoiler title

              spoiler text

              Yeah there are edge cases for sure and that specific example is pretty rough. It’s definitely not a perfect game even though it’s my GOTY and there are some RNG issues for sure. I just find that a lot of the people who complain about it turn out to not have taken advantage of the tools the game affords you.

              Late game spoilers

              Between Conservatory, Resilience of the Rook and dice upgrades on two separate common rooms you have enough to at least get to reclaim the crown I would say. Plus there are even more dice to be found with the shrine blessing and lab experiments if need be. Hell even the Jackhammer regularly digs up dice.

              • Poik@pawb.socialEnglish
                2·
                8 days ago

                Mostly out of laziness. I keep forgetting the spoiler markdown… I used Discord and Telegram’s spoiler format first… Also, that ended up spoilered so it didn’t tell me how to do it. ^^;;

  • RebekahWSD@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    I love Heaven’s Vault. I love finding random items and reading what people wrote on them. I especially love finding weapons because people are so overly dramatic with their weapons lol. I love finding items and things and getting more words! I should do another run.

  • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    Highfleet. Complex systems, incredible UI, requires massive amount of strategic thinking and learning how to avoid getting killed by every next threat the enemy throws at you.

  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    I’m upset that I can only play Chants of Sennaar for the first time once. Double upset because me and my fiancé played it together, arguing over the meaning of things in a loving way.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    Disco Elysium is a wild add because information can also be a hindrance in that game. There’s a ton of shit that is completely ignorable and does nothing to help solve the case or progress. In fact, it wastes time (which is a factor in the game) and can confuse you with details that throw you off the real truth.

    But that is also part of what makes it so damn good and gives reason to try everything. 😃

    • SolarBoy@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      I suppose the knowledge in this case is knowing what to ignore. Knowing more definitely makes new runs smoother

  • TheAsianDonKnots@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    I keep starting Disco Elysium but I just stop for something else shiny. I’ve done this 5-6 times now. Please give me a reason to stick with it. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played (first bookshop encounters), I just don’t know why it’s not clicking.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      It’s probably the best written game of all time. In the conversation of best game of all time. If you can relate to themes of failure, depression, addiction, being stuck in the past and unable to move on, nostalgia and so on it will be a very emotional experience. It’s affected me the most deeply out of any game I’ve ever played. It’s one of the most rewarding games in terms of clicking on wacky dialogue options - you’re never punished and almost always rewarded (same goes for failing checks).

      That being said it’s essentially just a visual novel. It’s slow, and that’s not for everyone.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      It’s one of my favourite games of all time, to the extent that I sometimes feel like I’m evangelising when trying to get people to play it. That being said, it’s okay to not click with a game.

      Sometimes I’ll play a game that I can recognise objectively nails what it’s trying to do and is a very good game, but I’m just not clicking with it. Trying to make myself push through that rarely leads to productive results; whilst persevering to try to appreciate the artistic vision is a laudable aim, we can do ourselves a disservice by continually throwing ourselves up again a wall. Darkest Dungeon is one example of that for me. I played it because it’s one of my friend’s favourite games, but it just didn’t work for me. It’s objectively excellent, but it’s just not my cup of tea, and I can’t explain why.

      Personally, Disco Elysium seized me completely before I even left the starting motel room. If you’ve only gotten to the bookshop, then you won’t have seen what I would consider to be the highlights of the game, but the last thing I’d want is for someone to push themselves to play the whole game, see those moments and come away feeling “meh”. Whilst I want everyone to love the game as much as I do, that outcome would feel worse than someone never playing it through in the first place.

      It’s okay to just shrug and say “I wish I could experience what everyone else loves so much, but for some reason, I don’t click with the game — I don’t know why”. You don’t need to be able to justify your experience for it to be valid. Sometimes in our quest to experience and understand “objectively good” art, we end up diminishing our ability to recognise both objective and subjective value of things. Both of these angles are important aspects of the creation and experience of meaningful art — especially the subjective side, which seems to be a somewhat marginalised lens in popular discourse.