Outer Wilds changed my life then Tunic changed it again
Edit: Game Recommendations by the people in the comments:
- Disco Elysium - @[email protected]
- Kingdom Come Deliverance - @[email protected]
- Fez - @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected]
- I Was a Teenage Exocolonist - @[email protected]
- Noita - @[email protected], @[email protected], @Crow_[email protected]
- The Witness - @[email protected]
- Lingo - @dexa_[email protected]
- Bad End Theater - @[email protected]
- Celeste - @[email protected]
- Fear & Hunger - @RIP_[email protected]
- minit - @[email protected]
- The Forgotten City - @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected]
- Deathloop - @[email protected]
- The Soulsborne games - @[email protected]
- Void Stranger - @[email protected]
- Baba Is You - @[email protected]
- Roguelikes as a genre - @[email protected]
- The Long Dark - @[email protected]
- Who's Lila? - @Crow_[email protected]
- Cultist Simulator - @[email protected]
- Sorcery! - @[email protected]
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!
You know how metroidvanias gate progression by having, for example, a jump you can't make without an upgrade, or a poison area you can't survive passing through without a way to be immune to poison, and so on? That, but instead of it being an upgrade your character gets, it's knowledge. You find a clue somewhere in the game that allows you to solve a puzzle elsewhere. You were always able to take the actions needed to solve it, you just had to learn that you could.
These are games where a major portion of the gameplay involves learning about the game. In Heaven's Vault and Chants of Sennaar this manifests as learning languages. In Return of the Obra Dinn this is figuring out what happened on the ship. In Tunic and The Outer Wilds this is based around knowledge checks, or mechanics that are present from the start of the game but you only learn how to exploit them much later.
There's also Roguelikes where most of the progression is just getting better at the game and knowledge on things to do.
Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds are about unveiling a mistery.
Heaven's Vault is about deciphering an ancient lost language.