Bugsnax. Substantially better game than I anticipated.

Classic corridor shooters fill this niche pretty well for me, if that kind of on-rails experience is what you're looking for. I recently played F.E.A.R. and it's first expansion Extraction Point (don't play any later expansions or games in the franchise though) and they're some of the best, tightest and most satisfying FPSes out there. Metro 2033 is also good for this.

If you want a no-nonsense RPG I want to put in a good word for Skald: Against the Black Priory which is very tight and linear with minimal fluff, focused on telling its story and doing a few things well rather than spreading too thin.

The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I'm getting the no play for 5 and 10 years achievements with no cheating.

OUTER WILDS!

• zero fluff. every piece of text and every setpiece is in service to the main story.
• no gating. you can go everywhere from moment one.
• no grinding. no combat at all, in fact.
• no time pressure. it may seem like it, but don't worry.
• the big mystery requires understanding the world and the story, rather than fighting a difficult battle
• it will make you cry

Live for the adventure, not the grind:

Journey (if you play one game on this list it should be this one)

Far: Lone Sails and the sequel Changing Tides

Jazzpunk

Master Reboot

Manifold Garden

Sable

Fract OSC

Chants of Sennar

The Red Strings Club

The Stanley Parable

Rime

Superliminal

Naissancee

Soul Axiom

Contrast

Baldur’s gate 3 would be my suggestion. It has difficulty settings from easy to insane. No quick time events. And the whole world was designed with care.

The combat system is very deep since it is based on DnD.

You can ignore side quests and still see the whole main game but even after 1500 hours in the game i was still finding new questlines and hidden caves to explore.

I feel exactly the same as you. I have ADHD so fluff is painful and pointless grind is just depressing. I thought the most obvious way to recommend my favourites would be to go by hours played, so here's my top four:

My Time At Portia - 594hrs Hardspace Shipbreaker - 498hrs Kingdom Come Deliverance - 370hrs Just Cause 3 - 255hrs

Special mention too for Assassin's Creed Odyssey (164hrs) because that is one well made game in almost every respect. Very little fluff, grind and you're always in control of how big a challenge you feel like facing. To my mind it makes all the other AC games look clunky and drab.

Also I hate difficulty spikes so much that whenever they happen and just seem to be there so the devs can grind a few more hours of playtime out of you for their analytics, I just reach for WeMod. Big shout out to WeMod in fact :) It's made so many games I'd abandoned fun again.

Slightly old by now, but Portal and Portal 2 remain two of the best games I've ever played. Gameplay is intuitive and linear, and doesn't require grinding or building up resources. I thought the difficulty increased appropriately as well.

Half life 2?

Metro 2033?

New doom games

Witcher 3 if you stick to the main quest line only

I usually have a good time with isometric fantasy rpgs in the vein of Baldur's Gate. They don't really have grind, the world is generally well-filled with a relatively dense story and interesting quests (denser than Skyrim at least), and if the game becomes too hard you can turn down the difficulty. Though you do need to actually be interested in the combat mechanics (which are much more complicated than e.g. in Elder Scrolls games) to really enjoy these games, IMO. One downside is that these types of games are usually really long; I've dropped a couple of them halfway because they overstayed their welcome.

Some examples:

• Baldur's Gate 3 (don't really need to have played 1+2 to enjoy this one, though they're still very good)

• Divinity: Original Sin 1+2

• Pillars of Eternity 1+2 (2 has much better combat, but the first one is pretty important to understand the world)

• Tyranny (this is a relatively short one)

• Pathfinder: Kingmaker 1+2

For more Skyrim-style games, I really enjoyed the Gothic series. I think their level of grind is about the same as Skyrim (probably a little less, but it's been a while), and if you can get past the outdated graphics of the early titles they're quite fun. Especially the dialogues, they aren't as serious as Skyrim's.

Oh, and I just remembered the old Thief games. They had pretty consistent difficulty. At least for the first two. I cannot remember if that was retained with the third because it was a little more open in terms of what you acquired in the hub world and took on missions. And we don't talk about the fourth (which was a reboot nobody wanted, not even the dev team).

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 could be what you're looking for. The main story areas are significantly easier than all the side content.

You'll want to do the side quests because how can you not play that game with cool sunglasses and a baguette on your back?

But you can easily get through the game without doing any side quests. And if you are afraid of being overpowered when you do play the side stuff, they recently added some nice controls to bump up the difficulty.

mass effect, cyberpunk, clair obscur, baldur's gate 3 all super fun and have difficulty options. Doom is pretty fun too. I've just been ripping through game pass single-player campaigns and RPGs.

If you want more Skyrim, Starfield will give you lots of that. I know people give it a hard time, but it really is just more Skyrim in space.

It sounds like you've found some games you like but are turned off of by some difficulty bottlenecks. If that's the case, considerWeMod. It's a trainer for a ton of games that allow you to "cheat" in singleplayer games(god mode, speed hacks, etc.)

I still love playing games but as I get older, my tremors get worse, making it impossible for me to get through one on my own. WeMod allows me to explore all of the game world without being stopped by something as simple as clicking on something quickly.

Death's door. Didn't think the difficulty spikes were that bad, and after doing the umbrella run, the bosses were almost easy the next playthrough

Edit: also just played Arranger and the cat quest trilogy.

I don't understand fluff in this context, what does it mean? I searched in dictionary but I'm still not sure.

Anyway:

• Spiritfarer: I don't remember so much grinding in this game, and it's a beautiful game, not too long, not too hard
• The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
• Slay the Princess, but you don't really play, you make choices. It's a masterpiece of narration. If you dislike body horror, don't play it.

I know exactly what you're talking about with the burnout and decision anxiety for new games that take hours to complete a tutorial or have paragraphs of menu text. It's not exactly the open world you're talking about, but I found Hard Space Ship Breaker to be a great alternative to that. It's got excellent lore and storytelling while still being a very simple game. Think power wash simulator, but breaking apart spaceships in a space trucker stop. It's simple, and each "day" is a hard 15 minutes, so you'll always have a stopping point in a reasonable time.

Maybe the Half-life games? You go through the game on rails, the most challenging part is the final bosses but you can skip those or use cheats.

If you haven't already tried Oblivion Remastered, that's a no brainier.

Avowed was pretty straight forward with a decent story. It's more linear than Skyrim, and sometimes I had to reload a save because I walked into a situation I wasn't ready for, but all in all, I made quick consistent progress.

I played both on Gamepass.

Also, there's no shame in turning that difficulty bar down when it's available. I'm in the same boat as you. I don't want to master the game, I just want to enjoy it.

I enjoyed the Star Wars Jedi games.

What are some ROM hacks you can recommend?

There is Mass Effect on the Game Pass.

Dragon Age, the first one.