Games that emphasize emergent narrative

Missing one of my absolute favorites: Kenshi.

This here is also a great game with emergent narrative: "One Hour One Life". Each time you only have one hour of lifetime and act in a evolving multiplayer world.

Just copy pasting the first comment on steam to show what kind of stories unfold:

I was born mere seconds before my twin sister in a once prosperous town. Through the years and hardships, the townsfolk seemed to be dwindling in numbers and there were not many left. My mother, Honey Nova was the leader of our people and a strong and kind woman. She took very good care of my sister and I. She named me Yun and my twin sister Yan. Life was easy as a child, I enjoyed playing outside with my twin in the berry fields and following my mother as she worked as a gravekeeper. She was a hard working woman and was very close with her two brothers. When it came time for her to pass on, she begged to be buried next to them.

My sister and I gathered around her as she stood on her gravesite (she always put her work first, a dedicated grave keeper). We cried as we said our last goodbyes - her dying words were "I'm proud of you daughters". We took off our hats in respect and steeled our resolve to become the village's next gravekeepers. Our first order of action was to bury our mother and uncles and then to find them gravestones.

Our work was busy and fast-paced. We scoured the wilderness for headstones, built paths and plots, and even found a few wayward relatives in the wilderness that could finally be put to rest. A few years after my mother died I had my very first son. Stillborn. Too young for a grave, too old for the pain it left in my heart. I never even gave him a name. I was eventually able to conceive another son, I named him Yama. He was a quiet child, never speaking much - but seemed to intrinsically understand the world. He immediately set out and fed himself and started working. I was so proud! He was a role model for his (many) cousins. My sister was a fertile woman.

Then along came my second son... I gave him the name Yurem.

Yurem was a little more, spirited. Around the age of four is when I noticed he wasn't quite right. I retired from my job to stay home with him and hopefully instill some of my mother's values - love, respect, strength. Around the age of 14 he started acting out in the kitchen and I grew increasingly concerned. He would throw off his clothes and hide in the corner mumbling things about God and witches. I pleaded with him to put his pants back on, nothing seemed to get through to him and nothing could prepare me for the horrors about to unfold.

In the following year, Yurem snapped. He had found the body of my first born son and approached me. He screamed at me, veins popping from his neck and forehead. He said I was a witch, that I had an abortion and that I needed to be cleansed. My oldest son Yama overheard and came to my defense. It was then that we saw the knife behind Yurem's back. Yama dove in front of me, telling his brother that I wasn't a bad person. That stillborn children happen all the time. We don't have hospitals. But there was no talking Yurem down, he had finally jumped head first into the deep end. As Yurem lunged for me, Yama grabbed him and wrested him to the ground. After a long tense struggle, he finally managed to wrench the knife from Yurem's hands, but suffered several wounds in the process. Struggling for his breath, he raised the bloody knife back towards Yurem and said he will die for his actions. Yurem slunk to the ground and began sobbing hysterically.

About this time, other members of the village were alerted to the unfolding scene and rushed to the room. When they entered, all they saw was Yurem crying in a heap on the floor and Yama with a bloodied knife. I tried to explain the situation, but things started happening so fast. The leader called for the exile of Yama and all of the villagers immediately followed suit. They cursed him! The poor child that only ever tried to protect his mother. The one that held so much promise. His body turned to bones almost in an instant, unable to carry the weight of all the curses. I stared, unable to speak, at the skull of my child. All I could pictures was his bright brown eyes as he looked up at me when he was a boy.

The villagers slowly filtered out of the room one by one. It was when the last one left that I heard it, a slow, menacing chuckle. Yurem was staring at me from across the room. I screamed for help and ran out of the room. I told everyone who would listen the story of what actually happened, but nobody would listen. Yurem disappeared at some point, maybe into the wilderness, maybe into the delivery truck that frequented our village. I lived the rest of my life in fear, hoping he would never return. The only respite was the love of my gentle sister and my many nieces. As our lives neared their end, my twin sister and I made our way to our graves. Her children came one by one to tell her they loved her. I stood alone, with only one random villager running by that said RIP to me. My sister died shortly before me and I could feel death's fingers enclosing. My last words were: Curse Yurem Nova.

Do immersive sims count?

https://rawg.io/collections/extended-list-of-all-immersive-s...

The list of games you linked is very different IMO. For example the Gothic Games , you have a major choice to chose a faction but except that everything is always the same(same quests, same dialog, same NPCs).

The games listed in this article have a lot of randomness , random maps, random characters, random events, usually you can change the world and have your action be reflected, each play will be very different then the others. I like watching on YouTube talented people play this kind of games, I am not so creative/inspired to play them.

Probably The Sims series could fit the article criteria.

Personally, as a writer and game designer, I find most emergent narrative is actually simulation, and the ones that work depend on the players imagination injecting meaning into the game events. Another version is basically just social media, with game rules and a sandbox aspect. That’s cool, and it can pay off massively, but narrative just feels like a strange word for it. World of natural consequences without imposed meaning seems a better fit, although it’s a mouth full. In tabletop games, we just call them sandboxes

People wish sometimes that video game ai could keep up with a good game master - but then again, you would lose the fun of hanging out with friends in person