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Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
271–280 of 452 posts
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#272Hollow Knight
Although sure, it is 2D Platformer with lots of critters being killed.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#273I haven't finished it but I started playing Sable for a bit. There's no attack mechanics at all and it's fun to explore. The art style is also very nice to look at IMO.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#274Mirror's Edge might be close, it's basically a parkour game with a nice story with some restricted violence (the whole game can be done without killing anyone).
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#275Eliza, a visual novel about morality and AI, set in the near future. I usually don't play these types of games, but it was amazing.
Secondly, The Beginner's Guide. It's a first-person "walking simulator" type game with a great story.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#276Single player games fun to play around tv / switch controls : Firewatch - about 6 to 10 hours narrative walking exploring adventure with beautiful scenery. Teens and up probably. Outer wilds : astonishing space exploration game. So many mysteries and puzzles and wonders and connections to be made. Cannot recommend highly enough. Tale of two brothers. There's sadness in this game but handled very well. If you're ready…
Tacoma is similar in gameplay style to Firewatch, both amazing games.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#277Portal and Portal 2 are absolute classics which I cannot recommend highly enough. The story in the second game is fairly detailed, and the way that it tells that story through gameplay is absolutely phenomenal. Life Is Strange is a well-done adventure game. It's not quite *zero* violence in that the story takes some turns, but you're fundamentally a high schooler in a relatively normal setting, I wouldn't expect you…
Portal is an interesting case study in psychological torture. The cake (is a lie). The weighted companion cube(that you kill faster than any other test subject). The test result saying you are a horrible person and we weren't even testing for that.
It goes on and on. It wouldn't give it to kids that aren't old enough to handle complex and subtle emotional situations.
Not to say it isn't a great game, but the subtle violent atmosphere building up is a very core part of it.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Portal really count as “non-violent”? You commit murder at least once.
Portal 1/2 has a lot of non-violent levels, but a demented AI is passive-aggressively trying to murder you throughout the game. You may also end up under a laser, a press machine, an oven, at the bottom of an abyss, melt in acid or get riddled with bullets. What really is violence anyway?
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Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#279Outer Wilds. (Not to be confused with Outer Worlds which came out around the same time.) While the game is non-violent in that you never actively harm anything, your character will die, a lot, in maybe concerning ways (crushed, out of air, crashed, etc). It also has a story with themes that may be over your kids’ heads. Look up reviews to see more.
To make the confusion a bit worse, there is also a game called "Outer Wonders".
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Games really, really need something to solve this. I can't tell you the number of games I've had to start over.
More and more games nowadays have a little recap during the loading screens when you load a save file. I've even seen games that explicitly say "you haven't loaded this save in a while. Do you want a refresher?" It's a cool idea and seems to me to solve the problem of "where was I" after a break, but it hasn't caught on fully yet.
The FFXIII series did this really well. I took a year to finish FFXIII, and even with its complicated plot I was able to follow it because of the recaps that would be presented to me every time I'd start the game up. I think it's the best Final Fantasy ever made.