Check out `A Short Hike` and `Alba`.
Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
391–400 of 452 posts
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#392Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#393Bit late but:
To The Moon (and the subsequent A Bird Story, Finding Paradise, and Imposter Factory): Wonderful series of games that focuses on narrative. Amazing soundtrack and good recurring cast of characters.
Firewatch: Beautiful game set in the wilderness with pretty much your only interactions being over the radio with your boss who you never meet face to face. Focuses on the relationship with your boss and the theme of escapism.
Heaven's Vault: Great game that focuses on exploration and discovery. It shines with the small, focused stories you'll run into on different planets while piecing together an ancient language and the mysteries of the universe.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#394I find most of these are for older kids maybe, Outer Wilds and Witness may be too much for younger kids. One game my kids became entranced watching me play is The Last Guardian.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disco Elysium is not exactly devoid of violence and aggression, even if they aren't central mechanics. It's great storytelling but with some mature themes. Honestly, I thought I'd have an easier time coming up with some other suggestions to throw in but there's usually some ass-kicking in my favorite story driven games. The Oni platformer games are a little bit fight-centric but not really violent or cruel, and the s…
Oni? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oni_(video_game) Or Ori? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ori_and_the_Blind_Forest
I meant Ori, yeah! Sorry.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#396I'm struggling myself to find videogames for my daughter (almost 4). She played Kirby star allies and Yoshi's Crafted World (both finished now), but after that I've been struggling to find any meaningful game that had the right difficulty, right theme and didn't have the requirement of being able to read. I avoid all tablet games because there is too much garbage. Anyway, depending on the age of your kids, those two…
Here's some unrequested parenting advice, but almost-4 year olds do not need video games in their lives.
OR, you could play videogames and have great bonding moments.
The hand-eye coordination my daughter has is incredible too, her creativity is incredible. A lot of in-the-park games are a consequence of what we play: one time she grabbed a short stick (a wand) and a huge stick (I assume a two handed sword) and invited me to go around and defeat monsters and bosses. Never played a game like that in the park with her, she came up with it. We actually had a great time.
Use videogames like any other toy: with a critical eye at all time, with moderation at all time.
EDIT: Sorry I'm very bitter on this. People keep treating videogames like a special case, but it's like any other toy. TV included. Just keep careful eye on your child and constantly re-evaluate how toys are impacting them. It's easy to see how more than 1 hour TV makes your child grumpy and bored, however it's also easy to see how some movies stimulate her will to dance and sing (Moana, Frozen), which in turn promotes playing with her little brother.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#397I wrote [1] targeting some younger audiences, but here's some more "mature" (teens and up, I'd wager) ones for you, OP:
Tacoma: I saw this mentioned but it's absolutely worth a shot. The gameplay is distinctly well built and the story is superb. Tacoma is best experienced with one person playing the game and a few others trying to figure out what's going on silently, or collaboratively.
Gone Home: From the same people that did Tacoma, a story that explores what happens when you have to unravel a few family secrets you didn't realize you had to conquer.
Oxenfree: Something is wrong, and the story doesn't let on what exactly. I had to play this
2067: Read Only Memories. Point and click adventure game that covers some extremely mature topics in an approachable way. Racism, classism, the pressure of being a minority, all these come up. You're a writer turned unwitting detective when a rogue AI breaks into your house and begs you to help find the killer.
Opus Magnum, and any of the other Zaktronics games: They're absolutely nerdsniping, with deep techincal lore that makes you think long and hard about an answer. Opus Magnum is absolutely a game that you will spend some time trying to optimize down to a tee.
Orwell: You, civilian, have been tasked with assisting the training of an online learning AI to help categorize and assist in law enforcement. How much free will you have in that process... well, that's not for you to decide. (n.b. I had to set this one down for a while; There came a time where I felt like I was fighting the central conceit of the game before I let it go)
Snakeybus: you are bus. you collect passengers. More deliveries of passengers = longer bus. You see where this is going. The physics engine is... part of the charm.
Snapshot: What if cameras could transpose a whole world? Side scrolling platformer, but where you can snag a snapshot of the world to grab items out later.
Slipstream: A classic OutRun Arcade title, thrown in since it's cheap and a great mind-melter. Unlike OutRun, however, it doesn't make things unfair... Any failures are your fault, not because the game wanted to screw you over.
Later Alligator: A slightly paranoid alligator is worried someone's taken out a hit on him. The question: Who?
Eversion: Mario clone but with the warning that not all is right. Cute turns to creepy.
VVVVVV: vvvvvv
Night In The Woods: There's no way around recommending this game, it's just so well written. Not a lot of action but some definitely mature conversations about accepting growing up.
Verlet Swing: Vaporwave speedrunning game where you catapult yourself off things by leveraging momentum.
The Stanley Parable: This is the story of a man named Stanley. The narrator of this story is not Stanley.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#398Outer 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.
It's hard for me to express just how incredibly brilliant this game is and how beautiful it is to play. What's incredible to me is that the successfully make a game where all of the progress is through information gained while exploring, there are absolutely zero artificial barrier to progress. Once you know the world, you can finish in one play through. Most games cheat regarding exploration by tying exploration to…
Riven is another brilliant game that shares the structure of using information about the world as both the purpose and the means to exploration.
Outer Wilds excels with creative planets full of adventure, while Riven is a slow paced affair that is impressively dedicated to creating an intricate world wordlessly.
Without written aids ala the logs in Outer Wilds, gleaning insights from disparate information in Riven often means scrawling down notes & looking for patterns.
While I highly reccomend Riven for fans of the structure of Outer Wilds, Riven is now a dated game that operates at a glacial pace. I played it recently at a time that I was taking a break from more modern games and I think that did wonders for helping me adjust to its conventions & pace. If you give it a shot know that it'll demand your patience before it'll absorb you into its world.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#399I love video games, but consider reading books to you children. Much better, deeper stories and less violence!
Reading is great, but there’s nothing wrong with kids playing a reasonable amount of video games — numerous studies indicate they aid in cognitive development as well.
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Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is so violent there is a game mechanic that resurrects all the bad guys you have killed, just so the game doesn’t have to keep track of so much state.
it has nothing to do with saving state and everything to do with the fact the world would be boring if it stayed empty meaning it was a design decision not a technical one
https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Moon
> Mechanically, Blood Moons are a way to refresh Breath of the Wild's long-term memory and appear to purge the game's cache. Consequently, data stored within the game's long-term memory is reset, including the presence or lack of Materials and Weapons.