Spiritfarer
Haven Park
Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
431–440 of 452 posts
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 of…
Riven is an absolute masterpiece in visual storytelling. I remember playing it when it came out and just being blown away by it.
Riven and its predecessor Myst catapulted me into 3D modeling, graphics programming, and finally development in general. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today if those games didn't plant a seed in my mind back then.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#433Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I know what you mean there’s surprisingly few games that hit the sweet spot. The latest sackboy is probably the best one I’ve played in that you both get to play a full character (ie no boring cappy), it drops extra lives like a sieve if someone isn’t doing very well, so the adult can usually get you both through a tough level and there’s plentiful checkpoints. It does get hard towards the end game but there’s a…
Thank you, this is really good input. I evaluated the builder but haven't found anything that would hook my daughter, she gets caught in the "full freedom" thing and regresses to "I'll just go around" mode. SUper Mario 3D world looked good, but I was afraid after the Odyssey experience, I'll put that on my wishlist. I'll check sackboy, never heard that game! EDIT: I see, it's playstation only, I'm cut out of that. PC…
Super Mario 3D World is more like Sackboy so you’ll probably enjoy that, 3D world is more typical Mario levels, then Browsers Fury is more free form/open world platforming - both have you in control of full characters though.
RE Sackboy - keep an eye out Sony seem to have relented and are releasing their games on PC now so it’ll probably appear at some point.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you, this is really good input. I evaluated the builder but haven't found anything that would hook my daughter, she gets caught in the "full freedom" thing and regresses to "I'll just go around" mode. SUper Mario 3D world looked good, but I was afraid after the Odyssey experience, I'll put that on my wishlist. I'll check sackboy, never heard that game! EDIT: I see, it's playstation only, I'm cut out of that. PC…
Super Mario 3D World is more like Sackboy so you’ll probably enjoy that, 3D world is more typical Mario levels, then Browsers Fury is more free form/open world platforming - both have you in control of full characters though. RE Sackboy - keep an eye out Sony seem to have relented and are releasing their games on PC now so it’ll probably appear at some point.
I am indeed keeping an eye out (I have a wishlist that spans any platform). Especially Sackboy and Returnal seems like good candidate.
Returnal for myself, obviously ;)
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#436Ittle Dew is similar to 2d zelda. I enjoyed its quirky, meta humor. As it's typical for 2D Zelda, you need to beat enemies, but the violence is very cartoonish.
I'm sad it wasn't more popular. I really had fun with it, even though more than one person said it looked like I was playing a kids game!
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#437Check out visual novels (The visual novel database: https://vndb.org/). Nowadays I don’t play games at all besides reading visual novels. Winning against predictable “AI” in conventional games feels like an unintellectual massive waste of time. Playing against other players online is more satisfying but gets repetitive, and I don’t really get any more learnings (in terms of mental toughness) out of it after reaching a high ranking. Experiencing ingenious and emotionally impactful stories written by fellow human beings is what I’m after nowadays.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 of…
I'm actually replaying Riven right now, and at least for me personally, I find it just as new and refreshing as it was so many years ago.
Riven and its siblings (Myst, etc) are the only games that I've ever had to take down written notes to plan how to approach and solve the puzzles. Riven is more than just a play-for-fun-with-no-benefit way to spend my time; it is an intellectual exercise.
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#439Outer 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…
> It's just nearly unbelievable that the team behind Outer Wilds achieved this all through clever construction of the world they build.
One way they achieved this is they made a paper prototype they could play through quickly to make sure they got the narrative and knowledge and progression down. They also made a simple digital point and click version (using the Java library Processing, apparently) and got that rock solid before they built the rest of it. Very smart, and something people should consider if they want to make their own narrative games.
They have a whole article about it, including pictures[1]. I only wish the simple digital version could be downloaded. I'd love to play around with it now that I've beaten the game.
[1]: https://www.mobiusdigitalgames.com/news/demaking-outer-wilds
Re: Ask HN: Non-violent video games with great stories?
#440Webbed - it's fairly short, but it has both a charming story and great mechanics.