I want to try and play some more games. That feels more fulfilling if you play games that you can finish and be done with.
So what are some good games that have zero (or close to zero perhaps) replayability? I’ll start with my own suggestions:
- Return of the Obra Dinn: Amazing mystery/detective game. However once you’ve played it, you basically can’t play it again as you remember the solution already and the challenge of the game is trivialized.
- Chants of Sennaar: Really great game about deciphering languages. However, once again, by playing the game once, you’ll remember the languages and the game has no challenge any more.
- Outer Wilds: Mystery adventure game. There is some replayability as there are perhaps areas that you can still explore, but largely once you figure out the mystery and complete the game, there’s not much more to experience. Some people speedrun the game though.
All of the above games I value extremely highly even though I only played them ~8-10 hours.
Do you have any others?
Antichamber - clever first person puzzle game. I played it exactly once and I loved it.
I replayed it after many years. It was fantastic, now I need to wait another many years to forget the solution.
Superliminal was cool, but I just didn’t enjoy it. It was fun for a bit, but I feel like the mechanic overstayed it’s welcome for how simple it is. There’s not very many unique ways to use it. That’s probably why Valve abandoned the idea too.
Still, it’s interesting and worth a shot. Plenty of people love it.
This goes for most of these first person puzzle games. Once you solve the puzzle its not very fun to do it again.
Portal 1 and 2, the Witness, Talos Principle 1 and 2, Manifold Garden - all worth a play through. Next on my list to try is Viewfinder.
Copying my comment from elsewhere in this thread
I was going to write anti chamber, because I never want to play it again, but %'s 30-90 of the way through the game I was itching to start over. It had me so hooked, but then the ending just took the wind out of the sails so hard. Heck maybe 10-98% of the game had me itching to replay it.
There was an old flash game called “You Only Live Once”
It’s basically a rudimentary mario-like platformer. But once you die, the game just cuts to your funeral. Each time you load up the game again, it just shows time passing as your grave slowly ages and is forgotten.
There’s a similar one called ‘One Chance’, in which you have three days to cure a disease that will otherwise kill everything. Same sorta concept.
This feels like it’d be great for a networked game where what you do gets passed onto other players so eventually someone can finish it. Souls-like or Death Stranding-like multiplayer style. The issue is it’d probably take a lot of effort to make in a way that be interesting and take long enough, and also if it can only be done once then that sucks for making money. I guess it could use procedural elements and make it replayable, but that’d probably remove some of the charm.
Could you could clear your cookies or open an incognito tab and start over?
What Remains of Edith Finch. A psychological horror game that REALLY sucks you in. As you play, there is a lot of stuff that doesn’t make any sense, but there’s a secret (disturbing) meaning behind it all.
I spent a good chunk of a Saturday going through it and there’s no need to do it again, but it was a great ride!
Also take a look at: The Suicide of Rachel Foster
It’s currently 90% off on steam at 1.79USD
Oh man - I loved WRoEF, but the bathtub segment has ensured I can never play it again.
Puzzlers usually fall into that category. If that’s up your alley you should try the Talos Principle.
Why do i keep bouncing off this game? I keep hearing it’s great and then i play a bit and get bored. I don’t get far. Is there a point i need to get to where the story opens up?
Much like the gameplay itself, the story is another puzzle. You assemble the story from bits of emails and voice recordings that you find around the place.
There’s some reading required to appreciate it, as you find the emails and the various philosophical texts around the place. If you get bored, maybe that just isn’t for you. But I’d encourage you to give it a shot and see the story as another puzzle.
Subnautica.
I found it to be one of the best games I have ever played with a fantastic story that really pulled me in. If you do decide to play it, look up nothing. As in don’t even google it because it’s a slightly older game and people spoil the entire thing.
It’s actually very granular on the grind difficulty. There’s a story only mode that removes the survival elements and leaves only the material gathering for crafting. There’s also a creative mode where you don’t even have to gather materials and can just build whatever and go wherever and see all the story bits with almost no challenge at all. You choose how you want to go at it.
For me, it wasn’t just the story, but also just randomly going out and exploring, checking things out, and finding cool (and sometimes scary) things.
It’s one of those games that I’m hoping in like 10 years or something I’ll have forgotten enough of it that if I go play it again it’ll be mostly all new again.
