It feels like new games are just more of the same, with no real meaning. However I recently started playing “Return of the Obra Dihn” and love open ended deduction in it. It feels like I’m actually figuring things out by myself without being handheld through it. Are there any other games that don’t coddle the player that you guys recommend?
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Chants of Sennaar - adventure/puzzle game where you need to learn the languages of the world. It’s not super difficult, but finding all the secrets was challenging.
Manifold Garden - no real story here, but a trippy 3d spatial puzzle to navigate.
Was waiting for Senaar
The witness is a really interesting puzzle game that can be had for not that much.
Or if you are looking for something more actiony then I would recommend remnant: from the ashes or remnant 2. Described as souls like with guns, but they really change up the formula I found with semi random worlds and bosses.
Antichamber really stood out to me even among other puzzle games
I was ready to replay antichamber and make it one of the few games I did every puzzle in, then the ending happened and I put it down never to pick it up again. Why the heck did they change everything up in the last 2% of the game?
I much prefer recommending lingo these days.
Superliminal is also a VERY good puzzle game that isn’t like others.
The Talos Principle - It’s pretty much purely a puzzle game with a nice dose of philosophy to drive the story along. Some of the later puzzles can get pretty difficult, and some of the optional challenges will likely take you a good while to figure out without guides.
I heard good word about Paradise Killer, in which you’re also a detective and must figure out the truth
The outer wilds is amazing. You should play it.
If you’re liking the feeling of solving a mystery with no handholding, give Shadows of Doubt a look. 1920s detective noir set in an alt-history retro cyberpunk 1970s where the Coca-Cola corporation is the president of the USA. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, but what you get is a proper hard-boiled detective story where you are in total control of how you pursue every case. The game gives you an honest to God murder board with string and sticky notes. There’s no “detective mode” bullshit where you scan for clues and then the game solves the mystery for you. It’s completely on you to find the evidence, follow leads, canvas witnesses, scrub through security footage, stake out a suspect’s apartment or place of work, and finally make an arrest (and hope like hell you didn’t finger the wrong person). This all plays out in a fully simulated city district. Every room in every building can be entered. Every NPC has a complete life; a partner (maybe), a home (usually), a job, a medical history, a shoe size, fingerprints, the works.
The voxel graphics aren’t for everyone, and there’s some areas where it’s less complete than others, but those only really stand out because of how shockingly complete the world is in so many other ways. All in all, it’s a brilliant game, and like nothing else out there.
I’ve tried it, but couldn’t really get into it. Didn’t feel like there was much deduction, but more just evidence collecting. However I didn’t play for too long and I’m planning to try again. I assume it takes same time to get invested
I love the concept but honestly I can’t solve shit. I even got a side mission once to take a picture of a vague description of a person who lived on the 4th floor of an apartment. Thankfully there was only one apartment on that floor. Unfortunately there were two people who lived there. And neither matches any of the descriptors.
And that’s the side jobs. Murder? Forget about it, I got no clue.
Any idea where I could learn?
Yeah, hit up YouTube, look for tutorials. There are some great guides to things you really should know (the game’s tutorial is minimal at best) and handy tips for crime solving. Some of this stuff you can figure out in game with some intuitive leaps, like looking for security footage, or checking sales ledgers in stores to find out who bought a murder weapon. Other stuff is a little more obscure.
The game is still early access (or only just recently left it) so you also probably ran into some bugs. There are/were some missions that just spawned wrong and couldn’t be completed.
There’s 4 puzzle games called The Room that I found really interesting. It starts with a puzzle box that opens up with each solved puzzle to eventually reveal spaces within the box that are bigger than the box itself. There’s something supernatural about these puzzle boxes and you get little clues about where it came from and who made it.
I have those. I haven’t gotten to them yet, but it is great to see someone who actually played them and enjoyed them
Awesome! Hope you enjoy them
Check out Fez if you haven’t already. Also Tunic does a great job of starting out basic & breaking precedent.
I watched a fascinating video describing Tunic, Outer Wilds, and Sekiro as knowledge based rougelikes. Where in playing the game you learn information (or enemy patterns in Sekiro’s case) that make additional playthroughs vastly different.
If you haven’t, watch some Tunic speed runs, as once you know where certain things are you can almost break the game without actually breaking it.
Forgotten City is another interesting game, that like Outer Wilds, has you piecing together a mystery. Hadn’t seen it mentioned yet.
For an older classic in the mystery/no coddling space there is the Myst series. I’ve only played the first, but they’re challenging puzzles/mystery point-and-click games.
It’s not difficult but I really enjoyed Super Liminal. Very short but fun.
The Case of the Golden Idol, can’t believe no one mentioned that…
I personally found the Inscryption scratched the same itch, albient in a different way. Its a very different game, being a sort-of narrative driven, Slay the Spire inspired card game. I won’t go into too much detail, given that spoilers, mechanical or narrative, take away a lot from the game, but I found that Inscryption did a great job of juggling a bunch of different mechanics to ensure I constantly had new tools to master, while also encouraging more lateral exploration through its plethora of secrets, and drip feeding story fragments to be peiced together as I progressed.
I quite liked the vibe, but got frustrated about the artificial progress blocks. If you’re a competent deck builder it’s pretty easy to build a deck that beats the game master, but then you get to a point where he just throws infinite enemies at you and you are forced to lose.
I get it, the gameplay requires you to lose a number of times, but it just turned me off from finishing the game.
Did you get past the part where you beat him? Things… get…
Tap for spoiler
Different.
The Long Dark
Survival game set in the cold Canadian wilderness. Most “survival” games are actually just boring crafting games but TLD is very different for me as it is mostly about exploring in the freezing cold with natural predators around to keep you on edge.
Not a puzzle game, but Noita throws you right in without any explanation or tutorial. Everything is trial and error to the point where people complain that you can’t figure things out without the wiki. Love the game though, one of the most unique games I know.
The Souls games never really held your hand either.
Hollow Knight, The Binding of Isaac and Elite Dangerous are other games I can think of that want you to figure things out.
Man. I’ve been staring at this box trying to find the words for why you should play Pathologic 2. It’s hard, especially without spoiling anything. It is a game about a surgeon named artemy burakh who is tasked by fate to save a town from a plague. It is as if Russian Literature grew legs and used them to kick you in the dick. It is emotionaly a lot. It is skillfully a lot. It is mentally a lot and you are on a time limit and it is not fair. But it has a message for you. There is a beauty to that message and if I could I would force every person on this planet to experience it.
But you will have to bleed for it. Please play it.
