The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
Seriously! I still am on the hunt for that feeling all over again in another game or watching others experience this game for the first time. It’s crazy because even the Steam description of the game is a major spoiler.
TUNIC is another game that you can only play once. I recommend it to anyone who likes elaborate puzzles
Oh man that one was good. You can get a couple endings but yeah it’s hard to really replay it I have found. I actually really did like Death’s Door if you like Tunic. It’s a lot simpler but has nice mechanics and a very dark and lovely story
Return of the Obra Dinn will scratch a similar itch
I agree and I loved Obra Dinn! Case of the Golden Idol is very similar, I recently ran across it and couldn’t stop thinking about it until I finished it.
When I first played I didn’t even know that you left the starting town. It was just strongly recommended to me by a trusted friend, and I took their word for it, and bought it without even reading the store description. It was truly the kind of wonder producing experience that old gamers don’t get often.
Lol I didn’t know anything either, and a friend of mine also strongly recommended because he wanted to talk about it so much. I tried it and stopped after like 7 min. He was IRATE. I didn’t give it a proper go until like 3 years later. He thought I was trolling him when I started playing it, and it quickly turned into one of my all-time favorites.
Rofl, yeah if it hadn’t come so highly recommend I would not have stuck it out. Because at first I was put off by the very obviously stock Unity-looking visuals, floaty feeling physics… it wasn’t a good first impression IMHO. But it made a great second, and third, and fourth impression 😉 Game just got deeper and more poetic the more I played
Completely agree! I know a lot of people say you can’t play it more than once, but it’s actually a nostalgic journey for me to replay and do all the lore pickups. Have done it several times now and it hasn’t taken away my enjoyment in the slightest.
Definitely. It feels good just moving around, checking things off your lists. 😌