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Time to Orbit: Unknown is an online story that is prrrobably close to wrapping up? The main character is a sociologist and the story has a lot about reconstructing what has happened and working out mysteries based on environmental clues. It's about fulfilling a destiny you were never meant to be chosen for and trying not to die to unexpected physics in the process.
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Jan 15, 2024 11:14
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 Funnily enough, that country is Australia
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Jan 15, 2024 11:22
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Well just hop on iView then.
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Jan 15, 2024 11:23
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GuavaMoment posted:Watch the season 2 episode of the children's show Bluey called 'Sleepytime'. I never made the connection to Outer Wilds but I've loved the hell out of this Bluey episode ever since I first watched it. Thoom posted:Bluey punches so far above its weight as a kids show.
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Jan 15, 2024 14:36
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Captain Splendid posted:The Forgotten City is also very good, with the same ticked boxes of time loops, exploration and plot twists . Right on cue, this is $10 on Steam right now, 60% off. That Bluey ep was very cute, I definitely get why parents love it. The broken planet sure looked like the Dark Bramble!
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Jan 15, 2024 20:24
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Bluey hits different when you live in Brisbane (Where Ludo is) and you recognise the places in the background in every episode!
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Jan 15, 2024 20:43
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I will not be watching Bluey.
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Jan 15, 2024 20:55
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Whelp - in my never-ending search for something, anything that can scratch the same itch as Outer Wilds, I'm just gonna take all the suggestions so far, see if we can get more recommendations going. In general, I'm looking for puzzles, exploration, the sense of wonder and awe, and just maybe the utter terror that this game provides. Obra Dinn - played this one. Really felt it had similar vibes of letting players play detective, by providing very gentle guidance and relying heavily on observation. Obviously quite different, but very satisfying when the mystery clicks. Case of the Golden Idol - played this one. Again more of a detective game than exploration, and it has quite a goofy look to it, but I feel the satisfying way everything fits together is even more pronounced than Obra Dinn. It is more guided, by limiting the vocabulary that you can use to combine things, but there is also something very fun about taking a snapshot in time and just taking in all the tiny little details. Some rather contrived scenarios aside, it's also got a pretty fantastic story! Forgotten City - I did not play this one; maybe it's because it reminded me of the goofy way Elder Scrolls NPCs stare right at you whenever you talk, lol. Seems like it was a former beloved mod of those games, with setting changed. From the looks of it, it seems to be more about manipulating NPCs with the time loop in mind than exploring hostile environments. Not sure if it delivers on the exploration and detective aspect I want? In Stars and Time - played this one. A little Undertale-like RPG about a hero stuck in a timeloop, and the gradual despair that comes with having to repeat things with no way out. Much more simplistic, given how it's an RPG Maker game; it's firmly more interested in telling an emotional story than any puzzle solving or exploration. I only found it because of the time loop aspect, it's a neat little game with some very inspired writing, but nothing like Outer Wilds. Subnautica - didn't play this one. I am terrified of space, and only the intrigue of Outer Wilds got me to play it anyway; I am more terrified of the open sea. This one seems to be more geared towards base building, but with similar story vibes, and a lot of fun hostile biomes. Maybe one day? Fez - didn't play this one, but I heard there's a lot of fun exploration, and some mind-blowing puzzles. I somehow stayed entirely ignorant of this ten year old game. Chants of Sennaar - tried the demo; I don't know how representative it is of the full game, but I feel like it barely required any translation puzzles yet, and I don't know how I feel about the stealth section. There are hints of some greater complexity down the road. Maybe someone who's further in the game can say more about how much the complexity and translation ramps up? Is stealth ever a bother? Not too sure about this one yet, but I would really love it to be great, just didn't get a good feel for that from the demo. Tunic - didn't play this one; visually, it reminded me of Death's Door, which was more straight action. Yet I keep hearing how amazing the puzzles are in Tunic. I'm curious, but also not sure how? La-Mulana - played this one and its sequel; nasty, hostile, sometimes hilarious, incredibly finicky, love it. It gets a bit annoying with respawning enemies and general clunkiness, and some of the more obscure puzzles suffer from bad clues (or just a weird translation), but strangely enough, I found it rewarding in a way not unlike Outer Wilds. It has the sort of puzzles that have you bust out the notebook, and that's a good sign for me. I'm also playing Void Stranger right now, but aside from puzzles that are more interconnected than you'd think, it doesn't really feel like Outer Wilds; it's a more guided experience (literally by being on a grid, and also one where you also manipulate HOW EXACTLY it's guided). Let's see, haven't gotten very far. Any ideas? I'm particularly interested in Fez and Chants of Sennaar, maybe someone's got a spoiler-free read on how close they might get to puzzley/explorey goodness.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:17
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Fez is one of my favorite games of all time. Great puzzles, fun art, and fantastic music. Have a notebook handy.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:46
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Might give a tentative rec for The Sexy Brutale, which is also about time-looping mysteries. It's much more linear than Outer Wilds though.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:51
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Some info on the ones you didn't play or didn't play a lot of. Forgotten City is indeed an old Skyrim mod that has been ported and changed to be a real game. I had a lot of fun with this game. It has the cheesy stuff you expect from an elder scrolls mod, and there's some dumb stuff, but it's overall a fun mystery game. Subnautica Is more geared towards base building, yeah, but it's in service of the story. So you can build cool bases around the world and just sit back and check stuff out, but you're going to these locations for materials and lore things that move the story along. It's both a sandbox base builder and a mystery game. Chants of Senaar gets trickier than the demo. The stealth stuff is barely a thing, like you'll get to a screen where you have to avoid something, but it's not a major part of the game. It just becomes a minor puzzle. The difficulty of the languages ramps up as the languages have different syntaxes, different ways of saying the same word or a different meaning of what an object is. I really enjoyed it and the story is great too. Tunic is an action adventure game that has a bunch of puzzles in it, and sometimes things you don't even realize are puzzles. The gist of it is that you are playing a game. Tunic is a game, but within its own canon it is a video game. Like when you pause the game to look at the map or the manual, you can see a CRT in the background. You're collecting manual pages and those pages are teaching you how to play the game and how to do things in the game. The manual is mostly written in a decipherable alphabet that you can figure out if you want, or just look it up online to get background info. But the main stuff you need to know is either in pictures or it is in English.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:56
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I did not particularly like Fez and didnt really get the hype for Tunic... Its a fine game, but I got nothing remotely Outer Wilds like from it and its ending felt a little limp, and the fairy hunting you have to do to get it was boring. Enjoyable to sequence break but a lot more like a traditional metroidvania than anything else. For games Id suggest to people who like Outer Wilds, depending on what they liked about it: Rain World - an exploration game in a very cool if unforgiving world where you uncover the backstory behind a lost civilization and eventually come to terms with death Subnautica - a chill and casual exploration game with some scary bits and lots of cool looking places to explore, plus you get to build submarines Obra Dinn - because nearly every OW player I know has loved it, it really gets that "bringing everything together in a satisfying way" but that Outer Wilds does so well. Star Control 2 / UrQuan Masters - a game where you fly around your spaceship exploring the galaxy, meeting aliens and trying to stop the pkunk from killing themselves. Not a super close match for outer wilds fans, but it is imo one of the best games of the 90s and this is an excuse to recommend it Kerbal Space Program - this is for people who really like flying spaceships in mini solar systems where velocity snd gravity matter Firewatch isnt much like most of outer wilds, but it has some of the same feelings. I cant quite describe why im suggesting it, but it feels right to do so, maybe because of the camping vibes Outer Wilds leans heavily on Elsinore - I suggest this time loop game mostly because the people who made Outer Wilds clearly loved it, since theg only really included one easter egg in the game and its a scene from Elsinore! GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 00:59
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The Roottrees Are Dead is the most recent one of these games I've played and its, way at the top of my list. Highly recommended. Its free and pretty short.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:10
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homeless snail posted:The Roottrees Are Dead is the most recent one of these games I've played and its, way at the top of my list. Highly recommended. Its free and pretty short. It's also made by Forums User Superrodan so you'll support your local game dev by playing it!
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Jan 16, 2024 01:32
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GlyphGryph posted:Rain World - an exploration game in a very cool if unforgiving world where you uncover the backstory behind a lost civilization and eventually come to terms with death This was brought up in the thread years ago I think, and it's the only game I've ever refunded on steam. It's a hard enough puzzle platformer without the enemies that can kill you, but then you have to grind to keep certain doors open, and you can't just explore, you have to run and hide in a safe place every so often. You can pretty easily get to anywhere in OW safely in a few minutes; getting somewhere new in Rain World felt like chore and a huge timesink. Has anyone else played it and loved it? I watched an LP of it, and of course it edited out all the grinding and deaths. I still didn't see the appeal. What did I miss?
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Jan 16, 2024 04:41
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I think people just liked the world and the style. I know that they added difficulty levels to Rain World that adjusts some of those elements.
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Jan 16, 2024 04:55
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The Witness is a little bit like Outer Wilds in that you "level up" with knowledge, and all puzzles you encounter are solvable if you know the rules, but it also doesn't have much of a plot or story, so it's "just" a puzzle collection on a pretty island. There are some deeper elements, but whether you care for them depends on your tolerance of pretentiousness. Also in the genre of "more puzzles, less story": Baba Is You - a Sokoban-like where you push words around to create sentences that change the rules of a levels. Some of the bonus areas are truly giant mindfucks. Lingo - kinda like The Witness, except the puzzles are word associations, and the world is made up of Minecraft-like blocks Taiji - basically The Witness in 2D, but with less pretentiousness and no Jonathan Blow The Looker a short (1-2 hours) parody of The Witness - free and pretty good ymgve fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 05:19
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Ironically, you can get pretty much anywhere in rainworld (with the exception of a few far flung corners) in a handful of minutes. You absolutely won't unless you've been playing for a long time, but you can. (I can not) Like Outer Wilds, it is primarily a knowledge acquisition game - most of the playable characters only receive a single in-game upgrade, and the rest is just about the understanding you have as a player. There isn't really much "grind" if you're playing as intended - but the base game is very very stingy about handing out knowledge, so it's easy to play it wrong and suffer for it. (This is made significantly better in the expansion, which I actually think overshoots a bit too far in the other direction, and I think it was a dumb idea not to include at least some of those improvement in the base games since newer players who could actually use it aren't gonna see it... but whatever) The intended base experience involves alternating between two play modes: - Explore: You enter a region for the first time, and explore. You will die a whole lot of times, but that doesn't matter at this point. Your goal is to learn - what kind of dangers are here? How can they be escaped and overcome? What are the new items and how do they work? Are these creatures dangerous, helpful, edible? Where are the exits and the shelters? How do the rooms connect? What unfamiliar mechanics do I need to learn better to navigate the area? You acquire little exploration rewards for other modes, and in the first half of the game you'll get guidance from a little companion dude about which exit will bring you to the next "story milestone", but mostly it's about filling out your map and understanding how the region works. Your goal is also to see a bunch of cool poo poo. Like seriously a lot of these regions and rooms are gorgeous. Like Outer Wilds, death doesn't matter too much as long as you learn something new (although that is harder than it is in Outer Wilds) - Survive: Once you've got the hang of a region, you demonstrate it by surviving for a few cycles and then working your way to the exit. In some regions this can be fairly difficult, but for most if you've done a bit of exploring it's usually pretty quick and easy, and if you found the region's flower during your exploration, you have to gently caress up pretty bad to lose progress. Optionally, you can also opt into some of the more advanced play modes: - Achievement hunting: The game has a variety of achievements, and getting any of them gives you a one time ability to teleport to any place you've been AND restore your karma to max. Several of these achievements will happen during normal play, while others really require going out of your way. Most are somewhere in between, like befriending a scavenger tribe or hunting one of each type of lizard or eating nothing but large game for several cycles. - Environmental Interaction: This is the thing that drives the real hardcore Rainworld lovers, I think. Every critter in the game has it's own AI, and most of them can be influenced in some way. You can convince scavengers to help you in fights. You can tame and befriend lizards. You can murder enemies so many times they reincarnate as something else. You can simply watch and observe, learning where different creatures make their lairs (and figuring out whether those lairs are accessible and what kind of goodies they contain), what kind of things they hunt when you're not around, what they're afraid of and how they react to different things, that sort of thing. Since every critter AI is unique, especially for the scavengers, so you never have perfect knowledge of how a new creature will behave, but you can get a good sense on what the normal range of behaviours is and what makes a given individual who they are it can be quite fun to learn about! - Lore Hunting: The game also has a lot of lore, and finding it requires finding and delivering things. This is by far the grindiest part of the game but also completely optional - I'd wager most players who have beaten it only ever unlock a handful of lore snippets, but it's also completely optional background info with no in game benefit, and is just there for the people who like that sort of thing. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 05:44
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The thing that annoys me most is that apparently if you choose easy mode they lock off some of the lore to punish you.
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Jan 16, 2024 05:46
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MikeJF posted:The thing that annoys me most is that apparently if you choose easy mode they lock off some of the lore to punish you. I'm pretty sure every single slugcat (even the "easy mode" slugcat) has unique lore, unlockable bonuses, and exclusive main story/plot bits. So technically you'll have stuff locked off no matter who you play. I would definitely recommend playing the easy mode guy ("The Monk") unless you like a challenge, though.
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Jan 16, 2024 05:48
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homeless snail posted:The Roottrees Are Dead is the most recent one of these games I've played and its, way at the top of my list. Highly recommended. Its free and pretty short. Outer Wilds is insanely good but so very different than my game in a huge number of ways. Even moreso than Obra Dinn which at least shares the concept of exploring a 3d world. If someone is looking for games like Outer Wilds I'm not sure what I'd recommend. It's just so good and so different than everything else I've played. Weirdly enough the closest thing that makes me feel like it are Mystlike games like Riven or Obduction, but even they aren't really the same because they're more contained to three dimensional exploration.
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Jan 16, 2024 08:43
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Cojawfee posted:
I picked this up on this thread's recommendation and I'm close to completing the story. I'm at the point where you start to act as interpreter between the groups. Having to remember and account for the different grammar between the tribes in order to get the right translation felt very similar to what I often have to do, as someone who works with multiple languages. Figuring out a number system as well with only contextual clues was very rewarding.
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Jan 16, 2024 09:54
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Captain Splendid posted:I picked this up on this thread's recommendation and I'm close to completing the story. Oh drat. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear, I think you just sold me on this one! I'll probably go for Fez too. Maybe Tunic, since the guidebook gimmick sounds fun. I can always refund it if I bounce off the basic gameplay as I did in Death's Door. Rain World looks utterly insane, not sure if I'm dedicated enough to mess around with it. There's also a nice LP out there; About Oliver, the astronomist who recently did a LP for Outer Wilds, is running Rain World right now. Goes on to show that people see some link between Outer Wilds and Rain World, I presume.
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Jan 16, 2024 10:53
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Outer wilds is one of the best games I’ve ever played and rain world is one of the worst.
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Jan 16, 2024 16:59
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Torquemadras posted:Maybe Tunic, since the guidebook gimmick sounds fun. I can always refund it if I bounce off the basic gameplay as I did in Death's Door. Tunic's gameplay will play a lot like Death's Door, so if you aren't interested in the Souls-very-lite combat loop, you'll probably bounce off it. But if you're willing to go the potential refund route, it was incredibly engrossing to me and the puzzle aspect was super satisfying. I think Tunic shows up on these lists not because of the gameplay style, but because putting together the world puzzles as a whole (similar to completing the knowledge of Outer Wilds or Obra Dinn) is a massively satisfying moment that you can never forget, so a replay will never give you that same satisfaction.
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Jan 16, 2024 17:18
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Tunic has an accessibility option that makes you invulnerable, if you ever get stuck on anything (or decide that you'd rather be playing a pure puzzle game)
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Jan 16, 2024 17:22
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I tried Tunic twice and bounced off both times. The puzzles seem cool, but the gameplay & exploration just aren't fun enough to hook me.
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Jan 16, 2024 17:24
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I found tunic to be fairly overrated. The combat is definitely a serious weakness and it's wild that they built a puzzle game and then decided to throw a Deaths Door esq challenge on top of it. Just a clear unforced error. The puzzles aren't wowing me. The central concept of finding the instruction book as you play is really clever, I definitely hand it that.
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Jan 16, 2024 17:48
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Poque posted:I think Tunic shows up on these lists not because of the gameplay style, but because putting together the world puzzles as a whole (similar to completing the knowledge of Outer Wilds or Obra Dinn) is a massively satisfying moment that you can never forget, so a replay will never give you that same satisfaction. Ironically, the "putting together the world puzzle" bit was where the game really feel flat for me. It had the neat reveal halfway through to open doors, but then it turned into grindy unfun fairy/environmental minutae collection for what I felt was a super lackluster payoff. It's not bad, though, but I thought it's strongest moments are based around finding hidden secrets and (ironically for the Witness haters who seem to love the game) figuring out line drawing puzzles.
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Jan 16, 2024 17:53
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Yeah Tunic has an option where you can just turn off damage and just mash attack to get to the puzzles. I got tired of the combat eventually, so I turned that on.
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Jan 16, 2024 20:54
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GlyphGryph posted:Ironically, the "putting together the world puzzle" bit was where the game really feel flat for me. It had the neat reveal halfway through to open doors, but then it turned into grindy unfun fairy/environmental minutae collection for what I felt was a super lackluster payoff. It's not bad, though, but I thought it's strongest moments are based around finding hidden secrets and (ironically for the Witness haters who seem to love the game) figuring out line drawing puzzles. This is like, exactly how I found it as well. I felt that it was very disconnected from everything that had come before it, and not a particularly fun time.
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Jan 16, 2024 21:04
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Other than Outer Wilds, my top five list of "puzzle games that i wish i could erase my memory of and experience again" is, in no particular order, Antichamber, Braid, Fez, Portal, and The Witness. The only one of those that I'd say is particularly like Outer Wilds is Fez, which has a big focus on exploration and platforming, but that's mixed in with a bunch of mind-bending puzzle-y poo poo. But it's still not really like OW; archaeology isn't the main thing you're doing in the game (understanding the history of Fez's world doesn't help you solve puzzles, though there is deciphering to be done), nor is the world as coherent, consistent, and interconnected as OW's. Basically, it's a lot more game-y and less verisimilitudinous. But there is archaeology to be done, at least, in an interesting world that you're encouraged to explore.
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Jan 16, 2024 22:41
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homeless snail posted:The Roottrees Are Dead is the most recent one of these games I've played and its, way at the top of my list. Highly recommended. Its free and pretty short. this is insanely cool so far.
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Jan 16, 2024 23:15
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DontMockMySmock posted:Other than Outer Wilds, my top five list of "puzzle games that i wish i could erase my memory of and experience again" is, in no particular order, Antichamber, Braid, Fez, Portal, and The Witness. The only one of those that I'd say is particularly like Outer Wilds is Fez I would argue The Witness is similar to Outer Wilds, but completely focused on the puzzle side of things and not the plot. It's a shame it has no story and just a lot of pretentiousness. It's a really awesome game. Also someone else mentioned La Mulana 1 and 2, and I really agree. They really scratch that itch, but they're vastly different experiences. You're looking at a difficult metroidvania with hardcore puzzle-solving (really hardcore as in "you must have a notebook next to you and write down/map out everything you learn because it will be relevant, maybe hours later"). It is incredibly satisfying to solve the puzzles though. Elman fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 09:38
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Elman posted:I would argue The Witness is similar to Outer Wilds, but completely focused on the puzzle side of things and not the plot. It's got a bit of that "exploring a cool environment" thing going on, but it feels very different to me. It's the difference between (Witness spoilers) going "oh, THAT'S why that's like that" for lore reasons, and going "oh, THAT'S why that's like that" for aesthetic/puzzle reasons. Still, strongly recommend it to anyone reading this thread. edit: vvvv  vvvv
DontMockMySmock fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 10:27
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Elman posted:I would argue The Witness is similar to Outer Wilds, but completely focused on the puzzle side of things and not the plot. It's a shame it has no story and just a lot of pretentiousness. It's a really awesome game. I think most people have played it already, but everyone with similar thoughts should try the free Steam game The Looker.
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Jan 17, 2024 10:41
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homeless snail posted:The Roottrees Are Dead is the most recent one of these games I've played and its, way at the top of my list. Highly recommended. Its free and pretty short. Thanks for that recommendation, it's been a really fun couple of evenings unraveling that one !
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Jan 17, 2024 15:58
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Bug Squash posted:I think most people have played it already, but everyone with similar thoughts should try the free Steam game The Looker. The looker is amazing.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:44
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I've started playing this game but decided to do it in VR after my first disastrous attempt at landing my ship, because there was a pretty simple mod to make it work, and it loving rules. With that said, I landed on one of the planets and found a puzzle involving logs of the ancient writing, and I recall being given a device to let me translate these but I seem to be missing any prompt to do so. I take it I should be able to translate these when I find them and that the VR mod might be causing me to miss the prompt to do so?
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Jan 20, 2024 14:12
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Yeah you’re supposed to be forced to take the device before leaving the first planet. Reading alien writing is essential if you’ve never played before :/
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Jan 20, 2024 14:22
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