Hey all, I’m on the hunt for games that really suck you into their world, the kind where you look up and suddenly three hours have gone by.
Games I’ve loved and couldn’t put down:
- Plague Tale
- Horizon
- Subnautica
- Mass Effect
- Expedition 33
- Homeworld
Doesn’t matter the gente, as long as it’s got that vibe where you just exist in the atmosphere and forget about everything else.
What are your go-to games when you want to disappear into another world? Bonus appreciation if it’s something underrated or off the beaten path.
Edit: Thank you all. I will definitely keep this thread bookmarked. You all dwarved what I found on Reddit ir any other platform! Well done!
No Man’s Sky. Take advantage of the custom game rules to tweak to your preferred gameplay. Personally, I skip all the tutorial stuff and boost resources as I like flying around/upgrading my ship more than the core gameplay loop.
If you’re willing to hunt for a 2009 oldie, I have a guilty love for The Saboteur.
GTA/Assassin’s creed esque where you play a race car driving Irishman helping the resistance in WWII, Nazi occupied Paris.
Gameplay can be repetitive, but free roaming Paris was a lot of fun. Plus, when I finally travelled to Paris IRL, I had a few “I know this place!” moments that felt really cool as a first-time visitor.
Dishonored and BioShock come to mind.
They’ve likely already been mentioned.
Bioshock… couldn’t stop until all three were binge-played.
Cyberpunk 2077. It had a lot to build on with the IP being decades old with a lot of worldbuilding done already. Such a huge, intricate, and alive world. My first playthrough took 200 hours just from exploration, and there’s a TON i never got to. Over 1k hours later, there’s still connections i haven’t made, secrets i haven’t found. I honestly haven’t found a more immersive game for me.
Runner up: Red Dead Redemption 2. Again, the world is so alive and detailed that my immersion goes off the charts. Another 200hr first playthrough. NPCs have lives and schedules, the voice acting is fantastic, and the overall world building is immaculate. Tiny details that 0.01% of players would ever notice are carefully constructed (Lemat cartridges, looking at you). Wildlife interacts realistically with other wildlife and other stimuli. Cats in cities will search for, find, and hunt mice. I never fast traveled because just riding across the landscape and looking around was a better time. Could not recommend more highly, but watching or playing the first one first is advised.
Disco Elysium. I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned yet. There was also legal drama with the original creators, so feel free to pirate. Not that Lemmy needs convincing of it.
Outer Wilds
Space puzzle exploration game. It’s the kind of game where it’s best to go in as blind as possible. I will say no more.
I tried it. I think I’m not smart enough for the puzzles. I go to a place and don’t seem to be able to complete much. It says there’s something left, and I can’t find it. It gets frustrating. I still have it installed because I love the atmosphere so much.
One thing to be aware of is that you can’t just go to a location and “complete it”… It’s not like normal video games where you just grind until there’s nothing left to do in a specific spot. Many times you don’t have the necessary knowledge to complete a location, and you must go and explore elsewhere to learn how to proceed in your previous locations.
If you want a more tailored nudge to proceed, feel free to DM me with what you have discovered, and preferably a screenshot of your computer in “Rumor mode”
The game is very nonlinear. If you can’t solve a puzzle in one place, you should go to another. Some puzzles require hints from elsewhere.
I had to look up a few solutions when I was done with exploration. That was a little bit unsatisfying but it didn’t ruin the game for me.
I’ve got this problem too. I played a bit more than you, but now I’m stuck and don’t know how to proceed. It’s more frustrating than engaging. I feel like I already looked for every hint the game provides.
Also I never experienced the much hyped revelations or what everyone talks about.
The revelations come later… The early game is mostly driven by an “oh that looks cool” exploration. You start seeing some puzzle pieces. Then as you explore for the sake of exploring, you find a few patterns but can’t see how they interact. This is where the game starts to get frustrating, you don’t know where to go, and the knowledge you have gained doesn’t make enough sense to be able to start piecing things together, this ms where most people get stuck. But if you persevere, then at some point you will discover a piece that connects some of the patterns you found before, and suddenly you can start exploring in a more focused fashion. Only well into this section you start experiencing the revelations.
If you want a more tailored nudge to proceed, feel free to DM me with what you have discovered, and preferably a screenshot of your computer in “Rumor mode”
Thanks, I’ll need to get back to the games some time.
I could check a guide. But am too stubborn to do that. Checking a guide feels like falling. 😄
I bought it two years ago, still haven’t played past the first little cave thing. I suppose I’ll find my way back to it this winter.
I bought it specifically because its soundtrack was absolutely amazing (not knowing anything about the game itself).
Unfortunately, it did not play as well as it sounded 😿
Noita.
Just be prepared to die. A lot.
Firewatch was a good game for me to get immersed in for an evening. It involves hiking around an isolated open world park. It follows a linear story which is pretty interesting, but I think there’s an option to wander freely after completion
Fallout NV
While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea there’s something about playing NV with radio NV running and running around the emptier parts of the map, then I get jumped by a bunch Romaboo larpers.
Arcanum
While it’s immesian is a bit different it’s music and story telling can drag me in easily.
Outer wilds
Death is inevitable, so you may as well enjoy some music with your pals.
There were so many moments where I got lost in the environmental details. One of the more memorable ones was finding an office environment where almost everybody is emailing each other about how much they hate a guy because he’s too hardworking and overzealous.
When you actually find that guy’s desk, it’s obvious that he’s been given no resources to do his job… and that he’s only trying to contribute any way he can. Even worse, he’s got a whiteboard that if you flip it around, you find that it’s got mathematical equations on it, hinting that he might have been a lot smarter than people gave him credit for.
EDIT:spelling
I have had this on my steam wishlist for a while. I’ll definitely pick it up the next time I buy a game :)
I’ve been playing Pal World this past week and been having a lot of fun exploring and discovering the world. The atmosphere is quite cartoony but you can also have a pet monkey with a gun go into battle with you. I’ve spent hours at a time just wandering the lands discovering new areas and also get lost in the base building aspect of the game.
Kingdom Come Deliverance.
Amazingly beautiful and realistic world with incredible detail. The forests, pastures, meadows and towns are incredible to just walk around in and lose yourself in the atmosphere.
Also the game(s) are very, very, good.
Medieval realistic role playing. You stay as a peasant who can’t pretty much do anything. Fight, sneak, or even read. You have to learn everything and you decide what you want to learn by doing it untill you get better.
Medieval realistic role playing
“Realistic” is used very favorably in this case… I get what you mean: Henry’s story feels plausible enough to suck you in and I don’t mean this as a critique. But it is in no way realistic: Henry starts as a smiths son and is pretty useless at everything but he becomes a proficient fighter in the story and as far as I remember pretty influential. This is extremely unrealistic for his timeline because social mobility in the late middle ages was very much on existent.
To be fair there are some examples from the middle ages where common people achieve great power in times of trouble.
Elite: Dangerous consumed a significant part of my life for quite some time, especially when I discovered VR.
I became one with my ships. Bounty hunting, exploration, and mining were my main staples.
Yeah same with me, I’d get lost for hours in that game just smuggling items from system to system. I’m not even sure if I ever figured out if there’s an actual story in the game, the flying in space was all I needed.
There’s this game that’s actually really short, around two hours gameplay, but in that time they manage to absorve you into a world that after a few years I still remember fondly. The experience is really unique, just like the gameplay.
I am actually surprised it is not already mentioned.
The price is well worth it. And in general, games by that company, annapurna are great examples of atmospheric games.
Stray for instance, it is more classical in the approach to the game style but it is amazing ( you play as a cat in a postapocaliptic world).
And talking of those games another that comes to mind as really absorving is Firewatch. Less action, more adventure style but so pretty.
Journey is brilliant. Thank you for the reminder. A second run might be in order. It’s short enough.
Stray… I probably should love cats for that. I’ll take another look.
Firewatch. I’ve seen it a few times. Should check it out again. At every look it feels like it’ll bore me. Might be wrong.
Stray was another case of the marketing made it look like an entirely different game (open world platformer with puzzle elements) when it’s really an intentionally linear puzzle game with no platforming
Your post made mine obsolete. Will check out firewatch some day.
The Witcher 3.
Awesome writing, really beautiful rendering, really good main history and side quests.
Watch one of the thousands of ‘how to start the Witcher 3’ to avoid common mistakes at the beginning of the game. And be ready for plenty of hours in The Continent.
(Oh, and forget the Netflix series, the games follow a completely different canon)
