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What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
134 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hello, in the recent years I find myself willing to spend much less time and energy on games, but I do still enjoy them. Oftentimes I end up quitting a new game I tried out relatively early on, because I'm encountering some block, grind, non-optional boring side quest, empty open world, uninteresting clutter or details that I have to manage, or similar. Like, I just wanna play the actual game play, see how the story continues, and visit those areas that were designed with care. Not worry where on the map I can sell the glimbrunses I collected so I can buy a 37% stronger glarpidifice that I'll need to beat the next glutrey after which I'm allowed to continue the main story.

Sorry if this turned into some kind of a rant, but I hope it's understandable what I'm looking for and what I meant by fluff. Some games that have fulfilled this for me during the last years:

  • Stray
  • Skyrim (there's a lot of fluff you can worry about in Skyrim, but the thing is you don't have to worry about it, you can also just walk in any direction and see what situation you wind up in, at least for the first 10-20h of a playthrough, which IMO is enough time for a game anyway)
  • Life is Strange
  • Some Pokémon ROM hacks where the difficulty spikes were not too harsh

Looking forward to hear your suggestions :) Games where there is some fluff but you're allowed to just ignore it are also fine, but not having any fluff is preferred. Bonus points for anything on the Xbox game pass.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Timer? Can you elaborate a bit? I was thinking of getting it but I fucking loathe time limits in games.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago

Trying not to spoil too much, there's a timer but it doesn't really matter, you will almost never run out of time and retrying is encouraged. There's almost no time pressure in this game, and the amount of time in that timer is over 20 minutes, which should be plenty of time to do what you have to, and if not you can reset the timer and try again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

i don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this because you learn very early in the game - physically everything in the worlds goes back to square one after 22 minutes (or if you die).

you do get to keep a log of everything you learn about the worlds and story but that’s all that persists. the log is actually helpful, so follow that if you get lost.

slight spoiler:

Tap for spoileralso the 22 minute reset is not an arbitrary design choice, it’s part of the story and puzzle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh okay. Thanks for the explanation that really helps. I was envisioning something more permanent from the initial description. That didn't sound bad at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

without spoiling the details, it's a bit like groundhog day, or majoras mask.

i always encourage people to take it slow and drink in the world with ow, and that applies because of the "limit". which isn't a limit, you can play as long as you'd like. think of it more as a pomodoro timer. it's also very well signposted.