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Interestingly enough, not every game needs a lot of dialogue and long cutscenes to present captivating storytelling. Through the use of mechanics, exploration, visual cues, and player reaction, some of the most exciting stories are being told in the games themselves.
Some games awaken the player to the characters and the surroundings they create, and the game designers created environmental hints to support it. You become one with the protagonist, and the game goes from being just a story to your life.
Here are ten games to remember, which tell a story through gameplay in a perfect way.
1. Inside
Developer: Playdead
Inside is a game that introduces a dystopian world and drops the nameless boy in the middle of all the chaos, where he is forced to run for his life. Without any instructions, without any text to read, the mere action of moving opens up a story of an eerie and complex world of power, observation and defiance. The game's highly disturbing environments and the constant growth of nervousness will lead you on a journey that will be open to different interpretations but will never be seen as insufficient.
2. Papers, Please
Developer: Lucas Pope
In this game, you play as a border control officer working in a fictional totalitarian regime where your job is to check the papers of the citizens and visitors and at the same time give way to those who are legal and send back those who are illegal. The situation is not so simple as people's lives depend on your decision, your family is poor, and you are offered a bribe, and the political pressure makes it more complicated. The routine task of checking the passports with time actually turns into an intense moral crisis.
Similar to how strategic players in the real world would think at a casino game, the game of Papers, Please will extract the intuitive, focused, and gut-challenging capabilities of the player while making decisions based on facts. The casino games at www.ignitioncasino.eu need punters to rely on intuition, concentration, and have a strong stomach for high stakes hands.
3. Journey
Developer: Thatgamecompany
In Journey, the designer leaves only what is absolutely necessary. You are a robed traveler in a vast desert, moving towards a high mountain, off in the distance. Anonymity, lack of dialogues and a scarce presence of music and the occasional meeting with real anonymous players would create an emotionally charged mood. The traveler makes his or her story, and the story gets constructed according to the participant's rhythm and the way chosen by the participant.
4. Hollow Knight
Developer: Team Cherry
Hollow Knight is a 2D action game set in Hallownest, a mysterious and atmospheric world that features complex platformer elements. Although someone is talking during the game, the heart of the story actually lies in the environment of the kingdom: ancient Victorian style structures, sleeping civilizations, and enigmatic NPCs. Your multiple decisions where to go, who to fight, and what to find make a vivid and poignant image of a destitute world.
5. What Remains of Edith Finch
Developer: Giant Sparrow
Throughout the game, you will be given the opportunity to wear the shoes of a girl named Edith Finch who is on a journey to an eerie family residence. Every room displays a different family member’s death and life through the most interesting and diverse kinds of gameplay that exist. One appears as a comic book, and another as a thought seen during a mundane and monotonous job. In a smart and emotional routine, the mechanics take over the storytelling in the game.
6. Return of the Obra Dinn
Developer: Lucas Pope
This hidden object escape room game will make you assume the role of an insurance agent whose duty is to solve the destinies of every person on a missing merchant ship. Using a magical pocket watch, you transport yourself to the last moments of a crewmate's life. The review of the game is all about gathering information and making links from pieces of evidence to come up with a conclusion that makes you think that you are a real detective who is working on the puzzle of a terrible thing, though no one has ever told you the story directly.
7. Dark Souls
Developer: FromSoftware
Dark Souls is well known for being one of the hardest games to complete, but it's also been appreciated for its way of sublet storytelling. Strings of the story are hidden in the descriptions of the items, design of the land and a little chat that happens in a short time. In this case, the world itself tells its own story and only the ones who have explored every single spot and connected everything will know the real, grand, and tragic story. Of course, the story isn't the main attractor of Dark Souls for you, but you will never be able to erase it from your memory.
8. Outer Wilds
Developer: Mobius Digital
Outer Wilds is basically a dead-end question, a mystery: Why is the universe going through the same cycle repeatedly? With a spaceship and inquisitiveness, you visit planets that undergo changes and uncover hidden items that are clues. There are no fights, no traditional levels, just the process of searching and finding out the new things. Each and every secret revealed is the result of your choices, the very reason it can be counted among the most artistically, differently, and uniquely narrated stories in the realm of gaming.
