The Talos Principle
HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!
“The Talos Principle” is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding gaming experiences I’ve EVER had and I’ve been playing video games since the Atari 2600 days. There is a reason why “The Talos Principle” is a hit among critics and the player reviews are “Overwhelmingly Positve.” For me this is a new classic. A game that catches lightning in a bottle. One of those games that scratches an itch I didn’t even know I had.
NOTE: If you think you might get this game, I’d recommend against watching video and looking at player screenshots. They are both highly likely to contain spoilers and inadvertent puzzle hints, both minor and major. I only played the demo going into the full game and I feel the experience was better for it.
– Real player with 103.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Philosophical Puzzle Games.
My favorite game by far in 2014 (and in the last couple years, probably), was The Talos Principle. It was as if this game was specifically made for me.
The most important things for me in single player games are:
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the quality and inventiveness of the mechanics—and whether or not I can manipulate them in a meaningful way
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immersion (which usually means first-person perspective, excellent sound design, etc..),
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the writing/story
Regarding mechanics, combat-focused games are the majority in the industry—especially on PC and especially in first-person games—so those that aren’t centered on combat often must work more creatively to be interesting—games like Myst (1993) and Portal (2007). This is also true of games which have combat, but also offer non-combative methods to play through the game (stealth/sneaking, for example)—ie., Deus Ex (2000), Splinter Cell (2002), and Dishonored (2012). These are my favorite types of games—especially the latter, perhaps because the avoidance of combat adds a further complication to the mechanics of gameplay. So, I was really excited about the First Person Puzzle design of Talos when I played the demo at PAX Prime 2014. It was love at first sight in the demo booth. I had trouble getting through the last couple demo levels on my first try, but it was still extremely satisfying and fun. As I sat struggling with the connectors and fans and boxes, of the fellows from Croteam warned me the Enforcers were coming to run everyone out of the Indie Megabooth, but told me to come back the next day to finish the demo—they’d get me back where I’d left off. So I went back the next morning, finished the demo, and gushed to Croteam about how interesting I found the game and how excited I was to play it on release. I tried to explain that it reminded me of playing Deus Ex and System Shock 2. It’s hard to articulate exactly how Talos relates to these types of games, but they all give me the same kind of satisfaction upon completing an area, even if the mechanics and design are quite different—the end feeling as a player is similar, so there’s some kind of overlap in how the gameplay works on the player. And the first-person immersion helps with that. (I should note here that you can play the game in third-person and easily switch between first- and third-person. I simply prefer first.)
– Real player with 66.5 hrs in game
VR Museum Tour Grand Collection
there could be some detailed intro for each item
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Philosophical Singleplayer Games.
ATRIA-1
Charge Game Studio presents a dark Sci-Fi first-person action thriller. Challenge yourself as a space colonist on a Russian ship lost so deep in the Universe that even the strongest com ties are torn. Experience the ruthlessness of cosmos, painful past, and extraordinary phenomena unfolding aboard the ship that all mix up into horror.
You are a former prisoner and the first victim of malfunctions on the ATRIA-1 spaceship. What’s it like to wake up after a year of criostasis and single-handedly fix up the ship with hundreds of unconscious people aboard? Eliminate a series of failures not only on board, but also in your own head: memory blackouts, recollection mirages, and strange visions. And don’t forget, all ship resources are running low: movement capability, air, energy, freedom, and common sense as well.
Read More: Best Philosophical Story Rich Games.
Shape
Great art, solid first person puzzler. It’s just a bit short, but worth the price if this dev will make a longer part 2.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
poetic
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
Obversion
The game’s difficulty ramps up as you progress through the 28 levels, each of which poses unique challenges. It’s not hard to work through them, though: with mechanics that are easy to pick up on without explanation (except for controls, shown when starting the game), plenty of accessibility features (those being autojump, automove, and the undo/redo buttons) that can make it easy to traverse over obstacles, and a free hint that can be picked up at the start of every level, plenty of help is given for players to work through the rather complex nature of 3D first-person puzzlers. Observation, planning, and cleverness are key in order to reach the end of all of the puzzles made, even more so with the bonus yin-yang collectibles.
– Real player with 22.3 hrs in game
Obversion is a complex yet elegant platform puzzler. You can work your way through it without significant struggle or you can take time to ruminate on the puzzles. The difficulty does ramp up through the worlds and you may find yourself with a puzzle that requires more thought than blindly barreling forward.
The music is a special gem. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for prospective players, but what I can say is that it compliments the levels and builds on itself as you progress.
The dev put a lot of thought into movement mechanics and it seems that the puzzles have been mapped out and thoroughly thought through. I found myself stumped in one place or another until I noticed a pattern or subtle hint.
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
SOMA
I replayed this game and it hits me just as hard today as it did back when I purchased it at launch.
Plus, all the bugs I had at the launch (such as crashes during scene switches) have all been fixed.
Don’t want to say anything about the game itself in case I spoil it, but if you enjoy existential and thought provoking science fiction I would highly recommend it. The game drips with thick emotional atmosphere and the occasional cheap jump scares, but it doesn’t diminish the plot or impact.
I also love that the game (like PREY, the 2017 version) gives you several important decisions to make which ultimately do not get resolved as part of the plot; You are left to your own imagination to figure out what impact they had upon the world. That’s the sort of engaging thinking exercises I wish more games would give me.
– Real player with 28.0 hrs in game
Different than thought, different than expected and yet really good!
When I got the game, I assumed it would be a kind of bioshock that was just creepier. Yes, reading helps, at least sometimes 😊
But in this case it played absolutely no role because I didn’t miss the shooter aspect in any way. Soma is a pure adventure game from the first-person point of view.
Nevertheless, the underwater scenario is somewhat reminiscent of Bioshock but with an incredible sound experience. Everywhere it creaks and groans. The game lives from the great soundscape and you should definitely use headphones to play.
– Real player with 22.1 hrs in game
Recursive Ruin
Lose yourself in the Infinite Realms, a dying, fractal world of strange beauty and mind-bending physics that repeats eternally inward and outward. Uncover the secrets of seven unique locations filled with hidden spaces and strange denizens. Overcome the impossible and use circular logic to manipulate recursive physics and solve challenging, self-referential puzzles.
Begin an introspective search for meaning and experience a bittersweet story that cascades into the surreal. Use your unique abilities and shape the world to beat back the scourge known as Ichor, a malevolent substance eating away at the fabric of reality.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1561890/Recursive_Ruin
ASPEN： Uncanny Home
love the game the atmosphere was awsome little hard to tell most times what you need to do but it was a fun experence and i loved it so much hope yall will make more games like this in the future :)
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Aspen: Uncanny Home has a beautifully rendered environment for the player to walk around in. There environment feels oppressive and claustrophobic as you wander between locations in the house wondering where a sound came from or how a doll got into a certain position.
For a psychological horror game, this is a great environment, but what this game has in environment, it lacks in player accessibility. The game doesn’t give the player direction and leads to aimless wandering in circles around the environment tying to figure out what changed each time and using the left mouse button to zoom in on specific items that change the environment to access the next area.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
PrisonShow
The story is set in a dystopic world. Our main character is a journalist that, hate the “President” when he gives a controversial speech. She calls him an idiot and gets arrested. She is then given a chance for a better place if she can complete the contest alive. The contest is made through several stages, each stage has traps and challenges similar to ones in old platformer games. The player must memorize the patterns to complete levels. The game is hard according to testers thus we didn’t add any difficulty settings for now. In the game, some levels have timers and extra challenges. For example, if the player misses all shots, they need to restart the level.
Incel Syndrome
“disgraceful caricature of us truecels”
Read the whole demo and i gotta say im not surprised at all what I read. Its another piece to put down lonely men in their 20s for not having success with women. The game has the same narrative that most media has on incels or adult virgin men. They are all either mass shooters waiting to happen or just smelly neets in their mother’s basement, while the game attempts to sound smart with its quotes from Otto. Notice how no where in the game a woman seems irrational. Of course that can change when they release the whole game but i highly doubt they will show the ugly side of women in todays society cuz truly lonely men are the worst of our race right? Normies will never understand the lonely male which is why they will just throw all of them in the extreme category of the incel group. Congrats on the cringey ass demo cant wait for the whole game so i can shit on it and laugh more
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
Is a novel, no a game-novel, rather full novel with no relevant decisions. The following comment is therefore a review of the plot (No Spoilers).
This stuff is not for everyone, hardcore incel issues, 90% of the characters are assholes (except for Jhon, love that bastard), thick text, references to a certain goverment in Germany in the 1930´s, and so on. However, I would argue the plot is pretty well done, the conflict of the main character is real, the characters are all flesh-made weak-but-true people and one can even extract an idea or two from this philosophy-elevated 4chan rant. The backgrounds and the music are perfectly aligned with the plot and so on.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game