1 player games?

[kindkit]

Anyone want to rec me some games? They need to be playable by one person, using a phone or a PC without a controller. I'd prefer science fiction, fantasy, or horror* with a strong story component and not much need for hand-eye coordination or the ability to push a zillion keys in an exact sequence in half a second. And I'd rather pay for the game up front than have to make in-game purchases in order to play successfully.

(*For horror games, please not too gory* and not rape-y at all.)

(ETA: On reflection, "gory" was probably the wrong word. I'm fine with moderate violence [think action movies] and blood, so long as violence isn't the main point of the game. What I'd like to avoid is graphic [think horror movies] violence, and disgusting stuff like zombies.)

Thanks!!

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I hate the micro-transactions thing too!

The Return of the Obra Dinn is meant to be excellent (horror/mystery with old school pixellated design) but I couldn't play it because it's on a ship and gently rocks from side to side. It's a PC game.

Monument Valley is very pretty, gently weird SF and a single payment, for phone. No rape, no gore.

The Room and sequels are definitely horror, mostly but not entirely of the creepy atmospheric type, but sometimes I found them difficult because the screen was quite dark. Great puzzles, though. No rape or sexualised horror, hinted gore but almost nothing on-screen. For phone.

[kindkit]

Ads in "free" games are another annoyance. I've been playing Best Fiends a lot, and it's hard to accumulate enough stuff to power up without watching a bunch of ads, and some of the ads are very very not good.

Thanks for the recs!

[mllesatine]

Firewatch

I played it on my PC with a touchpad instead of a mouse. You play as a forest guard who spends the summer in a firewatch tower where shortly after he arrives strange things start to happen. It's good that he can talk on his walkie-talkie to another more experienced forest guard in another watch tower but can he really trust her?

Trailer here.

I also liked NeoCab, a text heavy sci-fi adventure where you play as a cab driver in a new city and have to solve the mystery of your disappeared friend.

[kindkit]

Those both sound awesome, thanks!

[mllesatine]

I'm also playing What remains of Edith Finch and I haven't finished it yet so I'm not 100% recommending it but it's super engaging and visually stunning and very mysterious as well. It's about a young woman who explores a house. It's not at all gory but it deals a lot with death including the deaths of very young children.

If you decide to play some games on steam I'd recommend putting them on your wishlist first and then wait for a sale (they will send you an email). A lot of games regularly go on sale. There is also the site isthereanydeal.com to check sales on a number of gaming sites and also sale history for games. For instance I paid 7,99€ instead of 19,99€ for What remains of Edith Finch and I don't think I waited more than a month for the game to go on sale.

Steam also has a recomendation feature based on your purchases and tags.

[kindkit]

Awesome, thanks again! I've looked at the Steam site, but there are so many games that I didn't really know where to start. But now I know.

[snickfic]

"Kind of creepy or horror-y, requires NO dexterity whatsoever" is exactly my favorite kind of game, so I have some recs. :D

Fallen London is a text-based browser game about the city of Victorian London, which has been brought underground by mysterious entities. It's a great mix of macabre, humor, and general steampunky goodness. I've happily played it for 10 years for free, but there's also a subscription option if you want to support them (or the microtransaction route, but like I said, I've played it for free). The worldbuilding is completely bonkers and it just keeps going and going. The downside is there's a lot of grinding. No rape, occasionally a little bit gory but played in a humorous way? It's generally very light in tone.

Kentucky Route Zero is a gorgeous, atmospheric point and click game about... capitalism? A guy with a truck is trying to make a delivery and ends up on a mysterious road that might not exist. I play it on Steam.

Oxenfree is a point-and-click game about a group of teenagers exploring an island one night and having a lot of weird experiences. There's a science fiction element that gets stronger as you go through, and you're trying to solve a mystery, so there's a little bit of puzzle-solving. Available on Steam.

The Last Door is a point-and-click game with pixel art (!), about a man in the late Victorian era who receives an alarming letter from a friend with whom he once did a dark ritual. THis is definitely the darkest of my recs, and there's some blood, but it's heavily pixelated blood. This is mostly a puzzle-solving game (and I had to cheat about once per chapter and check a walk-through), but it's got great atmosphere and I genuinely enjoyed the art. The very first chapter is the best, though, IMO - by chapter four the the worldbuilding went pretty far off the rails, and I quit playing after that. On Steam.

[kindkit]

"Kind of creepy or horror-y, requires NO dexterity whatsoever" is exactly my favorite kind of game

Yay! All your recs sound amazing. It's a shame about the worldbuilding problem in The Last Door, because otherwise it sounds right up my alley, with the Victorian setting and the dark rituals and all. I like occult horror a lot. A little while back I watched the Rusty Quill Streams playthrough of Cultist Simulator, and I was deeply disappointed that the game mechanics were so bad, because the premise was so exactly my jam that I was tempted to buy it anyway.

(BTW I'm fine with a bit of blood or not-super-graphic violence, I just want to avoid really icky stuff.)

Thanks!

[silveradept]

I haven't played much of it, but Darkest Dungeon is an unforgiving roguelike that is about eldritch horrors and the problems that come with being too close to them.

There's also Slay the Spire, which is a deck building Roguelike. Neither require twitch skills, but they both will do a lot of frustrating and aggravating while you learn how much the RNG is weighted against you.

[kindkit]

Thanks! I'm not coping brilliantly with frustration and aggravation at the moment, even in a game context, but I'll keep them in mind for when things are better.