I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 (albeit on Tactician) recently, and I wanted to share the experience with my non-gaming spouse, but there is way too much “gaming” stuff in it. This is things like gear management, stat management, half a million rules and conditions for any action. So while the story/branching dialog seems to capture her attention the other stuff takes up so much time that she doesn’t really care for it.

For context she’s not anti-gaming: she was obsessed with animal crossing, and enjoys overcooked, and we played Mario odyssey together, but she’s never played anything with a real story, even though she has enjoyed looking over my shoulder watching the story portion of narrative games I’ve played.

Can anyone suggest games that you can throw people into that don’t require video game intuiting, but also have good narratives?

Basically, narrative games with 0 skill floor.

I was thinking maybe things like Walking Dead or Detroit: Become Human, but those don’t really have “gameplay” they’re pure story. Maybe that’s the direction to go but I’m wondering there are alternatives.

Edit: Also played Portal together

  • TheMillinerBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Phoenix Wright games. It’s literally mostly just a visual novel, but with puzzle solving, “find the thing”, memorisation of information and deductions.

    Superliminal. Another puzzle game, but all about visual perspective, rather than inventory items and such.

    Night in the Woods. A completely story-based game where most of the gameplay is just exploration of the town of Possum Springs and making decisions on what do do and when.

    Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. A game literally about collecting and telling stories. It takes some deductions to figure out exactly what to do, but once you figure it out it’s very, very simple. Plus, super great music.

    Stanley Parable. Basically a walking simulator about choices and tropes in videogames. Not much gameplay, per-se, but definitely a great time.

    Still There. A point and click puzzle game with some seriously difficult puzzles, despite all the puzzles literally having the answers in a big binder you’re meant to use to solve them. Also has a narrative, but you’re likely to pull your hair out about the puzzles.

    Event [0]. Kind of a walking simulator, but with a neat mechanic where you need to speak with an AI on computers in the game using a text-based system where you write things and it responds. It’s not super complex, but it’s still neat.

    Kentucky Route Zero. A super heavily narrative game with a bunch of choice-based stuff in it, but it’s a little close to a walking simulator.

    Gods Will Be Watching. A sort of narrative-based game (it’s difficult to explain) about making brutal choices to survive each scenario (the second chapter is making choices to survive increasingly vicious torture for seven days). It’s a bit complex, but the only “gameplay” part of it is making choices in the moment.

    • Unicorns_in_spaceBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’d disagree as you need the motor control of many hours of gaming. There are some tight timing things you have to do right. Yes the levels and gameplay are nearly unique but it still ends up in a standard boss fight. 🤷🌈🖖

  • Unicorns_in_spaceBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Disco Elysium. It’s fairly RPG but you can play at your own pace without needing to be a player or ever having used a peripheral before. Most of the game play is text based or fairly simple decision tree type stuff .

    And it’s amazing, funny, wrong, beautiful and melon twisting.

  • CiabattaKatsuieBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Until Dawn and The Quarry.

    ​

    Really great games to play, especially if you wanna cozy up and play in the dark at night. Good suspense, pretty good acting, and a pretty great amount of permutations between playthroughs.

  • SenhorSusBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Same people that made Baldur’s Gate made Divinity Original sin 2…pretty much identical gaming mechanics.

    Stardew valley and animal crossing is also very non gamer friendly

    Check out the Telltale series of games…they’re narrative driven with a few popular settings from modern media.