Games

The Metro series is incredible for this. You have to press a button to check how many bullets are left, or how much oxygen is in your current canister. All kinds of awesome stuff in a bleak, rich world.

Dead Space. Ammunition is displayed on your weapon, health and stasis on your suit.

Prey 2016 also displayed your ammo on your gun, but had traditional health bars (it was an fpp game after all).

But I like a good HUD if it's implemented in the story, like Cyberpunk where it's a part of your augmented eyes, like an advanced Google lens. Doom did the same with the helmet.

Regarding GTA V, I never got to know the city well enough to play without a map. That fucking town was just to big for me. But I remember Vice City, I knew the map in and out, and playing without a map was fun!

Dead Space, my favorite game of all time. All HUD elements are holographic projections from your suit and weapons, integrated into the game world and moving with the camera. Your health meter is a series of light segments going up your spine, and the meter for one of your abilities is a pie-chart style light on the back of your right shoulder. Even the objective markers are a trail of light projected from your hand when you press down on the control stick.

Dead space? It famously has a hud that's built into the world rather than being random bars and stuff on the screen. Everything UI related is essentially from an object in the game

Elden Ring and other fromsofts have the Hud disappear unless something actively happens with it sometimes. You don't see your health or mana unless you get hit or cast a spell.

I'm pretty sure Hellblade didn't have HUD and that game was incredible.

I played Tears of the Kingdom HUDless and it was really immersive! I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything either, it honestly felt like how it was meant to be played.

Limbo is amazing. You want engrossing atmosphere? No HUD, no music, no color. Just you and the terrifying, soul-crushing, body-crushing environment.

An oldie but goldie: Grim Fandango

You drive your character like a tank, up moves him forward from his perspective, though there might be a setting to change that, it's been years.

When you walk around the environment, Manny will turn his head to look at interactive objects, then you have "interact", "examine", or "pickup".

The inventory screen is a close up of his jacket, where he reaches in a pulls something out. Hit the "next item" keyboard shortcut and he puts that object back into his jacket, and pulls out the next item.

Example of inventory screen: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/grim-fandango/images/a/a3/MarkedCard.jpg

I completely understand how overcluttered and distracting some HUDs can become. I have found however that fully HUDless experiences tend to be more of a novelty than an increase in immersion.

If I’m playing a shooter and don’t have information on, say how many magazines I have, I find that more distracting than immersive. In real life I could quickly pat my vest to know. A HUD can be a replacement for information that seems intuitive to have because in a real situation we’d have kinesthetic feedback.

Basic information like health while injured is simply too useful. Realistically my health isn’t defined by a single variable bar nor is it restored instantly from a grievous wound by a using a syringe, so I find that seeing the bar is useful for succeeding in the game even if it is equally as unrealistic.

Something like the iHUD mod for modern Fallout games is my ideal HUD. It is modular and I can define what information I see, what information I don’t, and for how long the information I do get stays on the screen. Health can be set to only show at certain thresholds, the compass directions or map markers can be disabled unless I ask to see them briefly. Other elements similarly made optional.

I’ve played fully HUDless in both Metro games and in modded STALKER games, and each time I do I find myself going back to having at least a minimal informative HUD.

I don’t hate HUDs and I think most people who try HUDless don’t actually hate them either. What is hated are obnoxious tool tips, flashy HUD animations, and floating intrusive quest markers. If UX designers do their jobs right, people don’t know they did anything at all.

Kingdom Come Deliverance

The standard game mode has map markers, quest icons, and a health bar. However, if you switch to hardcore mode it removes pretty much everything. There's no map markers on the world map, and no compass, so you need to figure out where you are on the map by building up knowledge of the landmarks and roads of the area. The sun and moon can be used as directional markers as well.

Both Zelda BotW and TotK have the option for a "PRO" HUD mode which only shows certain elements of the HUD at the right time.

It makes exploration so much more fun when you're not (if not subconsciously) navigating with the minimap instead of the environment in front of your eyes.

+1 for Battlefield 1. That game nailed the cinematic experience and without a HUD it's turned up to 11.

Have you played heists in GTA5 in first person without a HUD? It becomes a completely different game!

Ghost of Tsushima has a very minimal hud

I loved playing Assassin's Creed games hudless. Especially 3, Odyssey, and Ragnarok.

Well, you mentioned Battlefield 1 already, but yes.

No HUD, good sound system, only standard issue rifles... Honestly an experience like no other.

I mention good sound because no HUD means you get a lot more focused on what you're hearing, and the sound in this game is fantastic. So many great audio clues to work with.

I really like portal's absolutely minimal HUD. The game absolutely works without any hud whatsoever just as well too.

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Turning off the HUD makes you look up at the environment to help you plan where to go. You start to remember landscape shapes and areas that way. Plus it’s just nice.

Your hearts and stuff will show up if they need to, but otherwise it’s totally blank. And since pulling up the map is quick it’s really not that jarring to not have it in the corner.

If you're into Bethesda games and modding them, nearly all of them have "immersive HUD" mods that only show HUD elements when it's relevant.

Alien: Isolation is another good example of this. Actually terrifying to be hunted by the AI as well.

Don't think I've seen anyone mention sea of thieves, always loved how pretty it was and the complete like of hud is great

Dead Space, which has come up a lot, does have a hud, it's just all diegetic. Whether that fits or not is up for debate.

For true zero hud stuff the first one I think of is Inside, for instance. If you're going for immersion that counts, but of course it's a very light, focused game. Journey and Flower are in that space, too. So is Mirror's Edge, technically, but it feels more intricate due to being first person, for some reason.

There's a bunch of minimal HUD games from that period, too. There's a thing here and there, but not a full HUD. There's the Portal games, which technically show which portals are up on the reticle, but nothing else. There's the Metro series, which will pop up some HUD but mostly relies on other visual cues. There's The Order 1886, which at the time was one of the standard bearers for minimal HUDs but I think now it's just slightly lighter than average, because that game is super underrated in how ahead of its time it was in terms of setting triple-A standards.

Does The Witness count as diegetic HUD or just no HUD? It's borderline. I think the Talos Principle has some light HUD elements, but they may be optional.

And hey, let me call out the times when a super dense HUD is actually immersion-creating, especially when it comes to representing tech or machinery. There's Metroid Prime, making the HUD part of the suit and placing you inside it. There's Armored Core, where the mech stuff is such a part of the fiction. There's the new Robocop, which I don't like but does a lot with its HUD. HUDs can be cool and immersive.

At the moment, I am doing New Vegas hudless run (VNV modlist + JSUE Tweak) on my spare times. Honestly I am adore it due to the fact it feels like 3D Fallout 2 as previously I run my playthroughs using hud. However this also makes you need to be perceptive as on this tweaked game raider tends to ambush you so you kind of develop second nature of how you perceive surrounding on Mojave. Even though people may thinking hudless does not make a sense, it simply each on theit own enjoyment as you cannot please everyone with same tricks every single time.

Although not hudless, but in GTA San Andreas I can notice a landmark or a spot of the map just from a pictures. It feels like ingrained on my mind from my countless hour doing SP as kids and playing SAMP during my teenage years.

I used to play Skyrim with a mod that turned off the HUD. Can't remember the name. I switched off extra options, and it became quite fun sneak-archering with neither crosshairs nor stealth indicator nor enemy radar dots.

Gotta be honest here.

Immersion has no meaning to me and I don't understand the obsession.

I used to play Overwatch with no HUD. The game is definitely not designed around that, but I found I did decently well, and many characters have displays on their guns that relate the same info.

I know Jurassic Park Trespasser infamously used a tatoo on your characters chest instead of a healthbar to avoid using a HUD.

I did the same as you in GTA, very different and fun way to experience the game.

I always thought it'd be cool to make a no UI fighting game, with health being related by the characters appearance (ie more and more beaten up) rather than the usual top of the screen health bars.

I know you can disable all HUD elements in Doom eternal, but you need to be pretty good at it already to be effective. So not a good candidate for a beginner, but it sure does look good if you can pull it off.

The Long Dark...

Resident Evil 7 iirc, no hud, health is a wristwatch

escape from tarkov