Games

Unpacking.

I would volunteer a lot of the single-player story games produced by Sony like Uncharted, The Last of US, with Spiderman being the exception to the rule.

Some of their games have a little more open game loop design, but personally, I don't think I could play The Last of Us twice.

From what I played of God of War I would imagine it's similar, but I never actually beat it.

I'm sure there are people out there who love single-player game narratives and would disagree. I just think a lot of these games are good for the story, but the gameplay feels like once you've done it, you've done it.

I'm currently playing through the ace attorney series, couch party w my fiancee. We're having a blast, but there's absolutely no doing this a second time. The nature of the games is such that you can't really progress in any of the cases without having asked every question of every witness, gathered every piece of evidence and explored every relevant branch in cross-examination, so by the time you finish a case there's just nothing left to go over a second time.

Stranded Deep - one of the only survival/crafting/procedural open world games that has a defined objective and an actual ending.

10/10 don't need to play it again but I might anyway because it was so great

A lot of people are posting games that are short and linear. But to match your energy, games that cannot be replayed unless you forget what you learn;

• Case of the Golden Idol is a mystery/deduction game, a la Obra Dinn.

• Toki Tori 2 is a puzzle metroidvania, where you can do your full moveset from the start - tweet and stomp. Right from the first screen, big chunks of the map can be shortcut through once you put your later learnings into practice.

The Forgotten City. Interesting mystery game set in a Roman city, but after you know the spoilers there's little reason to play it again.

Escape Academy? It’s a great escape room game (even better in co-op) but it’s more engaging than Escape Simulator since there’s a story pulling everything together. The story’s ridiculous but honestly the context adds entertainment value, regardless of how absurd it is.

SuperBrothers: Sword and Sworcery probably fits this bill. It’s an odd game, but I love the shit out of every minute of it. I have 3 hours in that game. I haven’t touched it since 2013, but I still remember just how ethereal and soothing it was while still being an exciting adventure game. One of the odder things about it is how it instructs you when and for how long to play it. For example, it tells you to stop playing it for a few weeks so the moon’s phase can change. Not that that’s a bad thing, but

Visual novels, and the Frog Detective series.

Doki Doki Literature Club being the biggie (or well-known one), Florence is very sweet, Yenba is also very nice (Game Pass).

Undertale, if you have a heart.

Her Story

Human Powered Spacecraft

Tacoma

The Park

Betrayer

The Walking Dead (Telltale 2012)

Swapper

Pony Island

The Corridor

Spirits of Xanadu

Pneuma: Breath of Life

Deadlight

Valley

The Signal From Tölva

Control

Unepic

Ghost 1.0

Limbo

Super Trench Attack

Year Walk

The Room

Outer Wilds. not only is it a fantastic game, but the entire premise and gameplay is centred around discovering the world. theres no progression, the story is all diagetic and not quest-bound or anything, and once you know the world you cant really discover it any more (unless you forget)

Since puzzle games seem to be the theme overall here I’ll mention Cocoon. It’s a recent puzzler that is absolutely gorgeous to look at and did some super clever stuff imo.

Soma - This is such an amazing game, but it made me so mad that I would never play it again.

The Painscreek Killings - A really fun detective/mystery walking sim. You absolutely have to figure everything out yourself, as there is no hand-holding or hints given by the game. At all. But, like Return of the Obra Dinn, once you've figured out the mystery, there really is no sense in replaying it.

I was going to add some others before realizing I had a theme of mystery walking sims. I think that genre of games are pretty one and done kind of plays. They can be really great, but most don't give you a reason to go back and replay them, unless it's for achievements or something.

Limbo and Lost in Random

You could replay them for the vibe, but that's it

I would also say that most of the walking simulators that where mentioned here:

My mentions would be The Last of Us, Spec Ops: The Line and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Also The Stanley Parable depending on what you consider "completing" that game.

Personally, any bigass AAA game that has a million different things to do. Like there's no way I'm playing the God of War sequel-reboot again even though I enjoyed it. Coming from someone who beat the original trilogy like 3 times each at least

More on topic though: Any adventure game for as long as you remember the solutions

The remake of shadow of the colossus since they removed the time attack mode with awesome unlocks.

While I'm not sure the "walking sim" games are what you're looking for, I'd add Lifeless Planet and maybe Dear Esther. Once you know what's going on/what happened, there's not much point in replaying.

Outer wilds

I enjoyed

• "One Shot", it has a few achievements that might require going back to try to complete.

It is puzzle top down story adventure game( it does the whole look into your actual files for solutions thing), once I finished the main story I felt satisified. It allows for playing after the ending but doing so feels hollow and unsatisifying which is the point. It asks the question of why do you still want to play, but oh well I will allow it and makes it possible.

That dragon, Cancer

After playing it once, I can’t go through it a second time.

Storyteller

A short but memorable puzzle-type game where you have to put together scenes and characters to create a story. Actions in previous scenes affect how characters behave or appear in later ones.

Really liked that one, it's fun.

If you're ok with point and click/puzzlers, the rusty lake games are probably some of my favourite storylines. Extremely well written imo, creepy and with a few jump scares to keep you on your toes.

What remains of Edith Finch Life is Strange series The beginner's guide

Some people might disagree with me, but Celeste.

OneShot is very much based on its story and immersion. Contrary to the title’s implication, there’s not so much potential for risk during play, even if it’s themed that way, but it does feel like any efforts to repeat the game would ruin some of the immersive thoughts present.