Which games blow your mind, but only if you know nothing about them in advance?
Best examples I can think of are:
- Outer Wilds
- Doki Doki Literature Club
- The Stanley Parable
What are yours?
(please no spoilers)
Return to the Obra Dinn, you are a insurance auditor
You should go into Nier: Automata thinking it’s a game about a hot chick fighting a bunch of robots. The only spoiler you should know is that the end isn’t the end, and you need to play it again.
You should go into Spec Ops: the Line thinking it’s a game about a cool special forces team fighting a bunch of terrorists or something. The only spoiler you should know is that it’s supposed to feel like a generic third person shooter.
I’m disappointed that nobody’s mentioned Pony Island yet.
Hollow Knight
Warframe
Noita
The warframe lore is pretty complex, but its also great. Especially the way the game tells you the story. Can only recommend going into it blind.
I don’t think you understood the assignment…
I think they’re all games that seriously benefit from not knowing the lore or mechanics beforehand… you didn’t even contribute aside from being snide to me so how about you explain what I did wrong?
Now i wonder about the opposite. Games that you should never go in blind XD
Dwarf Fortress, probably.
Hearts of Iron IV
My Summer Car
Subnautica. You can only play it for the first time once.
I tried it a few years ago and gave up after an hour of not knowing what to do. But I had this week off and tried it again, it I’m really enjoying it this time. It’s not like anything else, and once that initial bump is passed its learning curve is really quite good.
It is one of my all-time favorite games. I have unfortunately played it to death; I’ve run out of stupid challenge runs. The game has a story and uniquely for survival games it has an ending, there’s a Win The Game button. But the game is as much about the story you’re going to create; the way you choose to go about things, the order you decide to explore in, the happenstances of your adventure are maybe more important than what the wiki says the story is. Savor that.
I will offer this hint. I don’t think it’s a spoiler; I think there is a strong possibility this hint will prevent you from alt-tabbing out to look up the wiki and accidentally encounter a spoiler. But I will tag it as a spoiler anyway.
spoiler
If you find yourself without an immediate goal, you’re milling about the ocean thinking “well now what?” Go deeper.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention one of my favorites:
Spec Ops: The Line.
The risk with going in blind is that it seems like a generic cover-shooter that doesn’t do everything quite as well as its competitors but it actually works to its advantage once you get into it.
If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it, you can usually find it for really cheap.
Well you can’t buy it digitally at all anymore and if you do find the disc it’s usually priced as a “retro collectible” so the only reasonable way to get it is via the high seas—which, technically, is “really cheap”
Control
It’s on sale on Steam for $7, just got it!
Frog Fractions
What, and I can’t state this clearly enough, the FUCK did I just play?
I wasn’t prepared to have the history of punching explained to me on Mars in a frog platformer.
warframe used to be. but it’s near-impossible now to start & get through even the first major ‘holyshit’ moment without having it at least partially spoiled before hand.
sorry, but online free-to-play disqualifies it for me.
- Disco Elysium
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- House Of The Dying Sun
- FEAR
- Limbo
- Oxenfree
Yes! Return of the Obra Dinn 100%. You can still watch other people play it on YouTube later and have a blast seeing them figure things out. And read Lucas Pope’s excellent devblog later as well.
I am super intimidated Return of the Obra Dinn. But it looks so cool, and I feel like it uses a lot of lateral thinking and makes you smarter for playing it.
No need to be intimidated. Just pick it up in a sale. Definitely a brain teaser but there are spoiler reduced guides out there in case you get stuck. But you should be able to finish the game even without guidance.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
And probably Tears of the Kingdom too but I haven’t played it yet.
TotK makes BotW feel like a tech demo
If you’ve played botw, you basically can’t play totk blind by the nature of the games’ similarities
I can at least try to wait a few years to forget as much as possible.