Players usually want a good story in their games. I can enjoy a good story too, but sometimes I just want to get going and do stuff without listening to several minutes of dialog in-between action.
Do you know any games where there’s no story (or very minimal/skippable one), and the game mechanics alone carry the game?
EDIT: Thank you all for the suggestions. There are some that I’ve never heard of and look very interesting. Will definitely pick some of them up.
Factorio. All about letting the factory grow.
I also started playing wizards of legend recently. It takes maybe 20 minutes to get through the tutorial, then it’s just game. I’m enjoying it so far
Oh no there’s a stoty all right. It’s the story of thinking you’re in Castaway, then finding out you’re actually in The Lorax…as the Once-ler.
Tetris, along with most puzzle games.
It’s seriously hard to beat Tetris.
Tetris effect is insanely good for the music alone, and with ve the whole thing was an experience
Jonas Neubauer did.
Definitely doesn’t have any story, that’s for sure.
I mean they made a movie…
Came here to say Tetris!
This is such a hard question to answer without more information. There are a literal ton of mechanically good games with minimal/no story across a massive variety of genres. What are you into? Surely your interests run deeper than “don’t make me read, don’t show me a movie”.
I’d start to look into rogue-lites; games that kill you rapidly are less inclined to lore-dump before they get to it, instead either hiding the story around the game world, or giving you snippets between runs. Dead Cells, Bullets Per Minute, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Rogue Legacy, Into the Breach, Enter the Gungeon. That should cover a wide birth of genres, anyway.
Be more specific and we can give you far better recommendations.
Rogue-lites are probably a good suggestion, considering I played and enjoyed Bullets Per Minute and Rogue Legacy. Also Dead Cells is probably one of my favourite. If there’s at least some form of progression then I think I’ll like it so I’ll look into the others you mentioned. Thanks.
Nova Drift is one of my favorite rogue-likes, highly recommended. Check out the youtube channel “Ultra C” for a ton of different rogue-likes.
Nova Drift is great! Easily one of my top played games.
Slay the Spire maybe?
Hades deserves to be in this list if you’ve not played it.
Hades for sure has a story. Probably the best implementation of story in the whole genre.
Yeah it does, but I wouldn’t say it’s the main attraction. It’s good, but I wouldn’t call it story driven.
The gameplay loop uses getting to interact with the characters and to advance the various subplots as part of your reward/consolation at the end of each run. I’d call that story-heavy.
If you liked Bullets Per Minute, pick up Metal: Hellsinger. Not a roguelite, but a very well-structured single-player story-minimal (~10-15 second voiced introductions to each level, occasionally a 1-2 minute, voiced cutscene between stages) game. It’s more like Doom - set arenas, with set encounters across varying difficulties - with a more refined, BPM-style “shoot on the beat” system. And it sports an insanely good original soundtrack with guest vocalists from across the spectrum of metal.
Factorio?
The factory must grow
Deep Rock Galactic
Kenshi is a post-apocalyptic sandbox open-world RPG / base-building game with a bunch of lore but absolutely no plot for you to follow.
One of my favourite games. So much fun.
Rogue likes usually have very little story getting in the way. Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, Nova Drift, Darkest Dungeon are a few of my top played. I also really enjoy the make your own adventure Creative Survival type games like Minecraft, Astoneer, Terraria, Starbound, Empyrion Galactic Survival etc. City builders, colony sims and Farming Sims are always a good choice too. Some of my favorites are Cities: Skylines, Banished, Timberborn, Forager, The Anno series, Stardew Valley. Then there’s the pure building games. I really enjoy just building stuff and testing my creations out with games like Scrap Mechanic, Instruments of Destruction, Main Assembly, Cosmoteer, Reassembly, Kerbal Space Progam (the first game, Id wait on the second until all the bugs are fixed). Hack and Slash ARPGs are always fun for turning the brain off and most of them dont have a ton of story, save for a few cut scenes here and there. Path of Exile, Torchlight, Diablo 1 and 2 (I don’t like 3 and 4 personally) Grimm Dawn, Cronichon, Fate, Last Epoch are some of my favorites.
Nice selection, thanks.
Vampire Survivors
I keep hearing about this one. I need to try it one day.
It’s $5 and brilliant 40+ hour game with excellent mechanical complexity
I just discovered this game this past weekend and it is sooo good. I wanted a fairly mindless “kill a bunch of guys and keep my hand busy” type of game, and that’s exactly what I got.
Minecraft. Cities Skylines. RimWorld. Helldivers.*
*You’re going to need to co-op to have any chance in the mid to late game.
Vampire survivor? 20 Minutes Till Dawn?
Vampire Survivors has more story than vampires. Which is a low bar to clear but it just about does.
Trackmania. Any of them. TMNF/UF, Trackmania2, Trackmania Turbo, Trackmania (2020)
You mean the post-apocalyptic, self driving car game?
Best answer here.
Dwarf Fortress
Elden Ring is apparently good. And the dark souls games as a whole. Almost no story
Heat signature. And Minecraft
