Games that rely on players to figure things out on their own

There's a difficult balance that many games can fail to strike: We don't always need in-depth tutorials for every single mechanic, but we also don't always want to be thrown in the deep end with no idea what to do or how to proceed. Either way frustration lies, usually, but the games that trust us to figure things out ourselves and give us the tools to do so can be very satisfying.

Sometimes, after all, trial and error and experimentation are an important part of the process. In these games, there's very little in the way of guidance or a hint system (if any at all, actually), but instead you'll find something even more valuable: the chance to learn the rules, mechanics, and your own playstyle on your own.

Don't starve

Spectacular Sinister Survival

Survival games often have very steep learning curves because the central concept is the idea of ​​improvising to survive as long as you can. If you don't keep up with the development of your base, or store enough food, tools and resources for the long term while taking care of your immediate needs, your run will be tragically short. For a brand new one Don't starve players, it is often difficult enough to remember to establish a light source in time to fend off Charlie, the Night Monster.

Your first runs will then be about trying things out. You might find yourself hunting rabbits and trying to hit them with a melee weapon as a source of food in a pinch, raiding the spiders' dens to try and clear them out before you're prepared with combat gear, or beating a Beefalo only to find that the entire herd is now furious with you. That's the beauty of the game though: You learn what to do and what not to do right as you go. You discover the important function of certain mysterious items, a good order to create necessities for smooth development, and how to turn things from weather conditions to the behavior of wild creatures to your advantage. When you do, you'll find that your runs last longer and longer.

Celeste

Adapt to progress

Celeste is a beautiful pixel art platformer that sees a young woman, Madeline, encounter a series of stages on her journey to conquer a formidable mountain. New mechanics, such as wind effects, mysterious platforms that move when you change direction, and Seeker enemies that must be avoided are added to the mix as the game progresses. This ensures that each chapter is distinct not only in its visual style, but in the techniques you need to use to progress.

The developers make excellent use of level design, ensuring there is a “safe” place to experience a new mechanic and learn how it works. You would hardly ever notice that you had just received a mini-tutorial, as it is organic and not intrusive at all. Binoculars are also placed around certain points in the stages, allowing the player to look around an entire long room at once and plan how to approach obstacles before making the first jump. Using these techniques, the team ensures that, while it may take dozens of failed attempts to do so, the player knows everything they need to succeed, without being led too directly.

So much freedom

Many fans have lost count of the number of times they have played The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim since the first release in 2011. They probably haven't forgotten their very first playthrough, and how relatively inept it was. The tricky thing about a game where you can pretty much do whatever you want is that many of these things ultimately won't help you much, if at all. There's almost too much freedom, in a way, to be able to come into someone's home and take all sorts of things from shelves and desktops as you like. As inventory hoarders will attest, you can never really tell when a particular item will come in handy, but there's a catch: In Skyrim, you can easily find yourself with an inventory full of nonsense and poorly invested Perk Points that don't really reflect your playstyle very well.

However, all this comes with experience. Bethesda lets you experiment with all of them Skyrims different mechanics and its huge world, gradually learning the items to value, the skills to prioritize and the most helpful companions depending on how you like to play. This is a big part of why the game is still so loved.

Tunic

A dungeon-Part adventure in the Zelda mold

The 2022 century Tunic mixes some of the biggest influences in the industry into a stunning and atmospheric package. The isometric perspective and colorful art style are so reminiscent of classical The Legend of Zelda records, such as A link to the past (and especially the redesigned one Link's Awakening), while the combat system is governed by the need to watch our fox friend's stamina a la Dark souls. There is also a trunk-like system.

The unique touch with Tunics storytelling and player guidance, however, is that it is largely visual only. A fairly detailed game manual is offered, but with the significant catch that the text is written in a partially unique language and that separate pages must be found around the world to be added to the “book”. Without engaging with the system, determined players can still piece together a context for where to go and what to do, and the story of a lost fox civilization that warped time and manipulated souls in its efforts to avoid death is an intriguing and enigmatic one.

80 days

Improvise around the world

At Jules Verne's Around the world in eighty daysPhileas Fogg and his valet Jean Passepartout are tasked with circumnavigating the planet in the late nineteenth century, within the strict time frame. Along the journey, of course, they take several different modes of transportation, meet some very colorful characters and succeed in the end. Included 80 days is a text-based version of the saga, a well-written odyssey that can end differently every time you play. As Passpartout, the goal is to manage money, choose routes from an interactive world in the world, and keep moving by any means necessary until you get back to London. If the attentive attendant lets Fogg's health deteriorate too much, or you run out of money to continue, it's game over. What really makes the game so captivating is that every move is determined by the player.

You can see the possible routes, where they lead next, and the costs of a particular trip, and then you have to weigh up the best route to take. At the same time, you have a small case with belongings that can help in different ways. It's all about the decisions you make, and there's also a smart trading concept. Items you buy in one city may be worth a premium in another, but visiting that city to earn money may cause you to take a more expensive trip later. Pausing in a certain town to gather information can give you a valuable lead, but it can also cause you to miss a certain carriage ride. The story unfolds through text (and a lot of it), and even here there are plenty of narrative decisions to make that can change your relationship with a particular character and thus your entire journey. There is very little guidance in the game, meaning that repeated playthroughs and your own experiences are the best teachers. Even then, 80 days will constantly surprise you.

Deus Ex

Your goals, your way

For some fans, the 2000s original Deus Ex is still the series entry that gave the player the most freedom to experiment and achieve their goals. Protagonist JC Denton is a UN anti-terrorist coalition operating in a near-future dystopian world as bleak as any: The Gray Death ravages the population, and supplies of the vaccine, Ambrosia, are targeted by various organizations for their own gains. Against this horrific backdrop, Denton and the player have a series of dire decisions to make, the outcome of which can change the course of the story in various ways.

The game allows players to dictate the experience in many ways beyond the story. Cybernetic enhancements allow the agent to be tweaked to perform best according to the player's preferences, and objectives can be accomplished in various lethal or non-lethal ways. As with such as Hitman series, the player is free to analyze the situation and decide the best method to neutralize enemies based on their preferences. You can potentially get out of trouble, find a hackable unit to mess with to overcome obstacles, or simply opt for an all-out attack. The game gives you all the freedom you could want in that regard.

Little nightmares

Solve macabre mini mysteries

As with many titles on this list, Little nightmares keeps tutorials and direct guidance to an absolute minimum, instead of a strictly visual approach. This series has a way of telling absolutely terrifying stories without a single word being spoken, and it's only by paying attention to every little action in the background of scenes that you can really understand the horrors of what's going on. In the original game, Six ventures through the bowels of a ship called The Maw, where hungry customers seem to enjoy eating a rather young and sprightly type of meat provided by the Warden from his prison. Six survive all these encounters and ultimately meet the lady responsible for The Maw, kill her and escape.

Little nightmares is a scary adventure/puzzle game, which usually challenges the player to examine the objects in a room and determine how they can be used to open a gate, reach a lever, or otherwise overcome an obstacle and progress. Subtle light cues can point you to important objects in the environment, but otherwise there is very little guidance. Often there's also the pressure of an enemy somewhere in the room, sending you back to a checkpoint instantly if you're captured. For example, in the kitchen with the twin chefs at The Maw, you have to go through a door opposite them to escape, which means carefully climbing around a mountain of plates and such, knowing exactly when to dive into a floor-level hiding place, dashing with that key and carefully timed platform when they see you and you run towards the next area. Each area is like a cunningly designed escape room, and it's just you and your resource against the hideous denizens of The Maw. The developers Tarsier Studios are really not about to help the player.