I want to try and play some more games. That feels more fulfilling if you play games that you can finish and be done with.
So what are some good games that have zero (or close to zero perhaps) replayability? I’ll start with my own suggestions:
Return of the Obra Dinn: Amazing mystery/detective game. However once you’ve played it, you basically can’t play it again as you remember the solution already and the challenge of the game is trivialized.
Chants of Sennaar: Really great game about deciphering languages. However, once again, by playing the game once, you’ll remember the languages and the game has no challenge any more.
Outer Wilds: Mystery adventure game. There is some replayability as there are perhaps areas that you can still explore, but largely once you figure out the mystery and complete the game, there’s not much more to experience. Some people speedrun the game though.
All of the above games I value extremely highly even though I only played them ~8-10 hours.
For me, it depends how much of the game is story-driven, how long a campaign takes, and how dynamic the gameplay is. I’ve never replayed an assassin’s creed game (from 3 thru Odyssey), but rank them highly. I consider racing/sim games “replayable” in the sense that I never finish the absurd number of championships but will binge them for a while as I buy more dream cars. Similar story for battle Royale/arena/non-story games like rocket league or fortnite. My most-replayed game series is Ace Combat (4-7), but that’s because the campaign is only about 5 hours typically and offers more variation in gameplay along with attainable medals. Puzzle games like Portal 1/2 or The Turing Test offer replayability to me because I never really remember all the tricks to the puzzles, but that’s like 5 years between replays to not spoil the entire story.
This is also driven by having less time available to game. I wish I could learn 2 games every week but a good gaming week has 10 hours of gameplay for me. It’s usually less than 5. So there’s a little more motivation to play something familiar so I can start having fun faster. Ironically, Elite: Dangerous is a comfort game despite the common complaint of its complexity. Some PS2 era games come to mind
I only play games you can’t really finish.
My favorites are Crusader Kings 3, Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and Euro Truck Simulator 2.
I struggle to define what “playing it once” would even mean in those games.
I mean there’s games like… Minecraft that I certainly have played many, many times for many hours with lots of different combinations of mods. That’s repayable to the max.
Yes that’s a good point. I don’t have a lot of time to play so I try to stick with shorter games as you said in the post. Even if there is replayability I just drop it after I finish it the first time. For that reason I don’t play stuff like Minecraft and also rarely open worlds, I’ve played a few but try to stick to the main story
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.
Sometimes you can still replay them for the same reason you’d re-read a book (like to catch things you missed the first time around). It’s not as common and a different kind of replayability though
I would say something like ICO is the latter kind for me. It is focused on the gameplay, but the gameplay is the same exact thing from the first moment to the last and you can find all the secrets in the levels themselves pretty easy the first time through (since the rooms ain’t that big there’s not much room to hide things), the only reason to replay it multiple times is for the special weapons you can get; which are more like skins than actual weapons, except for the energy sword that OHKOs everything. But you only get that after like, 5 or 7 completions I think? It wasn’t worth it. By the time you get it, a normal person would be totally over playing the game lol
I think Dark Souls and Elden Ring and such would be the same for me, if not for the PvP multiplayer. Other games copying that style without any multiplayer at all, I have so far only played once and then never touched again. But I keep coming back to the ones with PvP to make new builds and fight other players. And because of how you obtain items, making an entirely new character means playing through the entire game, or at least a good deal of it. Currently building a dude to be ready for Shadow of the Erdtree and seeing just how low level I can beat Mogh at. So far it’s been 60. 😄
Phoenix Wright comes to mind since I’m just watching someone else play the games I don’t have because there’s not much player agency so watching it is as good as playing it 🤷🏻♂️
Would you count NG+ as replayability? I know for Nier Automata and Armored Core 6, it’s basically part of the story and you haven’t finished until you’ve unlocked all of the main paths. There is enough new stuff each playthrough for it to be unique though.
as much I love the genre, but most single player 3D action/adventure platformer games that are based around a story OR fully arcade-y.
both aspect looses their point if you 100% the game.
Like, I just finished New Super Lucky’s Tale, and though it was an excellent 3d platformer, I don’t think I’ll start a new game.
but not only 3D games. Like Shovel Knight also falls into this category. Amazing and exciting game, but other than a harder difficulty (as New Game+), it doesn’t really have too much of a replayability.
I want to like this game but I keep making stupid decisions and being so confused at the start that I just gave up. The game is fun but doesn’t do a fantastic job at explaining how to get going.
I would also put Subnautica here - and personally say it is worlds superior to Stranded Deep but of course personal preference can give either hte advantage.
I enjoy replaying it, but the contrast between first time and any repeat is mind-boggling, and nearly enough to say that replaying it isn’t worth it. That first time… wow, it just hit so well.
It’s quite an open question. Most games I play are “one and done” even though I think most people go back to them. Even with replayability it doesn’t mean that you have to and I’m happy to leave things be once the story is over.
Mafia trilogy sticks to the story and will take a decent amount of hours.
If you liked chants of shenaar, check out heaven’s vault. I think it does what chants of shenaar does, but better, and it did it years before. It was a bit strange to me to see chants of shenaar get so much hype, but have heaven’s vault stay slept on.
Funnily enough, what that review said is basically what I said in my review about chants of shenaar, except without the glowing praise. Lots of tedious running across maps and very surface level language-puzzling, whereas I don’t remember any tedium with heaven’s vault at all. I guess different strokes for different folks?
I would say, it’s such a unique and well-executed concept that I would give it a play yourself to see what you think. It’s one of those games I haven’t found a replacement for, even with chants of shenaar.
Well - I played both and I quite enjoyed Heaven’s Vault as well.
I played HV through twice - once for the story and then a second time to see how far I could alter that story with different choices. My wife even played a third time to try for a really particular set of events.
The translation game in HV goes much harder than Chants’. After the first playthrough, you get longer and more challenging texts to decipher.
Also - there’s no backtracking really required. The game is pretty strict about telling you where you can and cannot go and reacting to what you found or didn’t find. You can cut whole plot lines in HV and it’s no problem.
Which makes it one of the better games for replayablity in my mind.
If you want something very similar to the three you named, do not sleep on Case of the Golden Idol.
It might have a little more replayability due to they way decisions you make impact the story, but I’d also put in a strong recommendation for Pentiment.
Yesss, I loved both of those games. Pentiment was so strange - there are things I didn’t love about it, but I still got so sucked in that I’d wake up the morning and be eager to start playing again to find out what happens next. I haven’t felt that way about a game in a while.
90s style adventure games like Sam and Max hit the road, day of the tentacle, monkey Island, Indiana Jones, etc. Lots of comedy you can’t hear again for the first time, and puzzles that can be memorable.
scummVM can be used to run those games and runs on basically everything, phones, tablets, desktop.
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Am I the only one who just plays any given game once?
For me, it depends how much of the game is story-driven, how long a campaign takes, and how dynamic the gameplay is. I’ve never replayed an assassin’s creed game (from 3 thru Odyssey), but rank them highly. I consider racing/sim games “replayable” in the sense that I never finish the absurd number of championships but will binge them for a while as I buy more dream cars. Similar story for battle Royale/arena/non-story games like rocket league or fortnite. My most-replayed game series is Ace Combat (4-7), but that’s because the campaign is only about 5 hours typically and offers more variation in gameplay along with attainable medals. Puzzle games like Portal 1/2 or The Turing Test offer replayability to me because I never really remember all the tricks to the puzzles, but that’s like 5 years between replays to not spoil the entire story.
This is also driven by having less time available to game. I wish I could learn 2 games every week but a good gaming week has 10 hours of gameplay for me. It’s usually less than 5. So there’s a little more motivation to play something familiar so I can start having fun faster. Ironically, Elite: Dangerous is a comfort game despite the common complaint of its complexity. Some PS2 era games come to mind
Super Mario Bros 3
After getting through the last castle, I never wanted to play it again.
Madness! I’ve played it so many times
I only play games you can’t really finish.
My favorites are Crusader Kings 3, Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and Euro Truck Simulator 2.
I struggle to define what “playing it once” would even mean in those games.
Sure, in the same way that some people only watch movies once, or read books once.
Speaking for myself, I’ve found only a small handful of games are worth my replay time, and most of them are Mass Effect…
I mean there’s games like… Minecraft that I certainly have played many, many times for many hours with lots of different combinations of mods. That’s repayable to the max.
Yes that’s a good point. I don’t have a lot of time to play so I try to stick with shorter games as you said in the post. Even if there is replayability I just drop it after I finish it the first time. For that reason I don’t play stuff like Minecraft and also rarely open worlds, I’ve played a few but try to stick to the main story
The Cat Lady
To The Moon
SOMA (you can play it again of course but the raw shock and intensity of the plot is lost the second time)
To The Moon; Once you go through the experience of the story, there’s really no need to replay again.
But there are sequels to play! Also, playing To the Moon with someone who hasn’t played it before is just as good.
Nah, I replayed it and it is still great. (And I don’t replay many games!) Like rereading a good book.
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.
There are some games that are entirely story based that fit the criteria better.
One that comes to mind is To the Moon. There’s some puzzle elements to make it a game but its appeal is pretty much entirely based on its story.
Literally anything focused entirely on telling a story.
They’re only worth replaying if you forget the story.
Sometimes you can still replay them for the same reason you’d re-read a book (like to catch things you missed the first time around). It’s not as common and a different kind of replayability though
I would say something like ICO is the latter kind for me. It is focused on the gameplay, but the gameplay is the same exact thing from the first moment to the last and you can find all the secrets in the levels themselves pretty easy the first time through (since the rooms ain’t that big there’s not much room to hide things), the only reason to replay it multiple times is for the special weapons you can get; which are more like skins than actual weapons, except for the energy sword that OHKOs everything. But you only get that after like, 5 or 7 completions I think? It wasn’t worth it. By the time you get it, a normal person would be totally over playing the game lol
I think Dark Souls and Elden Ring and such would be the same for me, if not for the PvP multiplayer. Other games copying that style without any multiplayer at all, I have so far only played once and then never touched again. But I keep coming back to the ones with PvP to make new builds and fight other players. And because of how you obtain items, making an entirely new character means playing through the entire game, or at least a good deal of it. Currently building a dude to be ready for Shadow of the Erdtree and seeing just how low level I can beat Mogh at. So far it’s been 60. 😄
Got any particular examples? :)
Phoenix Wright comes to mind since I’m just watching someone else play the games I don’t have because there’s not much player agency so watching it is as good as playing it 🤷🏻♂️
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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).
Would you count NG+ as replayability? I know for Nier Automata and Armored Core 6, it’s basically part of the story and you haven’t finished until you’ve unlocked all of the main paths. There is enough new stuff each playthrough for it to be unique though.
as much I love the genre, but most single player 3D action/adventure platformer games that are based around a story OR fully arcade-y.
both aspect looses their point if you 100% the game.
Like, I just finished New Super Lucky’s Tale, and though it was an excellent 3d platformer, I don’t think I’ll start a new game.
but not only 3D games. Like Shovel Knight also falls into this category. Amazing and exciting game, but other than a harder difficulty (as New Game+), it doesn’t really have too much of a replayability.
Funny OP, you named the exact 3 games I was planning on naming here.
Great minds think alike 😜
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
I want to like this game but I keep making stupid decisions and being so confused at the start that I just gave up. The game is fun but doesn’t do a fantastic job at explaining how to get going.
I would also put Subnautica here - and personally say it is worlds superior to Stranded Deep but of course personal preference can give either hte advantage.
Subnautica is replayae just because the world is so beautiful
I enjoy replaying it, but the contrast between first time and any repeat is mind-boggling, and nearly enough to say that replaying it isn’t worth it. That first time… wow, it just hit so well.
It’s quite an open question. Most games I play are “one and done” even though I think most people go back to them. Even with replayability it doesn’t mean that you have to and I’m happy to leave things be once the story is over.
Mafia trilogy sticks to the story and will take a decent amount of hours.
Inside is short but fun.
+1 for inside, I love this game
Don’t forget about Limbo!
The remake of shadow of the colossus since they removed the time attack mode with awesome unlocks.
If you liked chants of shenaar, check out heaven’s vault. I think it does what chants of shenaar does, but better, and it did it years before. It was a bit strange to me to see chants of shenaar get so much hype, but have heaven’s vault stay slept on.
I considered it as well, but this review made me reconsider. Would you say it is as bad as that review makes it seem?
Funnily enough, what that review said is basically what I said in my review about chants of shenaar, except without the glowing praise. Lots of tedious running across maps and very surface level language-puzzling, whereas I don’t remember any tedium with heaven’s vault at all. I guess different strokes for different folks?
I would say, it’s such a unique and well-executed concept that I would give it a play yourself to see what you think. It’s one of those games I haven’t found a replacement for, even with chants of shenaar.
I’ll give it a shot!
Well - I played both and I quite enjoyed Heaven’s Vault as well.
I played HV through twice - once for the story and then a second time to see how far I could alter that story with different choices. My wife even played a third time to try for a really particular set of events.
The translation game in HV goes much harder than Chants’. After the first playthrough, you get longer and more challenging texts to decipher.
Also - there’s no backtracking really required. The game is pretty strict about telling you where you can and cannot go and reacting to what you found or didn’t find. You can cut whole plot lines in HV and it’s no problem.
Which makes it one of the better games for replayablity in my mind.
It is - for sure - slow paced. Almost meditative.
If you want something very similar to the three you named, do not sleep on Case of the Golden Idol.
It might have a little more replayability due to they way decisions you make impact the story, but I’d also put in a strong recommendation for Pentiment.
Yesss, I loved both of those games. Pentiment was so strange - there are things I didn’t love about it, but I still got so sucked in that I’d wake up the morning and be eager to start playing again to find out what happens next. I haven’t felt that way about a game in a while.
90s style adventure games like Sam and Max hit the road, day of the tentacle, monkey Island, Indiana Jones, etc. Lots of comedy you can’t hear again for the first time, and puzzles that can be memorable.
scummVM can be used to run those games and runs on basically everything, phones, tablets, desktop.
Yeah I played S&M and Full Throttle probably once every couple months when I was a kid… how else can you recite every scene from the entire game?