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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2283 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What are some games that focus on exploration and vibes but with zero gamification elements? Something I’ve noticed is that games will try to nudge you into exploring an area by giving you an “exploration point”, or some other sort of positive reinforcer. But whenever this happens, it actually reduces your interest in exploring for its own sake, because the extrinsic reward interferes with the intrinsic reward processing. So when you get that point or that notification telling you that this is a new area, you now want to explore a new area already instead of actually taking in and experiencing the area you ostensibly have just discovered.

Is there any game that doesn’t do this? That encourages the intrinsic exploration element simply by not encouraging anything at all? (An old game which did this, that I recall playing briefly as a child, is The Endless Forest)

Honestly, Minecraft. Even after all these years, it's still my go-to whenever I get that freeform exploration itch. No objectives, no waypoints, no maps, just me and my terrible architectural skills. With just enough of a survival gameplay loop to keep the sandbox from getting stale.

If you've never gotten around to it, or haven't played in a decade, I'd really recommend it. That first few hours after starting up a new Minecraft world is something special I've never quite replicated in another game.

It's simplistic but there's https://slowroads.io/

Peripeteia is an immersive sim that could fit. There are some elements like that, like there are some secret stashes, but overall you're given huge levels without much direction, and it's up to you to explore them.

It has a demo on Steam, which is the first level of the game. If you don't like the demo, you won't like the game. It is in early access, but the demo works well as a self contained experience too. I played it for 10 hours, when you can finish it in one pretty comfortably.

Otherwise for games with minimal elements like that you can look at Thief 1 and 2, or The Dark Mod fan missions. You still have a mechanical goal to accomplish to finish the mission, meaning obtain enough gold, and steal something specific. But otherwise you're free to explore.

Factorio maybe? Exploration is not strictly required but is beneficial if you want more resources to exploit.

Underrail. It actively discourages exploration. It's an RPG whose entire plots takes place on roughly.. 1/4 of the game world. The rest is wholly optional. The vibes of exploring it are impeccable.

You will suffer if you try to explore. Especially if you see red mushrooms. The rewards were pain, tears and more pain and an ungodly amount of money spent on antidotes. because the reason places on the map are unexplored is a species of a cryptic, adaptive visual camo using .. insect that has a habit of sneaking up on people, traumatically injecting them with a paralyzing poison and eating them alive after it kicks in.

You have five seconds to slam an antidote or you're dead. Or be a psyker and set yourself on fire.. Oh, and there's a subspecies of crawler that, if you slam said antidote, almost kill you through forcing anaphylatic shock.

Or be a god-tier electronics guys and cobble together an energy shield out of very rare components that will bounce off their stingers (possible but very hard).

Or simply stay out of those places and keep to the 'civilized' bits of the game.

It's not entirely.. unreasonable to explore, there are a few locations with interesting gear - but generally, the rewards are very slim.

The second half of Wind Waker is pretty good. Basically, you are given a goal (collect the 8 plot coupons and restore your weapon to full power) and absolutely no direction on how to accomplish it. It's up to you to sail around the 50 islands that make up the game map exploring landmarks and talking to people and doing random quests until you eventually get rewarded with a treasure map revealing the location of a MacGuffin shard or manage to get into the two dungeons you must clear to upgrade your blade.

People hated the exploration phase so much that Wind Waker HD gave you a fast sail and reduced the number of steps needed to complete the game, but I really liked it.

The big problem I had was the two-hundred-rupee-a-pop deciphering fee for each of the eight McGuffin shard maps. That made the whole thing feel bloated and not worth replaying.

And the lack of tacking.

I believe what you are looking for is the 2013 indie game Proteus. There is no extrinsic goal or gamification at all, and the entire point of the game is to wander around a large procedurally generated world with strange fauna and sights to see. It's a world made solely so the player can explore it.

I share your sentiments about this by the way - I find that many open worlds have so many gamified elements and nudge you in the right direction so much that it barely even feels free anymore. Sure, you can deviate from the main quest markers if you want to have some fun, but you always know you're going to be returning to the main story, and the world is generally such a content desert that it barely gives incentive to explore. Sure, you can circumvent the quest markers and skip major sections of the story, but you'd only do that on a first playthrough if you want to have a significantly worse experience and miss most of the properly fleshed-out content in the game. This was my exact issue with Breath of the Wild - it felt very gamified and on-rails, and the open world not only seemed irrelevant but was also fairly unrewarding. And don't even get me started on the goddamn weapon durability system.

Games like Proteus are also empty. But games that are explicitly all about exploration and vibes get away with liminality and emptiness better than stuff that tries to meld it with a plot and a combat system and collectibles does. The latter frames itself in a goal-driven way which leads you to approach its open world in the same manner, the former does not. This is why "gamifying" open worlds barely ever works.

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