For me it’s first person puzzle games. I can think of maybe a dozen off the top of my head that came out in the last decade. I especially enjoy when they’re open world. The ability to just quit a puzzle that’s stumped you and go try something else for a little bit is incredibly refreshing.
Games that are made for the sake of making the game insread of being made to squeeze as much retention and money out of you as possible
Now thats a style that is becoming increasingly rare
I contend that there are more games out there now that are made for the sake of making them than ever before. It’s just that fewer and fewer of these games are AAA titles. The indy scene is really what are making these games nowadays.
That or modding. Modded Minecraft is done purely because someone wanted to have the functionality of magic wands or engineering or resource processing in their lego game. It’s completely unmonetized and gets extremely involved very fast. I fondly remember my nuclear reactor exploding and having to work around the irradiated zone. Good times.
the indie scene may be greater for that but is also filled with the same money making trite and on top of that constantly copying each other and barely doing anything new.
Half-assed unoptimized horror game #367992: Find the 8 pages before the tooth fairy jumpscares you!
Just follow a YouTuber with similar tastes and play the indie games they play. AAA is creatively dead
Thank you but I trust youtubers opinions as much as a gaming “journalist” which is to say, not at all
The problem might not be with the industry.
Youtubers are inheritor by the virtue of their existence just are a little to biased like the gaming magazines, I also find text much easier digestable than 2,5 minutes of invideo ads, sponsors selfplugs, like button smashing.or whatever else they want to subject me to
I spend far more effort trying to find gold than one really should have, there shouldnt be a need to spend so much time
Take a genuine hard look at this industry, an industry full with exploitation, lootboxes, micro and macrotransactions, the same 5 ideas ad naseum, where for every cuphead you have 10 slendermans, (thats just the tip of the iceberg)
you mean to tell me in THAT industry its ne with the problem? Cause thats a fair assassment and ill support whatever conclusion you may or may not draw
I think it’s more that, in absence of a gaming social circle, games discovery in the indie scene is hard. So, the easiest way for a lot of us is to find a gaming content creator who played games we like and play whatever they’re playing.
There’s a YouTube streamer I’ve been following for over a decade and every single game he plays is a 5/5 for me. At least ½ of my gaming is just games from his channel. It’s super easy; I don’t even watch him on Twitch much, but I can scan his recent broadcasts for gaming suggestions, and watch him play for like 30 minutes to figure out if it’s for me.
I have hundreds of games in my steam library with no in game purchases or lootboxes which I have enjoyed for between 50 and 2000 hours each. If you really have that much trouble finding games you can enjoy playing, then you need to change your habits.