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.
Do you have any others?
Tunic is a solid 10-15 hour adventure game, and I highly recommend playing without spoilers as several experiences are information-locked like Outer Wilds. It’s an isometric adventure game heavily inspired by Zelda with some Souls influence bleeding into the lore, mechanics, and boss fights. Replayability is limited to speedrunning and challenge runs.
Bastion is a wonderful adventure game with a heavy focus on combat. It’s a precursor to Hades from the same developer, and shares the same mechanical DNA minus the rogue-lite elements that Hades introduced. The followup game, Transistor, is also worth checking out, though it didn’t quite hit the same highs for me as Bastion. Both are 10-20 hour adventures with limited replayability if you want to achievement hunt.
More games to check out:
Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2
Journey, Abzu, and The Pathless
Subnautica
Saying Tunic has zero replayability is absolutely insane to me. IT EVEN HAS A NEW GAME PLUS!!
I kind of agree with OC’s sentiment. The game is a masterpiece, but the puzzle solving and metagame is half of the game, if not more. Once you’ve solved that, replaying it is just going through the motions of a pretty OK action adventure game. I dunno.
It’s like playing Braid after beating it. Another masterpiece of a game! You could speed run it—which I was very much into—but the thought of playing it again after that just doesn’t interest me. It’s just going through the motions.
That being said, its been years and years since I’ve played it and there’s a new anniversary edition coming out with new content. I’m almost certainly going to buy it.
I loved the built-in speed run of that game. You only had 45 minutes to beat the whole thing. The first time I accomplished that, my time was 44:58 and some change! I lost my shit that I managed to juuuust squeak in a win! 😂
I ended up getting it down to 37 minutes. There are so many tricks in that game to speed it up. I wonder what the official best time is. Back in the Xbox 360 days there were a lot of cheaters using the back-end to submit bullshit scores. Or people doing save trading and all having the exact same time down to 1/100 of a second.
I’ve got my Tunic time down quite a bit too, and since your upgrades carry over I’m super OP with my health, magic, and stamina spanning basically the entire screen lol. To me it’s fun to go in and just do a run here and there. Personal preference obviously but there’s certainly replayability there.
NG+ is optional since it’s not required to finish the game or appreciate the story. It’s there for the challenge.
“Finishing the game” comes before the “replayability” aspect though. You finish the game first, THEN you see if it’s replayable. So… Yes, I completely agree? Replaying is usually always optional lol
I would highly recommend Tunic as well, played through with a GF and it’s an amazing game! (Single player though)
I would somewhat disagree with Subnautica. There are lots of different settings you can tweak to make the game harder or more survival-oriented that might warrant a replay (although probably only one) if your first play-through was on a simpler/easier mode. Plus there are the creation modes where you can create your own base without restrictions, which sort of counts as replay? Mostly though the setting in Subnautica is quite unique, and short of playing Below Zero you won’t be able to find that vibe anywhere without playing the game again. However as a story-oriented game I’d agree it has lower-than-average replay value.
I find Subnautica has less replayability than other survival games since the map and questline is static. Once you know where everything is and you’ve seen all the plot beats there’s not much reason to play the game again unless you want to challenge yourself with a speedrun or, as you said, one of the harder difficulties.
I wouldn’t consider creative mode or sandbox mode to be a core part of the game. They’re great for fucking around or as an extended tutorial, but I see them more as external tools than as part of the game experience proper.
For me the story really drew me in. It was like watching Terminator 1 and 2 for the first time - you had no idea where it was going but it was going to be awesome.
I have watched both movies again, and while they are great they don’t hit the same as the first time.
I would absolutely consider replaying subnautica if managing inventories wasn’t so bad. Playing it to build up a base would be fun if it wasn’t such a frustrating process to deal with. I think all crafting should pull from all inventories in your base, and also preferably adding inventories just increases the size of one large abstract storage system of your base that you don’t need to worry about organizing.
As it is, once the story was done I was done. I had become so annoyed with building out my bases that I just couldn’t be bothered to do it again.
I definitely played through Bastion at least thrice. There is enough build variety that you can make another playthrough feel totally different, not to mention the difficulty modifiers. First game that I took the time to 100% for achievements.
Bastion’s story doesn’t necessitate multiple plays. Sure, it’s fun to play through again and try different builds. I’ve also 100%'ed the game.
The important thing, I think, for OP’s question is that it can be finished in one play. It has a satisfying ending from which the player can set down the game and move on.
For Tunic - you will 100% be expected to play like an old school game. So keep physical paper notes of what you see or you’ll be going back and forth.
+1 for Tunic especially if you go for all of the late game puzzles and other stuff that I shall not spoil. I have the Tunic plushy up on my shelf!
+1 for Tunic. Fantastic game. Not too long. Get it on sale.
I played it on my Steam Deck when I had Covid and was banished from my bedroom so I didn’t get my wife sick. 😅