For me, in no particular order:
- Firewatch
- This War of Mine
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Gone Home
- Papers Please
- Doki Doki Literature Club
- I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
A game that’s not mentioned here yet: Outer Wilds.
You know how your high school English teacher tries to get through your brain about what “sublime” means and why the Romantic Era writers cared about it so much? The meaning of the word never really clicked for me until I played this game. It is pure, distilled sublime. It presents nature as this simultaneously jaw-droppingly beautiful and existentially scary entity that I’ve never seen any other game come close to replicating. For anyone who hasn’t played it yet, I heavily recommend it.
Note: don’t confuse Outer Wilds with Outer Worlds. They sound similar, but they could not be farther apart
Yeah what an unbelievable game. The music really hit the feels button for some reason. I still need to play the DLC!
I highly recommend the DLC! The best thing I can say about it is that it’s more Outer Wilds, with the same level of world-building, puzzle-solving, and emotional impact.
I don’t think I’ve ever emotionally connected with a game more than Disco Elysium. It had a profound effect on me, that game can truly do sadness
Oh man… I don’t know why this wasn’t the first thing I thought of when ever since I played it earlier this year, I have had the phrase “I don’t want to be this kind of animal anymore” stuck in my head. I think that daily.
I wish there was a disco option…
Journey.
I don’t think it works quite as well nowadays with much fewer people playing it but it was an incredible experience when it first came out. I still play it whenever I need to calm down or just having a bad day. It’s truly a special game to me.
Journ
Couldn’t agree more!!
I actually played Journey for the first time just several months ago! I think there’s still enough people around that you can still run into other players on your journey. Maybe I ran into you at some point?
I ALSO just got around to playing Journey a few months ago, knowing nearly nothing about it. Spoilers ahead.
I started, got the hang of it a little bit, and was running around. I see another person! I chirp, he chirps, we dance around a bit, and we’re on our way. He shows me a few things, so I’m confident he knows his way around. I still go my own way, and he waits for me. Chirps when I should follow. I do. At some point, I have to pee REALLY bad and I want to make a drink. So I chirp, turn in a circle, chirp again, and he does the same. I go pee, make a drink, and when I’m back we are both sitting.
We make it through the rest of the game. He is the best companion I could hope for. I tear up twice during our adventure, and am nearly crying at the end. No games do this to me.
We make it together, and I PRAY at the end it lets me know who this person is. I’m DELIGHTED when it shows me his name, and I add him. He immediately accepts.
I tell him it’s my first time playing, and that I appreciated him helping me out so much! He tells me that he has fully completed the game, and plays so he can find new players to help have an amazing first time. We ALMOST got all of the secrets, but I missed a couple. He then sends me screenshot after screenshot after screenshot of us on our journey. He has a mod of some sort that lets him take out-of-body cinematic photos. I tear up more. I love this person.
There are just so many.
- SpiritFarer
- Lost Words: Beyond The Page
- All Persona games (recently Persona 4)
- Mass Effect
- Nier Automata
- Final Fantasy 7
- The Last Of Us
I’m probably missing more but that’s just a few that I have a strong connection with and make my heart soar.
The original Life is Strange was it for me back when I first played it. I have to admit, I was feeling a bit down at the time, so the soundtrack, the atmosphere, and the emotions in the game really resonated with me. I’m actually a bit hesitant to play it again because I don’t want to lose the special memories from my first time through the game.
The original Life is Strange is a masterpiece and I wish I could reexperience it anew. I played it twice to see how choices mattered and it’s not quite the same the second time around.
The other Life is Strange games are also really great, but sadly they can’t quite match the original.
That is the only game that has actually made me cry.
The Witcher 3. Sometimes there were no good choices to make and one had to choose the better of two bad outcomes. Sometimes the obvious good choice led to bad things happening to a village. That game was a rollercoaster of emotions.
I also second This War of Mine.
I fell into a week long depression after finishing the game for the first time. For me the Witcher 3 is the best story you’ll find in a game, period.
Arguably the best story telling in a game. Each side quest was given a lot of attention to detail and never felt like any were copy-paste jobs.
Mass Effect " … someone else might have gotten it wrong …"
SOMA gets me pretty good. To the Moon, too.
Shadow of the colossus has to be up there as one of the most memorable video game experiences I’ve had. Jaw dropping and thought provoking at the same time. I’m not sure what kind of wizardry and blood magic was involved in making this game run on playstation 2.
Soma. If you know, you know.
This one’s pretty up there for me. Short and sweet. Top 5 on a philosophical sense.
A Short Hike
A lot of it is because of where I was in life when I played it, but playing this game felt like an oasis in a very turbulent time for me.
I had just graduated university in the middle of a pandemic, feeling lonely and scared of the transition to a new career. I ended up feeling surprisingly emotional the whole time I played it.That game is really nice. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
- Citizen Sleeper
- Suikoden II
- Journey
- Papers, Please
- Darkest Dungeon (if only through the Narrator lines)
- Undertale
- Celeste
- Gris
- The Lion’s Song
- Final Fantasy Tactics
- Silent Hill 2
- Ace Attorney
- Orwell
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Tacoma
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- SOMA
- The Red Strings Club
- Unpacking
I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention Ghost of Tsushima. What an incredible emotional journey. I saw the ending coming from a mile a way but that didn’t matter in the least. The voice acting is unbelievably good. The way the game design, writing, and acting all fit perfectly together is not something I’ve seen matched in any other game. It’s a wonderful piece of art. My partner was watching me play when I started the game for the first time because the beginning grabbed her attention and she ended up watching me play basically the whole game. We both had wet eyeballs at the end. But it didn’t just give me sad feels, I’ve never played a game quite so just overall beautiful? Visually, again, the game design itself is beautiful, serene. And that’s just the main story, there are such good small stories told in tiny side quests that I still haven’t forgotten from my first play through. On top of all of that you get feel like a badass slicing up fools. I can’t say enough good stuff about that game.
Kinda surprised it hasn’t been mentioned yet but Undertale definitely did that for me
just in case, if you liked papers please you may love “the return of the obra dinn”. really good game from the same guy.
