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What are your favourite single-player games without much fluff, grinding or difficulty spikes? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello, in the recent years I find myself willing to spend much less time and energy on games, but I do still enjoy them. Oftentimes I end up quitting a new game I tried out relatively early on, because I'm encountering some block, grind, non-optional boring side quest, empty open world, uninteresting clutter or details that I have to manage, or similar. Like, I just wanna play the actual game play, see how the story continues, and visit those areas that were designed with care. Not worry where on the map I can sell the glimbrunses I collected so I can buy a 37% stronger glarpidifice that I'll need to beat the next glutrey after which I'm allowed to continue the main story.

Sorry if this turned into some kind of a rant, but I hope it's understandable what I'm looking for and what I meant by fluff. Some games that have fulfilled this for me during the last years:

Stray
Skyrim (there's a lot of fluff you can worry about in Skyrim, but the thing is you don't have to worry about it, you can also just walk in any direction and see what situation you wind up in, at least for the first 10-20h of a playthrough, which IMO is enough time for a game anyway)
Life is Strange
Some Pokémon ROM hacks where the difficulty spikes were not too harsh

Looking forward to hear your suggestions :) Games where there is some fluff but you're allowed to just ignore it are also fine, but not having any fluff is preferred. Bonus points for anything on the Xbox game pass.

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[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago

Live for the adventure, not the grind:

Journey (if you play one game on this list it should be this one)

Far: Lone Sails and the sequel Changing Tides

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

Red Strings Club!!! Woah!! Been a minute since I thought about that game. Very, VERY, good. Sort of a precursor to Potion Craft in a way, that really didn’t over stay its welcome. The pacing was great, difficulty curve was great, and it had a distinctly finite story that still left you satisfied. I’ve bounced off potion craft a few times because at a point the scale, and subsequent grind, is a bit much for me. Red Strings Club nails the middle ground with good increasing complexity without becoming a chore.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

I totally agree on the pacing. The Red Strings Club is a masterclass of storytelling in a video game format.

I think it's hard to describe as a game to gamers... the actual gameplay is pretty vague, the various minigame activities are almost inconsequential, but taken as a whole it's a perfect experience.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago

Jazzpunk is not a game I've heard of in a long time, great silly surrealism

Manifold garden is great too

[-] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

Jazzpunk was one of those games that left me wishing there was more of it.

Manifold Garden is just such a perfectly executed atmosphere, it's hard to do it justice with description - like walking around inside an Escher drawing.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Sable is on a giveaway this week by Epic Games. Use the free-&-open-source Heroic Games Launcher to play it without having to download their platform.

I got bored by FAR's puzzles and didn't finish it but I guess I should persist, huh?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I really enjoyed both Far games. I never felt like any of the puzzles were large enough to get tedious. When I finished Lone Sails I just wished there had been a longer section of driving the ship... it kind of felt like you never got to really go before there was some interruption that you had to stop and get out for.

this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025

148 points (97.4% liked)

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