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?
Am I the only one who just plays any given game once?
I only play games you can’t really finish.
My favorites are Crusader Kings 3, Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and Euro Truck Simulator 2.
I struggle to define what “playing it once” would even mean in those games.
I mean there’s games like… Minecraft that I certainly have played many, many times for many hours with lots of different combinations of mods. That’s repayable to the max.
Yes that’s a good point. I don’t have a lot of time to play so I try to stick with shorter games as you said in the post. Even if there is replayability I just drop it after I finish it the first time. For that reason I don’t play stuff like Minecraft and also rarely open worlds, I’ve played a few but try to stick to the main story
Super Mario Bros 3
After getting through the last castle, I never wanted to play it again.
Madness! I’ve played it so many times
Sure, in the same way that some people only watch movies once, or read books once.
Speaking for myself, I’ve found only a small handful of games are worth my replay time, and most of them are Mass Effect…
For me, it depends how much of the game is story-driven, how long a campaign takes, and how dynamic the gameplay is. I’ve never replayed an assassin’s creed game (from 3 thru Odyssey), but rank them highly. I consider racing/sim games “replayable” in the sense that I never finish the absurd number of championships but will binge them for a while as I buy more dream cars. Similar story for battle Royale/arena/non-story games like rocket league or fortnite. My most-replayed game series is Ace Combat (4-7), but that’s because the campaign is only about 5 hours typically and offers more variation in gameplay along with attainable medals. Puzzle games like Portal 1/2 or The Turing Test offer replayability to me because I never really remember all the tricks to the puzzles, but that’s like 5 years between replays to not spoil the entire story.
This is also driven by having less time available to game. I wish I could learn 2 games every week but a good gaming week has 10 hours of gameplay for me. It’s usually less than 5. So there’s a little more motivation to play something familiar so I can start having fun faster. Ironically, Elite: Dangerous is a comfort game despite the common complaint of its complexity. Some PS2 era games come to mind