Narrative Games Club, 1: Planning

March 4, 2017 1:41 PM

Following past discussion (here and here) there's interest in discussing games with a heavy narrative component. If you're interested, then follow us, and join the discussion. A few options have been floated, details inside.

Night in the Woods (Multiplatform) - $20, about 10 hours - Follows the story of Mae, who has dropped out of college and returned to her home town. Combining a few different genres, NITW is a critical success, and features a story that blends mystery, teen angst, and horror. Also has two supplementary, free, games released earlier in the year. My computer sucks, and ran this without a problem.

Gone Home (Multiplatform) - $19.99, about 2 hours - You arrive home from college after a break, only to find your home abandoned. You explore your house and try to figure out the story of what has happened. I haven't tried this on my shitty computer, but I think it's pretty low impact, and also on consoles.

Life is Strange - ~$19 and on multiple platforms - You play as Maxine Caulfield, who realizes that she has the ability to rewind time. Having forseen an approaching storm, Maxine uses this power to try and save her hometown. This seems a bit more gaphically intense, but is on most consoles.

Read Only Memories - $20, most platforms - You play as a struggling journalist who comes across the world's first sapient machine, named Turing. This cyberpunk adventure game has you meeting a cast of quirky characters and exploring a futuristic San Francisco. It's pixel art, so I feel like most computers could run it without much problem.

I'm also happy to see what other people say - the above are by no means the only options. I think a good selection would balance price, playtime, and accessibility, but would most importantly lead to a lot of discussion. Let's give ourselves 3 days, and try to pick something for sure on Tuesday.

This thread is also open to general discussion about this club.

posted by codacorolla to Narrative Games (9 comments total)

Gone Home might be a good one to start with, since it has been out long enough and is well enough known that I expect a good handful of people here have already played it. And it's short enough that someone who does decide to play it can get through it pretty quickly and join the discussion.

I'm also a big fan of ROM, but realize it doesn't have as large a playerbase as Gone Home or Life is Strange.

I think once I'm actually finished it, I'll have the most to say about Night in the Woods.
posted by RobotHero at 7:54 PM on March 4, 2017

I'd be up for Gone Home or Life is Strange.

Is there any interest in possibly doing something that was in the humble freedom bundle? My thoughts are that they tend to be older but successful games in humble bundles in the first place, and my second thought that that specific humble bundle was very, very popular - so chances are some Mefites just purchased the game but maybe haven't pulled it out of the other 30-odd games they grabbed.

If anyone needs a full list of what was in that bundle, I can provide, but I didn't want to just have a giant list without seeing how others thought about the suggestion.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:38 AM on March 6, 2017

I think Gone Home sounds like it might be a good idea. It's also been on sale and in bundles many times recently. Plus it plays quick.
posted by codacorolla at 8:52 PM on March 6, 2017

OK, let's go with Gone Home. It's a pretty quick play, and a lot of people have played it already, so let's say Wednesday is when the discussion thread will go live.
posted by codacorolla at 11:54 AM on March 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've started a Gone Home post here.
posted by RobotHero at 7:39 PM on March 18, 2017

this is so cool! Another good game to add to the list is Firewatch
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:31 AM on March 21, 2017

Her Story? It's short, cheap, and multiplatform. The downside is that discussing it is unavoidably very likely to spoil the experience for someone who hasn't played it yet.
posted by figurant at 11:12 AM on March 24, 2017

After watching Wonder Woman and reading the FanFare thread, I was just thinking how fun it might be to play through Valiant Hearts and talk about it. It's available for practically every platform and is cheap, and I haven't played it yet for no good reason. (Though I've watched a few scenes and it was very affecting.)

Anybody else interested? I think I'll start playing it sometime this week.
posted by asperity at 10:43 AM on June 12, 2017

Hey we haven't talked about games in a bit!
Tacoma is out, I'm halfway through it and it's very cool so far - anyone else interested in discussing it?
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:23 PM on August 22, 2017