Players usually want a good story in their games. I can enjoy a good story too, but sometimes I just want to get going and do stuff without listening to several minutes of dialog in-between action.
Do you know any games where there’s no story (or very minimal/skippable one), and the game mechanics alone carry the game?
EDIT: Thank you all for the suggestions. There are some that I’ve never heard of and look very interesting. Will definitely pick some of them up.
This is such a hard question to answer without more information. There are a literal ton of mechanically good games with minimal/no story across a massive variety of genres. What are you into? Surely your interests run deeper than “don’t make me read, don’t show me a movie”.
I’d start to look into rogue-lites; games that kill you rapidly are less inclined to lore-dump before they get to it, instead either hiding the story around the game world, or giving you snippets between runs. Dead Cells, Bullets Per Minute, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Rogue Legacy, Into the Breach, Enter the Gungeon. That should cover a wide birth of genres, anyway.
Be more specific and we can give you far better recommendations.
Rogue-lites are probably a good suggestion, considering I played and enjoyed Bullets Per Minute and Rogue Legacy. Also Dead Cells is probably one of my favourite. If there’s at least some form of progression then I think I’ll like it so I’ll look into the others you mentioned. Thanks.
Slay the Spire maybe?
Nova Drift is one of my favorite rogue-likes, highly recommended. Check out the youtube channel “Ultra C” for a ton of different rogue-likes.
Nova Drift is great! Easily one of my top played games.
If you liked Bullets Per Minute, pick up Metal: Hellsinger. Not a roguelite, but a very well-structured single-player story-minimal (~10-15 second voiced introductions to each level, occasionally a 1-2 minute, voiced cutscene between stages) game. It’s more like Doom - set arenas, with set encounters across varying difficulties - with a more refined, BPM-style “shoot on the beat” system. And it sports an insanely good original soundtrack with guest vocalists from across the spectrum of metal.
Hades deserves to be in this list if you’ve not played it.
Hades for sure has a story. Probably the best implementation of story in the whole genre.
Yeah it does, but I wouldn’t say it’s the main attraction. It’s good, but I wouldn’t call it story driven.
The gameplay loop uses getting to interact with the characters and to advance the various subplots as part of your reward/consolation at the end of each run. I’d call that story-heavy.
Minecraft. Cities Skylines. RimWorld. Helldivers.*
*You’re going to need to co-op to have any chance in the mid to late game.
Rogue likes usually have very little story getting in the way. Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, Nova Drift, Darkest Dungeon are a few of my top played. I also really enjoy the make your own adventure Creative Survival type games like Minecraft, Astoneer, Terraria, Starbound, Empyrion Galactic Survival etc. City builders, colony sims and Farming Sims are always a good choice too. Some of my favorites are Cities: Skylines, Banished, Timberborn, Forager, The Anno series, Stardew Valley. Then there’s the pure building games. I really enjoy just building stuff and testing my creations out with games like Scrap Mechanic, Instruments of Destruction, Main Assembly, Cosmoteer, Reassembly, Kerbal Space Progam (the first game, Id wait on the second until all the bugs are fixed). Hack and Slash ARPGs are always fun for turning the brain off and most of them dont have a ton of story, save for a few cut scenes here and there. Path of Exile, Torchlight, Diablo 1 and 2 (I don’t like 3 and 4 personally) Grimm Dawn, Cronichon, Fate, Last Epoch are some of my favorites.
Nice selection, thanks.
Deep Rock Galactic
Kenshi is a post-apocalyptic sandbox open-world RPG / base-building game with a bunch of lore but absolutely no plot for you to follow.
One of my favourite games. So much fun.
Vampire Survivors
I keep hearing about this one. I need to try it one day.
It’s $5 and brilliant 40+ hour game with excellent mechanical complexity
I just discovered this game this past weekend and it is sooo good. I wanted a fairly mindless “kill a bunch of guys and keep my hand busy” type of game, and that’s exactly what I got.
Best answer here.
Vampire survivor? 20 Minutes Till Dawn?
Vampire Survivors has more story than vampires. Which is a low bar to clear but it just about does.
Heat signature. And Minecraft
Trackmania. Any of them. TMNF/UF, Trackmania2, Trackmania Turbo, Trackmania (2020)
You mean the post-apocalyptic, self driving car game?
Elden Ring is apparently good. And the dark souls games as a whole. Almost no story
Most roguelikes either have no story or keep it out of the way.
Doom?
Played all except Doom 3. Good games.
Risk of Rain 2 is probably my favorite rouge like, easily recommended if you like FPS games
ULTRAKILL is a really fun movement shooter with minimal story except between chapters I guess, but there’s also an infinite wave mode that is a great time killer
100% Risk of Rain 2. I’ve dumped so many hours into doing silly runs in that game, just because I feel like it - not even attempting to unlock anything or make specific progress. The game is fantastic.
Lots of posts here, so maybe you won’t see this, but i think the ___ Simulator games are mindless task-oriented fun (if you enjoy that sort of thing). I have been playing House Flipper lately, which has basic task lists and skippable emails if you don’t care about the job’s context. Clean up trash, paint, build outdoor furniture. There’s just something satisfying about it for me, but it won’t be for everyone. I have heard good things about PowerWash and Gas Station Simulators as well.
It’s think I would enjoy it for a while but got bored pretty fast. But maybe some type of this genre could surprise me.
