So, here is my attempt at a list of ten games for the non-gamer. These are games that don't require that much gaming literacy to pick up and enjoy. And, they're just really great games, so even if you are a seasoned gamer, these are worth checking out.
11. Valiant Hearts: The Great War
Available On: XBox360, XB1, PS3, PS4, PC, iOS, Android
You don't need much gaming experience to enjoy Valiant Hearts: The Great War. It's a simple, linear puzzle game that, for a game about World War I, doesn't include much violence. You never shoot or kill anyone. Indeed, you play as characters in a war trying to avoid violence. It's not particularly difficult, making it easily accessible for non-gamers. It's informative and emotional all at the same time. It may be a simple game, but it does most of those simple things really well.
And just the emotions...
10. Pretentious Game
Available On: PC, iOS, Android, Kongregate.com (for free, even)
The name of the game probably fits according to some people, but it's a pretty well thought out and genuine game. It mixes simplicity with mechanics as metaphor kind of like a Mike Bithell game. In fact, it kind of looks like Thomas Was Alone. The characters are little blocks, but they represent people.
The game itself is almost entirely built on the premise of mechanics as metaphor. Each chapter is pretty short - only a couple of minutes, really - but there isn't necessarily a consistent style of play, other than that you move each square to a particular destination. It's basically a puzzle game in which you figure out what to do based on the clues given in the narrative. For example, there's a part talking about how this man would get drunk and couldn't control himself, at which point the square you control will often switch, so left arrow moves you right and right moves you left. One moment talks about how lost someone is feeling, causing the square to disappear in a dark background. It can sometimes be a little tricky to figure out what exactly each thing meas, but it's an interesting idea.
The story is a rather sad tale of lost love, really. Like Thomas Was Alone, Pretentious Game has a surprising amount of emotional power behind it for a game that features primarily cubes.
9. Her Story
Available On: PC, OS X, iOS
Her Story breaks the mold of what people might expect from a video game. It's actually kind of a passive game. Players don't get overly involved in it. In fact, the only thing players will input are keywords into a search bar in order to find new videos. The primary mechanic of the game is, quite simply, watching video clips of a woman as she tells her story about her history and her relationship to a man who has been found dead. Basically, the concept is that you are given access to old police tapes from when they interrogated a suspect in a murder case back in the '90s. The clips themselves look like old VHS tape recordings, but the computer screen is also a mock up of '90s computers as well, complete with a little time-wasting computer game you can play.
The videos are broken up into a ton of little pieces, and it's up to the player to find them all via searching the computer by keywords. Players can also re-organize the clips by "tagging" them with different labels, which is helpful when referring to older clips. The game is basically a giant puzzle, but unlike most puzzle games, the player doesn't get confirmation if they're right or wrong. There aren't really any moments to indicate that you're on the right track, and you never get an actual answer. Instead, you're left with all the notes you may have taken and a pretty good idea - maybe - of what happened and whether she were reasonably suspected of murder.
It's an interesting idea for a puzzle game, and I'd say it's maybe for anyone who became obsessed with the Serial podcast. It does a great job making you feel like a detective, but be prepared for what might be a slightly unsatisfying conclusion, given it's somewhat ambiguous. Sure, not a ton of replay value on this one, but I can't put into words how great I found my initial playthrough. It's quite the experience.
8. This War of Mine
Available On: PC, OS X, iOS, Android, PS4, XB1
I tried to avoid putting some of the bleaker, more serious games on the list because, well, people typically want to play games to have fun. Still, there are two games that I highly recommend because they're quite powerful and highlight what games are capable of doing. If you've ever watched television, you've probably seen commercials for one of the seemingly endless supply of war games. Typically, war games are built on premise of turning you into an elite soldier. It's an easy thing to do, but a lot of games use war as their background because of the action and adventure inherently built into it.
This War of Mine is not that kind of war game. Instead of turning you into one of the soldiers, built up as all heroic and all, it puts you in the role of civilians trying to survive in a war zone. Players control a number of survivors stuck in a house during the day in a region decimated by war. During this phase of the game, you use resources you've collected to survive. You'll tell some of your house mates to eat, or sleep, or take medicine, or whatever else they may need to do. Some, you'll have using resources to build new things like beds, stoves, animal traps, or even just boards to stop looters.
At night, you'll send one of your party to a location from a map. Some areas are off-limits because of recent battles. Others are home to civilians who aren't able to defend themselves, allowing you to steal from them with ease if you should choose. Some places, though, will have you run into other survivors. Occasionally, they'll be peaceful and even want to trade, but others will shoot you on sight. Your goal is to collect as many resources as you can. Food, water, medical supplies, building supplies: there's a lot of variety in what you can gather. Problem is, you have a limited number of things you can carry.
Each character has their own ailments to deal with. You're constantly trying to balance your limited food supply with each person in the party who is almost always hungry. You also get people who are sick, injured, or just sad. It's a really, really difficult and heartbreaking. Surviving is really difficult.
The game itself is simple. It's just point and click. You don't need much skill to play it. You just need to be able to stomach the difficult decisions. It's a really poignant game, demonstrating the brutality that a lot of people in real wars have to deal with.
7. Papers, Please
Available On: PC, OS X, iOS
Yep. Another bleak and depressing, yet extremely poignant game. Papers, Please puts players in the role of an immigration officer. Throughout the course of the game, all you basically do - from a game perspective - is look at an immigrant's paper work, determine if it's valid or invalid, and either approve them for entry or deny them entry. It's tedious, and at times very cold, but that's the point.
When not processing applicants, you're trying to figure out the best way to manage your finances. The game puts players in a fictional world that is probably run by a fascist dictator. At the end of each day, you must allocate your money into a variety of important things like food, heat, or medicine. Your family gets sick frequently enough, especially if you can't spend money on heat all the time. Money is a pretty limited resource, which connects to the immigrant processing gameplay too.
At times, you are presented with bribes. Immigrants will offer to pay you to allow them entry despite invalid paperwork. At the same time, border guards will offer you a cut of their bonuses for imprisoning applicants, forcing you to confront the uncomfortable scenario of apprehending someone with an invalid passport just so you can make money to pay for your child's medicine. There's a lot of gray area in the game, making it one of the best and most excruciating games built on morality. Like This War of Mine, the morality isn't clear cut, and is meant to make players reflect on the situation.
6. One-Finger Death Punch
Available On: XBox360, Android, iOS, PC
Ok! Let's get away from the bleak, but important games for a moment. One-Finger Death Punch is one of the simplest, craziest, and most fun games I've played in a while. The game does a good job getting progressively more challenging, offering splits in the story's path so players can choose how quickly they want the game to get more difficult. At some point, it stops being particularly easy, but it never stops being super simple.
Quite literally, you will only ever hit one of two buttons. One that correlates to "left attack" and one that is "right attack." The rest is just a rhythm based game, almost shades of simpler Dance Dance Revolution. All you do is tap the correct button when it shows up. It's all timing based, which makes later levels really challenging as they introduce new button combos to deal with and faster paces.
Bottom line: it's just sooooo much fun.
5. Monument Valley
Available On: iOS, Android
I'm not much of a mobile gamer, and I'm especially not typically into games on touch screen phones. Yet every once in a while, there is a super addictive game that I really enjoy. Whether it's the stylized side-scrolling Canabalt or the hyper addictive platforming Doodle Jump, it's not like there aren't fun games for your phone. Even as they try to adapt older classics like Chrono Trigger or Wolfenstein 3D so they're playable on your iPhone or Galaxy, it never quite works well enough for me to ever stick with it.
Monument Valley is a short and unique puzzle game that captures a lot of the spirit of the great indie games you can find on Steam. It's got a bit of Fez influence in the sense that perspective can matter. The main difference though is that all of the levels are built like these MC Escher-like puzzles. It might take a few levels to really get the hang of it, given that it's all built around optical illusions, but as a puzzle game, it's simultaneously different and similar enough to many of your more popular puzzle games on mobile.
4. Portal 2
Available On: XBox360, PS3, PC, OS X
Look, Portal 2 or even it's predecessor are among the greatest games ever made, but it made a little more sense to drop it from the top spot because it is a first person perspective, and you have basic FPS controls. The puzzle nature of the game is really fun. Mixed with the incredible humor, it also makes the game very appealing for people who don't play a lot of video games.
Because of it's more advanced controls, it can take a little more time and commitment for non-gamers to get it down. For veteran gamers, the FPS controls are intuitive. It's easy to think, "It's second nature to me, so why is anyone else struggling with it?" But it's important to keep in mind just how much experience a lot of us core gamers have with such schemes. (Just try to remember the very first FPS game you've played. Probably hard to recall at this point, but it probably felt weird at first, and took some time to really get down.)
While the first Portal was excellent, it just felt right to put the sequel ahead, since it's so much funnier. Plus, you can play in a co-op mode, making it a great game for gamers to try with their non-gamer friends.
3. Life Is Strange
Available On: XBox360, XB1, PS3, PS4, PC
Much can be said about the flaws inherent to narrative-drive games with its primary mechanics built around making choices, but Life Is Strange does a lot of things better than most. The time rewind powers add to the adventure/clicking gameplay, and also add to the overall themes and story. While the final episode is a bit disappointing, the game is strong enough - with good enough characters, an intriguing enough story, significant decisions to make, and a killer soundtrack - to make up for it.
The fact that it starts off really grounded, and centers around some fairly realistic characters makes it an easy game to relate to. There are few games that resonated with me on such a deeply personal level. It's an easy game to pick up and figure out, making it a great game showcasing the power of video games as a medium of story-telling.
2. Flower
Available On: PS3, PS4, PS Vita
If you want a really simple game that is beautiful and relaxing, then look no further than Flower. Thatgamecompany has really made a name for itself with beautiful, calming experiences. Fl0w is also a weirdly relaxing and simple game, and Journey is probably it's master opus at this point (which I admittedly have yet to play, which is why it's not on this list...yet!)
What's the premise of Flower? Well, you play as pedals on the wind as a row of house plants in the city dream about life in a field rather than the polluted metropolitan areas they know. Quite literally, you just blow around the fields collecting pedals. The goal is primarily to just beautify the fields. Thatgamecompany doesn't plan on producing any huge games, and that's totally fine. While some gamers might prefer their games to be really difficult and challenging, I think there is something to the idea of "lean back" games that we can play, interact with, and relax to.
It's also super rad for the way it uses musical notes to correspond to different types of pedals, allowing players to essentially create their own unique take of the music tracks.
1. Thomas Was Alone
Available On: PS3, PS4, PS Vita, XB1, PC, OS X, iOS, Android, Wii U
One of the best, and most simple games in a long time, Thomas Was Alone is a game that anyone - gamer or non-gamer - can love. At its core, it's a basic puzzle game. You're navigating a bunch of rectangles through a level to their respective exit points. Each rectangle has its own unique ability that will help get everyone to their spots.
At the same time, it offers a surprisingly compelling and emotionally touching story. Each rectangle has their own personality too. While voice over narration isn't the most complex form of story telling, it's what is needed for this game. (Also, the game is built on simplicity, so it fits tonally.) Often, the character traits match the power traits of each rectangle as well.
Fun gameplay, a compelling story, surprisingly human characters, and a killer soundtrack make this one of the most accessible games that anyone can enjoy.
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