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.

31 points

Factorio. All about letting the factory grow.

I also started playing wizards of legend recently. It takes maybe 20 minutes to get through the tutorial, then it’s just game. I’m enjoying it so far

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2 points

Oh no there’s a stoty all right. It’s the story of thinking you’re in Castaway, then finding out you’re actually in The Lorax…as the Once-ler.

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21 points

Tetris, along with most puzzle games.

It’s seriously hard to beat Tetris.

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6 points

Tetris effect is insanely good for the music alone, and with ve the whole thing was an experience

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2 points

Jonas Neubauer did.

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1 point

Came here to say Tetris!

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1 point

Definitely doesn’t have any story, that’s for sure.

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2 points

I mean they made a movie…

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14 points

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.

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4 points

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.

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3 points

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.

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2 points

Nova Drift is great! Easily one of my top played games.

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3 points

Slay the Spire maybe?

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2 points

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.

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2 points

Hades deserves to be in this list if you’ve not played it.

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4 points

Hades for sure has a story. Probably the best implementation of story in the whole genre.

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13 points

Factorio?

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1 point

The factory must grow

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12 points

Deep Rock Galactic

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