Games are an infinite medium fo♏r what they can achieve. Most mediums are, actually, but gaming exists in a wonderfully unique sphere that so few people have truly learned how to utilise so far. As such, games have a big habit of taking from other mediums for inspiration, primarily films, even when there are much better forms to emulate.
An example of this is storybooks. Gaming should feel more like a tale in your head that takes on a personality of its own based on how you experience it, not a singular vision that's immutable. Thankfully, there's a nice set of games th🎃at understand that joy, from the visual feast of a fairytale to the whimsical narration of bedtime stories.
10 The Banner Saga𝐆 🎶
The Banner Saga is a trilogy of tactical RPGs in the style of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy Tactics. Every choice can have dramatic effects, from the characte♒rs you recruit to the way the story unfolds. It achieves this tremendously across the whole of its Norse-inspired trilogy.
Perhaps the standout aspect of the series is its magnificent art style. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:All of it is hand-drawn, and it feels simultaneously stark and oppressive in how large and ruthless the world is portrayed. Yet it's also cosy and welcoming in a way only a human touch can be. It feels like skimming through the pages oꦐf a child's fairytale, mixed witꦡh a choose-your-own-adventure book.
9 Kingdom 💟Hearts - Hundred Acre Wood
Storybooks are a wonderful thing, as they present worlds that in many regards seem highly implausible — whether that's dragons soaring the skies, fantastically twisted landscapes, or talking animals. Yet really, none of that seems quite so bizarre as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Hearts, harnessing the most con🐠voluted and unexpected asp♔ects of media into one impenetrable package.
Being home to so many of Disney's properties, there's plenty of storybook♔ potential in there. The greatest, and most obvious, would be the Hundred Acre Wood of Winnie the Pooh. In eℱach game, you are quite literally gathering the pages of a storybook, and KH3 commits to even giving the world a unique art style too.
8 Pentiment
Storybooks in the modern sense are usually seen as being things like Cinderella, folklore presented in a digestible way and most typically aimed at children. Of course, storybooks have always existed, and in times before high literacy, were essential to teaching. A rather major one you maไy have heard of is the Bible. Plenty of t🍌he tales were taken in Europe and presented in illustrated manuscripts like The Book Of Kells.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pentiment is, well, exactly that. It is an illustrated manuscript done in the style of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:actual medieval ones, but in motion. It's an astoundingly gorgeous w🐓ork with a firm understanding of how drawing and calligraphy intersect. Plus, you get a murder mystery on top, which is just good fun.
7 The Witcher 3 - Blood An﷽d Wine
A big issue for many works in creating their fantasy worlds is that they make them feel too distant. Europe is usually used as the foundation for them, immensely whitewashed and filled with only a rough understanding of European folktales thrown in. None of it ever feels real though, like it should to the people within these worlds. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3 shines in this regard, using actual Slavic folklore and a world🦄 based on actual Europe to make the fantastic seem mundane in the best way.
Of course, even fairytales exist in such a world. You might be a dragon flying overhead, but a woman with endlessly long hair? That's just silly. The Blood and Wine expansion leans heavily into this, portraying Toussaint as a fairytale land. This gets even better when you are literally sucked into a storybook and witness a world that is e🌌ntirely unbelievable.
6 Fable
Living in parts of the world where folklore and fairytales were the norms is the very reason storybooks are so popular. It chronicles these stories and passes them on. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:For as much as things l🍬ike Greek and Norse myths are adapted, they're just as fantast🌳ic and ordinary to the people that wrote them as ur꧙ban legends are today.
Fable then exists at the perfect intersection of the past and present. RPGs that are based ꦏheavily on the folklore of people populating Britain, they are presented in a way that is very unspectacular, yet use exceedingly modern (for the time of their release) humour. With deeply saturated colours and the most wonderfully average of monsters, playing the games feels like reading your favourite bedtime story.
5 Odin Sphere ܫ
Though Vanillaware is much more well-known now due to the success of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, ♓one of their earlier works released in the West was Odin Sphere. It was a big project for Vanillaware, with massive amounts of voice-acting, and a beat-em-up combat syst🙈em.
Two major aspects of the game made it feel so unique. One was how the narrative was relayed, which was through five꧃ separate stories being read by a young girl, and which all overlapped. The second was how the game itself was displayed. It was similar to how a play would be viewed, with characters arriving on both sides and then leaving to one side once their role was finished. It's a wonderfuꦅlly unique presentation.
4 Batman: Arkham Knight - Mad Hatter's Storybook
When it comes to comic books, there are few as prolific and beloved as Batman. And like the character himself, there was no voice as adored as that of the late and great Kevin Conroy.ౠ He brought incredible life to the character no matter where he was portrayed, such as in Rocksteady's Arkham series.
The Mad Hatter first appears in Arkham City in a truly unsettling manner, and he's up to his whimsical tricks again in Arkham Knight. Here, however, he takes his namesake a bit more seriously, quite literally pulling Batman into the pages of an Alice😼 in Wonderland book. Can't get more storybook-styled than that.
3 Child Of꧑ Ligh🌠t
In a rare moment where creative vision was allowed to win out over raw guaranteed profit, Ubisoft allowed its creative team to come up with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Child of Light. It is a beautiful game, a rare title from Ubisoft that isn't focused on the hyper-realistic. Child of Light has you taking on thꦇe role of Aurora, a princess who's died of illness and hopes to make he𝔉r way back home.
Every aspect of Child of Light is dedicated to its vision. It uses a beautiful watercolour style to give the whole game a dream-like feel. All characters speak in verse, and💦 even the collectibles are writtenꦰ like sonnets. Every piece is designed to feel like a book written in prose. Everything is an experience, rather than existing just to push the game along.
2 Pyre
Supergiant has a bit of a knack for making incredible games, ones you might even dare to call p𒁏erfect. was their latest and greatest success, though their most unique project came immediately prior in Pyre. Mix a little bit of sport, a dash of visual novel, and a wonderfully woven world, and you have a game like no other.
In Pyre, you play as yourself, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:pronouns and all. You take on the role of a Reader, one who watches the stars and chooses a path forward. With its alluring art style and a literal caravan of companions, it's got the perfect cosy atmosphere tha🐽t any good storybook needs.
1 ♊ The Stanley Parable 🦄
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Stanley Parable is a game you've likely heard plenty of at this point. From its origins as a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Half-Life 2 mod to getting an 'Ultra Deluxe' edition more recently, it's a game that took the internet by storm. Strikingly self-aware, it reacted to every choice you made, even if it really didn't want you to make some of them.
In many ways, it's not the first thing you'd think of when storybooks come to mind. It's almost more like a tabletop RPG where the GM has to adapt the story on the fly. So really, it's actually like a choose-your-own-adventure book, with the challenge bein🌳g to see how far you can push the narrator to hold up their story. The Stanley Parable does it exceedingly well.
