Summary

  • Lesser-known indie devs offer unique choice-based narrative games that rival AAA titles in suspense and storytelling.
  • Killer Frequency immerses players in a high-stakes slasher mystery where choices impact the fates of potential victims.
  • The Thaumaturge, developed by ex-CD Projekt Red devs, delivers a Slavic supernatural RPG with intricate demon collection and turn-based combat.

There's simply no video game like one tha🌱t's fully narrative-driven from start to finish, and some of the best ones are always where your story decisions for certain events and d♓ialogue can alter the ending or your relationships with characters. Studios that do this remarkably well include Supermassive, Telltale, and Quantic Dream, but what about the lesser-known projects?

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Related
൲ Games Where Your Choices Have Actual Consequences

These games actually take into account how you choose to play your characters and adjust th❀e game accordingly. All choices have consequences.

Indie developers too hit the nail on the head by giving you wonderfully original games that implement choice-based narrative design in ways that can often compete with some of the Triple-A titl🔯es. The following hidden gems in the genre offer great suspense, myster🉐y, and story writing.

12 🦩 Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo
Adventure

Released
💫 December 16, 2021 𓃲
Developer(s)
🧔 Pendulo Studios ♛
Publisher(s)
Microids

Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 Oscar-nominated film starring James Stewart and Kim Novak got itself a video game using an all-new story and cast of characters. While it still keeps Hitchcock in the title, the game has very lit🗹tle to do with the actual fi༺lm and sets out to tell its own original choice-based mystery that affe🥃cts multiple playable characters.

All good stories start with a character who's a writer, and here you'll play one named Ed Miller. Ed is an aut🌜hor who's recently been in a car accident that led him to develop a case of the titular condition, which affects his recollection of events.

Then comes the key ♛mechanic – Ed develops the a𝔉bility to rewind and examine moments from his past, similar to crime scenes in Detroit: Become Human.

11 💝 Killer Frequency 🌠

Platform(s)

PC, PS5꧑, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xb𝔉ox One, Nintendo Switch, Meta Quest 2

Released

June 1, 2023

Developer(s)

Team17

Publisher

Team17

Killer Frequency is a high-stakes slasher mystery filled with homages to the films and horror works ๊of the '80s that inspired it. The town of Gallows Creek has a series kille🐈r known as The Whistling Man on the prowl, and it's up to you, a radio DJ and late-night host at the KFAM 189.19 station - The Scream, to help potential victims evade the killer.

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168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Best Choice-Based Horror Games

These horror games wi♉ll lܫeave you with the worst horror of all... indecision.

It's a short and twist-filled interactive narrative game dependent on your choices, where you navigate the interior and exterior of your radio station to find clues and resources to help those 🤡desperately calꦫling in.

Facing immense pressure, the fate of the victims rests entirely𒐪 in your hands based on the directions you provide to callers during the puzzle segments, like telling them how to properly hotwire a car and successfully navigate a maze.

10 Twin Mirr🍬or

Twin Mirror
Adventure

Released
💞 December 1, 2020 ಞ
Developer(s)
Dontnod Entertainment ꧒
Publisher(s)
🌳 Dontnod Entertainment
Platform(s)
PC, Xbox One, PS4

Twin Mirror is a game developed directly by Don't Nod, the ﷽creators of Life is Strange, Tell Me Why, an♒d Vampyr. However, this game seems to🦂 be the least talked about and most forgotten by the studio, and it really sh🍸ouldn't be. Granted, it doesn't live up to the same quality as those aforementioned games, but it's equally unique and still weaves a very compelling mystery.

You take on the role of a former investigative journalist named Sam Higgs, returning to his hometown of Basswood, West Virginia after a two-year absence to investigate his friend's 𝐆death. He'll do this by frequently visiting his Mind Palace toౠ allow his mirror self to review memories and reconstruct events.

I🉐f you like Alan Wake 2, Tell Me Why, and Remember Me, Twin Mirror is an excellent companion to those titles.

9 Loretta

Platform(s)

PC, PS5, PS4, Xbo﷽x Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Released

February 16, 2023

Developer(s)

Yakov Butuzov

Publisher

Dangen Entertainment

If you'r𝓡e a fan of Ti West's Pearl from the X movie trilogy, you can consider Loretta as Pearl's video game match. In this 1940s film noir-inspired landscape of the rural South, you will be playing the titular housewife who, depending on your choices, can ultimately snap and become a murderous femme fatale to enact revenge on her cheating husband and claim his life insurance policy.

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168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 13 Best Mystery Games On Steam

Mystery games provide immersive content that leaves you yearning for answer🥀s. Here, you can find the best mystery games available on Steam.

It's as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:dark and dis🦩turbing of a psycho𒐪logical thriller as you can get, 😼and the game's brilliant pixel art style with added inspiration from artists Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth makes everything feel noir and atmospheric. Loretta will have to choose her words and actions carefully in this game that feels like a c🍒ombination of Stephen King's 1922 and Otto Preminger's Laura.

8 Lake

Lake
Adventure

Released
September 1, 2021 𒐪
Developer
Gamious
Publisher
꧋ Whitethorn Games

Lake is one of the coziest games where🐷 your choices matter, and that's because the stakes aren't high at all and there's no murder mystery or darker plot at play. It's a light and easy delivery sim game set in the 1980s in the fictional lakeside town of Providence Oaks, Oregon, where♋ you make decisions when interacting with townsfolk to forge your own relationships and get different endings.

The story will still draw you in right away. The main protagonist, Meredith Weiss, returns to her hometown and leaves life in the big city and her job in tech behind to deliver mail in Providence Oaks while her dad is away. Along the way, she may form a romantic interest which will affect the trajectory of what she wants to do with he🎃r life and whether she stays or leaves Providence Oaks.

7 Stray Gods: The Rolepla𓆏ying Musical

Platform(s)

PC, P♛S5, PS4, Xbo🧜x Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Released

August 10, 2023

Developer(s)

Summerfall Studios

Publisher

Humble Games

168澳洲幸运5开奖☂网:Greek mythology game𒈔s are plenty and fun, but have you ever seen one where the entire premise no𝔍t 𓄧only revolves around a branching murder mystery scenario, but a full-on musical game involving the Greek pantheon?

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is precisely that, asking you to investigate the death of a former Muse, Calliope,💧 while romancing characters from Greek myth and singin🙈g along with them!

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The cꦯast is also extremely star-stu🌜dded, featuring the likes of Rahul Kohli, Troy Bakerꦆ, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, and Merle Dandridge from The Last of Us, Janina Gavankar, Khary Payton, and Alyn of Hull and🐽 Bayek actor Abubakar Salim. On top of it all, Stray Gods is a roleplaying game written by none other than former BioWare narrative designer David Gaider, who's also a co-founder of Summerfall Studios.

6 Tron: I🔴dentity

Tron Identity

Released
ܫ April 11, 2023
Developer(s)
🙈 Bithell Games
Publisher(s)
Disney Interactive 💮
Platform(s)
PC, Switch

Did you know there was a new Tron entry from Disney in 2023? No, it's not the next film quite yet, but rather a Nintendo Switch 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:and Steam-exclusive visual novel that introduces a de💦tective mystery storyline to th꧑e series.

You'll assume the role of a program aptly named Query in a new virtual Grid enജvironment, wit♚h the job of investigating the case of a Repository vault that's been broken into.

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Though a much ligh🦂ter mystery and a more text-heavy game in the genre (with no voice acting), Tron: Identity remains atmospheric with its visuals and music.

As you carry out your investigation, most of the crime-solving will be achieved via intricate card puzzles, and you'll be faced with many important decisions that can potentially lead to moments 𝓀of combat and certain characters getting derezzed.

5 🍸 The Th☂aumaturge

Released
March 4, 2🌜024
Developer(s)
Fool's Theory
Publisher(s)
ﷺ 11 Bit Studios
Platform(s)
PC

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Thaumaturge is an RPG likely not on many choice-based fans' radars, but i🉐t is an exceptional gem absolutely worth playing. The game is created by Polish-based studio Fool's Theory, founded by ex-CD Projekt Red devs who worked on The Witcher series and is a studio that assisted Larian with Bald๊ur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 and is now working on The Witcher Remake with CD Projekt Red.

The Thaumaturge is like the Slavic supernatural spawn of Disco Elysium, BG3, Vampyr, and creature collectors. Set iꦚn 1905 Poland, you play a detective named Wiktor Szulski who's also a thaumaturge and can collect various demons called Salutors to upgrade their s🐼kills and employ them in turn-based combat.

You have Rasputin by your side, and the characters, creatures, and isometric world 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:are all crafted in Unreal Engine 5.

4 T✱he Council

The Council - Episode 1: The Mad Ones
Adventure

Developer(s)
💝 Big Bad Wolf
Platform(s)
PC, Xbox One, PS4

US President George Washington, French military strategist Napolean Bonaparte, and First Secretary of State of the Kingdom of Spain ꦕManuel de Godoy are gathered for a 1793 occult meeting on a secluded island. While this sounds like a great setup for a joke, it's anything but, because this is the main premise and cast o💖f characters you'll meet in The Council.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:In this five-episode game, you play Louis de 🐎Richet, a French citizen off to join the occult meeting of The Golden Order on the island in hopes of finding his mother, who's gone💛 missing there.

The choice-based gameplay in The Council is something else entirely. As Louis, you can select from up to 15 sꦺkills to unlock different dialogue paths for strategic approaches, be they diplomatic or more questioning.

3 80 Days

80 Days
Indie Games
Adventure
Strategy

Released
December 15, 2014 ♉
Developer
Inkle, Cape Guy Limited 𒆙
Publisher
Inkle, Ca🦹pe Guy Limited

Inkle is not only a developer of video games, but also the open-source narrative design tool inklewriter, which is used to build its own interactive stories and text adventures like the 2014 award-winning hit and Time Magazine Game of the Year – 80 Days. And yes, the game is precisely⭕ based on Jules Verne's Around the Wꦑorld in Eighty Days.

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These text adventure games have be♛en written down as the best of their genre.

Taking the themes and characters from the book and through a combination of text-adventure gamep💮lay and management mechanics, you are Phileas Fogg's French valet, Jean Passepartout, bound for ꦚa trip around the world by various modes of transportation, including ships, hot-air balloons, and trains.

It's a race to the finish, with a trajectory course an❀d real-t🍷ime clock charted by the game.