Return of the Obra Dinn: Amazing mystery/detective game. However once you've played it, you basically can't play it again as you remember the solution already and the challenge of the game is trivialized.
Chants of Sennaar: Really great game about deciphering languages. However, once again, by playing the game once, you'll remember the languages and the game has no challenge any more.
Outer Wilds: Mystery adventure game. There is some replayability as there are perhaps areas that you can still explore, but largely once you figure out the mystery and complete the game, there's not much more to experience. Some people speedrun the game though.

All of the above games I value extremely highly even though I only played them ~8-10 hours.

Do you have any others?

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[–] iheartneopets@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you liked chants of shenaar, check out heaven's vault. I think it does what chants of shenaar does, but better, and it did it years before. It was a bit strange to me to see chants of shenaar get so much hype, but have heaven's vault stay slept on.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I considered it as well, but this review made me reconsider. Would you say it is as bad as that review makes it seem?

[–] swordsmanluke@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

Well - I played both and I quite enjoyed Heaven's Vault as well.

I played HV through twice - once for the story and then a second time to see how far I could alter that story with different choices. My wife even played a third time to try for a really particular set of events.

The translation game in HV goes much harder than Chants'. After the first playthrough, you get longer and more challenging texts to decipher.

Also - there's no backtracking really required. The game is pretty strict about telling you where you can and cannot go and reacting to what you found or didn't find. You can cut whole plot lines in HV and it's no problem.

Which makes it one of the better games for replayablity in my mind.

It is - for sure - slow paced. Almost meditative.

[–] iheartneopets@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Funnily enough, what that review said is basically what I said in my review about chants of shenaar, except without the glowing praise. Lots of tedious running across maps and very surface level language-puzzling, whereas I don't remember any tedium with heaven's vault at all. I guess different strokes for different folks?

I would say, it's such a unique and well-executed concept that I would give it a play yourself to see what you think. It's one of those games I haven't found a replacement for, even with chants of shenaar.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 points 8 months ago

I'll give it a shot!