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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[–] spunkycomics@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The Witness has a lot of generative puzzles that I guess technically are replayable, but you can’t go back to before the moments of joy of discovery and that’s the core of what made that game incredible to me

[–] sp6@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

If you want a good laugh, check out The Looker. It's a short satire of the Witness, free on Steam

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I did play the Witness, though the ending was quite disappointing to me. I got kind of tired of the (imo) very similar puzzles throughout the game.

[–] Aremel@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Agreed. By the end, i was just looking up the solutions so i can just figure out what the heck happened on the island, only to be met with the biggest let-down in my personal gaming history. Game went from an 9/10 to a 3/10 just on the ending alone.

[–] spunkycomics@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

A problem with The Witness is that the game’s single biggest excitement comes from a twist that revealing completely spoils

spoiler

The environment puzzles

So it’s stuck in the position of letting 80% of its player base walk right past the best part, or preserving the moment of discovery.

I’m personally grateful it has the integrity to let me find it on my own, but it’s also a bummer since at least two of my friends beat it without ever realizing