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most games marketed to young adults or teens are a power fantasy - after all, they are what sells well because everyone has power fantasies, and those games fulfill them.

But occasionally, a good game comes out which makes you think about the world, and evoke other kinds of emotions like papers please.




Many good games are not power fantasy. There is huge category of puzzle games, dating simulators, speed based racing games that are power fantasy only if you extend the definition to cover anything. Angry birds, tetris, card solitaires, candy crush, minecraft to name easy most popular examples.

Non power fantasy does not mean only a game that makes point about the world. It may mean also comedic game or Nintendo like feel good whatever.


'Spec Ops - The Line' comes to mind. The gameplay is nothing special, but it makes you face the consequences of your actions in a very brutal way.


Chiming in, this is currently available on steam at a huge discount (€4 here).


Because the gameplay is so poor, my experience was that it ignored my actions and presented consequences that didn't match them in the slightest.


I'm not trying to alarm you, but I've watched a youtube video of a gamer playing it "unironically". After 30 minutes the guy was enjoying rejecting people and starts getting angry at characters with bad papers, insulting and rejecting them with some kind of sadistic pleasure. Pretty scary.


The Age of Decadence is a great example, if you're on a lookout for such games.

It's a non-linear RPG that lets you play a lone, vulnerable person in a brutal, unforgiving world with a rich setting and highly intricate storyline.

One-on-one fights are hard enough, you-against-many usually ends with your dead body on the ground and a snarky commentary about your yet another fatal mistake.


Like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

That was an awful game.


What makes it awful?


Could have been more elaborate here. Didnt really want to explore it. Well the story and the choices you must make. The game itself is a fine work of art; but it's more exploitation than a fun adventure game.

I picked up the game because I thought it would be a spiritual successor to the text based game Mind Forever Voyaging. Well it wasnt exactly that.

The game gets dark fast. In fact I don't see it as a game at all, as it isn't fun other than solving puzzles that are at time grizzly.

(Nsfl)

I was pretty shocked at having to operate an organ/eye out of a living and awake prisoner of war in a one of the game's simulations; of a concentration camp.

Another simulation you play as a female that gets violated.

Screenshot: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bf/I_Have_No_Mou...

"The game's story is set in a world where an evil computer named AM has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, whom he has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years. Each survivor has a fatal flaw in their character, and in an attempt to crush their spirits, AM has constructed a metaphorical adventure for each that preys upon their weaknesses. To succeed in the game, the player must make choices to prove that humans are better than machines, because they have the ability to redeem themselves. Woven into the fabric of the story are ethical dilemmas dealing with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia and genocide."

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_...




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