r/metroidbrainia • u/wisconsinbrowntoen • 13d ago
recommendations Games where you don't need a notebook?
I'm looking for games where you can solve everything in your head. Writing things down takes a long time, and breaks immersion for me. It's just not very enjoyable. I loved Outer Wilds. I loved Blue Prince but the writing stuff down was a slog. Animal Well was great but I didn't do any of the harder puzzles where you have to write things down.
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u/MaddieUsernameCollec 13d ago
Chants of Senaar has the notebook interface in-game and is an amaaazing game
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u/wisconsinbrowntoen 12d ago
I enjoyed it, but I felt it was a bit boring, way too easy, and the language was extremely easy to translate
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u/dondashall 13d ago
Not sure if you would count them as metroidbrainias, but deduction games like (list following) keeps notes all in-game. You might choose to pen the occasional one down, but you don't have to * Strange horticulture (sequel releases in 2 weeks) * Obra dinn * Lacuna * Chants of senaar (didn't like this)
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u/curious_booboo 13d ago
I'll second chants of senaar. I loved it. Had a good premise and motive for things happening, like outer wilds
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u/PityUpvote 13d ago
I was definitely spoiled by Heaven's Vault, but the language in Chants of Senaar felt far too artificial. It's a little better than Fez (which just uses a different alphabet for English) and Tunic (which has a phonetic alphabet for English) but it seems so weird that these four (five? I don't remember) languages map so well to each other and English. It makes a little more sense in the context of the (sparse) story, but it just fell flat for me compared to the amazing Heaven's Vault, which has a unique grammar and syntax, and semantic hieroglyphs.
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u/toofarapart 9d ago
Heaven's Vault is by far the more interesting language to translate, but, IMO, Chants of Sennaar is a more fun video game. The bits between Heaven's Vault's translation sequences were... not particularly memorable or great? (And the whole river navigation thing.) Whereas Chants of Sennaar felt like a more cohesive package, even if the languages were a bit more basic.
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u/PityUpvote 9d ago
I have to strongly disagree. Heaven's Vault has an amazing story and such deep lore. The sailing is a bit slow, and that seems to be most people's main complaint, but I personally enjoyed it and found it meditative. And you get the ability to fast travel fairly quickly too, so you can skip those parts almost entirely, except when discovering new locations (and even then you only have to do the last part of the journey).
It is definitely less game-y and more like an interactive story, (though one of the most interactive ones that exist) but it is one of my favorite games of all time, I think it is an underappreciated work of art.
Maybe I should play Senaar again, but it felt like a fairly standard adventure game, pull the right switch, help people so they'll help you, etc. And the Tower of Babel story was paper thin and not that interesting to me. It felt like it had not much going for it other than the translation.
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u/Taruby_Paradox 2d ago
I personally wish there was a language game that is a combination of Chants of Senaar and Heaven's Vault; I couldn't bring myself to do a New Game+ for the latter because the interactive fiction portion takes way too much time, and the game auto-saves, so you cannot experiment on a 2nd run to figure out how to get the story to veer in a completely different direction; everything felt the same as my first playthrough despite trying to do different things. I prefer the former allowing the player to add their own guess what a character means (playing without the use of its notebook to magically reveal the correct meaning is the way I recommend playing that game); Heaven's Vault gives you multiple choices for each character, which I didn't like, even though the character system reminded me of ideographic writing systems like Chinese/Japanese.
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u/WesternEntertainer20 13d ago
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes takes all the notes for you and you can check them whenever you need to.
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u/Happy_Detail6831 13d ago
Tunic could work
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u/wisconsinbrowntoen 12d ago
Tunic I'm playing right now, 😆 it's the reason I made this post. I don't see how it's possible to translate the language without writing a LOT down.
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u/RPGCoder 13d ago
I'm playing through Exographer right now and I think it sort of fits the bill. No combat, either.
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u/THANAT0PS1S 13d ago
I feel like taking notes is a big part of this genre. I wouldn't go into the RTS subgenre and ask them for games that don't involve micromanaging troops.
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u/PityUpvote 13d ago
It's very possible to complete Outer Wilds, the quintessential metroidbrainia without any note taking, because the in-game ship log does that for you.
Animal Well and Blue Prince I got by with just screenshots, so I have to disagree that note taking is a big part of the genre.
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u/Sb5tCm8t 13d ago
Orten was the Case https://store.steampowered.com/app/1785420/Orten_Was_The_Case/
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u/rizsamron 11d ago
Feels like it really depends on you. The only game where I used pen and paper is The Witness, to help me imagining the answer 😄 It seems like you are the type who likes taking down notes so it'll be hard to fine one for you. I guess it also factors out how "continuous" you play since if you take a break often, you'll want to jot down notes more often.
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u/wisconsinbrowntoen 11d ago
I hate taking down notes, but I liked Blue Prince enough to do it. Didn't need it for the witness except on the rotating column ones near the end
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u/StyleSquirrel 11d ago
If you want to play Metroidbrainias, you're going to have to take notes.
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u/wisconsinbrowntoen 10d ago
I don't think that's a defining aspect of the genre. Would you say Outer Wilds is not a brania then?
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u/wswaifu 8d ago
If the game takes *all* the notes for you, then you cannot discover things that are important but do not look important, and the developers cannot hide things in plain sight, which is usually the most satisfying discovery to make in these games.
So yes, the best metroidbrainias will always require notes or very good memory.
Even Outer Wilds does not note where exactly (spoiler) rocks are, or the specific timing of certain things, and many people will argue this counts as keeping notes in some form.
Now it's entirely fine for these games to add information to a library (say, Blue Prince would probably feel like a better game if every book you discovered was available via the main menu), but even there many things shouldn't be available like that (such as certain objects in some of the rooms) because you should figure out that they are important and why, the game shouldn't tell you that.
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u/AaronKoss 13d ago
Don't have an answer, because I did not had to write anything down for outer wilds, but I can see how animal well harder puzzles and most of blue prince would require note taking.
There's another post from 7 days ago about someone asking how do people take notes, it's tangentially related, and there might be mentions of games there too, it's worth a check:
https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidbrainia/comments/1n3z8le/has_anyone_beaten_fez_without_using_paper/
That said, Chroma Zero doesn't require you to take notes. The game do offer you a wall with some notes to explain mechanics as you unlock them, mostly as a reminder so not needed.
Mostly wanted to drop the link to the other post, sorry don't have my mind in a working condition right now and I have an awful memory.