In search of games mechanically focused on exploration

2025-06-30

While I do enjoy a nicely narrated story myself, I usually feel unfulfilled by it. It's not that I hate games with a narrative focus, but that I'm usually more attracted to the happenings and events of the game's world. I know that people wanting "lore" kinda poisoned the enjoyment of fictional universes, but that's not really I'm looking for; I don't want a historically-accurate breakdown of what happened where and to whom, I want to hear legends, see cultures, try belief systems and, if I'm lucky enough, experience a set of events caused by my prodding that lead to what is called "emergent storytelling".

And this is a hard kind of game to find.

Probably, more people feel like this, but it's hard to connect the dots because video games are a mess of different things and it's hard to separate what really attracted us to each title without considering the whole as a context. I first started to notice this for myself when I figured out Skyrim was way more fun when freely exploring the handcrafted world than doing quests. I don't need radiant quests and generic NPC lines, just cool places with unique items and hints of lore and legends. This became more obvious after playing Dark Souls and finding out how alluring their worlds are: the craft put into place to create such detailed locations, that fit together in a tapestry of non-verbal storytelling, was way more enticing than the much loved-hated combat system and its "difficulty". Whenever I watched a VaatiVidya video (say that 3 times as fast as you can), it wasn't because I wanted to know accurately what the games' storyline was, but because I wanted to hear more about that worlds' stories and legends.

This made me go back to Morrowind, the best Elder Scrolls game, which is one of my favorite games of all times despite its jankiness. What is really attractive in that world is the care in making sure each place is unique and has some history of its own. Liberating slaves and killing plantation owners doesn't do anything, mechanically speaking, but still felt in-character for the Dunmer I had created. The way the "chosen one" questline dubiously throttles along, with the player having to convince people that they are for sure the real Nerevarine this time around, "trust me, bro", and trading in political favors for this acknowledgement, played an important factor into making Vvardenfell feel alive, even though the game had zero radiant-adjacent systems. The characters and the world itself felt lived in, instead of just being set-pieces for the player to fool around — even though, it being a video game, that's still the objective.

However, the pieces only fell into place (in my mind) after playing Roadwarden (official website linked because it's made by an indie dev and he should be supported), a game that eschews the typical idea of "open world" but still feels very exploration-focused in its core. I mean, you literally play the role of a colonizer in a strange land, and while you explore and learn more about it, your decisions impact that place's and its inhabitants' future. Despite being a text game with light RPG features, the narrative feeds very well into the idea of exploring somewhere new. Being a text-focused game is an advantage here, as it allowed it to interconnect dozens of different storylines and quests, a mountain of content that can't be seen in only one playthrough. The issue is that, as with all good games, it has an end, which left me wanting more experiences like this one, and that's the main issue here: it's such a niche thing that it's almost non-existent, most of the time it just being a small part of larger and grander games.

There are a few games that get close, though. The adventure mode on Dwarf Fortress is pretty good for this sense of exploration, and the same goes for Caves of Qud on non-permadeath mode (which plays as a pretty good RPG, in my opinion). Vagrus is pretty great too, although I hate the combat system with a passion (a matter of personal taste, a lot of people seem to love it). Disco Elysium kinda works too, with the amnesiac trope being a great way to find more about the world at large (with the right skill set), with lots of side quests focused on the typical lives of typical people and many interconnected events.

But, Roadwarden became my gold standard¹. It showed you don't need a large open world to have interesting exploration as a focal point on the gameplay, but having a small — and to be honest, a bit limited — map with layers and layers of content can do just well. What matters is to have interesting content, contradicting stories, beliefs and legends, and non-factually correct history being told by multiple points of view.

I'm still searching for more games like this. Most of the time, they still focus too much on combat systems or puzzles to extend the gameplay time. Other times, they are just too linear (like the Avernum series), heavy-sided on character sheet and, again, focused on combat. There are even games where the exploration is just an incremental checklist you have to go through, like Starbound and No Man's Sky (I suppose), instead of trying to propel you to explore through narrative curiosity or non-grinding system design.

I need to go back and explore Moonring a bit more because it gets really close to the mark: intriguing world and story, quests that reward you for exploration — or force you to explore — and a combat system that doesn't require grinding for XP. Caves of Qud 1.0 has also been calling my name for a while now.

In any case, my search for such games continues.

#caves-of-qud #moonring #rambling #roadwarden #vagrus #video-games