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Game subthread.
Review of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader in the child comment here. (if putting it like this, let the mods remind me of not doing this)
What are some games that focus on exploration and vibes but with zero gamification elements? Something I’ve noticed is that games will try to nudge you into exploring an area by giving you an “exploration point”, or some other sort of positive reinforcer. But whenever this happens, it actually reduces your interest in exploring for its own sake, because the extrinsic reward interferes with the intrinsic reward processing. So when you get that point or that notification telling you that this is a new area, you now want to explore a new area already instead of actually taking in and experiencing the area you ostensibly have just discovered.
Is there any game that doesn’t do this? That encourages the intrinsic exploration element simply by not encouraging anything at all? (An old game which did this, that I recall playing briefly as a child, is The Endless Forest)
Underrail. It actively discourages exploration. It's an RPG whose entire plots takes place on roughly.. 1/4 of the game world. The rest is wholly optional. The vibes of exploring it are impeccable.
You will suffer if you try to explore. Especially if you see red mushrooms. The rewards were pain, tears and more pain and an ungodly amount of money spent on antidotes. because the reason places on the map are unexplored is a species of a cryptic, adaptive visual camo using .. insect that has a habit of sneaking up on people, traumatically injecting them with a paralyzing poison and eating them alive after it kicks in.
You have five seconds to slam an antidote or you're dead. Or be a psyker and set yourself on fire.. Oh, and there's a subspecies of crawler that, if you slam said antidote, almost kill you through forcing anaphylatic shock.
Or be a god-tier electronics guys and cobble together an energy shield out of very rare components that will bounce off their stingers (possible but very hard).
Or simply stay out of those places and keep to the 'civilized' bits of the game.
It's not entirely.. unreasonable to explore, there are a few locations with interesting gear - but generally, the rewards are very slim.
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