For me, in no particular order: Firewatch This War of Mine What Remains of Edith Finch Gone Home Papers Please Doki Doki Literature Club I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Doki doki was great. I played a lot VNs and this one hits you really hard.
I buyed the Plusversion on Steam again a few years later
Night in the Woods. It’s hits you in places you never knew were sensitive until you’re acutely aware of each and every exposed nerve.
Outer Wilds
A random reddit clip introduced me to the game years ago, and my life has never been the same since…
Yes!!! I was hoping someone would have commented this… The sense of just scale and epicness, the loss, and feeling so small. I wanted to keep learning more and more about the story. It doesn’t seem like it’d be fun, reading in a game? No shooting? No killing? But it’s honestly in my top 3 favorite games of all time. Also Last of Us-- strong feeling of loss in a specific scene in that game.
Abagail Foy in Prey (2016)
That one chapter in Spec Ops The Line
The scenes where you go back to your childhood home in Wolfenstein The New Colossus
Firewatch
Cyberpunk 2077. Talking to Angel/Skye in Automatic Love. I was in an emotional state at the time where that dialog really got me.
Also Jackie’s end. That got me good. Animators really nailed that scene.
Rime completely wrecked me. I downloaded it because it looked like a cute fun puzzle game. I was not prepared for the emotional journey it would take me on.
I should probably try that game again. I got stuck on some puzzle in the beginning, and uninstalled it last time.
Nier Replicant really hits hard (even more than Nier Automata)
Good lord, someone turned the Harlan Ellison story into a game…? Savage.
Journey, for me. Nothing has ever even come close to the power it can deliver. Only problem these days is there is some rng involved in actually getting a great experience.
FF6 and FFX also hit pretty hard, in that good old epic jrpg way. TLOU is an easy mention, the way it all comes together.
Suzerain also pulled off a really unique experience. But heavy VN elements are cheating a little bit. Obviously you can hit people in the emotions if you’re basically just writing a book. Making me care about a fictional country and its people was a cool trick though.
