Roguelikes with the potential for broken builds.
Sometimes you find the perfect combo on your run and become an unstoppable force, but it doesn’t ruin the game because you finish your god-like run and next run you try to find another overpowered build.I do enjoy game mechanics that interact in emergent ways that weren’t fully planned out by the developer in games like Dwarf Fortress.
I’m not that excited by deep skill trees or crafting or inventory management, lately i enjoy good movement, music, exploration, and story.
The movement in destiny 2 felt really good, similar games have it where you get momentum, dives, floating with warlock, etc. I think Titanfall 2 and borderlands 3 zane had similar really good feeling movement.
The exploration in pre planes EverQuest was great, fast travel limited to certain classes and levels, risky but faster travel routes in kunark, groups in overworld and dungeon areas, dangerous places to get to with high reward for the risk. Elder scrolls, dark souls/elden ring, and Zelda breath of the wild had similar feelings for me.
I like most game mechanics to some extent. Creativity in combining game mechanics is key to making an outstanding game imo.
However, I don’t like things that force a time limit. I play games as an escape. I don’t like feeling stressed by a clock while I’m off the clock. These can be literal timed missions or things like a food/water meter. Escort missions also suck for similar reasons.
I think difficulty in a game should come from overcoming a foe, traversing harsh terrain, or solving a puzzle. If the game is hard because I have to stop what I’m doing to feed myself, or I have to rush to complete an objective on a timer, it just becomes work.
Same deal with making shit absurdly difficult and relying on trying over and over until you manage to do the correct timing/sequence/whatever 28934928x in a row. Games like Dark Souls or Cuphead intrigue me, but I will never ever play them again because I have shit to do in real life. Also, fuck any single player game that doesn’t have cheat codes.
Peaceful exploration
All the stuff mentioned here with jiggle physics
Alright, I’d rather hide this under a similarly cringey top comment, but: Clothing damage. I think it gets a pass sometimes when applied in a gender neutral way, but a lot of games now avoid it for fear of international censorship rules (and, it generates an ick factor for players that are not similarly cringey as I am)
DayZ nails this quite well
I’m not sure if this counts as gameplay mechanics or rather narrative structure, but games like Outer Wilds, Fez, Tunic, where the exploration and discovery of the game is the end goal of playing the game, not just getting to the game’s end state.
I’m not sure if there’s an accepted term for these games, but I’ve always thought of them as “archaeology” games. There’s a bunch of stuff, both plot and gameplay, that is hidden (sometimes in plain sight), until you discover it and find out what meaning it carries.
Save anywhere
Inventory Tetris
Ew, please no. I’m pretty much the exact opposite, I’d rather have little or no need for inventory at all. As in, more Zelda, less Diabo.
I could go on a 6 paragraph rant about Breath of the Wilds inventory system.
Oh yeah, I meant pretty much everything before BOTW (Echoes of Wisdom’s echo selection also sucks). When you only have like 10 things, there’s no need to organize anything.
Project Zomboid with the Tarkov inventory mod is essential for you then
Diablo 1 and 2 for the simplest, RE4 for one that really takes your time
Backpack Heroes?
Roguelikes and roguelites tend to be my favorite. Ones where each run is new and you can toy with different builds and usually get pretty OP toward the end (or get cut down early because luck wasn’t in your favor or you made a mistake).
If you are at all (or were ever) into pokemon, have you played through Pokerogue.net already? Game is hard!
Among plenty of the other things mentioned, I enjoy “diagetic interfaces”. Ways of interacting with a game’s systems that stay grounded in the reality of the setting of the world. Dead Space is a prime example, but I’ve been enjoying a lot of the crafting in Vintage Story for this reason. The smithing in particular has had me hooked for a while. Hammering out my armor and weapons voxel by voxel made finally suiting up and feeling ready to take on a boss that much more satisfying.
Vintage Story is massively underrated!
Parry and riposte mechanics make me happy. Idk why exactly, but something about timing a parry and making the enemy entirely helpless for the followup is just great.
I like systems that allow for outrageous combos, whether unintentionally or by design. Roguelikes and roguelites usually have them, but it’s almost entirely luck based. Dynasty Warriors 8 allows for plenty of OP combos if you manage the right weapon attributes. Skyrim and its
broken as fuckperfectly balanced enchanting + alchemy (or Morrowind’s even more perfectly balanced permanent fortify attribute magic)Once you wrap your head around it, Rimworld is great for stuff like that. Once you start thinking outside the lines you can perform the most outrageous war crimes for literally no reason other than your own entertainment.
Like, if an enemy sends a raiding party you can nuke half the map with nerve gas to kill them, then skin them, eat them to keep the colony growing, then load all their skins into a pod and fire it back into the enemy base. The game doesn’t encourage you to do stuff like that, but it also doesn’t stop you lol.
Or you can use the skins to make hats and trench-coats.
I’ve had plenty of experience with Dwarf Fortress, but never managed to fully weaponize magma before the FPS death killed my fortress. Using bridges to atom smash raids was always funny as hell.
I know Rimworld is a lot more expansive in some areas but, much like Factorio, is a game I’m avoiding because I don’t need yet another addiction 😅
I really like Zelda and Ys style ARPGs. Specifically, rare and impactful loot, and little reliance on skill levels, but rather skill aquisition. Both approach it very differently, and later Ys games fall into more traditional RPG mechanics (e.g. farm money/exp, buy gear, etc), so I’m more talking about Ys 1, 2, and Origin, as well as pre-BOTW Zelda games.
Basically, I love this gameplay loop:
- Enter dungeon/level and fight baddies
- Find important item/ability
- Use important item/ability to defeat monsters
- Fight boss, using a mix of important item and learning movesets
- Repeat 1-4 several times, with plot mixed in
- Fight final boss using a mix of everything acquired
Ys and Zelda do this in very different ways, and I absolutely love the level cap in Ys 1 to enforce playing smarter instead of grinding. You can never really get OP, even if you try (except Ys 2, which I don’t like much).
Unfortunately, “ARPG” has been twisted to mean Diablo-like, which is heavy on loot and ability trees instead of puzzles and exploration, and future Ys games go that direction as well.
This isn’t really specific to mechanics or systems, but I’ll like pretty much any mechanic or system that lends itself well to that gameplay loop.
I love anything with a tech tree or a skill tree or items that improve based on usage. The ratchet and clank games have such a great mix of all of those things, I end up spending a bunch of time just leveling up the guns!
