Playing a game set inside a building from the beginning to the end may sound a bit limiting at first, but some developers don’t really embrace the old“the more, the merrier” philosophyand manage to use this kind of setting to their advantage to create some pretty unique experiences.
For instance, usinga smaller and contained environment can intensify immersion, narrative focus, and even more detailed scenarios. It can even contribute to claustrophobic and intimate atmospheres if we start talking about horror and indie games.
10 Amazing Small Open World Games
We aren’t just saying this to protect their feelings. In this case, size doesn’t matter!
This setting choice is pretty far from being a limitation, but rather a powerful and interesting design tool for developers.And there are a bunch of great games that can prove that! Let’s take a look at 10 of them.
10Unpacking
Who Said Moving Isn’t Relaxing?
Set inside several houses, this is a cozy, relaxing puzzle game that narrates someone’s life by pulling her possessions out of boxes and organizing them into a new home, every time they move.
Without any words, dialogues, or even a protagonist that shows off her face,Unpackingmanages to be a masterclass in environmental storytelling, since it narrates all the phases of a person’s life by only showing off their belongings and where they live.
My first playthrough made me feel completely relaxed and curious at the same time, since every item reflects an important part of this person’s life, even small details like a hobby, a secret, a failure, and so on.
For example,I was so happy when I noticed that her favorite stuffed animal from her very first bedroom became the inspiration for her first published book, after graduating.
If I may sound a little cheesy, it’s a game about unboxing life with all its little nuances, wherethe journey matters more than the destination, despite being a short and simple journey, compared to the other containers of this ranking.
A House That Struck The Industry
Okay, you got me. This is not a complete game, but come on, you’re able to’t deny that P.T. — the playable teaser for the canceled Hideo Kojima’sSilent Hills, may it rest in peace — isvery influential and importantto the gaming industry in general, and probably one of the best horror experiences ever.
Here,you are stuck in a loop inside this very mysterious and spine-chilling house, where an entire family was killed by its father, who supposedly went insane out of nowhere.
The main objective is to find a way out, but the player finds themselves back at the beginning when they reach the final door, since leaving is not an easy task and requires the solution of many challenging puzzles.
I remember how I took several hours to solve these puzzles to get out of there, only to be traumatized by the fetus on the bathroom sink for the rest of my life.
There’s a very claustrophobic vibe while walking through the corridors that makes the experience even more intense. Sadly, we’ll never get a chance to play the full game. But hey, let’s try to look at the bright side of the situation and think that at least we were blessed with this amazing playable teaser.
Exploration At The Space Station
Tacomaisa narrative-driven sci-fi game that is set aboard a high-tech space stationin the year 2088, which is completely abandoned, and it’s up to the player to find out what happened to its crew members.
There’s no combat, choices to make, or conflicts of any kind, only casual puzzles and a bunch of scattered items to interact with, since the main goal is to explore every nook and cranny of this mysterious place to recreate past events with a replay mechanic.
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The idea works quite well because it has such great text, which makes the experience even more immersive, despite having a quite simple and short story.
I admit that I was impressed by how the game can make you feel you really are in space, even without leaving the station, not even once. Plus, you get to float while exploring the area. I mean, how amazing is that?
7Layers of Fear
Inside A Painter’s Mind
Layers of Fear
Layers of Fearis the very first attempt by the studio Bloober Team, from the acclaimed Silent Hill 2 remake, in the genre of horror, that manages to deliver a terrifying and psychedelic experience.
The player controls a nameless painter who’s trying to create his masterpiece that portrays his wife, who recently passed away, apparently by suicide. But our dear artist is struggling with loss, which is reflected in a deteriorating mental state. So,while exploring his house in search of the reagents needed to finish the painting, he’ll need to confront his darkest thoughts and sanity.
What I loved the most is how this game messes with the players’ perception of what’s real or not. It still gives me the creeps to remember that a scene suggests that some “parts” of his deceased wife were used to create the painting. I swear that now I think twice before visiting museums.
6Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Castle With No Memories
Amnesia The Dark Descent
The Dark Descentis the very first game from the Amnesia franchise and easily the best one, if I may say so, since it’s the perfect example of how a video game can use its limited environment to intensify its atmosphere.
Set inside an old castle, the game is about a person that practically lost all of his memories, and now he’s completely lost in a dangerous place. But the player doesn’t have much time to think since there are a bunch of terrible monsters lurking around every corner, and every step needs to be taken carefully.
One tiny detail made this experience terrifying to me: you can’t directly kill any creature in the game. The player can try to lure some of them to fall into dark pits, but that’s it. The main strategy is just to hide and escape, which makes everything so much, much more intense.
Beautiful, Dangerous, And Weird
Developed by the acclaimed Remedy Entertainment,Controlis a very good example of how a setting can be so deep and memorable that it ends up being considered as a character itself.
The Old House is as important as the protagonist, Jesse Faden, and you never leave the building (even when you do). Itsinspired Twin Peaks’ atmosphereis hypnotizing and can be a little scary sometimes, especially when the paranormal elements and enemies kick in. I mean, what’s scarier than a bunch of corporate monsters?
Also, its aesthetic, which mixes surrealism and corporate design, is impeccable. I still get mesmerized while looking at all the thousands of screenshots I took while playing, since every corner of the place is beautiful. Believe me, it’s nearly impossible not to be drawn into this unique setting.
4Look Outside
Don’t Look Outside In This Case
IfUndertaleand the cosmic horror genre had a baby (I know, a quite exquisite mixture), it definitely would beLook Outside, a survival game with RPG elements, where nothing is as it seems.
In this beautifully terrifying game, the player is a regular citizen who simply woke up one day to discover that the sky has been taken over by a mysterious cosmic event. If anyone looks at it, something really bad happens, so you’re able to’t ever look or step outside the building.
Inside this context, the objective is tosurvive 15 days in a row until the mysterious event ends, while exploring the apartment buildingto find out that the neighbors are not quite who they were before.
Every step you make, every door you open, every NPC you talk to — I mean, everything you do is unpredictable in Look Outside, and that got me obsessed with this game. It also has a unique sense of humor, where I found myself in complete horror at one moment and then laughing out loud seconds after.
Portals Inside a High-Tech Facility
Set in the same universe asHalf-Life,Portalis probably one of the most acclaimed games ever and follows a very simple (but smart) premise. You play as Chell, a young lady who is serving as a testing subject for a new item from the Aperture Laboratories: a gun that creates portals.
Sounds easy, but guess what? Using the Portal Gun,the player is subjected to a bunch of challenging puzzles that use perception and gravity as their core basis. I got a little dizzy in my first hour while playing it until I finally understood how the portals work, and I was completely mind-blown when that happened.
Also, everything happens inside an astonishingly vast and high-tech facility from Aperture Science that is controlled by the artificial intelligence GLaDOS, which is loaded with an incredible sense of humor. There’s no way out, so the player needs to solve every problem ahead to discover the dark secrets of this weird place.
2Gone Home
Abandoned Family House
Gone Homedidn’t pioneer the genre of first-person exploration games, but it definitely popularized the term“walking simulator”, which became quite common in the industry for experiences that are narrative-focused, combat-free, and usually with little interaction.
Set in 1995,you play as a young girl who’s returning to her home after a one-year trip to Europe, only to find out that her family is gonethrough a mysterious note left by her younger sister. Sounds kind of spooky, but it’s actually a delicate story about coming of age, identity, family, love, sexual orientation, and even mental illness.
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These games are very different from one another, but they share a love for worldbuilding and storytelling that makes them unique.
Your job is to explore the house while searching for anything that her family left behind to put all the puzzle pieces of the narrative together. Explore at your own pace, and try not to read much more about the story, since it’s very rewarding to discover everything by yourself.
A funny anecdote: I thought that Gone Home was a horror game, so that’s why I started playing it when it released. But I’m very grateful it wasn’t, and it simply became one of my favorite indies.
1The Stanley Parable
Stuck In An Office
The Stanley Parable
If you enjoy a good, quirky, experimental game,The Stanley Parableis one of the best examples you might find out there. It’s a walking simulator about an office worker named Stanley, who simply woke up one day to find out that all his coworkers had gone missing.
The main objective is not to have one.You are stuck inside the office, so simply walk through the entire placewhile a narrator, who is brilliantly voiced by Kevan Brighting, comments on your every move. It really is as weird as it sounds, and that’s the main charm of the experience.
The Stanley Parable has a captivating humorous tone,fourth-wall-breaking moments, and no fear of poking at the gaming culture, such as making fun of the players’ choices, critics' reviews, story archetypes, and even at itself.
I can’t even count how many times I smiled and laughed while playing it! It’s hard not to love to challenge the narrator by not following his descriptions, and it’s incredibly fun to discover all the endings. Last but not least, Stanley Parable is incredibly efficient at using a contained environment to make this experience immersive and unique.
10 Most Iconic Small Towns In Video Games
Despite being small and ordinary, these video game towns have had an iconic impact.
