In praise of the short narrative video game...

I used to love getting lost in virtual worlds. My favorite games were the ones that I could explore for hours: New Vegas, Skyrim, Hollow Knight, Breath of the Wild, Outer Wilds, Outer Worlds, KOTOR, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, (okay you get the idea). A game felt like a bargain if my attention span was the only the only thing keeping me from playing more.

I discovered the wide world of roguelikes, and for a while I demanded infinite replayability out of each purchase. Spelunky, then Spelunky 2, Enter the Gungeon, Hades, Slay the Spire, Wildermyth. I credit this partially to being broke and wanting to make each dollar last.

But recently with the Summer Sale, I picked up two games that made me rethink what I now value in games. The first game was Citizen Sleeper, a beautiful narrative that I binged in a single twelve hour sitting. I wanted to befriend everyone in the city, finish every single quest. In Citizen Sleeper, the main challenge of the game is survival. The game does a wonderful job of providing the player with a sense of urgency—the player character is infected with a terminal illness and must work for medicine. However, towards the end, the player can become self-sufficient.

Once this happened in my game, I immediately set out to befriend everyone in the city, finish every quest. Not out of some persnickety completionist urge, but out of a genuine love for the world and characters stitched into the game. I finished most of the pre-DLC content, as the sun peeked into the window of my room, I finally crawled into bed.

The next day, I realized I had no real desire to return to the world of Citizen Sleeper. I wanted to see how some of the stories ended, but knew that it would essentially consist of talking to an NPC, waiting the requisite X days for the story to advance, doing my chores each day to stay alive. The narrative didn’t feel worth the busywork. I had gotten enough out of the game.

I booted up the other game I’d purchased instead: Roadwarden. I was ready to explore another world. My god, did Roadwarden deliver. I have never encountered a game like it. It is a game that respects the player — granting you immense agency in what you choose to do.

In Roadwarden, you are a traveling mercenary, part messenger, part scout, part muscle-for-hire. Originally, you are tasked to explore a remote peninsula to determine whether its villages can be profitably integrated into the Ten Cities. Besides your mission, you choose a personal goal for your character at the beginning of your adventure from the trite (I want to help others), to the classic (I want to be remembered as a hero), to the mercenary (I want to complete my mission and retire rich). The brilliant choice in the game, though, is that you are limited to 40 days on the peninsula.

My first playthrough lasted about 10 hours, and I did standard hero stuff. I reported back to the guild that hired me for the mission with a full map, saved a city from ruin, befriended a village. I thought I had done pretty well. The journey had been satisfying. The post-game report told me otherwise. The city I saved from plague? It would be ravaged by the bandit tribe I failed to stop. The villagers I befriended would be the first to fall to dark magic that I had ignored.

The next day I woke up and decided to try again. My second playthrough, I was determined to do things differently. I knew the layout of the peninsula, I knew how to complete the main story. Surely I could do more to ensure civilization continued on the island beyond my death. Instead I stumbled upon even more secrets. I befriended a local sorceress, helped her overcome an addiction, but had to leave before I could convince her to move to the city with me. I discovered a previously unknown tribe, but wasn’t able to convince them to tell me their secrets. I found mysterious items and statues that led me to betray my faith in pursuit of their power. I failed to uncover their mysteries. I discovered an island that required four party members to fully explore. I was four coins short of convincing a person to help me. I uncovered a conspiracy but didn’t have the time to confront the mastermind. Although I saved civilization on the island, there was so much I couldn’t do.

Therein lies the beauty of Roadwarden, and in games that limit your experience. There is a great GDC talk about placing guardrails for your players to protect them from themselves. Counterintuitively, when placed in a game world, players will not always do the things that are fun. Sometimes they’ll choose to grind boring content for XP instead of venturing into new areas. Developers need to find ways to nudge players into having fun. I found that the limited nature of each game of Roadwarden made my curiosity stronger.

While I gave up on Divinity Original Sin 2 after 30 hours because the story felt too slow, I have never felt similarly bored in Roadwarden. The pace of the story is dictated by the player, who chooses to explore only what is interesting to them. It is a testament to the developers of the game that they were able to weave so many mysteries into a game less than 1GB.

Anyone else feel this way about games? I feel like at this stage in my life I prefer short narrative experiences like Before Your Eyes to yawning epics like Elden Ring or Persona 5 Royale.

Also curious if others have game recommendations for narratively strong, compact little games like Citizen Sleeper or Roadwarden. I am obsessed. Thanks for reading :)