Extremely short permadeath games?
October 10, 2019 8:42 AM   Subscribe

I like reading the wikis and watching different ending videos of games like Until Dawn and Fire Emblems where the ending changes depending on who dies during your run. But these are long games, at least for me, and I'm not going to replay the whole thing to compare changes. Are there any very short games where permadeath has narrative consequences?

Any platform is fine, I'll get around to having consoles and a better computer eventually and a list of games I want to play would help me choose which ones to get. Right now I have a DS, a wii u, and a very shitty laptop that might only be good for browser games (but browser games would be rad).

I don't know how to gauge game length - a few hours long? less than 10? less than 20 hours? is that a long game or a short game? But something where I could play through the main story in a couple of days.

Fire Emblems are a light version of this, since deaths seem to just take away optional stuff - the ending summaries, the support possibilities, and kids later on in the series. That kind of "narrative changes" is fine, because it's fun for me to fill in the story gaps in my head and do my own thing. But I would love to see more games like Until Dawn where the characters react to the changes and don't just have a couple lines of dialogue missing.
posted by gaybobbie to Media & Arts (10 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Some oblique suggestions:
Don't Starve. They way you die sort of is the narrative. Feels fairly different your first dozen time through, and by then you can start experimenting with different characters.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a more classic roguelike, many people can complete it within a few hours.
Dwarf Fortress is also sort of famous for procedurally generating narrative, but while a given run is often short, there is no "end" to the game.
Apologies if these are way off base but if you haven't tried the roguelike/rogue-ish games, you may enjoy how narrative can be constructed through the interaction of randomized items/levels/enemies and personal choice/character building, and also how runs go pretty quickly, especially when you are learning a given game. Unlike your key examples, finding the narrative takes some roleplay and imagination on your part.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:13 AM on October 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


The Java edition of Minecraft has a setting called Hardcore Mode, where not only is the player stuck in Hard mode (you have to find or grow food to regain health, enemies attack with greater power and spawn in higher numbers, etc.) but if you die even once you cannot respawn, you can only rejoin the world in Spectator Mode or delete it and start again with a new seed.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:14 AM on October 10, 2019


Depending how poorly you play, nethack can be an exceedingly short game...
posted by jim in austin at 10:34 AM on October 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) - you can play online or offline, in console mode or tiles. Learn VI keys for movement or remap your keypad.

As a beginner, it will be incredibly frustrating. A typical winning game for me is betwen 10 and 20 hours and I've won about a dozen games over the last few years; expert players can do it in under an hour. The vast majority of players never win, even after playing for years.

There's also Sprint mode which compresses the game and if you can win it, you can do so well under an hour.


lol, jim in austin.
posted by porpoise at 10:48 AM on October 10, 2019


DCSS doesn't really have a narrative. It's about as "pure game" as one can get while still having an end-goal.

I think people are seeing the word "permadeath" and thinking you're looking for roguelikes, when you're really looking for games where main/player characters can die and the narrative adjusts accordingly.

This is a trademark feature of "immersive" style games (famously, the original Deus Ex; the Fallout games, especially New Vegas; the criminally overlooked Alpha Protocol; Arkane's games Prey and Dishonored, to an extent) but those games are hardly short.

The one exception I can think of is Consortium, which is chock full of (naturally presented! real-time!) narrative decisions. I haven't played the whole thing (there was a demo at some point, which I don't think is up anymore) but it's apparently short and encourages multiple playthroughs.

(It seems you're really looking for traditional-style RPGs though, which aren't really my thing.)
posted by neckro23 at 11:23 AM on October 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Well the canonical answer, if you want an extremely short game where death has narrative consequences (for your next run through), that would be minit. Each run is, well, a minute.
posted by The Bellman at 11:26 AM on October 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Spelunky has permadeath with a steep learning curve consisting mostly of “oh, so I can't do that either” moments. If you're doing really well, you'll be playing for 45 minutes or so. (I should have a screenshot somewhere of my personal record of a 1.1 second game)
And it'll probably run fine on a shitty laptop.
posted by farlukar at 12:07 PM on October 10, 2019


King of Dragon Pass has recurring characters and narrative consequences and an average playthrough is probably less than 10 hours if you don't totally lose your mind with the permadeath stress like I do, lmao. That said it's still mostly a simulation game.

Undertale is a narrative with set characters and fixed consequences for the death of those characters. It's extremely metafictional about that though. Very playful and kind of ethically intense about wanting to see different endings.
posted by peppercorn at 1:03 PM on October 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Oh, Long Live the Queen is also a sim with recurring characters and narrative consequences for their deaths and short playthroughs! Maybe the closest match of the three here.
posted by peppercorn at 1:04 PM on October 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: If you like the idea of dying again and again, One Hour One Life takes the concept to the nth degree. It's an MMO where you age a year every minute and have a maximum lifespan of one hour, but you're much more likely to starve to death during infancy 15 times before you get anywhere. It's weird.

If you're more interested in the narrative consequences of NPCs permanently dying, you might like various titles in the Choice of Games library. They're reasonably well-written choose-your-own-adventures. They take about an hour to two hours to play and they only cost a couple bucks. Strictly text based, which might be a turnoff.
posted by zeusianfog at 4:23 PM on October 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


« Older Help for Newbie to Gym Etiquette   |   Float My Boat Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.