That Other Kind Of Game - Story Generators

Wow! It’s great to see you guys liked the video! You might also like the video I did last week, it’s over how different games implement the “Rule of Cool” to keep players immersed. It did really well for about one day then traffic suddenly dropped. Not for sure for the exact reason, but those who did see it seemed to really like it too. https://youtu.be/zx4gsU1Lg48 Also, after seeing so many recommendations for it, looks like I’ll have to look into kenshi!

Fun fact: rimworld’s hardest default difficulty is literally called losing is fun

I love the new waves of recognition the graphical release is bringing Dwarf Fortress. Been playing since 2008, myself. I never dreamed it would be so well recognized on its own apart from all of the 'it inspired minecraft' quotes. Being able to open twitch or youtube and see thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of people experience it at long last brings joy to my heart for Tarn and Zach Adams.

Writing for the Washington Post, Gita Jackson said "You win [Dwarf Fortress] when something that’s so funny or interesting or just plain weird happens that you have to tell a real life person about it." The game has given me so many stories to tell people it'll always be my favourite.

The guy who made Rimworld (which he explicitly calls a story generator) wrote a book about story telling in games. He also worked on Bioshock Infinite

Stellaris is my drug. I always come back to it.

Stellaris and Rimworld are my go-to games. Both near infinitely replayable with all the tools to make a fun and interesting story throughout a playthrough. This is only boosted further by their amazing modding communities, with some astonishing work that makes these games some of the best experiences you can find from this kind of game. Whether it be stuff like gigastructures and acot for stellaris, or Rimworlds vanilla expanded. There’s always something that can make another run worthwhile, and that goes for unmodded too.

Games like Kenshi, and Rimworld are games that I’ve had the most fun ever in. Both games are literally the analogy of taking off the training wheels and being told “go nuts”. Kenshi especially. The game tells you literally nothing besides the controls and you do whatever you want in quite the unique world. Surprised Kenshi is still as obscure as it is in this genre.

Cataclysm DDA has constantly blown my away by how beautifully in-depth and complex it is and the amazing stories that come from it.

4:16 when that rimworld music kicked in it just made me feel something. THAT is what story generators do. They are the TTRPGs of the video game industry

I consider Crusader Kings 2 a good story generator game, because of the emphasis on characters and their personalities

Stellaris seems like a good time but what I like about Dwarf Fortress so much is that all the stories are so personal. Every dwarf has a name, and history, and personality. You can order someone to pull a lever that swings the draw bridge shut with an elven caravan on it, and Mafol will always be the one who gets to do it as a retribution for declining the trade of his masterpiece shirt because it had a birch button on it. So now he lives to see the caravans of dozen elves splattered against the cavern wall, and the rest fall into a sea of magma bellow.

As for story generator games, an influential game has to be the Sims. If you take a war game or a management game and add a bit of Sims to it, then you have Stellaris or Rimworld.

I never knew I wanted a game category called 'Story Generator' so much. Literally one of my favourite types of games

For Stellaris, I give my highest recommendation to the "Civil Wars" mod. It adds a bunch of ways for civil wars to break out outside what the base game offers, making it so that conquering the entire galaxy is just the start of your problems. For example, if you change your government from Imperial, your heir can either go into exile and become an admiral for one of your rivals, or try to make an entire sector revolt against you as a new, feudal society empire. Or, when a faction within your empire dislikes you, you'll be given a couple years to fix the situation before that faction revolts. These are just a part of your problems.

Been playing DF since 2009 and there are so many stories. In this current version I have had a dwarven baby drown in a river, traumatizing my main stone mason who just started carving statues of this dead baby. The Fortress of Tombkeeper is living up to it's name, now, idolizing a dead child from the early days of expedition. Edit: Update: The fortress has progressed about five years since I posted my original comment and even my metalsmith ( a migrant, untraumatized I might add) has taken up occasionally making statues of Zuglar Fencedpunches, the dead, drowned Dwarven Baby.

Was happy to see NEO Scavenger get noticed if only for a moment, can get alot of fun stories out of it depending on how you play

you've earned my subscription. I've been a massive fan of these games for a very long time, and none of my friends ever understood them or why I liked them. This video perfectly summarises these games. Also, great editing!

A lovely story generator in my library is Wildermyth, where the developing of the story is the entire purpose of the game. I'd reccomend checking it out.

I feel like 'Story Generators' will be the games that age best with time. Dwarf Fortress is a perfect example of this, even excluding the new Steam version for a game to have a dedicated community for over two decades is unheard of in other genre's. They are the only single-player games that have infinite replayability, no two playthroughs will ever be the same experience.