![]() It’s not about the story, it’s just about the journey. Which, in a way, makes it all the more effective. There’s some vague spiritualism with the character being guided by the ghosts of his ancestors to the top of a mountain, but this is all done through images–there’s no dialogue whatsoever in the entire game. The puzzles are simple, the stylistic graphics hold up well even after so many years, and the overall journey is beautiful and highly satisfactory. Journey pioneered this genre, and still is unique in the way it brings in other players (sort of) to help you, but its simple, beautiful art style meshes well with the minimalist environments and haunting soundtrack. These games are probably the easiest for the content-wary parent to approve, as they’re literally just worlds to explore and puzzles to solve. It belongs to a simple and affecting game style of simply exploring a beautiful, massive world, often without any words or dialogue, just allowing yourself to drink in the beautiful vistas and muse at the possible history of the world you find yourself wandering through. Journey is a game that is practically a genre now. It may be debatable whether all of these are “exploration” games in the true sense, but it seemed a useful heading to group them under.) Journey (I had a list of many games, but decided it was too long and cut it up. I think there are plenty of good ways of implementing combat into games, but at least here, I want to focus on entirely nonviolent games. At least for this list, I’m going to focus on games where combat is non-existent. A lot of these are going to be names that many of my more gamer friends are quite familiar with, but to those who have kept the medium at a wary arm’s length, I hope this list may be helpful. Child-appropriate, I might say, though some are more challenging in their gameplay than all children may be comfortable with. ![]() A list of some of the most perfectly innocent and enjoyable games out there, quiet, whimsical games. There are many games today that involve no combat at all–plenty of beautiful, innocent games, full of sweetness and light, or at least contemplation, which so many people are unaware of because they don’t make the news. ![]() ![]() Because while, yes, the “sex-and-violence shoot-em-up” genre of games is still alive and well, they’re not nearly as much of a majority as they used to be, due to the explosion of indie video games and others playing with more experimental formulas on gaming. But still, I have to view this as something of a tragedy. I’m at best gaming-adjacent, in terms of how well I’m plugged into the world. Perhaps some have less and some have more, but in essence they’re all the same, and all, on some level morally dubious or dangerous. While everyone would admit that there are perfectly innocent games like Mario and Animal Crossing, it’s commonly accepted within such circles that the vast majority of games are high-fidelity shoot-em-ups with lots of sex and violence. In my own community especially, video games almost as a whole are viewed with suspicion. And that leads to people missing out on a lot, especially, I would argue, in the field of video games, which despite years of evolution and popularity, remains an utter unknown to many. My internal critic is currently remarking “Yes, genius, most of the populace only hears about the popular games, no duh, Sherlock, that’s what popular means.” But this means that people tend to judge entire fields of media by the few blockbusters that they know of. That’s practically a redundant statement. The big, flashy things that strike it big. It’s the nature of the world that you only really hear about the blockbusters.
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