I've played a few of these, and the rest are now on my list if they weren't before! Thanks!

Immortal Defense is the absolute undefeated champion.

An easy / cheaty answer: Most Zachtronics games. Especially Shenzhen I/O.

Planescape Torment is almost there.

I played all of these, and I agree on everything.

Lobotomy Corporation. The premise is that you are the manager of a energy-production company, and the means to acquire EGO is by satisfying the needs of whatever is contained in a cell. Be it a girl with many faces or a inky spider, you have to place your employees into dangerous situations without things getting out of hand. There are assorted themes with the game, but the overall sense of things is "Purgatory". This is in terms of the ingame story, the meta narrative, and how the gameplay loop reinforces the notion by making the player improve their personal ability.

I really wish the game was on GOG or Itch. This is one that I want to keep in my "Top 10" games collection. Also would be an ideal Halloween game for the managers among us.



Aside from LobCorp, I recommend Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites. Those are adventure games, in which the player can make decisions that are good and bad - with Starfleet reviewing the performance after each scenario. This means you can be Captain T. Jerk, or try to live up to the highest ideals of Starfleet. The assorted tri-corders and analysis of environments is very true to TOS. The characterization and gameplay are ideal. Available on GOG.


Ancestors: The Humankind Oddseyse - An open world game where you try to develop your apes into mankind. One example of the game simulating evolution regards hands - initially, the apes lack the motor skills to coordinate both paws together. Through lots of trial and error, both you and the apes will learn how to create tools, find good and bad things, and how to not die terribly. Available on GOG.

I'm going to mention Celeste again.

Undertale is also an interesting case, as it subverts one thing that commonly happens in games. Often, in a game with enemies, the player will kill everything they encounter (unless there's an enemy that's too strong or the player has gotten tired of all the random encounters or something). In Undertale, the game actually changes to reflect that. Killing a boss, for example, will cause that change to be reflected in the ending, and perhaps in some other dialog. Even killing normal enemies matters here.

How'd this thread get bumped randomly? I had completely forgotten about it.

I would venture The Swindle as a perfect example of this because the fusion of genres not only perfects the issues in each of them but it combines with the narrative to provide explicit justification for it.

Now that I've played Celeste I can agree that it fulfills the requirement, although personally for me it didn't have the profound effect it had for many.

I would also argue that Disco Elysium with its mix of detective-ing and introspection both focus on finding "the truth" of a given matter.

Interesting thread, glad I came across it. The two examples that come to my mind most when I think of a game that intertwines the storyline of the game with the storyline of playing the game in interesting ways, are Spec Ops and Silent Hill 4 (though most of the Silent Hills, I think, play with the concept of observer/player versus in-game character). To say more would require major spoilers but IYKYK.