Memes

Disco Elysium

Bastion will make you feel like you're reading a book. It's one of my all-time favorites, by the developers now best known for Hades.

Spiritfarer, To the Moon, Gris (no words in this one but still a good story imo), anything SuperGiant has ever made with my favorite being Transistor.

Oh sweet nobody's mentioned it yet! One of my personal favorite "book-feeling games" is an FPS series.

Linear, tightly focused, and feels like a novel because it's based on one:

Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light. (Haven't played Exodus yet)

You play a young fella named Artyom. Living in formerly-Russia's metro tunnels with other survivors after a nuclear apocalypse devastates the surface.

Your settlement comes under threat from seemingly psychic creatures called "the Dark Ones", and you're sent on a quest to go get help.

Across the way is a bit of a "coming of age" adventure. You run across really interesting and well-acted characters, sneak past hostile factions, contend with scary (and diversely behaviored) mutants, and risk dangerous excursions on the surface. This is a dark world where gasmask filters are precious and bullets are literally currency, but somehow it's still beautiful and fascinating.

(That intro guitar melody will stay with me forever.)

Like any good hero, Artyom finds himself in one bad situation after another, and along the way if you pick up on the hints, may even come to understand the world around him and the role he plays in it.

There's a morality system that's more subtle than "be boyscout or be a villain", and "ranger difficulty" is an amazing way to play because it makes gunfights feel tense and realistic.

You can only take a few hits in this mode, but unlike in most games, so can your enemies! It makes things feel much less "bullet spongey."

Everyone begged for an "open world" experience and we got Exodus which is supposed to be awesome, but something will always stay close to me about this post apocalypse story that takes you on a focused, well paced, and at times emotional ride to save a transformed world.

And that's just the first title mostly.

You won't be running between towns for hours or making rubber bands and glue into machineguns. You'll still feel like you're surviving, but know exactly where you're supposed to be going.

They go for super cheap on GoG and Steam all the time. Well worth the experience. :)

I absolutely adored a low budget game called Firewatch. It’s first person and your only contact with another human is through a radio. You’re running away from your life and work for a summer in a fire watch tower in a national park.

The story is nice and the characters are interesting and flawed and relatable.

Buy it on sale and have a fun evening or two with it.

Tales of Vesperia. I like the combat system most, but the story's pretty good, and there's a lot of optional content.

The Blackwell series, West of Loathing, Talos Principle II, To The Moon series.

Sea of Stars.

I'm listening to the soundtrack right now and it's awesome. The story is decent and the graphics and design are top notch. It was so captivating that I pretty much didn't play anything else while I was working through the game.

In Stars and Time is especially appropriate for Pride Month!

Disco Elysium is phenomenal as well.

You got a lot of great recommendations already, but I want to add one more indie game: Lost Words Beyond the Page. Gameplay is simple and it’s not very long, but the writing is excellent.

Disco Elysium. Its an RPG, but most skills have an application both in the world but also in conversations (of which there are a lot, and very well written). Its got a very bitter-sweet vibe to it.

Don't know that they'll all be ported to PC but the Supermassive standalones (Until Dawn, The Quarry) and Dark Pictures Anthology are great, if you like horror movies. I prefer to watch my wife play them. They're literally like interactive/choose your own adventure films.

The Sea Will Claim Everything

https://store.steampowered.com/app/337720/The_Sea_Will_Claim_Everything/