[sk1pper]

The commentary around organic learning reminds me of The Outer Wilds. Imho it’s an even more extreme case of what the author is getting at here: (very mild spoilers follow) there are no stats or levels in The Outer Wilds; there are no upgrades (mild spoiler because I spent like 75% of the game thinking I’d get some sort of item to help me deal with various obstacles eventually, but nope). The game randomly picks a planet at the beginning and suggests you start there, but you can truly just fly around and do whatever you want, and the only factor that limits what you can do is how well you understand the mechanics of the universe and its various planets. It encourages experimentation, and there’s never a lack of leads on what to go experiment with, because it has a system that kind of takes notes for you and gently indicates when there are more clues to be uncovered in a given area.

[fer]

I read the article and ctrl+f'd Outer Wilds straight away. It's an extreme case indeed, the game does very little hand-holding, while being tremendously complex and interconnected. The only thing that unlocks parts of the game is what you learn from it, and those details and mechanics are what enable to progress.

The downside is that it has very little replay value (you can beat the game within 5min if you already did before), but the path to get there is difficult, engaging, and extremely rewarding.

It's difficult to describe Outer Wilds, but I'd put it as an "open-world Portal", only it has numerous Portal-like quicks in itself.

[ehsankia]

I highly recommend both Tunic and The Witness if you enjoyed Outer Wilds. But yes, the concept of "knowledge" being the power ups you gain throughout the game is truly done fantastically in Outer Wilds, and few other games come close to replicating it.

[madrox]

Outer Wilds is probably in my top 5 games of all time, but I feel like it’s a category of its own. It has more in common with Myst or Lucasarts adventure games than Skyrim and other open world games.

Or maybe it’s a distinction without a difference. I know I’d rather see more Outer Wilds games out there than more Skyrims.