Rainworld is the game that made me realize that the best type of storytelling is not one that can be heard but can be experienced. It doesn't give you most of the lore, but encourages you to find more and piece together things yourself. Games like this are gems, rainworld, darkwood, outward, and even games like dark souls have that have a wayyyy more sad and grim undertone that if you aren't looking for it, you won't even find it and realise how bad things can get. Games need more of this!
I'm just happy how much traction games like rainworld have gotten in the past few years and being someone who has been in these almost "cold release" games and seeing them explode has made me happy but also surprisingly a little sad because on a lower degree it can make it worse and although that may be the person who hates change in me talking there are games who do much better without a bloodthirsty fandom scratching for content thankfully rainworld isn't this way on account that they actually respect there modding community but still
for me the best thing about rain world is how it convays its themes through its gameplay I started thinking about the themes of the game and its story way before it was actually told to me and shown in more upfront way through pebbles' conversation and echoes encounters
RAIN WORLD!!!! gosh i love rain world so much... honestly i think it's the best example of hidden storytelling i've ever seen in a video game. not just environmental (though it is INCREDIBLE at that... i genuinely cant pick my favorite example of it it's so good) but just. not telling you things in general. you kinda have to make up like 30% of the lore-- which makes the rain world community so much more interesting because no one has the same interpretation of the game!!! everyone has different theories and headcanons and ideas and it's so cool but on top of being crazy-vague, rain world makes you WORK for its story. you dont just get infodumped on randomly, you have to go find rain world's versions of books-- called pearls-- and bring them to one of the iterators and pester them into reading you what's on the pearl. which usually isnt much. or anything. some pearls just have nothing. but pearl-hunting to get every last crumb of story you can is extra torturous because 1. rain world is INCREDIBLY hard and you will be ragequitting frequently and 2. THE STORY IS SO. VOID-DAMNED INCREDIBLE I LOVE IT SO MUCH it leaves you with so many questions and not enough answers and a kind of huge slap in the face ending that just creates even MORE questions AND THEN THE ONE CLEAR ANSWER THAT THE GAME SEEMED TO PROVIDE FOR SAID ENDING THE DEVS CAME ALONG AND SAID "NAH THAT'S JUST FOR GAMEPLAY FUN IT'S NOT CANON" and WHY. WHY ISNT THERE MORE. IT'S SUCH A COOL STORY AND HAS SUCH FANTASTIC WORLDBUILDING AND CRAZY-COMPELLING CHARACTERS AND YET IT TELLS YOU SO LITTLE AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A HAPPY ENDING. IS IT A SATISFYING ENDING GAMEPLAY-WISE? MAYBE. BUT JUST. ARGHHH RAIN WORLD I LOVE RAIN WORLD SO MUCH that was a very psychotic ramble. apologies. but uh. rain world is a very good game. and it sucks. but it has been consuming my brain for over a year now and therefore it recieves five gold stars from me
My favorite environmental storytelling is unsurprisingly rain world. That game's lore goes SO HARD, i don't think there's any game that does it as well. Saint's campaign especially, with the silent construct, even that name just gives me chills as it brings up so much feels... I also love outer wilds, which also features a lot of environmental storytelling despite much of the narrative slowly being unraveled through texts and imagery. I love the environmental storytelling especially in the nomai cities on ember twin and brittle hollow. You really should pay attention to each and every nomai skeleton you find as each tells a different story of what they were doing when [REDACTED]. My favorite is the two skeletons lying hand in hand in the upper city district on brittle hollow. It just breaks my heart. SOMA is another amazing game but the story is pretty front and center (it does have one of THE BEST stories ever, which left me shattered for weeks). However it also has many little details that tell a story in the environment. In fact all of frictional's games do that, they're my favorite developers for a reason 😊. I'm glad you also mentioned hyper light drifter. I'm in love with heart machine both because of their games but also due to alx preston's personal experience. There's few people in the industry that i respect as much as alx. HLD is just a masterpiece and so is their second game Solar ash, which i love even more. It helped me process the grief i was going through at the time so it'll always have a special place in my heart. Blasphemous is also amazing in the environmental storytelling. But like souls games you need a spreadsheet to keep track of all the item descriptions, dialogues and backgrounds to piece it all together. It's a sick game in a literal and figurative way but i love it. One of the best indie titles and one with in my opinion the best pixel art. Although rain world's pixel art also goes hard. There's also endling extinction is forever which is a game with an environmental message mostly told through show don't tell. It's pretty bleak and confronting, showing up the worst of humanity, but there's some light & kindness to be found. A powerful game and truly emotional. Scorn, despite being super weird and seemingly random, also does environmental storytelling very well. It's a pretty vague game but it touches on cool topics like transcendence and hierarchy. Subnautica is also a supreme example of environmental storytelling. Especially the first game, it also gives you so many questions early on that eventually get answered. Below zero is more direct but equally great. Just less environmental storytelling but there's some, especially in the abandoned bases.
Hollow Knight is probably the only game where i felt emotionally attached to all the characters, the dialogue is just fantastic in that game and each line feels like it has some significance or is at the very least enjoyable to read. Not to mention, the character designs are super memorable so those factors help out with the worldbuilding and the atmosphere of HK a lot.
Yeah the character design is something I was gonna mention but forgot, hollow knight has such memorable character design and helps to make all the characters/bosses feel unique and personable
@@KaayLive Also with each ability you get, theres usually a boss shortly after that allows you to test out that ability and think about how you fight in a whole new way, which is really nice
Hyper light drifter by far. That game SOLD ME on indie gaming. It’s the reason i’ve turned away from modern Triple A companies, online shooters n MMOs, and so on. All that big time hubbup that most people these days still clamor for. I saw the HIGH QUALITY in games like Dust an Elysian tale, Hyper Light Drifter, & Hollow Knight. It blows me away how fun they are & how interesting there worlds are. And it’s still a 1 player experience not bogged down by DLC, micro transactions, big companies FORCING the devs to cut corners or make only choices they want, no multiplayer. IT’S JUST AN ABSOLUTE BANGER OF A GAME FOR $15-25!!!! WHAT?! That’s nuts!! I also recently got into rainworld too. But i’ve become such an indie gamer & retro gamer.
Yeah, it always feels like a full experience cause the indie devs can have their vision fully realised without publisher interference, no filler or unnecessary DLC
I can say 1 thing that'll probably bug you.. The Rain World Downpour DLC both impresses me & disappoints me. The content is great! Only 2 issues 4 me. 1) the crashing, lagging, & booting issues that i got after installing the DLC has... Really started killing it 4 me. Cus base game runs so smooth. 2) It's just SO HARD!! To avoid a ramble. All i really want is for the game to run smooth again, & maybe a REAL difficulty toggle/slider for enemy spawns.@@KaayLive
I never really had any crashing problems at all, but I get the difficulty complaint. And also hyper light drifter was also my obsession, I forced a few of my friends to play it lol. And tunic is on my to play list, heard really good things about it
Hey, someone else who played Dust! I feel like that one goes by the wayside even more than HLD, but it's quite good in its own right, you could really feel the passion in the project.
if I'm being honest I feel like environmental storytelling isn't just about what you see I've noticed in a few game, (mostly rainworld) that in game music can really help drive a narrative. just picture you're in a dark abandoned train tunnel and some heavy deep music comes on you would know that this place was definitely abandoned, but if the music was all happy and bright you'd know something messed up was happening
sabnautic has some awesome environmental story telling. sure you can scan stuff and read logs about things, but seeing alien vents sucking up fish and later finding where they go, in the sea emperor's cage for food, seeing man made destroyed structures of those who ended up in a timely demise, the alien building slowly turning, then you realize its a gun, seeing green infected puss on random fish, then you later get infected, the giant skeletons of dead leviathans, and so much more. Your character never speaks and the games world tells a story that you unravel as you try to survive and find a way off the planet.
My favorite game is rain world of course however there is outer wilds, outer wilds was like [SAINT SPOILERS] feeling the saint campaign once again, worlds to explore, mysteries to uncover, it is by far the best of the hidden gem games, i suggest playing it however play it and avoid as many spoilers as possible, because it is a game that can be experienced once
I havent played or heard about Hyper light drifter before so I skipped over that part but after you talked about Rain World and Hollow Knight, I kinda want to buy it too! Those three Rain world lore videos are actually my favorite videos too!!!
Hyper light drifter and hollow knight are so much fun, but i think my favourite game in terms of environment has to be Journey. That game is absolutely gorgeous, and while its really short compared to the games in this video i cannot recommend it more
Loved this video essay, I love visual storytelling and trying to piece together what happened to world while playing without telling the player. Speaking of rain world, I’m on my hunter playthrough rn and enjoying it.:]
I'd like to give Sky: Children of the Light and Journey a shoutout here, they're also games that does environmental storytelling very well. Both games are pretty chill and quite similar to one another (Journey is the inspo of Sky + both games are made by the same devs), it lets you explore through different realms and areas. All these different areas have a different feel to them, it's honestly amazing to go through them! Although Journey's lore isn't very evident (or maybe that's just me), Sky's lore is very clear and evident throughout it's areas. The spirits you relive as you explore the game have their own stories to tell, you may encounter murals that tell a story from the past, etc. Either way, I recommend playing these two games, they're both amazing :D
5:05 HUGE spoiler bro." I'll try to keep it spoiler free" naahhhhh. That is one of the craziest moments, that you just casually drop on potential future players. That's crazy.
Yeah I guess in hindsight, my thought process was if this is the first you are seeing of it there is no way of knowing the significance and if it were me I would’ve forgotten that frame by the time I play that far/know what it means
@@KaayLive Fair enough, but as someone who spoiled it for myself seconds before getting there as Saint, by watching HTwo's video, there are people out there who'd understand the significance of that frame, without having gotten there themselves. I do see your point though.
That moment... Wow. I got chills. Literally one of the best examples of environmental storytelling. Everything you know about 5P, the lore, the hate, the love, all of it is just gone... Saint's campaign is such a rollercoaster
I would like to recommend celeste, it has been one of the most amazing gaming experiences i've ever had. seeing as you liked rain world which is difficult and has pixel graphics I think you would love celeste.
Rainworld is the game that made me realize that the best type of storytelling is not one that can be heard but can be experienced. It doesn't give you most of the lore, but encourages you to find more and piece together things yourself. Games like this are gems, rainworld, darkwood, outward, and even games like dark souls have that have a wayyyy more sad and grim undertone that if you aren't looking for it, you won't even find it and realise how bad things can get. Games need more of this!
For real, rain world feels like a one of a kind experience on that first playthrough
Funny slugcats experience a hostile environment while learning about the cycle of life
Darkwood is soooo good. Epic that you mentioned it!
I'm just happy how much traction games like rainworld have gotten in the past few years and being someone who has been in these almost "cold release" games and seeing them explode has made me happy but also surprisingly a little sad because on a lower degree it can make it worse and although that may be the person who hates change in me talking there are games who do much better without a bloodthirsty fandom scratching for content
thankfully rainworld isn't this way on account that they actually respect there modding community but still
for me the best thing about rain world is how it convays its themes through its gameplay
I started thinking about the themes of the game and its story way before it was actually told to me and shown in more upfront way through pebbles' conversation and echoes encounters
RAIN WORLD!!!! gosh i love rain world so much...
honestly i think it's the best example of hidden storytelling i've ever seen in a video game. not just environmental (though it is INCREDIBLE at that... i genuinely cant pick my favorite example of it it's so good) but just. not telling you things in general. you kinda have to make up like 30% of the lore-- which makes the rain world community so much more interesting because no one has the same interpretation of the game!!! everyone has different theories and headcanons and ideas and it's so cool
but on top of being crazy-vague, rain world makes you WORK for its story. you dont just get infodumped on randomly, you have to go find rain world's versions of books-- called pearls-- and bring them to one of the iterators and pester them into reading you what's on the pearl. which usually isnt much. or anything. some pearls just have nothing.
but pearl-hunting to get every last crumb of story you can is extra torturous because 1. rain world is INCREDIBLY hard and you will be ragequitting frequently and 2. THE STORY IS SO. VOID-DAMNED INCREDIBLE I LOVE IT SO MUCH
it leaves you with so many questions and not enough answers and a kind of huge slap in the face ending that just creates even MORE questions AND THEN THE ONE CLEAR ANSWER THAT THE GAME SEEMED TO PROVIDE FOR SAID ENDING THE DEVS CAME ALONG AND SAID "NAH THAT'S JUST FOR GAMEPLAY FUN IT'S NOT CANON" and WHY. WHY ISNT THERE MORE. IT'S SUCH A COOL STORY AND HAS SUCH FANTASTIC WORLDBUILDING AND CRAZY-COMPELLING CHARACTERS AND YET IT TELLS YOU SO LITTLE AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A HAPPY ENDING. IS IT A SATISFYING ENDING GAMEPLAY-WISE? MAYBE. BUT JUST. ARGHHH RAIN WORLD I LOVE RAIN WORLD SO MUCH
that was a very psychotic ramble. apologies.
but uh. rain world is a very good game. and it sucks. but it has been consuming my brain for over a year now and therefore it recieves five gold stars from me
I couldn't have psychically rambled it better myself. This game is one of my Special Interests (Autistic Passions).
I WISH PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER MORE OFTEN... It's one of my favorite games and I hold it close to my heart, even today.
It is so phenomenal, actually criminally underrated
So much of my tastes in video games had been shaped by Hyper Light Drifter. I agree with you completely.
My favorite environmental storytelling is unsurprisingly rain world. That game's lore goes SO HARD, i don't think there's any game that does it as well. Saint's campaign especially, with the silent construct, even that name just gives me chills as it brings up so much feels...
I also love outer wilds, which also features a lot of environmental storytelling despite much of the narrative slowly being unraveled through texts and imagery. I love the environmental storytelling especially in the nomai cities on ember twin and brittle hollow. You really should pay attention to each and every nomai skeleton you find as each tells a different story of what they were doing when [REDACTED]. My favorite is the two skeletons lying hand in hand in the upper city district on brittle hollow. It just breaks my heart.
SOMA is another amazing game but the story is pretty front and center (it does have one of THE BEST stories ever, which left me shattered for weeks). However it also has many little details that tell a story in the environment. In fact all of frictional's games do that, they're my favorite developers for a reason 😊.
I'm glad you also mentioned hyper light drifter. I'm in love with heart machine both because of their games but also due to alx preston's personal experience. There's few people in the industry that i respect as much as alx. HLD is just a masterpiece and so is their second game Solar ash, which i love even more. It helped me process the grief i was going through at the time so it'll always have a special place in my heart.
Blasphemous is also amazing in the environmental storytelling. But like souls games you need a spreadsheet to keep track of all the item descriptions, dialogues and backgrounds to piece it all together. It's a sick game in a literal and figurative way but i love it. One of the best indie titles and one with in my opinion the best pixel art. Although rain world's pixel art also goes hard.
There's also endling extinction is forever which is a game with an environmental message mostly told through show don't tell. It's pretty bleak and confronting, showing up the worst of humanity, but there's some light & kindness to be found. A powerful game and truly emotional.
Scorn, despite being super weird and seemingly random, also does environmental storytelling very well. It's a pretty vague game but it touches on cool topics like transcendence and hierarchy.
Subnautica is also a supreme example of environmental storytelling. Especially the first game, it also gives you so many questions early on that eventually get answered. Below zero is more direct but equally great. Just less environmental storytelling but there's some, especially in the abandoned bases.
heard good things about rain world
You should try it sometime
I fucking love Rain World
Hollow Knight is probably the only game where i felt emotionally attached to all the characters, the dialogue is just fantastic in that game and each line feels like it has some significance or is at the very least enjoyable to read. Not to mention, the character designs are super memorable so those factors help out with the worldbuilding and the atmosphere of HK a lot.
Yeah the character design is something I was gonna mention but forgot, hollow knight has such memorable character design and helps to make all the characters/bosses feel unique and personable
yes
If you liked hollow knight you like rain world.
@@KaayLive Also with each ability you get, theres usually a boss shortly after that allows you to test out that ability and think about how you fight in a whole new way, which is really nice
@@debonairpuma8774 yes
Hyper light drifter by far. That game SOLD ME on indie gaming. It’s the reason i’ve turned away from modern Triple A companies, online shooters n MMOs, and so on. All that big time hubbup that most people these days still clamor for.
I saw the HIGH QUALITY in games like Dust an Elysian tale, Hyper Light Drifter, & Hollow Knight. It blows me away how fun they are & how interesting there worlds are. And it’s still a 1 player experience not bogged down by DLC, micro transactions, big companies FORCING the devs to cut corners or make only choices they want, no multiplayer. IT’S JUST AN ABSOLUTE BANGER OF A GAME FOR $15-25!!!! WHAT?! That’s nuts!!
I also recently got into rainworld too. But i’ve become such an indie gamer & retro gamer.
Yeah, it always feels like a full experience cause the indie devs can have their vision fully realised without publisher interference, no filler or unnecessary DLC
A tad off topic, Hyper light WAS MY OBSESSION for so long.
Also theres, Tunic, flint hook, Ori. Great stuff.@@KaayLive
I can say 1 thing that'll probably bug you.. The Rain World Downpour DLC both impresses me & disappoints me. The content is great! Only 2 issues 4 me.
1) the crashing, lagging, & booting issues that i got after installing the DLC has... Really started killing it 4 me. Cus base game runs so smooth.
2) It's just SO HARD!!
To avoid a ramble. All i really want is for the game to run smooth again, & maybe a REAL difficulty toggle/slider for enemy spawns.@@KaayLive
I never really had any crashing problems at all, but I get the difficulty complaint. And also hyper light drifter was also my obsession, I forced a few of my friends to play it lol. And tunic is on my to play list, heard really good things about it
Hey, someone else who played Dust! I feel like that one goes by the wayside even more than HLD, but it's quite good in its own right, you could really feel the passion in the project.
*Immediately notices Kayava playing in the background.*
if I'm being honest I feel like environmental storytelling isn't just about what you see I've noticed in a few game, (mostly rainworld) that in game music can really help drive a narrative. just picture you're in a dark abandoned train tunnel and some heavy deep music comes on you would know that this place was definitely abandoned, but if the music was all happy and bright you'd know something messed up was happening
Yeah for sure, rain world excels at using its music in impactful ways
sabnautic has some awesome environmental story telling.
sure you can scan stuff and read logs about things, but seeing alien vents sucking up fish and later finding where they go, in the sea emperor's cage for food, seeing man made destroyed structures of those who ended up in a timely demise, the alien building slowly turning, then you realize its a gun, seeing green infected puss on random fish, then you later get infected, the giant skeletons of dead leviathans, and so much more.
Your character never speaks and the games world tells a story that you unravel as you try to survive and find a way off the planet.
My favorite game is rain world of course however there is outer wilds, outer wilds was like [SAINT SPOILERS] feeling the saint campaign once again, worlds to explore, mysteries to uncover, it is by far the best of the hidden gem games, i suggest playing it however play it and avoid as many spoilers as possible, because it is a game that can be experienced once
I only just got around to playing outer wilds (and the dlc) a few months back and absolutely loved it
@@KaayLivenice, i am gonna be finishing outer wilds eote next month too
rain world AND HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER??? OH MY GOODNESS... i wish i could subscribe to you twice..
NEW PROFILE PHOTO + MINI VIDEO ESSAY WOOOOOo
I havent played or heard about Hyper light drifter before so I skipped over that part but after you talked about Rain World and Hollow Knight, I kinda want to buy it too! Those three Rain world lore videos are actually my favorite videos too!!!
i really like the environmental storytelling in black mesa, also banger vid
Yeah, black mesa, plus valve games always have banger atmospheres
Hyper Light Drifter, Rain World and Hollow Knight in one video. You know this is going to be good.
Hyper light drifter and hollow knight are so much fun, but i think my favourite game in terms of environment has to be Journey. That game is absolutely gorgeous, and while its really short compared to the games in this video i cannot recommend it more
Journey is goated
Loved this video essay, I love visual storytelling and trying to piece together what happened to world while playing without telling the player. Speaking of rain world, I’m on my hunter playthrough rn and enjoying it.:]
I'd like to give Sky: Children of the Light and Journey a shoutout here, they're also games that does environmental storytelling very well.
Both games are pretty chill and quite similar to one another (Journey is the inspo of Sky + both games are made by the same devs), it lets you explore through different realms and areas. All these different areas have a different feel to them, it's honestly amazing to go through them!
Although Journey's lore isn't very evident (or maybe that's just me), Sky's lore is very clear and evident throughout it's areas. The spirits you relive as you explore the game have their own stories to tell, you may encounter murals that tell a story from the past, etc.
Either way, I recommend playing these two games, they're both amazing :D
Thanks google for recommending me this, I am obsessed with rain world and this was about rain world and more. nice video.
GRAHHH I WISH I HAD A LAPTOP SO I COULD PLAY RAIN WORLD!!!
been craving this game for so long ever since i watched a full playthrough
Love this channel
Ooh... Three amazing games there... I played like 4 to 5 hundreds hours to complete them all... Very good experiences
I see two of my favourite games of all time on the front and i click.
Rainworld is huni cuz it makes the player crave for the dialogue instead of just spoon-feeding it
Saw rain world, clicked instantly
I played all three of them and they were fantastic!
5:05 HUGE spoiler bro." I'll try to keep it spoiler free" naahhhhh. That is one of the craziest moments, that you just casually drop on potential future players. That's crazy.
Yeah I guess in hindsight, my thought process was if this is the first you are seeing of it there is no way of knowing the significance and if it were me I would’ve forgotten that frame by the time I play that far/know what it means
@@KaayLive Fair enough, but as someone who spoiled it for myself seconds before getting there as Saint, by watching HTwo's video, there are people out there who'd understand the significance of that frame, without having gotten there themselves. I do see your point though.
That moment... Wow. I got chills. Literally one of the best examples of environmental storytelling. Everything you know about 5P, the lore, the hate, the love, all of it is just gone... Saint's campaign is such a rollercoaster
@@d00mnoodle24 You just said some real shit bro
Great video !
pls recommend more games like dis
I would like to recommend celeste, it has been one of the most amazing gaming experiences i've ever had. seeing as you liked rain world which is difficult and has pixel graphics I think you would love celeste.
You should take a look at Kenshi, even though it has lore in books and dialogue a lot of stuff is left ambiguous and it has some great sites to find
I keep seeing kenshi mentioned around but have never seen any gameplay, so maybe I check it out at some point
@@KaayLive it will be great if you go into it blind, but beware that it’s very unforgiving
This video showed up to me while i am playing kenshi
So underrated i swear
Also wain wowrld
Why did you show a pic of waterfront facility? 1:43
Idk cool background
Bro finally changed his profile picture !!!
Yeah!!! :D
ONLY VIDEO OF COMPREHENSIVE TOVARISCH GOD'S WORK RIGHR HERW
good video 5/5 stars
Meanwhile last video
We don’t talk about that
5:07 very small spoiler
banger
Hi
Could somebody please tell me the name of this game? 1:28
Gris