Games about despair?

[Grimwulf]

Holy damn, now I got more than I asked for. Despear games! Gotta play them all!

 

[Baron Dupek]

Marauder: Man of Prey.
You want to survive with your family in anarchistic Russia after selling it out by oligchars. Russians are always in bad mood so you know... People went nuts, there is some really fucked up things like

Spoiler

Fighting against crowds of people that attack your house, no other solution than gun blazing. And we know that Russia=communism so share your goods or die, yada yada.

Or you got quest to find daughter of some townsman.
You find her doll,

Spoiler

covered in blood. No good deeds here.

And there is no good ending, if any.

Spoiler

You just stop the kwans troops assault, then gather family and escape to other cities that are somewhat safe and/or have more stuff to loot

 

[Grimwulf]

Marauder: Man of Prey.
You want to survive with your family in anarchistic Russia after selling it out by oligchars. Russians are always in bad mood so you know... People went nuts, there is some really fucked up things like

Spoiler

Fighting against crowds of people that attack your house, no other solution than gun blazing. And we know that Russia=communism so share your goods or die, yada yada.

Or you got quest to find daughter of some townsman.
You find her doll,

Spoiler

covered in blood. No good deeds here.

And there is no good ending, if any.

Spoiler

You just stop the kwans troops assault, then gather family and escape to other cities that are somewhat safe and/or have more stuff to loot

Ah, I'm having one of those moments right now. When it's feelin' so good to be russian.

 

[pippin]

I second the GoT: rpg reccomendation. You'll enjoy it more if you're more of a book reader than a series watcher, though. The story and the characters really feel like they could have been in the novels. In some ways it's more faithful to the novels than the tv series, especially after season 4.

 

[Copper]

The Reconstruction, an RPGMaker game - doesn't start very strong, but the despair ramps up, if you can figure out what the hell is going on.

 

[TripJack]

fallout 3, by the time youve finished it your despair will be so great that youll probably hang yourself

 

[H-K]

Depression Quest

Thanks to your recommendation I downloaded the game, it's really good so I decided to donate to her Patreon.

Enjoy your despair.

Spoiler

 

[sser]

How about some strategy games.

Homeworld. Excellently executed sense of tension, isolation, and despair. There's a constant sense of an uphill battle, like the galaxy just doesn't want you to return home. And one can't escape the singularity of the Mothership's voice as it echoes into the emptiness that is space. Out there nobody can hear you scream. They can't hear an entire civilization vanish, either.

X-Com has a strong feeling of despair if not outright horror. This is pretty much the only strategy game that has ever 'spooked' me. Many of the aliens are nasty in both appearance and function. Your grunts are disposable, your allies quick to turn on you, and the invaders pretty fucking ruthless. Night time terror missions are absolutely some of the best moments of 'aw shit' in gaming. Most open with your guys staring out into the night, listening to civilian screams, and catching glimpse of horrors passing beneath streetlights. The newer XCOM is kinda like this but very 'lite.' I feel like the despair in that game is more through the cinematics than the gameplay. I found the constant pauses for action to be tone shifts. Whereas X-Com will have an alien open a (loud) door, blast your dude, and then go back away all in the span of about one second, scaring the shit out of you and still leaving you with the task of opening that door again, XCOM is more movie-like (i.e., overdone) in its handling of death and action. X-Com enemies can also 'snipe' you from way out of frame. A grunt eats a plasma shot to the face, spins, and collapses. The enemy shuffles away. XCOM is more like a 1950s movie: they're shooting at us, pew pew pew, and they're right there. Oh no.

Download the Battle Brothers demo. That's about as much desperation in a strategy game I've seen since X-Com. I just played the line battle and won, but it was rather intense. A necromancer revives dead enemies every turn, making him a very high priority target. So I had a swordsman sprint through an opening in enemy ranks. I then had a spearman fall in behind him and use his spear wall ability which knocks back anybody who comes into his zone of control. With a spear at his back, my swordsman couldn't get tangled in a counter-attack. I pursued the necromancer while the rest of my forces - depleted of the two men on an assassination job - held firm. Through clever use of a billhook and clubbing weapons, I managed to toss and bash my enemies into submission. Even when you're winning there is a feeling of despair because your troops lose shields, helmets, and armor. Bodies and arrows litter the battlefield - frequently conjoined - and you are completely outnumbered. Despair sets in pretty damn fast when you start taking casualties and, like X-Com, your guys die with no theatrics or drama, they just get cut down, brutally and with conviction.


Bonus shit: Warlock playing Armageddon mode. You and the rest of the AI playfully roam around a lush, verdant land before hordes of impossibly strong demons invade. Every time they take a city, they get a new, extremely fortified city, and deadlier demons start coming in.

Endless Legend has a 'winter' that sets in every so often, effectively brutalizing your empire's efficiency. As the game wears on, the winters get longer and longer... a light sense of despair, but not a major theme.

Xenonauts. X-Com redux.

Civilization II's alien invasion mod. X-Com on a more strategic level.

Playing as the King of England with Crusader Kings II's Old Gods...

 

[octavius]

I despair of ever finishing Bard's Tale 3.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Things are always pretty desperate in Freespace 2.

 

[Lemming42]

The Sims 1. I'm not joking. Over the course of about 10 minutes you lose your job, get into debt, your family drowns/burns and you piss yourself.

 

[baturinsky]

ToME4 plot/lore is pretty grim. It's nearly entirely consist of stories about some horrible tragedies. And usual playthrough involves you betraying several people and sending them to horrible death (if you are not magic user) and genociding two races.

 

[Siveon]

ToME4 plot/lore is pretty grim. It's nearly entirely consist of stories about some horrible tragedies. And usual playthrough involves you betraying several people and sending them to horrible death (if you are not magic user) and genociding two races.

Holy shit. I just thought it only had combat going for it.

 

[gromit]

Another game I remembered is I Am Alive.

I always meant to go back and check this one out. I like the idea of survival horror more than any of the actual games, and I've got a soft-spot for lower-budget titles with ambition.

The last time time I played a game where I was told this, I hoarded all my bullets and got really good at knifing. Well before I got to the next stage of the game, I had maxed out on bullets and concluded that bullets were not, in fact, really that scarce.

What brought it to my attention in the first place, is that your gun can be effective before firing... just wave it at some melee dudes from a safe distance and they might back off. Even when it's empty.

Why don't more games do stuff like this (or have scenarios where it makes sense to be able to?)

Also, I'm going to pretend someone said Torment, so that I'm not disappointed with you all.

 

[Jick Magger]

Nier. Humanity's been brought to the brink of extinction due to a mysterious plague called the Black Scrawl, which turns all who are infected into mindless monsters. The game begins with your daughter being infected by it, and slowly but surely things get worse from there. The game successfully maintains the tone of looming doom, that the world is basically irreparably fucked and those who're inhabiting it really don't have any bright future or long-term plans; they're just the last lights to go out, like with Dark Souls.

And then there's new game plus...

Plus the game has a simply godly soundtrack, here's the music from the opening titles:



I'd recommend Drakengard too, if it weren't for the fact that the actual game part of it is a truly abysmal experience.

 

[EmoBunny]

Alone in the Dark

 

[DefJam101]

Pathologic

Wait for the remake, though.

 

[Kattze]

Not really a game but reading the CYOA story Death Song by Endmaster is like fighting a losing battle when you already know the ultimate outcome.

 

[Jasede]

I just wanna plug NieR too; I don't think any of the other mentioned games made me feel that shit and desperate to see things turn out well... which they didn't.

Cavia hates your soul.

 

[Explorerbc]

I always meant to go back and check this one out. I like the idea of survival horror more than any of the actual games, and I've got a soft-spot for lower-budget titles with ambition.

It's a nice little game, the horror element is not that heavy, it consists mostly of tense encounters and the fact that you don't know whether you can trust the folks that appear in the distance. Managing your resources is indeed not that difficult but definitely forces you to be cautious about your surroundings, and try not to take unnecessary risks. Took me 6 hours to finish it, I think it is worth a look, especially if you like post-apoc settings.

 

[Astral Rag]

If you want to feel desperate you can't go wrong with Robinson's Requiem or its sequel Deus. There is also the more recent Miasmata.

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

Just play Dungeon Lords again.

 

[toroid]

3. Demon/Dark Souls series..? I played them all and this is more like a collection of short and quick stories about despair. You have to really puzzle up the pieces to make those stories clear and actually making sense. But players usually don't give a flying fuck about lore and setting and just play it for multiplayer. A pity really.

The pvp horde ruins everything. Roving from community to community leaving ruin in its wake.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Please don't listen to people recommending the Game of Thrones RPG, unless you can obtain it for free. It is a bad game.

For me, the best "depressing" game I've ever played is Planescape Torment.

The Last of Us is the best one of recent years.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Parasite in City.