What games have what you’d call really good worldbuilding, and what in particular do you like about them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages (often called conlangs) for the world.

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    6·
    12 hours ago

    Rainworld

    spoiler

    All living things are trapped in “The Cycle”, and no one likes it, they all want to die and be free of the burden of living. They called this “The Big Problem”.

    To try and find a solution to “The Big Problem”, people* built 3 AI that would constantly be running to try and compute a solution to The Big Problem. This requires a ton of energy, and an ocean’s worth of water to keep them cool. The AIs are generating so much heat that it evaporates oceans worth of water, resulting in periodic violent rainstorms (thus the name of the game). People moved to structures built above the clouds to be safe from the rain.

    One day, one of the AI finally solved The Big Problem, notified the other AIs that it was solved…and promptly died before sharing it. The remaining two AI (named “Looks to the Moon” and “Five Pebbles”) continue to iterate on solving the problem, but both have all but given up hope.

    You play as a Slugcat, a species specially evolved by the AI to squeeze through pipes and keep their systems clean.

    *I said “people”, but I don’t think it’s ever established what planet you’re on or what race of creatures built the AI.

    There is a ton of detail I’m skipping…

    …but when you start the game, you are merely trying to survive and explore a living ecology full of hostile creatures. The game doesn’t care if you understand any of the lore, it doesn’t care if you “finish” the game, it’s just there to be experienced.