These days, when talking about video games, the big open worlds and unforgettable stories usually come up. But it’s often that these end up overshadowing other subtle innovations. You don’t always need high-octane boss battles to fuel the experience. Instead, some games creatively turn mundane tasks like checking paperwork or delivering cargo into mesmerizing adventures.
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This list highlights times when games turned boring mechanics into addictive gameplay. This includes games that leveraged the monotony of the mechanic. So, from brilliantly utilizing movement to adding satisfying lockpicking mini-games, here are times when games turned the ordinary into something special.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon – Business Management
The Yakuza games are either known for their beat ‘em up or JRPG combat. But in Yakuza: Like A Dragon, there’s one ingenious feature that isn’t talked about enough: the business management mini-game. After beating Substory 15, you unlock the mini-game to manage Ichiban Confections. It’s a strategy simulator where you manage properties and try to make them profitable.
The mini-game is very fast-paced. You can buy properties and simulate the profit result instantaneously. As you continue to win in the mini-game, eventually, shareholder meetings will come up. If you have made good profits, Ichiban will end up getting up to 3 million yen to use in-game. That’s an insane amount of cash, and you can use it to buy new weapons and armor for the actual game.
The business management mini-game is the fastest way of earning money in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. It’s actually so broken that within an hour or two of playing, you’ll have made so much profit that you can even purchase the most expensive equipment for Ichiban. Ryu Ga Gotoku has taken a boring old property simulator idea and has made an addictive mini-game out of it inside another, bigger game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 – Choices In Dialog
Reading through and listening to dialogue is probably the last thing on anybody’s gaming bucket list. But after hearing what Baldur’s Gate 3 has to say, you’ll think otherwise. Baldur’s Gate 3 is primarily an RPG, but oh boy, does it love its dialogue. Per the developer Larian, there are about 1.3 million words of script in the game. Normally, listening to that much dialogue would make you insane. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 has a clever way of shoving spoonfuls in your ears.
Every encounter in Baldur’s Gate 3 can play out in different ways, and all of them rest on the backbone of the dialogue. You might be stopped at a fort. Now you can force your way through, bribe the guards, or think of some other tactic to pass. But whatever method you think of opting for, you’ll select it via the dialog.
Everything in Baldur’s Gate 3 totally depends on the dialogue. Whether it’s planning battles or progressing character relationships, the dialogue and the choices it gives you are crucial to the outcome. In this way, Baldur’s Gate 3 remains jam-packed with crucial chit-chat and manages to avoid shooting itself in the foot.
Death Stranding 2 – Walking & Delivery Logistics
Delivering parcels doesn’t sound like fun, but leave it to Hideo Kojima to surprise you. Death Stranding 2 is totally based around traversing long spaces of emptiness. A giant chunk of the game is just walking, climbing, and driving vehicles. Usually, something like this would be too tedious to be considered fun. However, Death Stranding 2 makes it fun by putting you in difficult scenarios where the path forward seems tricky.
Sometimes, supernatural monsters will stand in your way, and you’ll need to steer clear of them. Other times, you’ll have to go around a mountain to make the journey shorter. It’s always up to you to take the difficult route or meticulously plan things in advance. At the same time, walking itself isn’t easy.
Sam’s carrying hundreds of kilos on his back. Balancing Sam’s weight is one of the core gameplay loops, and you are always keeping it in check. But then there is riding cargo carriers downhill, the ability to double jump, and stuff like building roads to get by faster. Death Stranding 2 is one of the best open-world traversal games ever made. Traversing might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but those who do enjoy exploration will absolutely love how Death Stranding 2 takes a simple concept like movement and expands upon it tenfold.
Skyrim’s a massive game. It is filled with jaw-dropping locations, hundreds of unique quests, and memorable NPC interactions. There is complete freedom in what you want to do. Want to become a vampire? Check. Want to join a secret society of thieves that lives underground in Riften? Check. But as amazing as these things are, Skyrim doesn’t limit its greatness to its macro features. It even finds innovative ways to make mundane tasks like alchemy and lockpicking enjoyable.
Every house, chest, and prison cell in Skyrim is unlockable via lockpicking. The lockpicking mini-game has you move the two joysticks in specific locations and then turn the tool. Some locks are easy to pick, while others are super difficult. The lockpick might break, but when you do eventually get it right, it’s extremely satisfying. Not to mention, you can rob the city hall or entire guilds of their precious merchandise.
In the same vein, Skyrim’s alchemy system lets you mix ingredients you collect in the open world together and concoct all sorts of poisons and potions. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim nails all major aspects of what makes an RPG exciting. Having said that, it also nails the little things and should be played for them, too.
Papers, Please – Document Checking
Papers, Please is a point-and-click game. If there were a genre with the highest probability of being boring, this would be it. So, you could imagine how Papers, Please challenges itself by taking the most boring form of gameplay and successfully managing its conversion into something fun. In Papers, Please, you play as an immigration officer in charge of border control. Every in-game day, you go through a dozen profiles and find out any discrepancies in their passports.
So, the gameplay loop is you constantly reading through profiles and rejecting or accepting them. This type of point-and-click gameplay is normally very monotonous, but Papers, Please navigates around that by introducing new mechanics often. You start off by reading through passports only. Then, things like x-ray scanning, national ID cards, and investigation mode are unlocked. Things gradually become complex but never overwhelming. Papers, Please smartly keeps you invested. You never lose interest, which is rare to say when it comes to point-and-click games.
