General Immersive Sim Thread

[gerey]

Immersive sims are near and dear to the hearts of a lot of people here, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a central resource to track interesting developments in this genre, especially since nowadays so many im sim are being made by indies and don't receive a lot of coverage.

This thread is still very much a work in progress, I have just added most of the in-development im sims that I'm aware of, so if you have any recommendations or suggestions feel free to share. The fine folks over on TTLG already have a pretty neat thread on the same topic, so you can take a look there as well.

EDIT (06/02/2023) - Added a few more games to the list, also added im sim adjacent games in development as I felt they may be of interest to people
EDIT (08/02/2023) - Added Repo Man, not sure if it's an im sim, not enough information on the game yet, but the developers refer to it as such
EDIT (08/02/2023) - Added Cold Depth, Safe Not Safe. Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum
EDIT (08/02/2023) - Added a section for all the released im sims so far, haven't managed to add all titles, welcome suggestions
EDIT (27/02/2023) - Delightfyl is apparently canceled, added Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 at last

IMMERSIVE SIMS CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT:

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Delightfyl - developer announced the project was canceled


Terminus : Cyberstar


Aquametsis


Spectra - game is apparently being made by a commie

IMMERSIVE SIM ADJACENT GAMES IN DEVELOPMENT:

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========================================================================================================================================

RECENTLY RELEASED IMMERSIVE SIMS:

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RELEASED IMMERSIVE SIMS:

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Ultima Underworld 1 and 2

[gerey]

(Reserved #2)

[rusty_shackleford]

Isn't Judas the one with the WGFD tattoo?

[gerey]

Judas is the true next-generation immersive sim, letting you approach any situation in a myriad of ways, allowing you to unleash your inner Jew.

Also, how loose/strict should the definition of an immersive sim be to featured in this thread? Do we only keep track of games that can trace their lineage back to Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief and Deus Ex, or would "im sim adjacent" games ala Hitman or My Summer Car count as well?

Please don't sperg the fuck out and have pages upon pages debating what an immersive sim is.

[wndrbr]

I don't consider imsim to be a separate genre, imsim is a buzzword that describes rpg-adjacent games where the player has a lot of agency on how to handle objectives through interacting with the various gameplay systems (such as physics for items and props, AI being system-run and not overly scripted, etc).

Deus Ex is an imsim. TES4 Oblivion is an imsim. STALKER is an imsim. Hitman games (especially the World of Assassination trilogy) are an imsims. Divinity OS 1-2 are imsims. Zelda BOTW is an imsim.

Imsim is just a design philosophy that every gamedev should strive towards.

[gerey]

I don't consider imsim to be a separate genre

I'd argue they are, if only because people can easily recognize such games. It would be the same as saying that "Soulsborne" aren't a genre separate from other action RPGs.

imsim is a buzzword that describes rpg-adjacent games where the player has a lot of agency

But neither Thief 1 and 2, nor System Shock 1 are RPGs, or RPG-adjacent even, yet we still consider them immersive sims, so RPG elements are not strictly necessary to be an immersive sim.

My best explanation of what an im sim is would be games with a plethora of interlocking system, that have predictable outputs to a player's inputs (i.e. guard sees dead body and sounds the alarm; guard hears a noise and goes to investigate) which the player can use and manipulate to achieve desired results.

Now, using my example you could argue that pretty much every game under the sun could be lumped into the immersive sim genre, but the most important aspect is actually the number of said systems that the game has in place. That's what separates immersive sims from games that borrow mechanics from them, much like how we make a distinction between cRPGs and games that borrow RPG mechanics.

Calling them immersive sims is a misnomer, or at the very least a very poor description of what the games are about.

[wndrbr]

But neither Thief 1 and 2, nor System Shock 1 are RPGs, or RPG-adjacent even, yet we still consider them immersive sims, so RPG elements are not strictly necessary to be an immersive sim.

those games are basically dungeon crawlers that were stripped of character stats in favor of a different type of progression - progression through the acquisition of new tools.

[rusty_shackleford]

First we have to define what an immersive sim is

[JarlFrank]

- first person
- highly systemic ways of interacting with the world around you (physics systems, skills usable everywhere, etc)
- AI that reacts to player behavior in some way
- level design that allows a freeform approach to your objective

[agentorange]

There is nothing about this "genre" (which as Wunderbar already pointed out is just a broad philosophy for how to make good games with a focus on interplaying systems) that necessitates being first person. Games like Darkwood, Hitman, and I would even say Gothic are far closer to the philosophy of systems based game design than something like Bioshock; likewise games like Thief or Deus Ex would not cease to be the kind of games they are if they happened to be in third-person. Immersive does not mean first person.

[Roguey]

But neither Thief 1 and 2, nor System Shock 1 are RPGs, or RPG-adjacent even, yet we still consider them immersive sims, so RPG elements are not strictly necessary to be an immersive sim.

those games are basically dungeon crawlers that were stripped of character stats in favor of a different type of progression - progression through the acquisition of new tools.

That sounds like it describes a Metroid-like, which isn't what those are (Well I suppose System Shock actually is) and that's a genre that doesn't necessarily adhere to the design philosophy (I don't believe the Metroid Primes have any imsim qualities).

[Ratcatcher]

JarlFrank mentioned some excellent points. I would add determinstic systems to it tho. No hit chances a là Morrowind or saves against your powers/tools. It's the main reason I ruled out VtM:BL when asked before, too much rng.

There are some qualities in common with the *gasp* fighting genre also. Specifically, most of the time animations commit your character to the action. Less visible in titles like Prey but pretty noticeable in DMoMM and thief. Learning how to time attacks and navigational tools is paramount, especially going up in difficulty, when usually the stealth aspect most of those have is pushed as the AI becomes more aware and you have less room for error.

I suppose exactly like soulsborne can be considered a defined subgenre, RPGs can have imsim mechanics without needing to be full fledged ones. At the same time, imsims can and usually have some qualities specific to RPGs.

[Roguey]

JarlFrank mentioned some excellent points. I would add determinstic systems to it tho. No hit chances a là Morrowind or saves against your powers/tools. It's the main reason I ruled out VtM:BL when asked before, too much rng.

I reject Bloodlines because it relies on scripts instead of systems. One of your first goals is to find a nosferatu in Santa Monica. He's behind a fence you cannot unlock or destroy or climb over. Unlocking the fence requires going through the Jeanette/Therese plot.

[gerey]

He's behind a fence you cannot unlock or destroy or climb over. Unlocking the fence requires going through the Jeanette/Therese plot.

But there's many other immersive sims that use such crude ways of gatekeeping the player on occasion. Deus Ex also has indestructible, unpickable doors you cannot get through until a specific point in the game. Best example that comes to mind is the locked door in the UNTACO HQ that leads to the MJ12 base.

Thief 1 and 2 also required the player to find a specific key on occasion, not giving you any alternative way to progress other than the way the developers intended.

Ultimately, this is a compromise that needs to happen because it is impossible for developers to predict all the myriad ways that player could sequence break the game.

[Luckmann]

Ultimately, this is a compromise that needs to happen because it is impossible for developers to predict all the myriad ways that player could sequence break the game.

While that is true, I think it's a matter of degrees or magnitude, and how it is presented. Getting into the bottom of UNATCO in Deus Ex would have potentially plot-shattering consequences that would be hard to narratively work around, and the door in question is presented as a reasonable insurmountable obstacle at the point in time in which you encounter it; even if you have the code (I don't remember if it was a code lock, but let's suppose) it doesn't break the suspension of disbelief that they'd have different codes at different times.

Meanwhile, the way you're forced to go through the Malkavian party babes in Bloodlines comes across as completely arbitrary, with the opening of the gate/him showing up at a later date never really being sensibly explained or contextualized; you're not given a key or anything, there's nothing that reasonably explains why it was closed and locked before and now suddenly open, and why he'd hang out there now but not prior. Further, it's not something that would be narratively hard to work around, should you have discovered the nossie earlier, or simply have him require you do something with Therese and/or Jeanette, or maybe send you to the babes for an entirely unrelated reason, just to "soft-force" the player into doing that interaction.

I think it's a nitpicky reason to disregard Bloodlines based on this alone, but I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment. Not everything can be naturally systematized, especially if you're not going for a fully open world, at which point we're entering the realm of hiking simulators.

JarlFrank mentioned some excellent points. I would add determinstic systems to it tho. No hit chances a là Morrowind or saves against your powers/tools. It's the main reason I ruled out VtM:BL when asked before, too much rng.

Nonsense. There is absolutely no reason to require deterministic systemics to be a part of an immersive sim. And VtM:BL has "too much rng"? Christ. I can only assume that you've got some kind of preference towards deterministic systems vs. probability-based mechanics, but to include such a preference as a matter of the base definition of a genre is idiotic.

[Ratcatcher]

I can only assume that you've got some kind of preference towards deterministic systems vs. probability-based mechanics, but to include such a preference as a matter of the base definition of a genre is idiotic.

No? You're assuming a lot. I said nothing about the quality of those games. Simply that to be an immersive sim (in my opinion) you cannot have dice rolls determining the outcome of your actions. Imagine water arrows with a chance of putting out torches in thief. Imagine random damage numbers in DMoMM.
Bloodlines is an excellent RPG. The fact your aim and the effect of some powers is rng based, means you cannot easily predict the outcome of your actions. You cannot establish before what action are needed to perform a task.
Imo, this goes against the imsim approach. How you go from this to thinking I loathe BG for its dicerolls is anyone's guess. Most of the games I play have some sort of havy RNG based systems. Most of the games I play are not imsims.

And we're trying to define common traits to properly classify a genre. I simply vouched why, according to me, a specific title belongs to a different one. For what it's worth I know Deus-ex doesn't fall into this descriptor. Precisely like some RPGs and tactics game have deterministic systems.

My personal canon is to consider it a RPG with imsim elements. Not all games MUST fall squarely into a single genre,

[Luckmann]

No? You're assuming a lot. I said nothing about the quality of those games.

You didn't have to. It is the only imaginable reason for trying to force such a narrow definition, because it makes no sense otherwise.

Simply that to be an immersive sim (in my opinion) you cannot have dice rolls determining the outcome of your actions.

Yes, which is wrong.

Imagine water arrows with a chance of putting out torches in thief.

A ridiculous extreme of an example. You might as well say "What if you took two steps forward in Deus Ex and you suddenly TELEPORTED RANDOMLY? WHAT THEN?!". Even in games with significant probability-based mechanics, much of gameplay, especially in interactions with the environment, isn't "random" at all.

Imagine random damage numbers in DMoMM.

Dark Messiah? Alright. I'm imagining it. No difficulties there whatsoever. None.

Bloodlines is an excellent RPG. The fact your aim and the effect of some powers is rng based, means you cannot easily predict the outcome of your actions. You cannot establish before what action are needed to perform a task.

Not only is everything you describe here completely untrue, but it's all indicative of your preference, nothing else.

How you go from this to thinking I loathe BG for its dicerolls is anyone's guess.

Never said or implied any such thing. No need for hyperbolic lies.

Not all games MUST fall squarely into a single genre.

If you don't want hard genre divisions, don't try to establish hard genre definitions based on arbitrary preference. I actually agree completely with this point, but it jives poorly with your proposed nonsensical qualifier.

[Ratcatcher]

Thank you for stating you opinion in detail. I don't follow your same definition and have no particular preference for deterministic systems. This is the only point I want to make clear.

Everything else is just various degree of personal takes. I don't care if your library is sorted the way mine is.

[wndrbr]

Take 2 boss Strauss Zelnick did an interview, where he basically stated that Judas is going to be released in... 2025.

Yeah it's a Ken Levine's game. What a clown.

[gerey]

Take 2 boss Strauss Zelnick did an interview, where he basically stated that Judas is going to be released in... 2025.

Yeah it's a Ken Levine's game. What a clown.

Hasn't the game been in development since 2014? We're basically pushing Duke Nukem Forever territory here.

I don't understand why they keep handing him money to burn. Well, I (((do))), but let's ignore that for now. Not only has he not made a successful product since BioShock 2, his last project went horribly overbudget, was in dev hell for years and sunk the company. On top of that he only ever works on immersive sims (or bastardizations thereof), a genre that is notoriously difficult to develop and rarely makes back the money invested, hence why nearly all AAA publishers don't bother bankrolling these kinds of games anymore.

[wndrbr]

@gerey he didn't make Bioshock 2. Probably the reason it's also the best game in the series.

[agentorange]

Bioshock has little to nothing to do with systems based games, other than sharing part of its name with System Shock. Bioshock was one of the first games where it struck me how little in the environment around me was interactive, and how it all boiled down to elaborate window dressing on a very shallow core, a feeling I get from so many modern games where the player character feels glued to a world that is overly detailed yet can only be interacted with through context sensitive canned actions/animations (or the ever popular rolling). It may as well be a game like Doom where the viewpoint is locked to the horizontal because of how little there is to do other than walk forward and shoot things. Compare that to something like the cargo bay area from System Shock 2 where you are constantly navigating up and down through multiple levels, jumping on top of crates to avoid suicide bombing protocol droids, and trying to lure maintenance droids underneath an elevator so you can lower it down and crush them because you ran out of ammo.

You can look at Prey and Bioshock to see how two people can look at the same great game and learn completely different things from it. Ken Levine looked at System Shock 2 and all he took away was having a character talk to the player over a radio throughout the game followed by a le ebin twist about 60% of the way through the story, and audio logs (which make 0 sense in Bioshock). Raph looked at System Shock 1 and 2 and learned about level design that constantly allows for the use of vertical space even in a setting that is almost all enclosed interiors, allowing the player to navigate the environments more effectively based on how observant they are of their surroundings and how well they can utilize their movement options, and freedom in the order of how certain objectives and areas can be approached. Of course Ken Levine's Bioshock games sold 50 bajillion copies and Prey sold 500 copies.

[gerey]

@agentorange, I do agree that Bioshock 1 and 2 are immersive sims only in the most loose definition of the word, and that it's a tragedy that Prey underperformed despite being the superior product.

That being said there were ways you could interact with the environment in creative ways, though this was mostly in relation to the Big Daddies and security system. Environmental interactions were reduced to electrocuting enemies in water and melting ice with fire.

I think the reason why Bioshock was successful is that Levine managed to water down the immersive sim formula to the level of the average mouth breather, but also because of Rapture and the art direction in general. It's been proven time and again in the industry that if you take a complex game that is seen as a classic, and then dumb it down enough for the newer generations, that you'll have a hit on your hands.

In comparison, the absence of Viktor Antonov as a visual director was really felt because the Prey locales looked painfully generic. The gameplay was likely too complex for the average Call of Duty cretin.

Also, there was the whole controversy over using the Prey name, a fairly nonsensical choice that only created drama and made fans of the original Prey, and the people looking forward to the sequel, antagonistic towards the game.

[krokodil]

CTRL-ALT-EGO is one of the best damn Immersive Sims I've played since Prey. It's a great fucking game that doesn't get much exposure because it's just made by one guy. Buy it. Play it. There's a demo if you're a coward.

[viata]

I still don't get this genre's name. Looking at the released game list, I fail to see why Bioshock, for example, is a immersive sims if it just feels like any other FPS(a shitty one, though) I have played. And I could say similar things for games like Vampire Bloodlines, Dishonored and System Shock 2.

[Roguey]

I still don't get this genre's name. Looking at the released game list, I fail to see why Bioshock, for example, is a immersive sims if it just feels like any other FPS(a shitty one, though) I have played. And I could say similar things for games like Vampire Bloodlines, Dishonored and System Shock 2.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/bioshock ... Id,100875/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/bioshock ... Id,100876/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/bioshock ... Id,100874/

[viata]

So, playing as a wizard in RPG also turn it into Immersive Sim?

[Roguey]

So, playing as a wizard in RPG also turn it into Immersive Sim?

Depends on what the magic system is like. Starting with D:OS, Larian's gone all-in on imsim qualities. Pillars of Eternity is certainly not.

[viata]

So, playing as a wizard in RPG also turn it into Immersive Sim?

Depends on what the magic system is like. Starting with D:OS, Larian's gone all-in on imsim qualities. Pillars of Eternity is certainly not.

Funny, I was thinking about D:OS when I wrote that post.

[rusty_shackleford]

Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 are definitely immersive sims if we go by the original definition.

Warren Spector considered Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990) the first game to have an immersive sim mentality as while played from a top-down view, it relied less on events and planned-out puzzles, and instead provided the rulesets and systems through its living world to allow players to craft their own solutions to situations.

Both games give you problems and tools to solve the problems the way you want to. You don't have to follow some preset path in an exact order the designer has laid out for you.