Procedural generation is an interesting topic to me, as it forgoes traditional level design in favor of a bunch of formulas, rules, and random elements to make varied replayable gameplay.
One of my favorite procgen games is Dwarf Fortress, and how it creates a fully realized world with lore and history, and then places both fortress and adventures as relatively small stories in said world.
Also Deep rock galactic is great in varying its caves, from normal tunnels to massive caverns that you can only traverse using ziplines and platforms
Any other interesting procgen games?
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Noita is a great one. Making a randomly generated world this consistent while simulating a million particles and not having it collapse on itself is really cool.
Despite the fact that I don’t like No Man’s Sky very much, its procedural generation is also pretty impressive. Planets have a lot of variety to them. It’s a very pretty game.
not having it collapse
I’ve dead ass had levels in this game where as soon as I load the safe zone shake my screen for minutes at a time. Like what y’all doing down there blowing all them boxes up?
its always the damn worms, but at least you get to know about them
It’s likely gunpowder exploding in the coal pits. Happens a bunch yea
Yeah I’ll agree with No Man’s Sky here as well. While sandbox type games aren’t my favorite (I do find the expeditions fun though) the amount of procedural generation is really cool.
Dead cells
Doesn’t help the fact that the devs are super supportive of the game!
I think you mean doesn’t hurt, but YES. Still releasing regular updates, patches, fixes, expansions, they rule.
Dwarf fortress
Tough learning curve but yeah, one of the most impressive procedurally generated games out there.
There’s plenty roguelikes/terminal games with procedurally generated content as well. ADOM or nethack are two of the most popular examples.
Tough learning curve --> Fun™
Returnal is not fully procedural, it’s lego like procedural.(rooms types are limited, but the layout is procedural.)
Riftbreaker(RTS-ish with a player controlled mecha) procedural generate the location and missions so the resource type distribution roughly matches how much you “expand” your area of control. (ie the more you expand outward, the more rare resource patches starts to show up.)
Many rougelike/lite use procedural generated levels.
I like how terraria and minecraft mix premade blocks with procedurally generated terrain, also Spelunky has interesting level generation, they even had a talk about it.
Factorio has cool, and very customisable, procedurally generated maps. The ore distribution, quantity, biters, cliffs, water, all change game to game.
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is the best game of all time and changes gameplay (via powerups) in random combination that can make a god run or a really shit one. Highly recommend it
Which BOI game should I play first?
Minecraft/Terraria are obvious answers.
When Minecraft was still fresh, there were times when the landscape was absolutely jaw dropping.
Did this change? I saw videos of Minecraft with ray tracing enabled and it looked honestly stunning.
Honestly, probably not. It’s been a while since I booted it up though
Age of Empires 2 skirmish maps are procedurally generated, in contrast to other competitive RTS games of that style. It’s done quite well and makes scouting meaningful for reasons other than rock-paper-scissoring your opponent.
I like Shattered Pixel Dungeon.
Remnant was pretty good.
Really surprised no one has said no man’s sky on here
In my opinion, I don’t think No Man’s Sky’s procgen is very good. Or at least, it doesn’t feel very good to experience. It just all feels so samey, partly because it’s kind of “too diverse” and shows all it’s got way too quickly.
You’re not wrong about that. I’ve only played about 15 hours of the game so far, but finding it to really feel samey most of the time
It really is. I like no man’s sky, but most of it starts looking very familiar fast.
Only exception, I still get good surprises with random creatures. Sure, they’re all based on the same few structures, but once in awhile I get some perfect combination of funny, dorky and/or cool that I just can’t refuse as my new pet.
The ironic thing is that if the game just looked more samey, it’d actually be less of an issue. If all these cool stuff wasn’t everywhere, it would feel fresh for much longer.
Like you can tell what parts of the creatures are reused cause you’ve seen like a hundred species within a few hours.
