When I read about immersive sims online I keep seeing them described as systemic games that give the player choices for solving the problems they come across. But in my experience the different choices you have are so imbalanced in terms of applicability, rewards and exclusivity that I find it hard seeing them as such.
In Bioshocks the aggressive combat playstyle is viable everywhere, is the most rewarding both in terms of gameplay and resources and doesn’t lock you out of anything. The alternative playstyles can still be used situationally to access any exclusive treasure. On the flipside going all in on an alternative playstyle takes more time and often amounts to skipping content.
Frankly I don’t like either, I don’t want to miss out on content and I don’t want my choices to be meaningless.
With Bioshocks and Prey the meta is playing aggressively. With Dishonored it’s stealth. To me the whole scheme seems antithetical to the game structure of a linear story based game. The developer can’t craft a particular experience because they have to accommodate for different options, and the options can’t be too different because the path is the same.
The games that best fit the description for me are BotW and Minecraft or even Hitman, none of which is considered an immersive sim. The popular immersive sims seem closer to Batman Arkham games, which have no pretense of player choices save for what tools you use in combat, than they are to the aforementioned titles.
So, which immersive sim did you play that fulfills the immersive sim premise?
Well, no one said immersive sims have to be 3D action games where you either fight or hide!
Mosa Lina calls itself “a hostile interpretation of the immersive sim”. It’s an aggressively random puzzle platformer where the levels are randomly generated and the tools you have to solve them are also randomly assigned to you. Mosa Lina is a puzzle game that wants you to be clever, not smart, since there’s no predefined solution and success depends on your understanding of the tools and how they interact.
Rain World is a physics-heavy survival game with a simulated ecosystem. I’ve played a bit of it on a friend’s system. You play as a small creature who’s been separated from its family and you have to find them again while avoiding predators, catching food, and sheltering from lethal rainstorms. Since other creatures independently wander around the game world and attack each other, navigating your surroundings is often unpredictable.
Rain World has been in my backlog for a while. I’ll give it a go, and thanks for the other suggestion as well