What video games have had you taking real-life notes? - ~games (2024)

I recently did a Stardew Valley run where I ignored the wiki completely. Had a notebook at my side the entire time, and documented jar time, keg time, and sell prices for every vegetable and animal product (including different flower honeys). Moving on to casks now.

I also wrote down fish locations and times (just copied from the TV channel you unlock eventually), and I aspire to do each flowers base price, but haven't gotten around to it.

I have another page with key ingredients to keep stocked in my fridges so that I can always make foods with the best buffs. I basically live off of Espresso and Crab Cakes (not far from real life). I really want to experiment with making and selling meals, but haven't quite gotten there yet. It doesn't seem like they're worth much, but it'd be fun to know for sure (don't tell me if you know already).

I find myself focusing more on the day-to-day of the farm now. I unlocked Ginger Island, but don't have a ton of interest in that yet. I'm way more focused on documenting product prices and improving efficiencies on my farm layout.

I play on PS5, so I haven't gotten the latest (and final) update yet, but my dream wish list is a more expansive recipe and product list. At one of the fall events, someone mentions Pumpkin Ale, and yet you can't make any (just pumpkin juice). And Ginger, for example, can only be made into pickles, not Ginger Beer or Ginger Ale. I'd love to do and make more with my crops, even things that involve second or third steps. I'd love to make different oil infusions, or even grind coffee beans or corn before being able to make coffee/tortillas. That extra layer is really what I'm missing now.

While this all has made the base game way more fun, for me, I'm also happy to say it has completely changed the way I approach my day-to-day real life. One day while playing, I caught myself saying "okay, today I have to do X, and then Y by 2pm, and then I need to remember Z before bed.

And then I was like "wtf, lol, why do I not do this every day when I actually wake up?" Ever since, I've been getting out of bed when I naturally wake up, and doing a lot more with my days. It has been very gratifying and given me a whole new lens with which to view my life.

I'd love any recommendations for similar games that will help me scratch this itch. I love the simplicity of Stardew, but I'd like a bit more depth in the business side of things. Moonlighter comes close, but I find myself enjoying the time in the shop way more than in the dungeon, and the gameplay loop doesn't really allow me to take advantage of that (whereas Stardew allows you to accomplish a lot without ever having to fish or enter the mines that much if you don't want to).

I've tried things like Tropico and that space one, but I always boot it up and then basically nope back out, because the game doesn't ramp up as smoothly as Stardew, you pretty much have to know how the game works right away. Any recs would be greatly appreciated!

I tend to judge puzzle games on how many pages of notes they generate. It's not a perfect metric but if I felt that it was worth writing down things, then that means I was engaged. It doesn't help that I find that scribbling down things helps the process sometimes. Even if it's just to offload some concepts onto paper.

So far, The Witness takes the cake by a large margin. I have an entire notebook of scribbles that look like the scrawlings of a mad man.

Titles like Myst, Cultist Simulator, the Faraway series, Minit, Outer Wilds, Quern, and the Puzzle Agent series are all in another notebook. Some of these games consist of puzzles that can be helped with visuals on paper (Myst, Puzzle Agent, Faraway, Quern). Others are more for notes to keep what you've learned around for later use (Minit, Cultist, Outer Wilds). They're all wonderful titles, just not as expansive in scope as Blow's 100+ hour line puzzle fest.

Book of Hours is the only one that I have used a notebook on (at least beyond the old school password system for saving).

The entire game is based on you being a librarian trying to archive books in an old mansion filled with eldritch and arcane items. There are entirely too many things to keep track of in your head (or at least my head). Between shuffling items around the game to group them and a notebook in real life keeping track of some of the storylines and important places in the game, I was able to keep some semblance of a system going.

I highly recommend playing it. The game was very fun and relaxing. I did not finish it, but through no fault of the game itself.

Obra Din! I played this with my husband and we wrote down every single [redacted], including detailed characteristics of each [redacted]! Incredibly fun!

Same goes for Her Story - we noted down interesting [redacted]s we saw in each clip, and used those to find the next clips.

The Zero Escape trilogy is the first thing that sprung to mind. It's a Visual Novel/Puzzle game trilogy, and the premise is you have 9 characters who get trapped in a "Death Game" and have to progress through a series of "Puzzle/Escape Rooms" to survive. For gameplay think of either Phoenix Wright or Dangonronpa where the game has a lot of people talking, then it gets broken up by interactive segments (solving puzzles).

You don't need a pen and paper for all the puzzles, but there were definitely some where I had to write down notes and cross reference possibilities. I don't think it'd be possible to beat the game without taking notes as the later puzzles get very difficult and confusing.

A more recent example I can think of is Crow Country, a Survival Horror game inspired by old school Silent Hill & Resident Evil. The puzzles aren't particularly difficult but there's a lot of number based puzzles (which are saved to a notes file your character has). However, you can only view these notes in the save room, so you either need to memorize the number codes or write them down somewhere in real life.

There was also one puzzle towards the end of the game where you need to cross reference numbers presented to you on a slideshow across multiple slides, and It'd be quite difficult to solve without being able to write them down. (There is an alternative way to solve this puzzle that I won't spoil, which does let you bypass it though).

I think I prefer games that make you break out a pen and paper to solve them vs everything being in game. I find it quite fun to remove myself from the screen for a bit, however this can be annoying if you're in a situation where you can't just pull out a pen and paper eg: playing on a portable console.

I think a good middle ground is games where they have a "notes option", which let you scribble things down using a stylus or something similar so you can draw diagrams or other notes you may need.

The Painscreek Killings was one some friends and I were playing where we were leaving notes about characters, motives, story events etc in a discord channel and ended up with a mountain of info to comb through. That was a very different experience to other detective games I played, I really enjoyed it.

More recently we've been playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which is more keeping notes about puzzles and suchlike, but also very enjoyable so far.

Myst/Riven (and the rest of the series but those two especially. 3 probably doesn't need them at all)- The original for me. I was still quite young buy my dad figured out quick we were going to need to take some notes.

Tunic - The less said the better. If you like zelda or puzzles, play tunic.

The Journeyman Project 1 and 3 - Another from my childhood/adolescence and something I've been dying to go back and play. Some intuitive stuff, LOTS of "wait what" moments that require note taking.

I'm sure i'm forgetting a ton at the moment

EVE Online

While it was pen and paper initially, it quickly graduated to spreadsheets, though most larger companies in-game have proprietary systems you can SSO into that track most of what you'd use spreadsheets for.

Do you have any recommended “note”-worthy games

great pun, OP

As for the question: I have regularly taken notes IRL when playing any of the Football Manager games of the last decade or two. Mostly for either squad composition/management or for drawing up tactics. Newer editions of the game have made in-game planning and designing easier, coupled with things like Steam notes makes it so there's not as much need for pen and paper nowadays, but nothing makes you feel more like a real football manager than scrawling some half-baked formations on the back of a napkin when inspiration strikes you.

Another game I have taken a lot of notes for is Europa Universalis IV, but that might just be because of how complex it is and how much I've played it in the last 12+ years. Happens less so now that I'm much more experienced in the game (2000+ hours) and am well versed with its minutiae, but in previous years I would watch Youtube videos or read Reddit threads about very specific details and mechanics and strategies and then take notes to make sure I didn't forget anything while trying to min-max my own games.

Minecraft. I used to play a lot of creative mode. I'd often have some graph paper nearby so I could plan designs and such. I never sketched out a full building, but it often helped with foundational stuff like sizing and an initial look. I did use equivalent online tools pretty frequently, especially for curved surfaces.

Satisfactory is another. Really, any game that has some manufacturing/production. While I'm not one looking for max, perfect efficiency, I like to get pretty close. Which necessitates writing down and looking at ratios and relationships between inputs and outputs, which become inputs for something, so on and so on.

Majora's Mask. Before you even leave Clocktown you've got: Bomber hideout code, multiple ocarina songs, and a ton of things you want to take note of to check out on different days once you've got the ocarina. I never got past the first temple in that game, but I still wrote a ton of notes as a kid just experiencing Clocktown.

In fact, I recently started up a new playthrough of it and the first thing I did was dig out an old notebook I could use to take notes. There really aren't any other games where I feel the need to do that. I've mostly turned to looking things up online, but going handwritten felt right for Majora's Mask.

Oooooergh, lemme see <shifts bulk in armchair>. Hway back in the day, I used to jot down lots of item console commands and hexadecimal codes for Morrowind and Oblivion, as well as the locations of various secret items and locations. I wouldn't normally need to, since I managed to find all the info on the Internet, but Bethesda's games would have a stroke if you tried to alt+tab in and out, so I had to write it down.

Really, I don't write much on a physical pad anymore, unless it's to compensate for technical and/or design shortcomings like that.

Any of the Professor Layton games count because it's easier to write down notes on the puzzles than use the memo function, minus any puzzle where you trace a path. I think the only game I ever had to write down notes was Ultima Underworld (Or any 90s-era CRPG), only because there's alot of dialogue quotes which you need to take note of to progress in the game. System Shock 1 and it's reboot are also games where you do need to write down codes, but it's not as note-heavy as Ultima Underworld. Ultima is also a very slow paced game so that means you'll be moving at a snails pace taking notes.

I've noticed that many new games have completely ditched the quest marker or have made it more in-depth, I was able to play prey without the quest marker fully and the game was much more fun that way. Obviously this is different from preparing and writing notes for a video game, but I think this is a wholly good thing as we have figured out how to telegraph directions to a player in a more clever way than what was done with Skyrim.

I think most of mine have been mentioned in this thread already, and I'll be taking a very careful read for more recommendations.

The Witness is probably the big one (it's a shame Jon Blow went off the deep end). Especially in the greenhouse, diagramming out what colors were visible under which light sources was a big help.

TUNIC as well, especially with some of the larger puzzles. It was super satisfying to

Another one I've done is Satisfactory - while I'll usually go to one of the various online planners, when I'm trying to lay down a factory super precisely, I still prefer good ol' graph paper to draw my building layouts.

In addition to some of the games already mentioned, I took a lot of notes for Roadwarden. This is not strictly necessary to play the game, but it helped me organize my thoughts about all the different characters and communities so I could prioritize how to help them (or hurt them in some cases).

Taking notes really helped me feel more immersed in the world as well, seeing how all the characters' stories are deeply interwoven. I really loved this game and I'm eager to replay it and make some different decisions (I space out my replays so that they feel more fresh) because when my partner played it, he learned different information than I did, suggesting that the story is even deeper than I realized.

The cyan Games, myst, ...

Nowadays if a game would require note taking on that level I'd have more fun programming.

Monster Hunter World takes the cake for me when it comes to note-taking for a game. I've got a 14-page google doc that I created when I was learning each new weapon! Plus the updates to weapon movesets after the Iceborne expansion.

Devil May Cry 5 forced me to break out the pen and paper too. Compared to the other DMC games, #5 seemed to have way more characters with different weapons and fighting styles that actually matter if you're trying to get high damage scores. 😵‍💫

I don't mind having to do additional studying or note-taking if I enjoy the combat. I'd recommend both games if you like the action RPG genre. However, MHW can be harder to get into since the gameplay is essentially a grindfest with a ton of resource management activities, and it requires an extensive amount of knowledge that lives outside of the game.

Back in the day, I kept a notebook by the family computer for Darklands, since there was no built-in quest tracking and it was useful to remember which cities could teach you about which saints or sell you certain alchemy ingredients.

After using a guide to get 100% of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, it was refreshing to just use a notepad in The Wind Waker to track clues. It reminded me of playing the original Zelda and relying on schoolyard conversations to learn where new dungeons were located or how to get past tricky sections.

I don't remember ever doing that. It may be partly because of my playstyle - I play one game to finish before playing another one, thus I remember a lot of things from the game and I don't need to write stuff down.

Well, thinking about it now, I do takenotes here and there. I did draw specific thing from Outer Wilds (who played it knows what I'm talking about) and I have written down numbers in System Shock. I do this probably more often than I think but I do it just in cases where you have to memorize some sequence or shape for specific part of the game.

I know this sounds weird, but for me it was Amnesia: The Bunker. I wasn't sure in the beginning how much of a map we would get (especially when), so I printed the map (before you unlock the other parts of the map), added a map key and started noting where certain items were that I couldn't bring, where the holes for the monsters were etc. (I even outlined every room). Later I didn't really need it that much, however it was a lot of fun to do so I continued doing it.

So my entire first playthrough of this horror game was build a lot on strategy, which helped to immerse myself much more than without a map. It's something that absolutely helps with staying immersed and adding some "spice".