[sp332]

That Dragon, Cancer; Portal 2; Grim Fandango; Her Story; What Remains of Edith Finch; The Vanishing of Ethan Carter; Papers, Please

And just to make the point: the only games on this list I have played and finished are Portal 2 and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The others, I either know of the story because people liked it so much I learned it second-hand, or the gameplay was so boring that I just quit halfway through but I put it on this list for the story anyway.

Edit: I gotta throw Paratopic in here. Played that one through twice, it's less than an hour.

[ByThyGrace]

Papers, Please doesn't have a story per se, only a setting. You don't really beat the game, you just get one of several different endings which depend on more than just making mistakes and playing "badly". Getting a "bad" ending doesn't count as losing the game.

But that's what makes it perfect for an adaptation (for a different reason you were arguing about). Its movie script won't break a plot that doesn't exist, won't mess up any character development because there isn't one (recurring characters are secondary), and all it has to do is get the setting right. Writers can go anywhere from there.

[sp332]

Yeah, but the incident that interrupts you early on (level 3?) in Papers, Please is pretty famous. You're right that "story" is not the only interesting criterion, because some games make scenarios where lots of interesting stories can play out, and others just evoke make a mood/vibe without much of a story going on. Those would also be good options for movie adaptations.

[strangecasts]

Papers, Please actually did get adapted as a short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFHHGETsxkE

IMO it's an example of how to do a game-movie adaptation right: it gets both the mechanics and the themes of the game across effectively, and it uses the medium to set up scenes that would be hard to convey in the original game (e.g. the moment after Elisa leaves)