10 Story-Driven Games That Hook You From the First Five Minutes

Games focused predominantly on their stories face a challenge that other types of products don't, as they must draw you in through sheer narrative interest.

Sometimes, you can tolerate a bad plot if a game is entertaining enough, but this becomes unthinkable if, to maximize its tale's impact, it concentrates almost exclusively on the story itself, placing extra emphasis on the quality it has to possess to convince the player to stick around.

It's a risky gamble that might not pay off; yet, when talent and opportunity align perfectly, it gifts us with unforgettable fables that captivate from the very first moment.

Therefore, to appreciate these experiences with their exceptional ability to interest you quickly, I invite you to read this list of ten story-driven games that hook you from the first five minutes.

10 Zero Parades: For Dead Spies

A Familiar Delirium

Including it at the end of the list because ZA/UM's situation regarding the former Disco Elysium team puts me in an ethically awkward position, I admit the company's current staff almost makes me forget how reprehensible its executives were, thanks to ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies.

The similarities to the beginning of their debut title are extraordinarily striking, practically being the same, though this doesn't prevent it from working exceptionally well and easily capturing your attention.

Once again, the narrator's role is vital in convincing the player that they are about to experience a magnificent story with tremendous characters and unprecedented circumstances; not on Disco Elysium level, but close enough to be viewed favorably.

Before recommending ZERO PARADES, I encourage everyone to read about the developer's recent history before making a decision. That said, you can rest assured that the current group has been extremely capable of putting together an excellent title, so any uncertainty should be put aside in this regard.

9 Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk

Twenty Unforgettable Minutes

A visual novel lasting 20 minutes means that, for the purposes of this list, you'll have already seen a quarter of the game by the time the interest period ends, but believe me, it's more than enough when it comes to Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk.

Don't let the unconventional name and length fool you, because this is the kind of indie game that reminds us why complete creative freedom can lead to memorable experiences, however short and unusual they may be.

This portrayal of trauma and mental illness, where we act as an immaterial voice for the protagonist to help her make everyday decisions, hits like a truck at full speed coming out of nowhere, and five minutes is far too long for how quickly you get hooked.

From its color palette and the nature of the dialogue, you'll know you're dealing with something different from the moment you buy it, making Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk a special work that truly pushes the communicative boundaries of video games.

8 The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Ostracism in the Political Space

As a political scientist, Deconstructeam has become one of the developers I most respect for their honest yet knowledgeable approach to academic critique in the form of video games, which brings us to The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood.

Having your first encounter with a graphic adventure about political organization and intergalactic destinies, beginning with an ancient witch making contact with a cosmic being, is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat for the rest of the run.

With its perfect pixel art, coupled with excellent writing that oscillates between the poetic and the comedic, the introduction does a tremendous job of establishing the story's focus (and even the gameplay) with just a few lines and scenes.

Add to it the superb atmospheric music, and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood's prologue becomes a highly intelligent composition that prepares you for a political drama with iconic characters and an even more important message.

7 Wednesdays

A Work to Raise Awareness

In the vein of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk, Wednesdays is one of those delicate publications that only dares to tackle the topics it addresses because of its indie status, something we should appreciate far more.

For a work that tackles such a rarely discussed topic in interactive media as child abuse, I'd say any opening can be compelling enough to keep you engaged with its reflections, but its portrayal is interesting not only for what it addresses but also for how it presents it.

When you expect a typical point-and-click adventure, you stumble upon a park-building and management minigame that catches you off guard, conversing with a friendly whale that seems to recognize you, even if the feeling isn't mutual, already hinting there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Then, the screen shifts to a more traditional novel format, where you see a young man with a square head watching television with his grandmother, imprinting an enigma about its cubic face and evoking nostalgic memories for those who spent their childhood afternoons with their grandparents.

Wednesdays is a commendable work for what it communicates, yes, though it's also an excellently crafted video game that guides you through a delicate and compelling story that, however dark its core is, ultimately fills you with hope and awareness.

6 Before Your Eyes

One Blink at a Time

Before Your Eyes spends the first few seconds calibrating the game to recognize your retina and use your blinks in real time to advance the story, so you don't even have to wait for the actual campaign to begin to be intrigued.

Nevertheless, when you finish the preparations and finally see the action unfold, you find yourself facing a charismatic ferryman in a different realm than ours, telling you the story with an engaging personality that easily captures your attention.

Then, you relive the first memory and... everything clicks. You're filled with nostalgia, melancholy, sadness, and tenderness for recollections that aren't yours, but whose gameplay, visuals, and sound presentation are simply perfect.

An hour or so later, your eyes will hurt from crying so much, because that's what Before Your Eyes is: a tearjerker that, with sincerity and creativity, invites you to experience a story that reminds us, like no other, that life passes in the blink of an eye.

5 Road 96

The Odyssey of Emigrating

Emigration as the central theme of a story is a rather infrequent topic in video games, especially when it's not interwoven with metaphors and fantasy, which makes Road 96 a special anomaly from its very conception.

From said premise, the campaign's first few seconds show you a news report of a terrorist attack at the border alongside a poster of missing teens, followed by a child playing an arcade game while two thugs rob a store with shotguns, and you immediately realize you won't be able to blink for a second.

Road 96 bases much of its appeal on the decisions we make to achieve the goal of crossing borders, but also on its distinctive characters, for whom the game does a sensational job of establishing their personalities and objectives.

By the time the playable sections begin, and you understand the endless possibilities and spontaneous encounters that can happen as a result of your choices, congratulations, you'll already be more than on board the game bus.

4 SOMA

Traces of Humanity

Despite being a horror game, SOMA places far more emphasis on the archaeological investigation of the events that give rise to the adventure, though with the added twist of having dreadful entities stalking you from time to time.

However, his masterpiece of atmosphere and narrative begins very differently from what its creators promote and players describe, as you're an ordinary person in an everyday, real world, talking on the phone and interacting with things in the room.

What you don't realize until several minutes later, regardless, is that the title is training you for what you'll do during the nightmare that awaits you: listening to disembodied voices while scavenging every corner in an attempt to survive.

The point is, you arrive at SOMA knowing what to expect, but not when. The way the game shatters expectations by starting with such mundane settings and sequences is very powerful, because nobody buys the title without anticipating a science fiction horror game, and that makes for a phenomenal start.

3 Return of the Obra Dinn

Reconstructing a Tragedy

Boarding a monochromatic ship in the middle of nowhere, gazing at a lunar horizon that seems like a living painting frozen in time, truly leaves an indelible mark on your memory, which is precisely what Return of the Obra Dinn does.

With no further explanations, narrators, or secondary characters to guide us, the first few minutes aboard the iconic vessel border on the experimental, because you bear no sense of anything beyond the primal urge to look, search, and touch things until something happens.

You have an incomprehensible dialogue, a book filled with images and words you can't yet decipher, a creepy-looking pocket watch, and the inexplicable yet visceral need to find answers in such a mysterious but immersive context.

When you activate your arcane instrument and travel through time, beginning your timeless, detective-like quest to decipher what happened on the ship, the lightning bolt of truth strikes you, making you realize Return of the Obra Dinn will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

2 What Remains of Edith Finch

Walking Through the Corridors of Misfortune

Walking simulators are among the genres that rely most heavily on their narrative capabilities to justify players' time investment, and none surpasses What Remains of Edith Finch in this regard.

By integrating the narrator diegetically into the adventure, with subtitles that appear perfectly adapted to the environments as if God were painting them onto the world around you, every step you take is a narrative pill that compels you to continue.

You begin in front of an imposing house with countless floors and rooms that urges you to, at the very least, reach its halls, but it's the walk that takes place before such a solemn moment that manages to catch you.

From the stories about the abandoned mailbox to the damaged fences, the story has a superb power of contextualization, especially due to how the spatial progression is combined with beautiful scenery and an extremely tight ambient sound design.

The heavyweights of his campaign come later, but anyone with well-trained eyes and ears will know from the outset that the emotions this journey evokes will have few parallels.

1 Pentiment

A Dream Made Art

Pentiment screams "I am art" so loudly and so fast, making thunderous gestures with his hands in the process, to the point that it's inconceivable for anyone to miss.

Just imagine the first screen of a video game placing you in a theatrical setting straight out of the most beautiful 16th-century painting, chatting with Socrates and Saint Grobian in an exchange worthy of a fever dream, and it's impossible not to want to reach the end.

When you notice the perfect representation of the period's handwriting in the speech bubbles, and hear the sound of the quill pen writing them each time they appear, you sense an extraordinarily unique soul and passion, the product of authors who truly love their work.

It's only hours later, through conversations, decision-making, exploration, pacing, characters, and everything else, that you finally realize you're in the presence of a masterpiece, though the initial encounter should give you a pretty strong indication.

Those exquisitely drawn images aren't easily forgotten, and rest assured that the only thing in Pentiment that matches such divine aesthetics is its own story.