Ask HN: What are some intellectually stimulating video games? - lainon
======
ArtWomb
Lot's of people love the Zachtronics family of "crafting" games: Opus Magnum,
SpaceChem, Infinifactory, and SHENZHEN I/O.

And while Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is on the surface a simple fighting game.
Once you unlock all 74 characters, special moves, spirits, etc. It's becomes a
mind-bendingly massive combinatorial space!

------
jryan49
Factorio, the talos principle, the witness, portal. Intellectually stimulating
is a pretty broad net however. I find starcraft 2, rocket league, CIV, CS:GO,
sim city, flight sims, racing games (dirt rally), to be all "intellectually
stimulating".

~~~
shoo
> the witness

braid was also pretty good

------
CM30
Well, most games with decent speedrunning communities end up being more
intellectually stimulating if you get involved in that sort of thing. The
amount of tech and number of strategies you have to learn to master the likes
of Zelda Breath of the Wild at a high level is pretty impressive. Same with
everything from Ocarina of Time to Super Mario Odyssey to any Metroid game to
whatever else. Heck, if you want the equivalent of a phD in either Super Mario
64 or Paper Mario, then videos by pannenkoek and Stryder7x are fascinating:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/pannenkoek2012/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/pannenkoek2012/videos)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYDnJiF0_RqSjkjvjRbG1tA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYDnJiF0_RqSjkjvjRbG1tA/videos)

I suspect competitive Pokemon would probably be pretty intellectually
stimulating too, if at the level of Smogon or the world championships. There
are a crap ton of tactics in that series, and trying to anticipate your
opponent's own strategies while countering with your own requires a lot of
creativity and thought.

~~~
yesenadam
What is a 'decent speedrunning community'?

~~~
CM30
One with a lot of people involved and lots of interesting techniques being
found on a regular basis. For example, Super Mario 64, Zelda Ocarina of Time,
GoldenEye, most of the Metroid titles, Paper Mario, Zelda Breath of the Wild,
Super Mario Odyssey...

(Though I guess less popular ones can have interesting 'scenes' too. I'm on a
Discord for Mario & Luigi series speedrunning, and titles like Superstar Saga,
Dream Team and Paper Jam had a lot of neat discoveries as well).

------
framedump1
Anything by Zachtronics - Shenzen IO/ Opus Magnum. He also made a challenging
cirtcuit building game on Kongregator (flash game) called Konstruktor (spelled
with Russian characters).

------
cm2012
Starcraft 2 is the gold standard of competitive play. It was chosen as Google
AI's next big project for a reason, as it combines the best elements of chess,
poker and piano playing.

~~~
IpV8
Broodwar will always have my heart. The first true e-sport with amazing
balance without a patch in decades, and people are still discovering new
techniques and strategies.

------
anigbrowl
You'll get more responses if you narrow it down a bit, as there's more than
one sort of intellectual stimulation - from military strategy to abstract
geometrical reasoning.

------
inertiatic
Most competitive games if you want to play at the highest level are extremely
tactical and thus intellectually engaging.

Top players all have top tier mechanics and then it mostly comes down to
tactics, the ability to metagame etc.

I personally enjoyed Dota in the past, for that reason, although I currently
play games with smaller multiplayer sessions.

------
gaspoweredcat
Shenzen I/O - a very clever electronics based puzzle game

Or if youd prefer an existential crisis with your video game try the
spectacular NieR Automata

------
Gustomaximus
The 2 Portal games are fin puzzle solving.

Some of the total war games are good if you push yourself and don't glitch the
AI.

------
newfocogi
Kerbal Space Program

------
rc-1140
Non-competitive?:

Mapgames (Europa Universalis 4, Stellaris)

Rougelikes (e.x.: The original Rouge, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Nethack)

Zachtronics games as previously mentioned in the thread

Competitive?:

Dota 2

CounterStrike

Fighting Games (most)

Highly dependent on player count, but Starcraft Brood War and Age of Empires 2

------
jxub
Polytopia is a pretty decent indie strategy mobile game which tests your
military strategy, tech development skill, and economical maximization like in
the Civilization series, also recommended (for PC and consoles only though).

------
shahbaby
This is kind of like asking what's the healthiest thing I can eat at Burger
King.

If you really want intellectual stimulation then read a book.

------
new_guy
I'd say Horizon Zero Dawn, it kept me hooked wondering what 'zero dawn' was
etc. The game itself isn't really intellectual but thinking about that
scenario etc can be.

------
DrNuke
Text-only adventures from the 80s really make minds work.

------
brailsafe
Myst

