Here’s a couple of examples Keep talking and nobody explodes — The most popular in the list I think
Uncle Chop’s rocket shop — the game where you are repairing your client’s rockets by following the in-game guidebook
Tin can — here you are also repairing the spaceshp but this time you are it’s capitan and you are in space in the middle of nowhere
Tunic, in a certain way.
Elite dangerous, you end up with spreadsheets fetching data from online sources if you go wild
DayZ everyone uses interactive map and it’s a good game for anyone with time to kill and some gluttony for punishment. I do need to add: “Players often describe DayZ as a psychological horror or “psychosis simulator” due to the extreme paranoia and auditory hallucinations of solo survival. In the r/DayZ subreddit, survivors frequently share stories of constantly misinterpreting wind and ambient environmental noises for distant player footsteps or enemy gunfire”
Project zomboid is really cool if you print out the world map
Papers, please kinda fits
Strange Horticulture -You run an occult plant shop and identify plants by leafing through a botanical guidebook, matching illustrations and descriptions.
HighFleet - Intercepting enemy radio transmissions means using the in-game codebook and manual tables to decode messages and triangulate positions.
The Signal State - A Zachlike about repairing farm equipment with modular synth racks and lots of documentation.
Retro Gadgets - You build electronic gadgets from scratch, and reading the chip documentation is basically the whole game.
Sethian - You learn a dead alien language by studying an in-game dictionary/manual to converse with a computer.
Carrier Command 2 - Co-op crewing a carrier where the in-game manual is dense and necessary, giving strong Tin Can/submarine-crew vibes.
Objects in Space - Space sim, flying a submarine-like ship, reading dials and signals.
Jalopy - Roadtrip / car maintenance game set in Eastern Bloc.
Reentry - Crazy realistic space sim where you follow manuals, procedures, checklists etc to complete missions like the Apollo moon landing.
To keep with the space ship theme, there’s always pikmin
Not quite as strictly as what you’ve cited, but some of the older Sierra point-and-clicks relied on maps/pamphlets/etc that were packed in with the game. Most just used them as low-budget and thematically in-universe anti-piracy gating (the Dagger of Amon Ra), but some stretched beyond that. Conquests of the Longbow: the Legend of Robin Hood had royal family crests, language keys, and (of I remember correctly) a catalog of gems that were all perused outside of the game interface.
GOG has PDFs of all those documents if you buy the games there, so you can still experience it fully. Might be worth checking out, since it’s usually less than $5.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/370360/TIS100/
The instructions for this game come in the form is PDF written in an in-universe style.
From the same develeoper: https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/
See the game’s manual: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2515197025
Highly recommend. It’s a great puzzle game. No coding knowledge is needed, but familiarity with assembly is helpful
Edit: Whoops, I was thinking of Shenzen I/O. Same developer though
Subnautica and Subnautica 2.
The guide is an ingame tablet that’s literally your character’s survival guide book, recording data on wildlife and tracking your crafting tree.
Great games, but that’s more of just flavor text than a manual type situation.
Strongly disagree, the pdf holds all of the beacon markers that literally guide you through the game.
Also, it lists all unlocked recipes and their ingredients, which help guide player progression.
You do not need the manual. At all.
Just because they went through the effort to put a bunch of info into a place does not mean you NEED that info to do anything. Similarly, just because it can be useful does not make it required.
Now, stop being pedantic and start trying to think of games where you NEED the manual, hence making it, a “main gameplay aspect”.
How about I do nothing to make you happy because you’re an ass?
lol thanks for proving you’re more willing to be a dumbass than wrong. Good job, failure!
Retro Game Challenge (English version of Game Center CX: Arino no Chōsenjō) and its excellent fan-translated sequel.
Tunic
The first one that came to my mind !
Iron Nest? You drive a turret and you have to read instruction on how to operate it and where to shoot. Not yet come out though.
Keep talking and nobody explodes.
One player(s) has the bomb disposal manual and the other has the game controls to defuse the bomb.
I already know about this game, and I even mentioned it in the post
Ah. The formatting and lazy reading meant I only saw 2 examples.
If by “in-game manual” you mean one that’s part of the game world (not necessarily displayed on a computer screen) check out the classic Infocom adventures. For example, Border Zone came with a printed terrain map and tourist guide, and Sherlock and The Witness came with newspapers, among other things.
