Games with procedural generation

7 Days to Die

You mine, you wall, and the seventh dusk is when the concrete has to be finished.

Balatro

The fiction is almost absent; the fantasy is watching a scoring engine explode. Balatro's identity is the spreadsheet you feel in your hands.

Banished

No adventure party. The settlement is the character.

Content Warning

The product is the clip. You film the monster, extract the tape, and the camera is the weapon.

Darkest Dungeon®

Stress works as a second health bar: a hero can survive every blow and still break down mid-dungeon. A narrator comments on each victory and each loss, so every campaign reads like a grim chronicle.

Dataminers

Dead Cells

The 2D combat is readable at speed, and the meta unlocks rewrite later runs.

Deep Rock Galactic

Class kits, a tank to fill, and a drop pod that leaves with the gold.

Digital Survivor

Dwarf Fortress

Failure is folklore. Digging, moods and sieges write stories the game never narrates.

Enter the Gungeon

Comedy items without a visual novel wrapper. The Gungeon is a shooter first.

Forge Industry

You chain machines into belts and throughput, and combat stays off the map.

FTL: Faster Than Light

The whole game fits on one screen: a cut-away view of the ship, its rooms and its crew. A fight is won by choosing which system to hit and which one to repair first.

Into the Breach

A turn is a chess problem. The city is the HP bar, and the Vek are a schedule.

Iron Bird

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

The bomb stays on one screen and the manual stays in someone else's hands.