I am part of an event called “nethackathon” where multiple streamers hand over the same character/savegame to the next person in the schedule, like a relay race. What other games do you think would be good for a similar kind of event?
Nethack is ideal for a few different reasons:
- it has a clearly defined objective (win the game)
- permadeath means there are real stakes, we care if each character lives or dies
- a winning run usually takes about 10-20 hours, short enough to be done in the weekend of the event, but also long enough that it can’t be completed by a single person and requires multiple streamers in 2 hour “shifts”
- transferable savegames (we play on a common server)
- the game itself is interesting and deep
What other games do you think would work well in this format and why?
Terraria. You can choose difficulty of the initial save depending on how familiar the players are, and there are several clear milestones that can serve as transfer point (usually marked by beating specific bosses). In a small world, 20 hours is probably doable? You can maybe find a suitable seed for world generation to be sure.
I was also thinking about Elden Ring - despite the game size, the minimum required amount of bosses to beat the game is surprisingly small, and you can also divide the game into milestones. If it’s too short (like, if your players are speedrunner), you can add the DLC on top.
Scheduling availability for people is way easier with set times, 2 hours each, rather than tying it into game progression.
You can’t really “lose” in elden ring, it’s just a steady slog towards the end, so it might be less interesting. All of our highlight reels are full of permadeaths and mishaps, “winning” barely even makes the cut. Terraria in hardcore mode could be interesting though.