Been thinking about this since I've been playing Rain World. I feel that Rain World is solidly within the genre. There are definitely video essays out there about it being about existing in an ecosystem or whatever. Pathologic is another obvious one. The original Dark Souls is probably paradigmatic of this category.
What traits define this category? I think:
- Difficult, you struggle to make progress
- Inscrutable narrative motivation
- Hidden depth to the world that can be teased out through intensive study
- Possible to find it fun, but much likelier to just bounce off (and watch the video essay instead!)
Is this a valid category?
Any sort of live service game these days will inevitably either become the next big thing (5% chance) or become the next Anthem or FO76 therefore they're fertile ground because you see, the year is 2024 and you really need to tell people why [insert current year live service game] learned nothing from the failures of the past decade.
The pain of remembering that Fallout 76 is still not dead