Antichamber - clever first person puzzle game. I played it exactly once and I loved it.

There was an old flash game called "You Only Live Once"

It's basically a rudimentary mario-like platformer. But once you die, the game just cuts to your funeral. Each time you load up the game again, it just shows time passing as your grave slowly ages and is forgotten.

What Remains of Edith Finch. A psychological horror game that REALLY sucks you in. As you play, there is a lot of stuff that doesn't make any sense, but there's a secret (disturbing) meaning behind it all.

I spent a good chunk of a Saturday going through it and there's no need to do it again, but it was a great ride!

Puzzlers usually fall into that category. If that's up your alley you should try the Talos Principle.

Firewatch

Subnautica.

I found it to be one of the best games I have ever played with a fantastic story that really pulled me in. If you do decide to play it, look up nothing. As in don’t even google it because it’s a slightly older game and people spoil the entire thing.

Firewatch. Road 96.

Superliminal - once you know the puzzles you know the puzzles, till then it has its fair share of mind bending moments. Speedrunning it is fun though

Tunic is a solid 10-15 hour adventure game, and I highly recommend playing without spoilers as several experiences are information-locked like Outer Wilds. It's an isometric adventure game heavily inspired by Zelda with some Souls influence bleeding into the lore, mechanics, and boss fights. Replayability is limited to speedrunning and challenge runs.

Bastion is a wonderful adventure game with a heavy focus on combat. It's a precursor to Hades from the same developer, and shares the same mechanical DNA minus the rogue-lite elements that Hades introduced. The followup game, Transistor, is also worth checking out, though it didn't quite hit the same highs for me as Bastion. Both are 10-20 hour adventures with limited replayability if you want to achievement hunt.

More games to check out:

Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2

Journey, Abzu, and The Pathless

Subnautica

The Witness has a lot of generative puzzles that I guess technically are replayable, but you can’t go back to before the moments of joy of discovery and that’s the core of what made that game incredible to me

Thomas was alone.(I recommend this one up there with obra dinn)

Spec ops the line

Dlc quest

Limbo

For something quite a bit different, amnesia the dark decent.

This one might be controversial, but the original BioShock, I played it how I wanted, and >! Got the good ending!< And never felt the desire to pick it up. If you're a completionist on the first run, and it isn't very difficult to do (very rewarding I'd say), then there's 0 reason to pick it up again. I felt the same about replaying BioShock infinite, but more because I just didn't want to play it again (I felt like it had much more story to offer, and sidequests to do, but I didn't get any of the same satisfactions from the game, first one was done and wrapped up nicely, third one was barely unraveled and I chose to read other people's ideas of how it had ended)

Brothers, a tale of two sons. It's a 2h ish long story, really good.

Untitled Goose Game

once you played it, or even just watched it, it loses the initial trill.

Might be an unpopular take but the Red Dead Redemption 2 campaign. I've tried twice to start a second campaign but it's so slow. The first time around the narrative carries it, so it doesn't feel so slow. But knowing what happens next takes that away. The worst part is how ridged it is with mission failure/success conditions. It removes room for creative solutions.

This is not to say it wasn't wonderful to play once. But it plays like they wanted to make a movie not a game.

Out of all that I could've suggested, Ace Attorney series probably fits the bill the most

EDIT: Also, Lunacid! Finished it recently; what a beautiful experience it has been

EDIT2: Also, Beacon Pines! For the love of all that is holy on this bitch of a planet, please play it

Tic tac toe has only a handful of replays.

Stray

90s style adventure games like Sam and Max hit the road, day of the tentacle, monkey Island, Indiana Jones, etc. Lots of comedy you can't hear again for the first time, and puzzles that can be memorable.

scummVM can be used to run those games and runs on basically everything, phones, tablets, desktop.

Myst

To The Moon; Once you go through the experience of the story, there's really no need to replay again.

If you want something very similar to the three you named, do not sleep on Case of the Golden Idol.

It might have a little more replayability due to they way decisions you make impact the story, but I'd also put in a strong recommendation for Pentiment.

Dredge comes to mind. It's a nice game and all, but outside of the two endings (which are basically a choose left or right situation) you see pretty much everything there's to see in a single playthrough.

It's quite an open question. Most games I play are "one and done" even though I think most people go back to them. Even with replayability it doesn't mean that you have to and I'm happy to leave things be once the story is over.

Mafia trilogy sticks to the story and will take a decent amount of hours.

Inside is short but fun.

• Spec ops: The line. I think this was delisted from most stores though, so you might need to sail the high seas to get it. It might not be as impactful today as it was when it came out, but it's a great game with a great twist.

• Life is strange. It's a story driven game, sure you can replay it and choose different things, but realistically you probably won't since the main of the story is the same.

• Batman games. Those were my go to for a while when I wanted something linear with an end.

I would volunteer a lot of the single-player story games produced by Sony like Uncharted, The Last of US, with Spiderman being the exception to the rule.

Some of their games have a little more open game loop design, but personally, I don't think I could play The Last of Us twice.

From what I played of God of War I would imagine it's similar, but I never actually beat it.

I'm sure there are people out there who love single-player game narratives and would disagree. I just think a lot of these games are good for the story, but the gameplay feels like once you've done it, you've done it.

Literally anything focused entirely on telling a story.

They're only worth replaying if you forget the story.

Funny OP, you named the exact 3 games I was planning on naming here.

Factorio.

Just kidding, someone please help me

Unpacking.

Am I the only one who just plays any given game once?

Escape Academy? It’s a great escape room game (even better in co-op) but it’s more engaging than Escape Simulator since there’s a story pulling everything together. The story’s ridiculous but honestly the context adds entertainment value, regardless of how absurd it is.

SuperBrothers: Sword and Sworcery probably fits this bill. It’s an odd game, but I love the shit out of every minute of it. I have 3 hours in that game. I haven’t touched it since 2013, but I still remember just how ethereal and soothing it was while still being an exciting adventure game. One of the odder things about it is how it instructs you when and for how long to play it. For example, it tells you to stop playing it for a few weeks so the moon’s phase can change. Not that that’s a bad thing, but