Better with A Notebook

Many games present a substantial challenge. This is often about quick reflexes or your ability to deal with multiple systems at the same time. There are a specific set of games that focus on the challenge of a layered, complex conundrum you need to decipher to succeed.

This complexity might be about the game world you are playing in. It might be about the obtuse clues you find along the way. Or maybe it focuses on piecing together evidence to solve a crime. However it works, these types of games are much better, as Clayton Ashley says in his video for Polygon, when you play them with a notebook at your side.

"We use notebooks to give form to the intangible," says Paul Walker-Emig about video game notebooks, "jotting down half-formed ideas and strategies with the aim of corralling them into coherence. We record and reflect on events in our lives, a ritual that narrativises our experiences and makes them comprehensible." Running with this though we group our notebook-enhanced video games into two areas:

• Notetake: These are games that are better when you take notes about them in a real physical notebook while you play.
• Keepsake: These are experiences that encourage you to create your own hand-crafted in-game virtual notebook while you play.

This list includes 29 games from the last 40 years, with 593 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to take notes while you play. We break them down into the following areas:

• Keepsake
• Notetake