Tangent: The Witness is an outstanding non-violent game as well, but unfortunately for recs here, doesn't fit due to lack of story.

I loved it too. I actually don’t agree there’s a lack of story, but it’s certainly subtle. More “poem” than “novel” in a way.

I loved the Witness, but the story seemed straight up pretentious. I just stopped listening to the audio logs after a while because they were just too long and the VAs went too hard, it was distracting and had 0 to do with the gameplay.

The cassette tapes and clips in the movie theater were my favorite part of the game (still haven't unlocked them all)

That's fair - to each their own. For me personally my favorite thing was finding those lines of "tutorial puzzles" that teach you how certain rules work, and suddenly realizing how other puzzles could be solved - I got goosebumps from that a lot of times. One thing can be said for certain, it's a great game - unfortunately not the best replay value though IMO, because you tend not to forget the puzzle rules once you figure them out (similar to Outer Wilds in this aspect).

Agree, the game is like a meditation on the nature of learning and perception. These realizations ("Is that just a tree or ...?") also gave me goosebumps.