It's Watching: My first custom story

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I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of not having a story either. It can definitely work. Take LIMBO for example. Its creates a great atmosphere and is certainly an engaging experience, but for the majority of the game you don't get any story or explanation at all. You just wake up in this world and move on, because what else is there to do?

However I believe there are still key aspects of a game that you should take care of and that are usually automatically solved by having a story.

The main problem is player motivation. You need to communicate to the player what he needs to do and the better way to do this is making him want to do it instead of just telling him. For example: If your game starts with the player falling down a hole into an underground labyrinth, you have automatically created the motivation "find the exit". The motivation to tackle smaller sub-challenges like finding a key to a door emerges from that on its own, because the end goal is clear to the player.

A bad example on the other hand would be to simply place the player in a house and give him the quest "find the key to the cellar". He has no motivation to do this apart from you giving him the order, thus it will not be very engaging for him to embark on this quest. Most games solve this problem through story - for example by telling the player that he can find a clue relating to his daughters disappearance somewhere in the cellar or stuff like that.
Since you have no story, keep in mind that you have to create the player's motivation through other means instead!

Another point is that even without a story, you still need an interesting setting. This can be easier if you have a backstory of sorts in your head - you don't need to tell the player, but it will help you create an interesting world. This goes hand in hand with environmental storytelling which goes a long way towards creating immersion.

To get back to LIMBO as an example - you'll notice all sorts of symbolism in the game and hints at what ties this world together. There's a strong recurring theme of insects, a mysterious tribe of natives/ other prisoners of the Limbo, ruins of what looks like a civilisation - or maybe a mirror image of the real world?, machinery... it all feels like there IS a story of sorts behind it, only that the game let's you make up your own thoughts about what it might be instead of feeding you information.

What this interesting world does, apart from being all awesome and immersive, is it also helps you with the problem of player motivation that I mentioned earlier. If your world is interesting enough that the player wants to explore it, you have another strong force that pulls him forward.