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Everyone has that one game that they love and can't believe no one else has ever heard of. A few of us have more than one. There's no great spot for talking about them, so I'm making this thread. Tell us about games we should know about and maybe try. All platforms are welcome, and I'm not going to put any kind of restrictions on how well known the games you recommend have to be. If you want to tell us about how we aren't paying enough attention to some recent Tomb Raider game or talk about your favorite Atari 2600 cartridge, knock yourselves out. The one thing I do ask is that you give a brief description of what the game you're recommending is and why you think it's worth checking out. Links to a store page are nice, but if you don't have one please mention the platform you played it on.
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Dec 28, 2022 20:56
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Here are a few selections to kick us off: Ann Achronist: Many Happy Returns: A time travel puzzle game about a girl trying to make her life better through changing what her ancestors did. On any given trip into the past, time advances on its own and you interact with things to lead to a happy outcome. It's very well-written with a decently fleshed out world that reacts to your actions, and a lot of the jokes land pretty well. Death Fungeon: A short but difficult platformer. I played this one not too long after I finished Celeste for the first time and it didn't suffer from that comparison. Ghostory: A puzzle platformer where you have to get a guy through a level with his backpack in tow. You can turn into a ghost and fly through walls, but you can't manipulate a lot of things (including the backpack). An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: A perfect adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's short story. Your high school literature teacher would approve. Free. Slimes: An RPG about two guys who hate each other. The gameplay and story fit together perfectly, with each character's most powerful abilities hampering the actions of the other. It's hard enough that you have to be smart but not so hard that you have to be lucky.
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Dec 28, 2022 21:03
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ultrafilter posted:Here are a few selections to kick us off: Nice haul, I'll buy 'em all For my part, I'm not sure which games would best allow me to flex my indie cred, but this one's at least mildly obscure: Vision: Soft Reset. A time-travel Metroidvania where every save is a node on your timeline-tree, and you have only twenty minutes before the planet explodes. Some upgrades are software, and stay with you through time jumps, and some are hardware and need to be picked up every time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1005450/Vision_Soft_Reset/
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Dec 28, 2022 21:21
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It was pretty popular on the forums when it came out (2014) but Dungeon of the Endless is my favorite hidden gem tower defense rogue-like. It also usually goes on sale for <5 bucks.
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Dec 28, 2022 21:28
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The Creeper World franchise. A series of games where you try to stave off the inevitable flood of goo while completing objectives and getting the gently caress out. Combination area control and tower defense.
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Dec 28, 2022 21:30
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Sometimes it's hard to tell what's a hidden gem relative to the general gaming populace or just to goons but here are some lesser-known titles that I will always recommend: Eliza: Thoughtful and well-acted sci-fi VN on the automation of mental health counseling services. Vigil: The Longest Night: Papercraft Metroidvania that seems to get a lot less attention than Salt & Sanctuary or Ender Lillies despite (imho) being the best of the three. Killer soundtrack. This Way Madness Lies: Retro JRPG starring magical girls who are also in a Shakespearean acting troupe. It's Zeboyd, so expect inventive turn-based combat and super corny humor. Blue Reflection: Second Light: Another magical girl JRPG that I think is somewhat well-known in the RPG thread but not at large. Big vibes game with an amazing OST.
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Dec 30, 2022 10:51
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Wuppo: If you like Yoshi's Island and you like metroidvanias or good games I would play wuppo. Also only 1.50 right now
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Dec 30, 2022 11:58
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John Lee posted:For my part, I'm not sure which games would best allow me to flex my indie cred, but this one's at least mildly obscure: Vision: Soft Reset. A time-travel Metroidvania where every save is a node on your timeline-tree, and you have only twenty minutes before the planet explodes. Some upgrades are software, and stay with you through time jumps, and some are hardware and need to be picked up every time. Treasures of the Aegean has a very similar concept and is worth checking out if you liked Vision: Soft Reset. exquisite tea posted:Sometimes it's hard to tell what's a hidden gem relative to the general gaming populace or just to goons That's why I pretty much gave up on trying to define what a hidden gem is. I'm interested in showing off the more obscure games I've tried so I'm mostly concentrating on games with fewer than 1000 reviews on Steam but I'm not going to treat that as a hard rule at all.
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Dec 30, 2022 15:56
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Brave Hero Yuusha EX: It's Dragon Quest but someone's messing with the narrative and the hero has to team up with the villain and the captured princess to set it right. Free. Fake Illusions: You know those illusions that make two lines appear different lengths or throw out false colors? Well, here one of the lines really is longer and some parts of the image really do have the colors that are supposed to be fake, and you have to find them. Rhome: A student-developed walking simulator set in a house that just isn't quite right. Short and free. Stealth Bastard Deluxe: A 2D stealth platformer that basically does everything right. The Prophecy Lies!: One of the better RPG Maker games out there. It's a little rough around the edges but there are no major flaws and the plot and characters work.
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Dec 30, 2022 16:05
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I'm gonna have to (again) shill for ELDERBORN. An incredibly satisfying first person hack'n'slash ('n'crush'n'throw'n'parry) game I still do occassional runthroughs of when the fancy takes me despite knowing the enemy layout by heart now. It's very short - can be finished under two hours if you know where you're going - but those two hours are just constant mindless murderous fun.exquisite tea posted:ELDERBORN has some great ledge kickin’ action unseen since the days of Dark Messiah. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 20:43
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ELDERBORN has some great ledge kickin’ action unseen since the days of Dark Messiah.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:08
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/573410/AI_War_2/ Extremely unique mix of RTS and a Space 4X where you try to win via guerilla warfare against a super AI that has already taken over the whole galaxy. https://store.steampowered.com/app/536270/Ancestors_The_Humankind_Odyssey/ Follow humankinds evolution from a lovely little monkey that gets bullied by everything in the forest to a fearsome pointy stick carrying biped that bullies everyone else instead, in this very unique system-driven game. The game lasted me for around 15-20 hours and by the end of it I was disappointed it wasn't longer. https://store.steampowered.com/app/767930/Assault_Spy/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/244750/Aztez/ Both fall into the category of "I have already played every good Character Action game that exists, time to dip into the indie circles for more." Both games are of indie quality but are very fun if you're into that genre. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1714590/Buck_Up_And_Drive/ Beat'em'up but you're a car. https://store.steampowered.com/app/344740/CRYPTARK/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/268130/Heat_Signature/ Infiltrate a large variety of space ships and deal with their security systems and guard using a variety of different equipment and cool systems. Cryptark is more shooty and Heat Signature is more thinky. https://store.steampowered.com/app/233610/Distance/ Nu-Tron styled racing game except your car is full of thrusters and can fly, and the tracks force you to battle gravity while you're racing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1975360/DRAINUS/ The only shmup that hooked me. It has a cool mechanic where you absorb enemy lasers and reflect them back. Incredibly satisfying. https://store.steampowered.com/app/503620/Fictorum/ Do you like destroying poo poo with over the top spells? I do. The game even has a system that let's you modify spells into completely ridiculous nonsense. Probably the best "play as an overpowered mage" game I've played since Magicka. https://store.steampowered.com/app/280180/Hover/ Are you itching to play something until they finally release Bomb Rush Cyberfunk? Look no further. This is probably the best Jet Set Radio-like so far. And yes, it does have music by Hideki Naganuma. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1108370/Ratropolis/ Rat game. It's a deckbuilding tower defense where you protect a city of cute rats against all kinds of horrors and also their own rat hubris. https://store.steampowered.com/app/425670/Seraph/ Very mechanically satisfying acrobatic platformer/twin-stick shooter. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1227690/Severed_Steel/ Mix between Mirror's Edge and F.E.A.R. on crack. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289810/Siralim_Ultimate/ What if we had Shin Megami Tensei but removed all plot and extended the gameplay systems to ridiculous extremes? We'd get Siralim. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1283410/Tails_of_Iron/ Rat game 2. Rat soulslike narrated by Geralt the Witcher from Fortnite. Solid gameplay, pretty good art and story.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:09
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Dome Keeper Released this year and still receiving updates but I didn't see it getting too much attention. There was an old flash game called Motherload I liked a lot where you were piloting an excavation vehicle in a square grid and had to keep drilling into the ground and bringing back resources, Dome Keeper takes that same mining gameplay and adds a wave defense mechanic to it which adds a lot of tension an strategy. There's always a risk/reward each wave of trying to mine out as much as possible before the timer runs out and enemies start attacking your dome without you there to defend it. Perfect game for listening to podcasts, runs can vary from 10 minutes or so if you're speedrunning a small map to several hours depending on the starting conditions you choose. Hopefully they keep developing it, with only two dome types and two characters there's still a lot of potential with the foundation they have. The Swapper  One of my favorite puzzle games, also released with what seemed like little fanfare. The main mechanic is that you're given a gun which you can use to create clones of yourself and transfer your consciousness into them if you have line of sight. Puzzles are mostly dealing with switches and colored lights which restrict your ability to create clones or transfer between them. Very unique art style where everything was first created with clay models and then scanned into the game and has an intriguing story to go with it. Existentially troubling when you consider what you're actually doing for a second. As of right now it's 85% off, an absolute steal at $2.25. Transistor  Not quite as hidden as others but I get the impression most people know Supergiant for Bastion initially and Hades more recently after it became a massive success. Transistor doesn't have the replayability of Hades but it's a really well-designed strategy game that you can get through in around six hours. Great visual style as you would expect from Supergiant and has what is still my favorite soundtrack in any game. Also heavily on sale currently at 80% off. The Bridge  A 2D platforming puzzle game based on M.C. Escher drawings. I was too dumb to finish it, but respect it nonetheless. Currently on sale for $1. NoEyedSquareGuy fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 21:14
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 As entertaining as it can be, space dogfighting is loving stupid. So is stealth in space. And gravity is kind of a big deal. This all means that space warfare, should it happen, would look nothing like what 99% of movies/games depict.  Yes it's a tube. No it doesn't look like a fighter jet, because fighter jets in space are loving stupid. This is why you should be playing Children of a Dead Earth and play through a number of scenarios illustrating various concerns that would have to be faced. You will negotiate transit between the various bodies of the solar system, with an eye on speed as time is of the essence during military operations, but also on your resources such as the fuel you will need to burn to accelerate in various directions for a certain amount of time. Not it isn't infinite, and no there is no space petrol station to stop at nearby.  No, I'm not drunk, and no, this isn't the scenic route. I'm trying to save fuel, ok? When the conditions lend themselves to it, you may want to launch hundreds of drones or nukes at enemy spaceships. Said drones/nukes also have their own fuel reserves allowing them a limited but critical amount of acceleration over time, and the enemy will obviously use their own fuel to change trajectory and stress the manoeuverability of your weapons. Their fuel reserves aren't infinite though, and depending on the angle at which your warheads fly towards them, it might be costly and make them sitting ducks for subsequent salvos. Watch your own fuel though, lest you became the sitting duck.  That's what happens when you remain on the trajectory of a laser drone swarm. If you're out of long range ammo, then it might be time to plan a flyby by your fleet where ship mounted lasers will get to play a part. Without missing much, because light happens to be fast and notoriously difficult to dodge. Now, for a face-on fly-by, you won't be able to aim for the reactor or fuel reserves, but things like radiators will be exposed. And if you break enough of them, they'll cook. And complete enough missions in the campaign and you'll unlock the free ship designer for pure sandbox mode.  I mean, just LOOK at how exposed those radiators are, and how much heat they need to disperse! Would be a shame if something happened to them... CoaDE is the best/only what-if game that explore what space warfare may actually look like, without pew pew green lasers, without space dogfighting, and without stealth. It's awesome, it's criminally unknown, it's often sold for nothing at 90% off (current sale has it at only 50% off but it's easily worth double its full price), and it'll provide you with a well deserved feeling of moral superiority when the self-described "space nerd" that pass as your friends argue which one of Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen is the "most realistic". And then you'll have an official reason not to talk to them ever again. If you have other friends who play Kerbal, then you can keep these. Kerbal is cool and explores different problems than CoaDE. In fact, if you don't own it already, buy Kerbal at the same time as CoaDE and get even more ammo to dunk on your dubious space dogfighting relations. FishMcCool fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 21:54
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1399540/A_Forgetful_Loop/ A fantastic worker placement puzzle game. You play as a team of scientists stuck in a time loop who are trying to fix their time machine segment by segment. Has fantastic sound design and writing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/352840/One_Way_Heroics_Plus/ A very approachable Japanese roguelike. You go right escaping the darkness eating the world from the left hand side only to get to the Demon Lord and defeat him. As with the best roguelikes, simple mechanics combine in fascinating ways here. https://store.steampowered.com/app/346130/Rktcr/ A very weird and extremely difficult physics platformer with time manipulation mechanics. One of the most unique games I've ever seen on Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/497800/Golden_Krone_Hotel/ Another very approachable roguelike. This time you play as a girl who is slowly turning into a vampire. You can stop it using potions or just give in and become one. Or become a werewolf and be hated by both vampires and humans. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1148290/Thy_Kingdom_Crumble/ A weirder version of Jump King. https://store.steampowered.com/app/752430/Arcade_Love/ A collection of really weird (see a pattern here?) arcade minigames. Most of these were actually available at Japanese arcades. Shmup Skill Test is especially fun and funny, guessing your age based on how well you do in shmup minigames. Terminally Bored fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 22:13
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Reassembly - a chill vector graphics ship builder with a great soundtrack. Megaquarium - wonderful aquarium simulator in lowpoly visual style Northern Journey - very interesting and absurd FPS made by one dev. Amazing soundtrack, but also full of spiders. Janky too but in a good way Chicken Police - great detective/noir game of which there are too few anyways The Journey Down 1-3 - great feel-good point and click adventure with good 90s feel to it
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Dec 30, 2022 22:39
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ultrafilter posted:Treasures of the Aegean has a very similar concept and is worth checking out if you liked Vision: Soft Reset. That game looks awesome. I don't understand how it can only have 46 reviews...
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Dec 30, 2022 23:29
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moosferatu posted:That game looks awesome. I don't understand how it can only have 46 reviews... I find myself thinking things like that often, and that's why we're here.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:03
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A Rose in the Twilight: Puzzle platformer where you switch between two characters to make progress. I can't say why I like this so much without spoiling something major about it. Dissembler: Erase the colors one at a time until there's nothing left. If you solve all of the puzzles here you're justified in feeling smart. Four Sided Fantasy: Another puzzle platformer where the edges of the screen join together. There's nothing particularly innovative about it but it's very satisfying nonetheless. In Between: A very strong puzzle platformer detailing the thought process of a man with terminal cancer. It'd be very easy to mess that up but the devs pulled it off and made something really good. Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy!: This is the most charming game I've ever played. It has a little bit of adventure game moon logic but it makes up for it otherwise. Wunderling DX: An autorunner platformer where you just have to handle jumping. I don't normally go for those but this is a really good game.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:09
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This is an amazing thread! Someone posted Siralim Ultimate and I could not agree more. It's an amazing game if you like ridiculous combos or accidentally doing something amazing and having to work out how. e: I said amazing too much, I am tired
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Dec 31, 2022 00:12
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I heard Siralim Ultimate described as "If you wished Pokemon were more like Magic: The Gathering," which is pretty much dead-on IMO. It's not really about picking some monsters and going for victory come hell or high water, it's about building ridiculous synergistic sets out of the twenty progression mechanics the game has and occasionally mixing it up and changing everything you're doing around.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:28
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haldolium posted:Reassembly - a chill vector graphics ship builder with a great soundtrack. I went to buy that, because it looked pretty interesting...turns out I already had the game in my library from...somewhere. 
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Dec 31, 2022 01:45
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John Lee posted:I heard Siralim Ultimate described as "If you wished Pokemon were more like Magic: The Gathering," which is pretty much dead-on IMO. It's not really about picking some monsters and going for victory come hell or high water, it's about building ridiculous synergistic sets out of the twenty progression mechanics the game has and occasionally mixing it up and changing everything you're doing around. Also one time I had a team of all griffins plus one double-headed snake guy and I called them all the same like Shoutbird, Buffbird, Attackbird and I couldn't think of anything for the snake so I called it Birdbird. I like any game where I can name my little guys.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:53
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One of the most effective Siralim teams I had won their battles by making several of my team members violently explode, then resurrecting then and then exploding them again, several times, all on turn 1.
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Dec 31, 2022 01:55
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Oh I have one I want to post! Wilmot's Warehouse You are a little square and you work in a warehouse. Every round, a truck pulls up and drops off a bunch of tiles with images on them. You have a couple of minutes to organise these tiles however makes sense to you. Then your colleagues turn up from the storefront and ask for specific things and you have a VERY tight time limit to deliver the things they asked for. You get more stars the more quickly you do this, and you can spend stars on things like 'greater carry limit' and 'a quick dash' and 'get rid of that loving pillar out of here oh my god'. Every few rounds, you get an infinite peaceful space to rearrange everything to your heart's content. The magic of the game is in how you choose to arrange things. It's all very well having one area for 'abstract shapes' and one for 'weather' but then the truck drops off twenty-four 'the concept of music's and where the hell does *that* go? It can also be played in co-op where you will row furiously over whether a bird goes in 'animals' or 'sky related'. It is both very chill and wildly tense. I love it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4
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Dec 31, 2022 02:01
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Throwing out a second recommendation for Northern Journey, I played it last year and it's stayed in my thoughts ever since I finished it, especially that soundtrack.Gay Rat Wedding posted:Game awareness post. It's Northern Journey!
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Dec 31, 2022 02:20
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HopperUK posted:This is an amazing thread! Truly an incredible game. The latest patch notes include this entry which immediately lets you know what kind of degenerate game this is : quote:Numbers greater than or equal to 1 quadrillion are now expressed using scientific notation. This means that all numbers can now be displayed so the game won't default to "?!?!" if you reach too high of a number. To contribute with a hidden gem of my own: Renowned Explorers Currently 75% off so it's like 5 bucks. A turn based roguelite game where you put together a team of 19th century explorers and try to become renowned by exploring the poo poo out of some locations and stealing all the valuable artifacts. I really like the theme and the possibility of making a team that resolves every encounter by making everyone their friends, or aggravating the opponents to the point where they give up. Fights in Tight Spaces What if Into The Breach was a deck builder, basically. You control a secret agent and beat up a bunch of bikers, ninjas, mafia hitmen and monks in usually very small areas like prison cells or the back of a van. Most of the gameplay revolves around moving your opponents around on the board, getting them to hit each other or knocking them off ledges, but since it's a deck builder you can just also build a deck where you knife people to death. That's what James Bond would do.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:54
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Apotheorasis • Lab of the Blind Gods A first person shooter without any visuals. It is designed to be played so people without sight can play it and the sighted can play with their eyes closed. It works way better than you'd think and it's really really immersive. Wizard of Walls Did you like the old arcade game Wizard of Wor? Well, you'll probably dig this updated version. Best in slow bursts but it's good for for arcade heads. Pill Baby A woman takes a job in a strange country and the job is to take pills and beat up weird delusions/monsters. It's a single-plane beat 'em up that feels good. Has a lot of sad vibes and indie introspection. Kings of Israel A strange recommendation, since it's a Bible-based board game but it manages to actually use its themes in an interesting way. You move your prophets around ancient Israel to try and remove sin from the towns while managing your resources and trying to build your temples. I'm not religious at all but I had a lot of fun with this one. My Nuclear Octopus The most underrated arcade-style game on Steam. It'll melt your brain from flashing lights and chaotic noise. It needs a few more players. I'm in the top 10 of the leaderboard and I'm terrible at it!
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Dec 31, 2022 04:47
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Backpack Hero is my current favorite. It's a rogue-like that adds in the inventory-Tetris fun from games like Resident Evil 4. There's different classes to play as, and a ton of different weapons, items, and synergies to build as you go. So far my favorite character is the bard. Seraphs Last Stand looks basic enough at first, but there's some intense synergies you can make with the right items. It's on sale for less than a dollar ffs. Hacknet is a great hacker-sim that really feels like you're diving into the mainframez and poking around where you don't belong. If you know UNIX it uses the same commands. If you don't know UNIX this game will teach you.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:06
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Are people most interested in newer games, or do old, "forgotten" games count? Anyway, here are some lesser known games (measured in number of reviews and number of people on my friends list who've played them): Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling - Cute RPG in the style of Paper Mario Murder by Numbers - A Picross/Detective visual novel The Zodiac Trial - Death game visual novel in the style of The Nonary Files Eastshade - Best described as The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but without the RPG and combat mechanics, just pure quests and plot. And painting. Manufactoria 2022 - Programming/logic game where you send colored tokens through compact intricate factories Horace - Platformer/light Metroidvania/genre defying The Painscreek Killings - Walk around an abandoned town and try to figure out a murder mystery Overboard! - multiple choice adventure where you have to try geting away with murder Omegaland - cute platformer, completely free! Lost Nova - cute exploration/resource gathering game The Norwood Suite - walking sim/exploration game about a hotel and a dead composer. Very unique art style. looK INside - adventure game where you explore old family memoirs to learn about their past Sagebrush - retro 3D walking sim where you explore an abandoned cult compound Ynglet - platformer where you swim and jump through shapes
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Dec 31, 2022 05:39
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1814170/Lingo/ A cross between Antichamber and a crossword puzzle. 'Epiphany'-based first person puzzle game like the Witness but it's all about antonyms and synonyms and anagrams and such.
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Dec 31, 2022 07:03
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Copy Kitty - The closest thing to a modern day Treasure game. While the art is what it is, the game itself is like Gunstar Heroes with bite sized levels, in which you can have two different weapons or combine them into a third weapon. Life Goes On: Done to Death - A puzzle platformer in which you have an endless stream of knights to send to their death so the ones after them can literally walk on their corpse to get further. The Looker - Free Witness parody game. I enjoyed the humor of the game at least (primarily making fun of how up its own butt the Witness was), and it has a few clever puzzles there as well. Rusty Lake Hotel - Horror puzzle game, though it is more 'alarmingly eerie' if you are a giant baby like me. Really, any of the Rusty Lake games belongs here. I am putting this one up because it was my first. The Samorost Series - One of Amanita Design's first game series. Adventure games. Click on things and see cute/beautiful things happen. Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving - More short stories than games, or Walking Simulators if you really must. They are both really good, the former is free while the other is $5, and they both take less than a half hour to play. Zombie Night Terror - Basically Lemmings, but with Zombies The Beginner's Guide - Davey Wreden's (Creator of The Stanley Parable) forgotten game. Not as gloriously self indulgent as The Stanely Parable but still a good little story.
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Dec 31, 2022 10:07
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The unfortunately-named and criminally overlooked CHR$(143) - apparently a tribute to the Amstrad CPC (slightly before my time), so its aesthetic is retro to a fault but I would easily recommend it to any puzzle game fans. It's the craziest one I've discovered in years, and it just keeps going deeper. Every time you think you've got a feel for what kinds of mechanics it's going to present you with, it pulls another rabbit out of its hat. First it's kind of like Boulderdash, then it's more like Chip's Challenge, then suddenly there's crafting materials. and an energy meter that can be boosted by building a generator and making use of water and heat exchange physics. And then the storyline kicks in. Comes with a level editor... if you're up to the task of actually unlocking it. Currently $3, or free if you'd prefer!
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Dec 31, 2022 10:23
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I can agree on Vigil: The longest night mentioned earlier, played that one too and even though not sure if I consider it better than Ender Lilies or Salt&Sanctuary, it's up there and definitely worth a play if you like that kind of genre. Also played Northern Journey and my review at the time was that IMO it would've worked better as an adventure game, since the combat set pieces felt incredibly frustrating to me. The world, setting, characters, atmosphere, exploration though, those were all excellent. My own pick would probably be Song of the Deep, which is an underwater submarine exploration game. Metroidvania, if you will, although not in the sense that you usually are pretty streamlined in what area you can move to, but in the sense that often times you'll be moving back and forth picking up items you might've missed earlier. There's a lot of puzzles (especially light puzzles) and hidden treasure while you follow Merryn's quest to find her missing father. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one I know who has actually played it, and even though it's probably not a super classic of the genre, it's a very nice game and has some atmospheric music. TeaJay fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 10:45
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Absolutely loving this thread. Was just looking around for the right game, and Chicken Police is exactly the type of game I was looking for. Thanks, Haldolium! My recommendation: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1304770/The_Magister/ A whodunit Roguelike with a card-based system. This is a guilty pleasure I keep on coming back to. Solving the mystery is pretty much about just gathering keywords to identify who did it, but the gameplay loop of walking around the village, taking on quests and random encounters keeps me entertained. Each game is also relatively short and self-contained, so it doesn't require a lot of time investment either.
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Dec 31, 2022 11:03
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MonkeyforaHead posted:The unfortunately-named and criminally overlooked CHR$(143) - apparently a tribute to the Amstrad CPC (slightly before my time), so its aesthetic is retro to a fault but I would easily recommend it to any puzzle game fans. It's the craziest one I've discovered in years, and it just keeps going deeper. Every time you think you've got a feel for what kinds of mechanics it's going to present you with, it pulls another rabbit out of its hat. First it's kind of like Boulderdash, then it's more like Chip's Challenge, then suddenly there's crafting materials. and an energy meter that can be boosted by building a generator and making use of water and heat exchange physics. And then the storyline kicks in. Comes with a level editor... if you're up to the task of actually unlocking it. Currently $3, or free if you'd prefer! This is the content I crave
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Dec 31, 2022 11:31
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Crystal Project just came out this year, and it's not on a deep sale for the holidays (25%), but outside of the Final Fantasy V goon discord I think it's probably still a hidden gem. Job-system based JRPG (like Final Fantasy V) the overworld has a lot of isometric platforming (like CrossCode, and yes, it can sometimes get frustrating, but it lets you do stuff entirely out of intended order) the combat turn order (like FFX) and charge time/damage dealt by attacks (like, uh, FF Tactics? but more so!) are both visible at all times and also the single dev has added a full randomizer, NG+, and a boss rush since release (and I think has plans to add more) it has a free demo with a substantial amount of the game on the Steam page, and the save transfers plus there's a sidequest to hunt down penguins in a town and they're cute https://twitter.com/RiverRunGames/status/1607075904139689988
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Dec 31, 2022 13:37
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TeaJay posted:My own pick would probably be Song of the Deep, which is an underwater submarine exploration game. Metroidvania, if you will, although not in the sense that you usually are pretty streamlined in what area you can move to, but in the sense that often times you'll be moving back and forth picking up items you might've missed earlier. There's a lot of puzzles (especially light puzzles) and hidden treasure while you follow Merryn's quest to find her missing father. Cool, wishlisted. Have you tried Depths of Sanity (I have not), another submarine metroidvania? This thread is horrible. Last night, I bought Treasures of the Aegean and Wuppo, and this morning I got The Bridge, The Norwood Suite, Dissembler, and CHR$(143) (all insanely cheap right now). I am enjoying both Treasures and Wuppo so far (especially Wuppo). A couple of recommendations of my own: Ato: Super-fun metroidvania. Its strengths are the feel of its movement, and well-done boss fights. This is my favorite metroidvania hidden gem. Phoenotopia: Awakening: Metroidvania-Zelda 2-like. It's a huge, gorgeous game. It is a challenging game, and there is a little jank to it, but I still had a lot of fun with it. Lost Flame: A rougelike with telegraphed attacks. I haven't played it since it was first put on steam. It was kind of inactive for a while, but the dev does seem to be working on it again now. Dragonsphere: Growing up, I was mostly into point-and-click adventures. This is one of the more obscure ones I enjoyed at the time. Honestly, have not played it since I was a kid, but it just came to mind, for whatever reason.
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Dec 31, 2022 14:12
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moosferatu posted:Cool, wishlisted. Have you tried Depths of Sanity (I have not), another submarine metroidvania? I haven't, but looks like I could, so I'll list that one. Dragonsphere is a legit 90's DOS adventure game but not as well known as some others from the era. I haven't played it but heard some good things about it.
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Dec 31, 2022 14:36
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I've become obsessed with Othercide and I don't honestly know if anyone is still playing it after it launched with only one(!) difficulty level: brutal. It has a new slightly easier/kinder difficulty level now which means I want to talk about it. It's a goth emo aesthetic heavy XCOM/Darkest Dungeon/Into the Breach fusion that's absolutely fascinating. You play: The Red Mother, who is dying, but thanks to time/dreamspace weirdness she can continue her fight against the abstract concept of Suffering. You, the player character, are some kind of dreamlike creature who helps her create her daughters - your fighting units - who you then send in teams to go forth and kill Suffering's agents. The ultimate goal is to kill all the bosses and then confront Suffering itself, and potentially help The Child. (Yes, the all caps titles are in the game. It's weird dreamlike logic, go with it.) I adore the concept of fighting suffering itself - every victory meaning you have spared someone, somewhere, of pain, of hurt, of harm. I'm perhaps reading more into this than the game itself is, but it feels more meaningful to me that every battle is important thematically. I've helped someone in this world by gunning down another monster. I don't often get that sense of satisfaction from a video game, and I know it's not reflective of IRL stuff, but it just lends this satisfying, hopeful feeling to an otherwise grim game - because you will fail. As far as I can tell, you cannot beat the game in the first run. The Darkest Dungeon structure is here: your heroes will fall, and you must replace them and build up your resources until through the weight of enough success through failure that you win. There's a meta currency you get on every run failure that lets you unlock more buffs, and crucially there's a central mechanic about reviving your dead units. The cemetery lasts between runs. If you lost your best heroes to a boss, you can drag them back. In the default difficulty, there is no way to heal your heroes without sacrificing another. All of your defensive skills cost HP to use. You cannot use a freshly created hero to heal a higher level one: you must sacrifice one that is the same level or higher. Resurrection tokens are rare - present, but rare. Creating heroes is cheap. The default difficulty, the intended thematic design of the game is that of an endless, grueling war where you feed your daughters into Suffering's maw, over and over, and some are brought back to live but most aren't. The Red Mother comments on how tired she is, but she can't give up. In the new easier difficulty, your units heal 50% every few battles and you have easier access to resurrection tokens. The battles are also a little easier. I was afraid, choosing this difficulty, that I'd lose the brutal but beautifully thematic war - nope. It's still hard. You're still going to die. But it's cushioned now so every loss is disappointing but not devastating, and I'm no longer paralyzed by fear over using the defensive HP-costing skills. Into the Breach: every enemy in the game, once you beat them once, gets an unlocked codex entry that explains exactly how they work. The Plague Doctor attacks with melee and will always focus on the closest hero, and if there's two or more who are equally close, it will pick the one with less HP. Equipped with this knowledge, you can look at the board and know what everyone is going to do. You can begin to Into the Breach style puzzle out how to clear it with minimal losses. This applies to bosses too, even if you lose to them! See, the entire game is structured around when units get to have their turn. A lot of your skills are based around delaying or speeding up when your turns come. You have 50 default AP... but you can use up to 100 if you're willing to accept a massive wait period on your next turn. The game is always asking: is this tradeoff worth it? Spending HP or time or both. But it gives you perfect* information so you can plan this out, go for the best attack. *There's some RNG, some attacks can be dodged based on percentiles. Initially Othercide was confusing and terrifying. I didn't grok it. I didn't love it. Now I understand what it wants, and that I need to decipher the bosses (as you cannot brute force them) and that it's okay to fail and come back equipped with stronger units and buffs and knowledge, and I'm obsessed. I want to uncover everything in this game. Also it looks sick as hell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHgFpd5o_3c
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Dec 31, 2022 16:05
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