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I am really not in touch with what games most people know, but I've shown these games to friends who have never heard of them: Space Funeral is an unsettling RPG about a sad man in pyjamas named Phillip and a horse made of legs named Leg Horse as they travel to The City of Forms to restore the world. It's a short game, if you know what you're doing it's maybe a 2h playthrough. Made in RPG Maker 2003, so I had to install a font to get it to work on Windows 10. Crypt Worlds is a surreal first-person adventure set in the world of 'The Crypts' with multiple conflicting goals and also your main method of interacting with the world is pissing on stuff. You may have to do some farming so you can consume more food to create more piss. Then you can meet such races of characters as Architects, and Pilgrimes, and purchase burg at Mart Donalds. Art Sqool is like if Kid Pix graded your work and had an overworld A Short Hike looks like Wind Waker on a DS, has incredible flying physics, and made me cry
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Jan 2, 2023 20:22
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ultrafilter posted: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. You Bastard! I came here to post about Wunderling DX. I picked this little one up  +9000 word review for it... TL;DR - it's the most underrated game that person has ever played.I figure if anyone is that in love/autistic enough to write such a detailed /vegeta worthy review for it, it must be some kind of gem, it's also dirt cheap. Now these next few aren't as "Hidden of a Gem" as say, Transistor (25k reviews lol) posted a few back, but eh. Circadian Dice A Tinyfolks TL;DR - It's Darkest Dungeon without the BALLCRUSHING YOU'VE BEEN FILTERED (that makes DD so good) stuff (stress, etc.)... As someone who loves DD, this is a poor man's substitute NGL, kinda shallow, but the gameplay-loop is there, and with lots of classes to choose from, you'll definitely find 2 bucks worth of playtime with it. And lastly... (and the MVP)  Hero's HourI picked this up last last sale, but even now I'm still playing this poo poo non-stop online hotseat-style weekly with my brother via Steam-Play (but have no fret, if you have no cool bro and/or no friends, then there's the HH's discord community worth checking out, they host lots of tournaments and p2p games, and lots of cool & nice people there as well, chat, make friends, become less of a goon, and learn about the game, etc.) So what is Hero's Hour? It's basically the bread and butter that is HoMM but with auto-battler combat instead of turn-base, but don't let that auto-battler part fool you, there very much is strategy with it, placement and directions for your units really do make a difference, and spell too that you can cast (like seriously just watch some tournaments of this game and how they play, you'll kinda get schooled in how you were doing things your way... noob!). Basically if you can strong-arm a real life human into playing with you and both have a grasp of HoMM style games, you'll have a blast with this one. I've seen some complaints about "balance" and "AI cheating" but I can say those claims are pretty much false and those people are just bad. Everything has counters and everything's viable, the "OP strats" are what makes games like this fun! Cheese is everything. This isn't Starcraft. This is Heroes of Might and Magic. You are not here to play fair, and neither is he AI/Human friend, its a race to the Cheese! Ready, Set... GO!!!
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Jan 2, 2023 21:01
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I love and hate heroes hour for the same reason I burnt out on Homm clones (hello Eador and Songs of Conquest), I really really disliked how the game so often felt like building an unstoppable snowball, and if you hosed up with your biggest ball you just lost, otherwise it kept getting easier, not harder Which is a really meta complaint in a thread about sharing cool games, so I'll follow up my whining by saying Heroes Hour is a love letter, the auto battling speeds up the game in a great way, and the game is extremely actively developed - if you love Homm get it, if you've never played Homm and you like strategy games get it
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Jan 2, 2023 22:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Dead Grid, a one man passion project zombie early access card battler(kinda) weird thing that I'm enjoying! Im not quite sure why this is fun, but it is somehow? I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's working
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Jan 2, 2023 22:20
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anilEhilated posted:Really? I tried to get into it several times and always bounced off (with stuff like some powers straight-up not working). Got any tips or builds that work? I did hear it was pretty messed up on release, but I didn't have too many issues (most were in the expansion, which I was kind of meh on). It also doesn't explain some features well. You get abilities and crafting schematics from quests, which I would stick to at first. Exploring is cool, and you can find abilities as you explore, but some specific stuff only unlocks in quests (and you can also find quests out in the wild). The rewards aren't explicit, there's no "level 2 lockpicks" quest. Some quests provide alternate chipsets, which is where your abilities slot into. Once you get some alternate chipsets, you can customize them for whatever you're planning on doing (exploring ruins gets the scavenger chipset, assaulting a nest uses an assassin's chipset). Abilities can go in as many chipsets as you want, but only one is active at any time. There are no experience levels, only more powerful abilities and chipsets. The game really opened up only once I had some alternate builds I could swap to as needed, so it's probably best to stick to the main quest until you unlock the base. Then do some exploring back where you started and finding ability unlocks. The game also suggests getting some daggers as one of the first quests, but don't feel the need to stick to thief-y weapons. There's a bunch of weapon types and they all have a unique moveset/combos/special ability. I liked spears the most.
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Jan 2, 2023 22:59
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lih posted:Unsighted YOUR first playthrough, maybe.  edit: lol Im_Special posted:You Bastard! I came here to post about Wunderling DX. 
John Lee fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 3, 2023 |
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Jan 3, 2023 00:07
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subROV : Underwater Discoveries You pilot a remotely operated submarine and explore the ocean. The game is developed with input from researchers at BIOS and the Schmidt Ocean Institute as the creator is a huge fan of real life ROV ocean explorations. The ROV controls and piloting simulation are based off actual designs. Really fun to turn off the lights and explore the ocean and find cool deep sea creatures, whale falls, etc. Right and Down Roguelike dungeon-crawler card game where you can only move either right or down. Sounds very simple, ends up more complex than you'd imagine while also still being very chill and fun. Forward: Escape the Fold Similar roguelike dungeon crawler except you can only move forward onto item/monster/trap cards. I think I enjoy Right and Down a little more (and I think this one might have inspired Right and Down) Dice Tribes: Ambitions You have a set of dice which use to let your tribe of villagers take actions. You can manipulate the odds on your dice in various ways to help the tribe grow, defend itself, and achieve goals. Very simple but addictive gameplay.
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Jan 3, 2023 19:03
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buglord posted:Bought this on the thread advice and it’s…really something. It feels really dream-like, as if the main character actually died on the boat and this some sort of screwed up purgatory. The NPCs are all ugly and some of their personalities seem to match. The spiders and bugs are awful. The music fits the entire strange experience. if anything it may be a bit too long, but the small drag later on is easily overshadowed by the amazing rest of the game some older game I came across the other day which I thoughroughly enjoyed is Stick it to The Man. It's short (~3-4 hours) but entertaining. Visual style is obviously like Psychonauts but it also has a charming humor. Not too deep or overly complex, just something to enjoy for a little while. Currently 80% off as well, very much worth it. Baron von der Loon posted: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! If you enjoy that, you may also want to check out Blacksad. Its a bit different but both were my favorite detective games recently. haldolium fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jan 3, 2023 |
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Jan 3, 2023 19:52
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Im_Special posted:And lastly... (and the MVP) Merrill Grinch posted:I've played through the action-rpg Seven several times but nobody I know has ever heard of it. Both of these were exactly what I was in the mood for. Grabbed them both, thanks for the writeups!
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Jan 3, 2023 20:28
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begging people to download the demo and try out Tactical Nexus. it's hard to describe but it's a puzzle game dressed up like an rpg where you go along towers full of enemies and kill them one at a time, but battles are automatic and your respective attack/defense defines how much health you lose in the process. thus your health is your primary resource and you have to ration it out as you go through the tower, collect powerups like stat bonuses, or experience multipliers, or health multipliers, prioritizing which enemies to kill in what order to get access to treasures so that you end up with the highest possible stats at the end to determine your score. there's also an element of metaprogression where based on your score in each tower, you accrue bronze/silver/gold medals etc which you can use in other towers to get bonuses right from the start, and a lot of towers will have a separate "nexus stage" at the end that are generally only doable with those medal-gotten bonuses so you have a lot of incentive to keep going back and doing towers you've already "completed". there's so, so much more, but the demo only covers chapter 1, and there are 6 chapters out right now. each chapter includes multiple towers (which can be enormous, a single playthrough of a tower can take multiple hours) and adds on new layers of complexity, like equipment you can wear that adds special effects (such as a sword that gives bonus attack on levelups, incentivizing you to sometimes save levels until you get that sword so you don't waste them, for example), or consumable orbs that can swap you with an enemy's place to let you cleverly bypass obstacles, stuff like that. there's just SO loving much in this game, it's enormous. i discovered it in late november and it has absolutely devoured my time. 
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Jan 3, 2023 20:30
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An Actual Princess posted:begging people to download the demo and try out Tactical Nexus. it's hard to describe but it's a puzzle game dressed up like an rpg where you go along towers full of enemies and kill them one at a time, but battles are automatic and your respective attack/defense defines how much health you lose in the process. thus your health is your primary resource and you have to ration it out as you go through the tower, collect powerups like stat bonuses, or experience multipliers, or health multipliers, prioritizing which enemies to kill in what order to get access to treasures so that you end up with the highest possible stats at the end to determine your score. Okay FINE I'll download the demo! This is going to be Logistical all over again I can feel it in my bones.
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Jan 3, 2023 20:35
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haldolium posted:some older game I came across the other day which I thoughroughly enjoyed is Stick it to The Man. It's short (~3-4 hours) but entertaining. Visual style is obviously like Psychonauts but it also has a charming humor. Not too deep or overly complex, just something to enjoy for a little while. Currently 80% off as well, very much worth it. The same dev team did Flipping Death, and if you like one of those games you'll probably like the other.
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Jan 3, 2023 22:06
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Heavens Vault - Adventure game with branching dialog trees but most of your time is spent trying to reverse engineer an alien language and floating through nebulas on a space-river while chill music plays. Unique logic puzzle and vibe and well worth a look
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Jan 3, 2023 22:17
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Isomermaid posted:Heavens Vault - Adventure game with branching dialog trees but most of your time is spent trying to reverse engineer an alien language and floating through nebulas on a space-river while chill music plays. Unique logic puzzle and vibe and well worth a look
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Jan 3, 2023 22:26
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I love heaven's vault but the minigame where you have to shift your space motorbike through the astral roads in order to progress is maddening. I also felt that the "puzzling together alien language" parts were too hand holdy, you don't really figure out anything yourself. Sethian is another language game with the same issue (which is also why I can't recommend it) The closest thing I've come to deciphering a language lately that is not simply English with the font replaced is Tunic, which is a great game overall, but not really a "hidden" gem in any way.
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Jan 3, 2023 22:34
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Enfys posted:Dice Tribes: Ambitions Quoting this so I can find it on my computer later. It sounds interesting!
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Jan 4, 2023 00:27
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There's another game in that exact vein, though I don't know if it qualifies as a gem https://store.steampowered.com/app/1229460/Dice_Legacy/
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Jan 4, 2023 00:31
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victrix posted:There's another game in that exact vein, though I don't know if it qualifies as a gem I haven't played a whole bunch of this but I really liked what I did play!
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Jan 4, 2023 00:38
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StrixNebulosa posted:Dead Grid, a one man passion project zombie early access card battler(kinda) weird thing that I'm enjoying! Bought this on the Steam sale and been having a lot of fun with. Really nice work for a 1 man dev team. Good recommendation!
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Jan 4, 2023 04:50
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Aww yeah, time to play all my best hits The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] - a very stylish platformer. I hesitate to call it a metroidvania, since there's really no mobility upgrades or backtracking, i's more of a "cinematic" platformer in the vein of Another World or Flashback. It also mixes up the gameplay a bit - there's one level that is more of a horror survival, one that is a traditional Another World style, and one that is more of a brawler, etc. Some great visuals and music. It might not seem like much in the screenshots, but in motion it's amazing. You'll play through it in 2 hrs or so, but it's very worth it. INFRA is a Source engine urban exploration game. You're an engineer tasked with assessing structural damage and you journey through abandoned buildings like factory, power plant, water treatment plant, subway tunnels etc. taking pictures of crumbling concrete and broken machinery. There's puzzles that all involve activating some kind of machine to allow you to progress, it's never adventure game logic, you have to figure out how something works and connect the right wires, sometimes even read a manual (but not too much, don't worry). I don't know how to describe it properly, but it's incredibly chill and satisfying to connect wires, pull levers and turn cranks. Also it's surprisingly long, just when you think that surely, it has to end now, another large area opens up. My playthrough took me about 20hrs and I missed a lot of hidden documents and caches. Thumper - a cyberhorror rhytm game where you are a space beetle and drop fat beats to defeat giant cosmic skulls. Or maybe you're avoiding the beats? Very cool and stylish and very satisfying once you get into the zone. Maybe not so niche as I've seen a lot of people talk about it here back when it released, but I thought it's worth reminding that it exists. Equilinox - cool and chill little game about building an ecosystem. It has some light incremental mechanics where each plant/animal generates points to unlock more stuff, but there's also a light puzzle element where you need to balance the different biomes so that all your species can thrive and unlock other species. If like me you can't wait for Terra Nil to come out, this might distract you for a while.
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Jan 4, 2023 10:54
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Who's Lila? - this is probably my favorite find of last year. It's a psychological/existential horror adventure game where you have to manually control the main character's face to influence how people react during conversations. It's fairly short, but the point is to play it multiple times through all the branching paths to piece together what is really going on, and there is some weird poo poo under the surface. I don't want to spoil anything, but sometimes you also need to seek information outside the game to progress. Amazing monochrome style. I'd honestly put it next to Signalis in the "Lynch-inspired horror" category.
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Jan 4, 2023 11:14
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I would not recommend buying INFRA, as one of the achievememts is a reference to a racist meme
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Jan 4, 2023 11:21
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I'm not going to defend a lovely unfunny joke, but this is the badness equivalent of paying $10 to post on a forum where  is an emote
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Jan 4, 2023 11:50
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Killingyouguy! posted:Space Funeral is an unsettling RPG about a sad man in pyjamas named Phillip and a horse made of legs named Leg Horse as they travel to The City of Forms to restore the world. It's a short game, if you know what you're doing it's maybe a 2h playthrough. Made in RPG Maker 2003, so I had to install a font to get it to work on Windows 10. Definitely check out Magic Wand by the same dev. It's a cool exploration game with funny writing.
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Jan 4, 2023 15:47
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Really expanded my wishlist thanks to this thread and want to try to contribute. I'm not sure how much of a "hidden gem" this is, but it's the closest thing that came to mind: Monolith is a top down roguelite shoot 'em up. Clear rooms, upgrade your ship, fight a bullet hell boss, repeat. In my opinion you don't need to be good at the shmup/bullet hell genre (I'm not) to enjoy this game. Individual rooms are manageable, you get a decent amount of health to work with, and there's a plethora of cool upgrades to keep you coming back for another run. The music is fantastic. You can quickly warp to rooms you've cleared so the floor cleanup/exploration never feels tedious.   Still skeptical? Try the demo!
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Jan 4, 2023 16:14
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seconded, I loving love monolith
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Jan 4, 2023 16:23
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Monolith is like the only roguelite that I've ever liked without caveat
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Jan 4, 2023 18:08
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monolith absolutely rules, I love it enough to speedrun it and I used to have some world records (bulletnick l I’m coming for you). just a fantastic game all around
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Jan 4, 2023 18:16
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Everyone should play Monolith it's great.
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Jan 4, 2023 18:23
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I may regret inflicting this on people because it will leave you staring for hours at text blocks thinking "WHAT IS IT", but i've been playing Lingo this past week: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1814170/Lingo/ It's a Witness-like but for the English language, with EXTREMELY programmer art and no music and one single sound effect. you see a word on a block, and you input a word to solve it, which might open a door near you or somewhere else, or it might be part of a larger room of puzzles that are required to clear in order to reach the end of the game. there's at least 700 blocks in the game from what I can tell (I've solved about 670 of them), and the puzzles range from synonyms, antonyms, anagrams, homophones, to even ciphers. each block has its own ruleset based on its color, position, whether it's connected to other boxes, etc. The game is also like Antichamber where the map is intentionally confusing and you warp around a lot, and I like this aspect the least, although apparently there's a cheat setting to display fake walls so I might turn that on just to finish the game. idk if i'd call it an amazing game but I also can't escape it and so I guess I am The Ring-ing this on to others
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Jan 4, 2023 18:36
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Oh no I NEED that. I’m gonna suck at it and I’m excited!
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Jan 4, 2023 19:12
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Yeah, I also tried out Lingo based on an earlier recommendation. Very few reviews, barely any discussion in the Steam community but the developer is still pushing out updates - one just went up today, actually, with promises of more. So that's encouraging! I wish this game had some means of keeping tabs on your overall progression or a map-like feature. The non-euclidean spaces mess with my head just like Antichamber and maintaining any sense of place quickly goes out the window. It's often hard to understand what the puzzles are asking of you, as there are few valuable visual hints other than the block colors. Each of them seem to follow a particular ruleset like 7th Guest said, but then there's others I've found where I'm stumped on figuring out what kind of "rule" a series of four images showing the cardinal directions is meant to have, because the word sizes are asking for something entirely different. This would be so much better if there was an easy way to monitor things so I don't feel lost all the time. But it is unique.
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Jan 4, 2023 21:22
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ErrEff posted:Each of them seem to follow a particular ruleset like 7th Guest said, but then there's others I've found where I'm stumped on figuring out what kind of "rule" a series of four images showing the cardinal directions is meant to have, because the word sizes are asking for something entirely different.
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Jan 4, 2023 21:32
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Agelessquote:Ageless is a story driven puzzle platformer where you must alter the age of animals and plant life around you to progress. Play as Kiara, a young girl who braves through heartache and loss as she journeys across a mysterious world to discovers its secrets and herself. This is another seriously underrated game. It's a reasonably difficult puzzle platformer with a mechanism that allows you to adjust the age of the creatures around you, altering their behavior so you can get to the next screen. The story is decent but nothing special, but the gameplay really shines. The platforming isn't all that difficult but you will need decent reflexes for some of the puzzles. There are also optional collectibles that are locked behind much more difficult puzzles if you're looking for an extra challenge.
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Jan 4, 2023 22:05
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Came here to post one of my personal favourites: Cargo Commander https://store.steampowered.com/app/220460/Cargo_Commander/ Alone in space, light years away from your family, armed with only your Fistcannon™; you are Cargo Corps' latest recruit, a Cargo Commander. In a sense it follows a very small genre, namely "you have a job, this job is dangerous" sorta like with Deep Rock Galactic. In this case you are a man who has joined the ranks of Cargo Corp, who has been tasked with salvaging cargo containers and caps from various disaster areas in space. You can visit many deterministic levels that you get to choose yourself out of whatever word or combination of letters you like and compete with others for the high score and the right to wear a small paper hat with #1 on it (this game has a rather grounded and hilarious sense of irony). in each space sector you use your ship's magnetic field to pull variously sized habitats and cargo container towards you full of cargo, various other loot and crystaline monsters; these form large chains of random somewhat mazelike areas with random interiors and gravity. You only have a certain amount of time before the wormhole in the background sends each of those containers screaming back into the void and you can only hold your breath in space for so long at a time. The ultimate goal is oddly enough is to reunite with your family, as only those who reach the full rank of Cargo commander are allowed to have a warp drive on their ship. Great story, entirely unique gameplay and a very clear vision about this game is supposed to be by the developers. I should also mention there is a dedicated button for saying "gently caress you".
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Jan 4, 2023 22:14
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The Ageless recommendation reminds me of Full Bore: https://store.steampowered.com/app/264060/Full_Bore/ Full Bore is a game about... boars... boring. But hopefully not boring you. It's basically a pure block puzzle game, and gets increasingly brain bending as you get deeper. Nice tunes, and there's a story lurking in the background. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXhOyTD6Tik Pretty sure it did so poorly the devs moved on to other stuff, judging by the 72 reviews it has on steam.
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Jan 4, 2023 22:33
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Tales from off peak city Vol. 1 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129920/Tales_From_OffPeak_City_Vol_1/ You're in town to steal a saxophone from a pizza peddler, but things predictably get complicated along the way. If you like chill music and surreal atmosphere in your walking sims this doesn't get much better. Cosmo D has 3 other games kicking around steam, 2 that are more or less the same vibe as off-peak city, and the last a rougelite dice-game where you get tips through rolling a clutch pepperoni/basil/etc on your pizza dice.
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Jan 4, 2023 22:47
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Full Bore is utterly fantastic and heartily recommended. Don't be fooled by the cutesy visuals though, the story gets pretty weird.
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Jan 4, 2023 22:48
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Sadly, it does not run on the Deck.  [edit] I take that back! It didn't work when I tried it over the summer, but it seems to work now! moosferatu fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 22:49
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victrix posted:The Ageless recommendation reminds me of Full Bore: https://store.steampowered.com/app/264060/Full_Bore/ Yes, yes, yes! Game of the year, every year.
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Jan 4, 2023 22:54
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