They’re both fantastic games, but the original (in which you go to Hamburg and a space station) felt more adventurous rather than the more grounded sequel (in which you go to the arctics and even more exotic locale: my hometown of Calcutta). Set it in the fictionalized disco-themed cold-war with the lead jet-setting around the world, and we’re golden!
Also, only a single game, but: Arcanum. (At least this one’s possible to buy on Gog and Steam…)
Arcanum supposedly had a sequel in the works at some point: Journey to the Center of Arcanum, and frankly, while I’d prefer to see other continents on that world explored a là Around the World in 80 Days, I’d still be sold on a hollow-earth adventure any day!
A friendly reminder to everyone: there is a fan project, part 1 and 2 updated to run on modern systems. They have their own page, the full games can be downloaded from there, and they just work. Just Google the title and fan update.
After fiddling with my original CDs back two years I gave up and installed these! Wide-screen, stable, high resolutions, perfect! I was so happy fans decided to get them running again!
Me too! My original discs for the sequel was unreadable even before I got to play it (it was a hand-me-down).
I also found this mod on itch as well, after your post. I think I had to edit the configs to get the resolution writing for Nolf2 even on the revival copy (and, save files from different resolutions don’t load!) If this patch can work around those issues that’d be great.
Time for another playthrough of the series, on the Steam Deck!
It’s a little known game from a small publisher originally located in Scotland.
The main premise is that you drive around a city as quickly as possible and go bowling with your cousin. Think Big Lebowski meets Driver. You can also play Pool and Darts in various locations around the town, and earn money doing small side jobs such as being a taxi driver or a paramedic.
I’ve never heard of it but it sounds like an interesting indie game from some rockstar guy. I wish they gave him a bigger budget to build a topdown version set in London.
After loving GTA 3 and Vice City and San Andreas, I strongly disliked GTA4. Story was fine, but they really went hard on terrible controls and boring missions.
GTA5 apparently “fixed it” by making the driving more arcade-like, but I forced myself to finish it to get to the ending. Flying was a bore. And again, boring missions.
Maybe I just like the more zany wacky open-world chaos that Just Cause, Mercenaries, or Saints Row provides.
The controls in GTA IV were realistic! Your car tyre would blip the curb and it would affect the stability of the car. Denting the car from every angle resulted in a uniquely deformed mesh that my god would still drive. Pedestrians would bounce off your bumper in unique and interesting ways. It was a simulation paradise.
In GTA V they changed all that, made it more midnight club and arcade-y as you said. You could literally decimate a crowd of people and they’d all die with the same canned animation. Cars would at most lose a door before considering deforming the whole mesh. It just felt dumbed down.
Saints Row is fun, but you play it once and then forget about it because there’s nothing to do once you reach godhood. Mercenaries was great fun, and Just Cause was a physics funbox, I’ll give you that
Well of Souls was a little primordial mmorpg I got in a 100 games CD a while back. I used to have tons of fun making a custom character from sprites and seeing how far I could get. When I played it never felt mmo ish as it was already pretty empty.
Rouge like turn based dungeon crawler. Certainly not new by any means, but still a pretty decent little dungeon crawler. The art is cute and the game is pretty simple to pick up, which makes it perfect for more casual play. That said if you’re a completionist, it can get a bit repetitive, but nothing too hair-pulling. Probably not worth the full sticker price, but historic sales have knocked it down to $1.49, which is a nice balance between cheap and fun (took me about 28 hours to 100%).
Yeah, probably. There is a village building/ upgrading component, but it doesn’t have much of an impact on gameplay. It does get pretty tedious, especially if you’re well versed in strategy. I mostly just figured I’d throw it out as a more casual one-shot to pick up on the cheap.
Dink Smallwood is an old fantasy role playing game. It has a small community that makes mods for it. It’s really dumb but it’s free to play and very short if you have nothing better to do.
edit: Wow! I didn’t realize a lot of people here know this game. That’s actually cool.
Bopl Battle is a hilarious party game for up to 4 people. The rounds go really quick so it’s a great game to play with friends when you have a limited amount of time, but the fun doesn’t wear out fast either.
Had to downvote, but the game is great. I play it with my kids and it is reliably hilarious. There are so many interactions that something surprising happens with amazing regularity.
It’s a tower defense where you also have guns and go fight alongside your towers as a first person shooter.
Both Sanctum and Sanctum 2 are worth playing and have slightly different vibes. Sanctum 1 is simpler while Sanctum 2 has more complex build crafting. Also Sanctum uses a square grid while Sanctum 2 uses a hexagonal grid, and Sanctum 2 has some tweaked enemy mechanics, including enemies that target destroy the towers or killing the players over just going for the core. I think Sanctum 2 tries to make the player feel more important instead of the towers being the main focus.
Megabyte Punch is a side scrolling fighting game where you build your robot with different parts salvaged from fought robots that give you different abilities and powerups.
It is a super fast, casual game that you can bang out in a few nights. It has a pretty good electronic soundtrack, boss fights feel weighty even if they are relatively simple.
One of my favorite games as far as just fun and de-stressing!
NandGameis a browser puzzle game, where you start of by building basic logic gates from relays and progress from there all the way trough processor design to compiling high-level languages. It does not hold your hand too much, but the invidual puzzles progress so incrementally, it feels almost magical how easily you learn to build computers and compilers.
I recommend Scavenger SV4It’s a very unique game where you send a rover down to a planet to grab what alien artifacts you can before your radiation exposure gets past the point it can be treated. You can bolt some of them onto your rover to make it better and send it down again. It also has several hundred different endings that are decided by how much radiation you absorbed and how much loot and what loot you brought back.
Occult Crime Police is a fantastic free offering for those looking for a bit more Ace Attorney. It mostly follows the gameplay of Ace Attorney games, in which you investigate murder scenes involving strange, paranormal phenomena, and then discover contradictions in people’s witness accounts to uncover the culprit. It’s a bit easy, but maintains some great humor and charming animation production value.
Continuing this in the same thread as it’s a bit topical:
Are you a fan of Love Live! School Idol? Me neither! I basically knew nothing about it at all. Regardless, Gyakuten Live is an incredibly detailed cutesy Ace Attorney style game, in which the characters of the show gather for “school trials”. Though you may need to put up with a cutesier all-girl cast, and the stakes are much lighter and involve things like stolen possessions rather than murder, the mysteries end up having a surprising number of twists and even some heartfelt motives at the end. Features a fully custom soundtrack and LOTS of custom artwork, matched with some traditionally silly Ace Attorney humor.
So far, THREE cases are available, and each features a different prosecutor. The game’s page lists plans to continue up to 6 episodes.
In ItchIO’s standard, the game is “name your own price” - so you can choose to download it for free. It’s unlikely to come to Steam since it technically infringes on an anime/manga without permission.
One more coming if my AA recommendations are well received.
Adding one more to the Ace Attorney spinoff block:
Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is a well-written fan spinoff of the AA formula, taking place in a fantasy universe where magic is real, but mostly the domain of the nobility. Trials are a form of theatre, where the nobility knows how to tip the scale, but your mentor knows how to tip them back.
It introduces some very enjoyable mechanics, in which knowledge of each spell’s effects and conditions constitutes its own evidence. Tyrion bears his own magical ability that lets him view the thoughts of witnesses. He is also accompanied by the defendant of his first case, a mercenary-mage named Celeste, who gets a lot of investigation banter with Tyrion, much like Maya and Phoenix.
Five cases in all, and none of them are shortened crapshoot cases, nor is there a downer ending; all the major threads conclude with satisfying endings, and the developer hopes to make a sequel from the world they’ve built.
Oh, and as is common for AA games, take a listen to “Eye of Horus”, the game’s equivalent of the “Objection!” theme when Tyrion nails a contradiction. The game’s soundtrack as a whole has some real bangers, for both the high points and the emotional pulls.
Imagine overcooked but where you kill and use your customers as ingredients and can raise skeletons from the dead to automate as your chefs and servers. It’s overall a very well put together game, especially for one with 240 reviews (total)
It’s a game where you are a little sheep creature that runs a cult. It’s a mix of a management game and a roguelike since you go on runs to fight the games main bosses and get items to bring back to improve your cult.
Art style kinda reminds me of Klei’s Don’t Starve and is probably one of the most impressive parts of the game
Though this one is more well known. Still, I hadn’t heard of it before so I think sometimes games with even a big following like this one can stay off the radar a bit unless they are truly massive.
It’s a cute game where you are a dog that brews beer. The game isn’t complicated and its pretty short in playtime but it’s $3.50 without a sale and its both cute and fun so I think it’s very worth.
The hell theme is cool, the cards are interesting as well as the characters you can play and overall just a really high quality game that’s underappreciated.
This game is incredible. Genuinely like probably the best game I’ve ever played. It simulates an economy fairly accurately (using the different colonies outputs and inputs to determine prices dynamically). In addition to this colonies can be hurt by you or other parties, affecting the prices of items on the market significantly so you can try to make your money on this margin.
There’s space fleet battles with a complex ship modification system. There’s colony management, it has an interesting early game and it keeps your interest as you get further in the game with new challenges.
It is $15 dollars and is technically in early access (which tbh is a steal). Though in practice my experience with it is not remotely reflective of it being early access. It’s a little like how dwarf fortress was in early access (although unlike df before the steam launch there is a frontend that’s really solid).
A small and simple semi-idle frog collecting game where you simply collect rare frogs and let them generate buckaroos so you can collect rarer frogs. There’s a free demo that got me hooked to occasionally logging on and collecting more frogs.
Cleaning the System is a platformer where you jump through levels as some kind of pogo stick. The movement is really fun and if you bounce well you can build up a lot of momentum, which lends itself to speedrunning.
There is also a free version of it from the GMTK game jam where it placed very well
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