Celeste is one of my favorite games period, and it qualifies. The gameplay parallels the story better than any other game I’ve ever played or seen played, and the soundtrack, art, and characters are amazing. Top tier gameplay and a great story to go with it.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for absolutely unhinged strange gameplay made by a programmer rather than a game designer, check out Fractal Block World. It’s pretty fascinating!
Some I really appreciate that I’m not seeing on this list:
I’m currently enjoying Blue Prince which is a fairly new rogue-like puzzle/mystery game it’s hard to explain without spoiling but it’s worth looking up.
Portals of Phereon is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a fairly deep tactical RPG thing with loads of replayability. It’s kind of like a Pokemon x FF Tactics but with monstergirls and it’s also currently free while it’s in development. Be aware it’s extremely NSFW and horny, which I suspect is the main reason it’s not as popular as some of the others listed (IE rimworld, stardew valley, etc.) however the horny is such a key point to it’s original gameplay and world-building that it wouldn’t be the same without it.
Thea: the awakening is a decent tactical RPG. I love it for it’s original battle mini game, crafting system and world-building. It unfortunately has some balance issues and jankiness that prevents it from being an all time favorite, but it’s definitely one I would encourage at least trying.
Thought of a few others:
Reus (2nd one’s alright, first one’s excellent)
Library of Runia
Book of Hours
Kenshi (saw it listed one other time, but it deserves a lot more love)
I was getting into Blue Prince, then I think I got a little annoyed with a puzzle involving a time lock, that claimed you could set it to open at a future date/time and it would stay for one hour. Fun, inventive way to get people to plan ahead.
But no, then I wasted several out of game days planning only to find that it’s referring to in-game time; something that has not plainly existed through any of the other mechanics thus far. I’ll likely get back to it, just think they could’ve chosen the orientation of “big picture” puzzles like that a bit better.
Oh I agree, but that one didn’t seem to bad to me due to the clocks depicting an in-game time that were everywhere. The ones that I almost rage quit on were:
possible spoilers- The stupid gallery puzzles with the nonsensical images that you have to creatively interpret to get the initial clues to parse together in insane ways to get the correct answer - the culture of nuance
Just looking though some of my higher playtime games, here’s a few I haven’t seen mentioned: (I think they’re all indie or small studio)
Gunfire Reborn - Roguelike fps with infinite replay.
Troubleshooter Abandoned Children - XCOM style battle system with a really really fun way to customize how your character fight. Story is pretty lame though (I ended up skipping it) and it’s pretty grindy.
Thronefall - Pretty challenging base defence.
The last spell - Turn based base defence with lots of different ways to build your characters.
Ratropolis - Roguelike real-time card strategy base defence. Pretty good, although not well balanced at highest difficulties.
I have a personal soft spot for Doki Doki Literature Club because it got me into programming when i was young, but that’s far more sentimental and to be honest i wouldn’t play it again as an adult really. If i had to pick something functionally though I’d say Project Zomboid. there’s a fuck ton of fun to be made in that, especially with Multiplayer. Even in singleplayer i like to turn on a NPC mod and assemble my own makeshift Walking Dead cast
Saw someone else out urquan masters, so I’ll put Caves of Qud and Rain World. they both of some of the best pixel art ever, and caves of qud has some the most dynamic story telling in anything I’ve played
Neat info. Positive comments in this thread prompted me to go read the thing, and I appreciated how it is a ground-up explanation, but still quite accessible. Now I understand why WINE is not an Emulator (I had been wondering, tbh)
Currently it’s Bellwright, among many other titles. what particularly tickles me about it is the shitty ai voices they used for the npcs. I am not pro ai by any means, but nothing makes me happier than hearing “all in a good days of work.” delivered constantly, in the most off-kilter reading imaginable.
Many of the early console and PC games were only solvable by finding answers in published magazines. Nintendo was notorious for this - they had their own magazine called Nintendo POWER and a hotline you could call to get tips. A few that come to mind:
Blaster Master / Goonies 2 / Mad Max / The Kings Quest games / The Black Caludron
On arcades, you’d get fucked by asshole difficulty. At home, you’d get fucked by asshole difficulty and purposeful lack of information. Took me a while to put 2 and 2 together and realize how “predatory games” have been around for a very long time. Can’t sell the game twice, but you can sell information.
Minimetro and Cultist Simulator are my go to “comfy” games, but cultist simulator really does get you feeling like you’re chasing a mad eldritch horror when playing at times. It’s deliberately obtuse and odd, and then a revelation of the truth takes you over and you push on beyond your wildest expectations.
Slay the Spire and Hollowknight have both been mentioned enough in other posts in case anyone reading this is somehow unaware of either of them.
Faster than Light and Into the Breach are both excellent games. FtL is rng mitigation and crisis control par excellence. ItB is basically chess, and you play out the turns as best you can. It’s rewarding, but once you get good you need to ramp up the difficulty somewhat to keep it fun.
I want to like Into the Breach but it’s too stressful. Like, when I fuck up in FTL and the crew dies it sucks, but when I fuck up in Into the Breach and all those civilians die? Oof. They were counting on me!
But once you’ve finished a run once or twice, you’ll get more options and be able to turn it essentially into Sudoku or some other solitaire puzzle and do most levels perfectly once you know what’s going on and having a few more options.
I’ll have to go with Selaco, it’s not even finished (in fact it’s approximately half done) but it feels more complete than any mainline Halo game after H:Reach. Looks better too.
bin.pol.social
Ważne