Thanks for the lists! Seems like whenever someone asks for some lesser-known indie games, people start mentioning ones like Stray and Hades, which are good, but not exactly deep cuts. :)
I looked through my most played and least reviewed indie games on Steam, and found these three. They're super cheap for the summer sale right now, too.
Venineth - 178 reviews - currently $8 - released 2020
Physics-based 3D puzzle platformer. You play as a ball, with a lot of momentum, that rolls around some amazing looking, mysterious landscapes. Chill ambient music plays in the background. I haven't gotten very far yet; the reviews suggest that it gets harder as it goes on. The first couple hours are very relaxing.
2D puzzle platformer with the best soundtrack ever (and the soundtrack is 40 cents right now). You need to have very precise jump timing, so it has more difficult platforming than most puzzle platformers. Very replayable with leaderboards, community-made maps, and unlockable new skills that let you solve a level in different ways.
I stayed up way too late playing this one many years ago, and I can't even explain why it was fun. You just kind of fall downwards, aiming at things as you go down, and trying to find new routes to hit the things you want to hit and avoid the things you don't want to hit. I can't really compare it to anything else, except for maybe some platformers where there's a "falling level." Except this is all falling levels. It's weirdly good. They're working on a new one, although it's very delayed at this point.
shipped a local multiplayer naval game Overall Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (523 reviews) : I had a lot of fun playing this game with my sist er and cousin.
seems like my previous comment didn’t get posted
Oh wow, kudos for sitting down and writing this piece out. Damn, that’s a long post.
But seriously though, all I could think of when I “skimmed” through the text was that you got too obsessed with the building blocks of a story and realised that you are critical towards that they’re all the same shape and/or made by the same material. So you stand very close to the wall and squint instead of backing up a few paces to get a good view of the actual construct in it’s entirety.
Relax and just be happy that we have the luxury in this day and age to appreciate gaming as a medium. Or don’t, whatever makes you happy :)
I really like this point. If you look closely most churches are built with bricks and wood, but still create beautiful structures. As I was reading through the list I was thinking a lot about games that did points good and badly. Tropes are tropes for a reason (check out OSP trope talks if you want break down on how specific tropes can be used well or poorly)
I could never get into Bioshock for some reason. I started playing it twice, but just never felt super engaged or intrigued. Which seems really weird to me because I love a compelling story and that game has a reputation for being a great story. Maybe I just haven’t been in the right mood and need to give it another shot.
Depending on how many hours you played, you might not have reached the point that gave it that reputation. I absolutely loved the story already, including the characters and the environment of Rapture, but there’s a certain point in the story where it gets taken to a new level.
Appreciate the perspective. Maybe it’s just not for me. But I may also give it another shot at some point since I’m not inclined to spend a lot of money on games these days and that one’s already in my Steam library.
The villain would have won, if he’d just had the good sense to NOT BE OBVIOUSLY EVIL FOR LIKE HALF AN HOUR. You could have just celebrated your victory over the first bad guy while you let the hero meander back to the surface and fuck off forever. But NO, you have to be like “HAHAHA I’M EVIL SO FUCK YOU!” and now the hero has literally no choice but to stay and kill you. It was so lazy, and so stupid. Up to that point, it was good, and I loved the twist, and then he had to go completely ruin it with a boneheaded move that made 0 sense except to show how evil he was.
Then Bioshock 2 fucking did the same thing again. Let these meddling interlopers get on the submarine and go away, and you’ve won, all your goals are complete, Rapture is yours. BUT NO, we have to show the reader how EVIL the bad guy is again.
Then Bioshock Infinite did it fuckingagain. Great, we’ve won, the revolution is a success, the good guys are triumphant, oh, shit, did we make these people too sympathetic? Better have them suddenly become bloodthirsty child-killers for no reason so you feel ok fighting them instead of fucking off back home! By that point, though, it was kind of a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat situation; I don’t know why I expected anything different after the previous two times.
If you’re interested in games that aren’t MMORPGs, Path of Exile fits your criteria for monetization. You can only purchase cosmetics and bank storage upgrades. It’s an online ARPG but it’s mostly single player.
It is pretty much unplayable without the bank storage upgrades though. Given the amount of time they can save you, you may as well say that they are power.
Final Fantasy XIV would fit the bill. The cash shop only has cosmetics, and you can pay to add more retainers (basically bank space), but in terms of actual gold buying or power upgrades, none of that exists.
Maybe they’re not so popular, or in context not worth that much, but levels and money usually are no-nos for me. Because the one appears to be straight up levels and gil.
Yeah, they’re a skip to endgame content. But they’re not any kind of “instant win.”
The couple types of pvp aren’t tied to your character level, and the most difficult raid content is best run with a group that you practice with. If you’ve never played, simply grabbing the game and one of those packages isn’t going to give you an immediate edge.
XIV is sort of a single player game with a bunch of coop boss fights.
And, not to be cliche, but you can play through the entire first two arcs (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) completely free, with no real limitations. The only things locked out of the free tier are the more social aspects, and any content above level 60. A handful of jobs are locked, but there is a ridiculous amount of content available for free.
I’ve played a few other mmos and hated them all. XIV is something weirdly different. And the overwhelming majority of the community is chill and friendly.
I play FFXIV since 2014 and I honestly wouldn’t recommend anyone to buy this. You’re just paying to not play the game and skip the main quest (which locks up a bunch of content behind it).
Would disagree it’s where the game begins, given how story-directed it is. FFXIV is, to me, a single-player JRPG in the shell of MMO combat with a huge amount of multiplayer content. (Especially with the fulfilment of duty support allowing you to do MSQ dungeons with bots.)
Quake III but no I or II? I see you’ve got DOOM on your list, I’m curious, did you not like the first two quake games or just didn’t play them? Otherwise you’ve got my list down pat (plus a few extras).
Yes, FF14 does have options to skip story or (most) character levels. They are, like others have stated, primarily targeted towards players who are levelling alts (which the game by nature doesn’t really need as much).
FF14’s story is amazing, but it’s long and not necessarily something you want to repeat.
And while this is effectively buying levels, FF14 is not designed as a pay-to-win game. The amount of experience required to reach maximum level is balanced for someone who is playing the game legitimately – unlike P2W games where requirements are artificially inflated to encourage you to spend money. You will get most or all of the experience you need to hit max level just from following the storyline and a moderate amount of side quests (on one class anyways.)
That said, many FF14 players say that fashion is the true endgame… and there are a lot of nice-looking items on the store. So I suppose it depends on what your definition of “winning” is. 🙃
As others have said, the story skips are kinda awful.
Plus, I gotta say that it doesn’t really make a difference. They don’t give anyone an advantage over anyone else and don’t impact the way you experience the game at all. If you don’t like them, just don’t buy them.
At worst, you’ll run into some guys who are really bad because they skipped a huge portion of the game to get to modern content. But it doesn’t give them any edge over you by any means.
Again, I can’t stress enough how these affect other players 0%.
Some of the best gear in ESO come from their paid DLCs and Chapters. Technically locked behind a paywall, but you’ll still have to farm the gear yourself.
The microtransactions themselves only offer cosmetics, consumables (that aren’t more powerful than the craftable options), and utility stuff (race-change tokens, and skipping some of the skillpoint grind).
There is a player market for exchanging Crowns (microtransaction currency) for gold, and another player market for buying raid clears with gold. Raiding (called Trials) offer some of the best PvE gear. You don’t need to buy clears if you’re skilled enough to run those Trials and can find groups to do it with you.
If you just want to enjoy the game without worrying about min-maxing your build, all the base-game and craftable options will do you just fine.
All the old MechWarrior games, starting with MechWarrior 2. That was my childhood. PGI didn’t have what it takes to recapture that with MechWarrior Online or MechWarrior 5.
Shout out to Half-Life 1 and Team Fortress Classic (1.5). THAT was my teenage years. I played an insurmountable amount of TFC, adminned a couple servers, and took zero interest in TF2, because it just wasn’t the same without concs, throwable frag nades, etc.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was a gamechanger though. That released when I was in college. Fell in love with the hopeless atmosphere, good gunplay, and the eurojank. I still play the various S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods to this day and am eagerly awaiting the release of number 2 (slated for December, but we will see. Devs have been through a lot).
I know a lot of people that played WoW back then, and their experiences were largely the same. I didn’t get much into MMOs beyond Guild Wars 1 at that time. Final Fantasy XIV was good for a time, but Elder Scrolls Online blew me away after they basically redid the game. That was obviously much later in life, though, and that’s a very different framework of MMORPG than classic WoW and its early expansions.
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