Thomas was alone.(I recommend this one up there with obra dinn)
Spec ops the line
Dlc quest
Limbo
For something quite a bit different, amnesia the dark decent.
This one might be controversial, but the original BioShock, I played it how I wanted, and >! Got the good ending!< And never felt the desire to pick it up. If you’re a completionist on the first run, and it isn’t very difficult to do (very rewarding I’d say), then there’s 0 reason to pick it up again. I felt the same about replaying BioShock infinite, but more because I just didn’t want to play it again (I felt like it had much more story to offer, and sidequests to do, but I didn’t get any of the same satisfactions from the game, first one was done and wrapped up nicely, third one was barely unraveled and I chose to read other people’s ideas of how it had ended)
I played amnesia exactly once and still haven’t brought myself to replay it. I tried a year ago (originally played in 2012) and, while I admit I didn’t give it much effort to relearn the mazes, I didn’t feel too motivated still remembering most of the plot and of course the finale.
Spec Ops The Line has sadly been delisted and is no longer available for purchase. If you already got it, you’re fine, but the only way to get a copy now is 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I have played it a decent amount, but I probably wouldn't still play it if it wasn't also on my iPhone (there's a "plus" on Apple Arcade that looks identical, too).
I like Monster Train better mechanically for the reason that it does feel like there's a lot more variety, though I dislike how short the runs are to build a deck with. (I'd like Slay the Spire to go longer on a good run, too).
I haven't been too far on ascensions. I don't think they're really more entertaining. I mostly do the daily runs because at least there's variety there.
Sure there aren’t that many cards but those cards are so well balanced. Every single card has its uses so you’re constantly presented with interesting decisions. It feels like almost every other roguelike has dead time where you’re just going through the motions whereas in slay the spire you’re making decisions from floor 1.
I find there’s a lot less variety in my monster train runs. Most classes have a distinctly best strategy and the artifacts generally also funnel you towards that strategy. For example, I can’t remember the last time I played an Umbra run that didn’t set up a morsel engine behind a warden or alloyed construct - as far as I’m concerned, those are the same strategy, it doesn’t feel different. The only other build I think is viable is just “play Shadowsiege,” which rarely happens early enough to build for it.
Every class in STS has at least three viable archetypes and almost every run within those archetypes still feels different to me.
Creeper World: A mix of tower defense and rts (with pause function) against a ever expanding goo called creep. The fourth installment is 3D and the next one will be a side-view spinoff.
Tales of Maj’Eyal: Quite popular among the people who are into traditional roguelikes, but I very very rarely see it mentioned outside that community. It’s definitely the (nearly) traditional roguelike I put the most time into thanks to its class/ability system that bridges the gap between roguelike and turn based rpg really well.
The Captain: Technically not indie as it was published by Tomorrow Corp (of World of Goo/Little Inferno/etc. fame) instead of the devs themselves. A mix between old school point and click game, but as a highly episodic space adventure. You travel from planet to planet on an overarching mission and each planet has its own interactive short story. Some are longer, some are very short and you never quite know what you’ll find before you land. All of the short stories have multiple endings depending on how you tackle the moral dilemmas it throws at you.
Infinity Wars actually released before the rise of Hearthstone and also before the popular Avengers movie of the same name. It is to this day one of my favorite digital TCGs, and I played so many of them. Before I get into the main thing that I love about it, I wanna mention that every single card’s base version (colorless) is free, anyone can build any deck for free the moment they pick up the game and be 100% competitive with everyone else. The only thing they monetize is bling. Unlike in most mainstream TCGs both players do their turns at the same time in secret, once they both lock in, their moves play out. This gives way for some insane mindgames and outplays that eclipse those in any other TCG I’ve played. It is a bit rough around the edges, so it might be more of a “hidden diamond in the rough” than a hidden gem.
Bombernauts is a really fun party game. To sum it up in one sentence: “Imagine if Bomberman was a platform fighter.” If you have friends to play with it, buy it on a sale, crank powerup drops up to the max (they stack, which took us hours to figure out), maybe download a mappack and I’m sure you’ll have a blast if the trailer looked any fun to you. There’s virtually no chance to play it with strangers through as it is super dead.
Lastly I wanna give a shoutout to Clonk. Clonk is (or was) a 2D sidescrolling game-series that is visually reminiscent of Lemmings. The gameplay is a sort of mix between Minecraft or Terraria (predating it by many many years) and very very very low-pop RTS. It’s a mission based game where you control around 1-3 Clonks (the lemmings) and has full online multiplayer support. The missions can range from “build a base in this active volcano”, “take out the enemy team’s castle”, “win this wizarding duel” to “build a bridge across this canyon”. What made it truly unique was the community and community creations though. It was created with the explicit purpose to be customizable and users made many, many different maps and modes. It was to me what Minecraft was to the kids in the generation after me (without all the content creators, of course). Some people made an entire RPG in it. Others made what was essentially Among Us, just to give you an idea. Sadly the spiritual open source successor Open Clonk could never recapture the magic for me, and I guess I’m not alone in that because it pretty much died around 5 years ago. If I could make one game popular overnight, it would be Clonk. It did warm my heart to see that some of the celebrated custom map/mode creators from back then ended up getting into gamedev. One of the games developed by someone I remember from back then is Vintage Story.
Holy fuck I rambled a lot about Clonk and I still feel like I’d have so much more to say but this isn’t the most fitting thread for that.
shoutout to nice explanation and link. I’m like 5k hours into Tales of Maj Eyal, and confirm it is excellent, especially after unlocking the adventurer, which allow to combine any of the 100+ skill trees.
I will try Infinity war, seems up my alley and less grindy then MtG
proprietary games that install rootkits(wrongly called anticheats) on the system. the corporations in charge have brainwashed masses into thinking that it’s just a benign thing there to fend off “cheaters”, conveniently brushing aside the fact that this is a massive and lucrative attack vector. it only helps bad actors(including three letter agencies).
and this is not a what-if scenario. every year you can find an incident where such a “solution” is exploited.
Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, any “Soulsborne” game really. I get why people like them, and I tried multiple times, but it just isn’t working on me.
The best games of all time are: Go, Soccer, Chess, Poker, Tetris… they’ve stood the proof of time over and over again (respectively: 4000, 2300, 1400, 200, 40 years).
A honorable mention should go to Doom, as in the “can it run Doom?” meme, but it’s anyone’s guess whether it will stand for another 30 years.
All the likes of Zelda, Mario, Halo, Pokemon, etc. are going to get forgotten as soon as the last generation playing the last re-release as a kid, grows out of time to play it actively, and as servers for the multiplayer versions get shut down.
Chess and Go are so old, I’m surprised that the best players in the world don’t already know every possible move to the point that the games are decided after both players make a single move.
They have an exponential number of valid positions, that happen to surpass human abilities to abstract, memorize, and predict.
Chess is estimated to have 10⁴⁰ valid moves, which means not even everyone playing chess throughout all of history, have explored all of them. Like, a billion people playing 1 distinct move a second for 1400 years, would only reach about 10²⁰ moves.
They still can be trained, meaning one person can be way better than another… but a computer trained even more, can be even better… and yet the games surpass even current computers abilities to explore the full possibility space. Maybe quantum computers will be able to do that.
Fun fact, mostly unrelated but something in your message reminded me: I once played against a guy at a Go club, and we had an enjoyable game but he beat me. He wanted to talk to me about the game afterwards, and he started replaying the game for me from memory so he could make commentary. He replayed a pretty decent chunk of the beginning; I honestly don't remember but I think around the first 25-30 moves of the game.
I later learned he was the visiting Go person who was just stopping by the club for social reasons but could demolish anyone. He was incredibly kind and polite.
Yeah, back in chess club at school, we also got a visit from the local (future) GM as a treat on one of the last days. He took us at something like 15 simultaneous games at once… and beat us all.
Go is slightly different; it only has one piece type, the rules are much simpler than chess, the board is much larger but with 8-fold symmetry, so the first 20-30 moves are likely to fall into some “basic” patterns in some of the octants. By comparison, the patterns in chess get hard to manage after just 10 moves, while Go pros may plan even 100 moves ahead. Where Go gets really complex, is when the patterns start meeting, and the complexity tends towards the 10¹⁷⁰ possible moves, way more than the 10⁴⁰ practical ones in chess.
All the likes of Zelda, Mario, Halo, Pokemon, etc. are going to get forgotten
I disagree. The reason being that video games and gaming of this caliber are completely unheard of in all of human history. We’ve come further in gaming tech over the last couple decades than the grand majority of all humans that have ever existed could even dream.
That being said, as long as emulation exists, there will be fans of big ips. The problem with saying “it’ll get forgotten as soon as the last person stops playing” is that the specific circumstance of modern gaming is unprecedented. People are still out there emulating games that came out in the 80’s. There’s really no rule saying this kind of technology won’t last hundreds or thousands of years like more classical games do.
Detroit: Become Human has some pretty tough decision trees. Not just in how you have to find the options, but even when you only have a few, it’s difficult to choose one because none of them are wrong (or right, for that matter).
Papers, Please seems incredibly easy, but then you’re given a choice like “this person doesn’t have a permit but their husband did and they say they will be killed if they have to go back; do you do your job or do you take pity on them?”
Jeopardy. The newest one I know of is multiple choice and some of the answers are hard.
MGS5? It’s not a choice, but damn do I have to take pause every time I get to the part where you have to put down your entire army while they stand saluting you because they’re infected by vocal chord zombie parasites. You never even talked to these people to get to know them and it’s still like “fuck man these are my friends…”
Including Jeopardy in a list of games like this is the kind of awkward “technically correct” dissonance I’ve come to expect from AI. What a weird inclusion.
I didn’t sleep the night after I played that part in MGS5. “We live and die by your orders, Boss” while morosely humming the Peace Walker theme – it’s like Kojima was trying to make the player share Snake’s PTSD.
If you want more cinematic games, the Quantic Dream portfolio has a couple. Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human are both notable examples. I remember having some serious anxiety playing Heavy Rain, in the best way.
I actually liked Beyond 2 Souls, too. Didn’t age well at all especially with the naked model allegations and all, but playing it at the time there were some intense moments in there.
I can’t speak for the other games mentioned in this thread, but in the case of Heavy Rain it was very enjoyable that often you had to make quick decisions or the game would choose for you
Hahahahaha, you’re right. My choice of words is very debatable, but it’s true that the moment you had to make a choice was implemented well and I was very concentrated in the heat of the moment
No it’s definitely enjoyable, I’m just kidding around. It’s that it’s the complex kind of enjoyable that is fueled by adrenaline and harmless anxiety. I’m a big horror fan, so it feels familiar to that fandom.
Oh, I’m sure we’re all great parents here. I applaud you for admitting a mistake and having the humility to ask for advice, both excellent parenting skills in my opinion.
I believe the answer is always culture. Once better videogames are discovered it’s likely that they will hardly go back to the bad ones (so that the problem of prohibitionism - which is only a temporary solution - can be solved).
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