Think enter the gungeon combined with superhot, but simplified a lot. It’s a turn based bullet hell, and an excellent arcade game playable in the browser.
EDIT: I’d also like to take this oppurtunity to talk about flashpoint. Flashpoint is a massive archive of basically every flash game and animation, and you can even play them again.
However, in addition to flash projects, I also noticed that flashpoint also archives HTML/HTML5 games… but only a subset of them. Although flashpoint’s primary purpose still is as a flash archive, it can also be used as a curated list of HTML5 games.
Open source idle game, but not quite. It eventually expands beyond watching numbers go up, into a sort of roguelike, where you can wander the world and collect stuff. And die. Die a lot.
A Dark Room was where I first saw the @ symbol used to represent the player character.
Also by double speak games, and open source gridland is a variant on the match 3 style. During the day phase, you accrue and store resources, and build stuff. During the night phase, you fight.
A fnaf fangame that is close enough to feel like fnaf, but has a twist: Every single level also involves a puzzle. While trying to survive enemies fnaf style. Although I’ve never played this game, I LOVE watching it on Twitch. I like to call it “Human’s can’t multitask: The Game”.
Absolutely obligatory, the simply named “The Game” is a work of art, and truly a life changing experience. You’ll never think about things the same after experiencing “The Game”.
I like to link it without the ending title, like store.steampowered.com/app/1944240/ because it’s funnier when people can’t see the game title in the link.
A simple but elegant io game. You are a ball, and you want to knock other balls to the ground.
One thing I like is that rounds in small, 4 person lobbies, rather than the massive worlds of other io games. Although you can’t really make friends, you can know personas, and it’s more personable.
This site has a few high quality browser games. The one I come back to is X Type, a bullet hell shoot-em up that has ever expanding enemy ship sizes, and never ends. It gets hard fast.
I also like Xibalba, which is a Doom/Wolfenstein style game playable in the browser.
That guy’s seriously talented!
Among the things he’s made, he’s also made some really nice, easy to understand, high-speed compression formats (QOI/QOA), as well as a public domain mpeg decoder.
I’ve used all three for various projects and I’d highly recommend that most software developers check them out. If only for the learning experience.
The indie scene has focused on a lot of SNES/NES-style retro franchises, but I’d definitely like to see a return to PS2 aesthetic, especially now that we can render those scenes at 60fps.
I recently played Psuedoregalia, and it was a lot of fun.
When they came for Pluto, I said nothing because I wasn’t a planet
When they came for Australia, I said nothing because I wasn’t a continent
When they came for Bielefeld, I said nothing because I wasn’t a city
When they came for me, there was no one left to say anything
You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It’s an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be.
I’ve heard many glowing reviews with this same sentiment. In order to avoid most spoilers, may I ask you here - if I didn’t enjoy Undertale, would I still like this? I didn’t enjoy the metagaming that undertale did, making fun of the player for reloading a save. It felt dishonest. Does Inscryption also do this?
I’ll back up June. I was “that’s pretty nice” on Undertale but wasn’t nearly as positive on it as its fandom was. I loved Inscryption. It’s not meta like Undertale, but it does have occasional fourth wall breaks, which is part of its game-within-a-game fiction.
It’s a completely different game vs undertale. It’s like comparing Dota 2 to DiRT rally, haha. It’s worth going in blind, and the post-game is extremely good and very replayable (and adds new content).
I’m trying this game on PSN, but often the dealer is just throwing high numbers at me and I can’t see any economic way I can match them with my own summons. Two bears in a row; what do?
It’s my common issue with Roguelikes. You’re replaying the first level a lot and things don’t really develop much very quickly. I kinda just gave up.
I’ll sticky that for the time being to remind everyone to be mindful of spoilers.
You are free to not care about spoilers, but at least respect those who do, thank you.
I can second all of these. Generation zero is the only one I didn’t enjoy much but I suspect it’s a lot better with friends.
The rest are fab, I’m currently playing Kena it’s like Pixar/ Disney meets dark souls. Beautiful game, has these little critters which follow you around called rot who are super cute and you can put hats on them.
Control is just excellent. The combat feels great and for me the whole game was worth playing just for the Ashtray maze sequence.
Ditto. I don’t ever replay single player games, but I’ve played Control 3 times and this post makes me want to start again! It and the DLC are all atmospheric gold
Oh god not Outward. After trying it recently I’m honestly kinda shocked that it’s being played at all. Me and my mate got the impression of playing through a 20 year old hobby game dev project at best.
It felt so very unpolished. Combat, UI, inventory management, dialogues, character creation, narrative, quest logs, crafting; it all feels ancient. Co-op especially - only the host progresses the story, gets quest rewards, and so on. A second player can kinda come along, but that’s it.
Don’t want to discredit old fans of the game ofc, but I honestly believe without a hefty dose of nostalgia you wont enjoy it. It would be like picking up Half-Life for the first time in 2024 and expecting a decent game.
I will admit that Outward is something of an acquired taste. It’s not a looker for sure, and starts a bit harsh, difficulty-wise. However it has surprising depth and a true sense of discovery. It is very rewarding once you really get into it.
Plus it really shines in co-op play. It is the closest thing I know of, that can be compared to “Skyrim, but co-op”.
I stand by my recommendation as it is very much a “B game” and pretty unique.
Nowadays? Mobile games have always sucked. All the way back to snake on your old Nokia. That game sucked too. It’s just now the games suck and they’re packed full of microtransactions.
For better or for worse capcom is doing this shit in nearly every one of their games so i kinda expected this shit And if we stop shitting on them for doing it, we let it become normalized.
Denuvo is a cancer This pretty much sums up the topic.
Optimisation. It is poor apparently. Nothing new really as far as pc games go. It’s actually a lot worse than that. It’s been a while since I played something that had this level of problems. The fact that it’s CPU-based performance is actually the bigger issue because it doesn’t matter how beefy your graphics card is, you’re still dropping a ton of frames in that city specifically. I can run the game at 144 FPS until I go to that city, then it drops to 40, which is just outrageous. Gaming PC build logic has for a long time been to prioritize a great graphics card over a great processor (assuming you’re building with a budget and not a ‘money is no object’ type build), because that’s what matters for games, but suddenly with this one specific game, the processor is the bottleneck.
To add to that, the DLC thing really pisses me off particularly because I bought the game last night, and there was no DLC. The DLC didn’t show up until a few hours later, and by that point it was too late to refund it. Kind of felt like a bait and switch, because normally I wouldn’t buy a game at launch if they did that shit.
Yeah, I would still fight for a refund personally. Not trying to assume you have the time or energy to go after it, but I feel like this is extenuating circumstances
Man, this shit is already normalized. MTX isn’t going anywhere. Zero complaints since horse armor have made a difference. At this point, the best I’m hoping for is not being reminded that there is MTX while playing the game.
Outer Wilds. I think it’s a fine game with a pretty cool gimmick (time loop) and a neat story. The gameplay itself isn’t that fun. I think what ultimately ruined it for me was the online discourse about the game; every time it gets mentioned, hundreds of people flock to the comments to extol the philosophical storyline, and throw around hyperbolic descriptions like “life-changing”. Again, the story is pretty neat, but I was left underwhelmed after having been built up by fans of the game.
I’m glad you liked it! I really wanted to like the game. I wish one of my friends in real life played through it so I could walk through some others’ perspectives on the game in person.
Several hours in, I couldn’t even make it to a point where the story started rewarding me. Which was part of the problem. I “cleared” one of the planets (Brittle Hollow), with its platforming elements (something I don’t like in 3D), and my “reward” was a small piece of a puzzle. I needed a lot more than that.
Even before that point, the game hadn’t made a good first impression. There was nothing about the intro section on the starting planet that particularly interested me. And then the ship controls drove me a bit nuts. The loop was the only interesting part about the game for me then.
Felt like the writing was on the wall for me after exploring that first planet, so I dropped it.
There was nothing about the intro section on the starting planet that particularly interested me.
Yes! I forgot about this. There were like a hundred characters to speak to and very little of it was interesting or even helpful. I couldn’t help but feel guilty when I just gave up and decided to get on the ship and leave without exploring all of the dialogue or points of interest.
I also gave Outer Wilds a try and don’t think it stood up to the hype. Got through probably 95% of the story and then gave up on it, there were two “puzzles” that I just couldn’t figure out. Ended up reading a walkthrough and was not sad at all that I put it down.
I haven’t quite finished it yet, my feeling is that it slightly overstays it’s welcome.
I’ve also noticed that most of the time I do a thing or two in the game then realise there’s not quite enough time in the loop to do another thing, but just enough time to make me want to not waste the loop, since I find starting a new loop a bit tedious.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Okami featured in one of these lists. Just to be sure I looked up some of Polygon’s and even in their Top 500, its not there, which is kinda depressing?
I’m not a fan of Zelda games - or most Nintendo games - but I do love when people take inspiration from them and make their own thing - Tchia, Darksiders, Oceanhorn, Tunic, and Ittle Dew all come to mind just as Zelda ‘clones’ - and I think there’s no higher example of that than Okami, a game that takes its inspiration and surpasses it in every way. The graphics were at the time mindblowing(frankly, still are), with its japanese classic art style cel shading, the soundtrack is phenomenal and Amaterasu has an excellent mobility, zipping across battlefields or simply open areas with easy and fluidity. The paintbrush is a stellar tool, both to use in puzzles and in combat, and the game boasts a charming cast of characters and engaging story. Probably the saddest tidbit about it is that it was also Clover’s farewell game, after its previous, unfairly lambasted, gem God Hand and two attempts at the beat’em up Viewtiful Joe series.
Nowadays the Zelda series has gotten a whole different kickstart with its open-world entries, burying these inspirations even further, but I still believe Okami easily stands atop most entries of that series, and on its own as well.
Okami is “Zelda-like” in its kind of medieval fantasy, action-adventure presentation, and in the way towns and NPCs feel, and perhaps in some of its bosses, but really it’s not all that much like a Zelda game. Okami is an quite standard all-ages real-time-battles RPG, whereas Zelda usually have no RPG mechanics - usually Zelda enemies are defeated in just one or two hits, with little or no stats, points or inventory. Zelda games usually have a lot of focus on puzzles and dungeons, or dungeon-like outdoor areas, whereas Okami has no puzzles. On the other hand Okami is obviously very steeped in (often silly or humorous) Japanese folklore, whereas Zelda is very much less wacky and often a little more emotional and dramatic, and has its own bespoke theming.
I liked Okami but I felt it was paced really quite slowly, and the battles/enemies were a little too RPG-like for my taste, as in taking quite a lot of real time for even weak enemies. I felt it lacked the mechanical polish that Zelda usually does: I felt generally the movement was a little slow and difficult (except in very open areas) and most disappointing of all was the frankly poor recognition of what brush move I’m drawing.
Okami has a fair amount of puzzles, they’re just mostly smaller to show the wider range of mechanics. Get ball into cup, bring vines to location, memorize dots on a page Simon says style. They’re ultimately not too different from a puzzle you might encounter in something like A Link to the Past, or Breath of the Wild. Not difficult enough to be integral but enough to test your understanding of the game mechanics and later reward you for wit. Some of them also become very important for boss battles or speeding up fights with enemies.
Personally I never had an issue with brush move recognition, but I played both the PS2 and Wii versions and use a Steam Controller for PC which is the closest to the Wii’s. Of all of them, analog sticks are probably the slowest, but keyboard control is pretty clunky for movement since it was intended for controllers. Combat on the Wii was something else entirely, it was genuinely meant for that I think as it has the blended analog stick + high speed but accurate input. For today, mouse input is very good as a very light trackball but so-so for a regular mouse - so the Steam Controller (or Deck these days) is a really good medium, or maybe the PS5 controller if you can use its middle touch thing somehow.
I’d say the only complaint I could make about the game is its pacing of the story. In terms of gameplay however, you take it at the pace you want to take it at. Don’t want to fight? Avoid the scrolls. But fighting can be so fast, over in just a few inputs. Only a couple seconds so sometimes the winning battle screens themselves feel like they take longer (but they can be skipped). The isometric style during the battle rewards spacing and the byproduct is the difference in how the movement feels - it also plays into Capcom’s general affinity for artificial difficulty, something like restrictions on camera movements and animation delays for Resident Evil and Monster Hunter. It’s asking how creative can you get in this situation with these limitations?
I think the best analogy for battles with this in mind is to imagine each moment you freeze as the perfect image captured by an artist, but that can only happen when the demons are visible to the human (after Ammy stuns them). With that in mind you stun all the enemies then finish them in one fell swoop!
The game does have some pacing issues in the early game that could have been fixed by allowing to speed up if not skip cutscenes, but otherwise overall I think it nails the widening world adventure game for encouraging the player to really engage with the game engine and their wits to progress forward. I also think the early pacing does a lot for some of the revealing acts of the game, if it was fast and punchy the whole time then later elements like the events of the Ghost Ship of Heaven’s Gate would be less impactful than they are. The stakes start out low as you familiarize yourself and they ramp up as you hit act 2. From there it’s actually pretty easy to skip a lot of side missions as it streamlines you from there, unlike the early game where it can be harder to tell which quests main and side missions. Much like Twilight Princess where in the mid-late game it’s really encouraging you to continue forward but if you take some time to explore you get experiences you’d have missed - although granted Okami is a little less forgiving with the gifts, with the 99 beads being the prelude to korok seeds I swear…
Anyway lol, tl;Dr I agree about the pacing although I think it’s intentionally self indulgent on the story and the payoff is worth it and while the RPG elements you mentioned for battles are accurate, I would say that the speed and movement are more about spacing and timing. If you know the weak spot and the finisher, then each monster can be dealt with in 2 strokes, and placed well that can be the end of the fight right there.
Also not trying to discount your experience, just adding my perspective :)
I think accessibility options in games are fantastic and as long as they’re optional you can do no wrong.
I think the best thing, that’s still not as common yet, is the ability to custom map game controls within its settings. Steam’s own software can do this pretty well, but there should be support for that in every game up front.
Not only does it make it easier for people missing limbs or dexterity to play games, but it makes it easier for any person to tweak the controls for their play style.
I really hope we see more support for features like this because they can be so useful to everybody.
Wrong kind of handicap. You are absolutely right in everything you said above, but it seems OP was referring to PvP games where one player has the option to have more health or do more damage than their opponent. It’s intended to even the playing field when ones pair is more skilled than the other.
I’d be more supportive of Valve if Team Fortress 2 wasn’t a dumpster fire to play in 2024. The game is infested with bots that make anything outside of independently moderated community servers unplayable.
Even Counter Strike 2 has dogshit anticheat despite the boasts that VAC Live was a solution that could surpass Vanguard, to the point where the only good competitive experience you can have is to play on FaceIt or ESEA servers with their own ring 0 anticheat solution.
If you can only have a good experience by installing malware, you don’t have a good experience.
I really should finish building that nvidia jetson based hardware anticheat that’d allow anyone to cheat even in vanguard protected games with perfect accuracy for just ~150$. Ring 0 anticheat’s only use is to spy on you and yet people will continue defending it until someone’s proven just how useless it is.
Can only speak for the higher ranks of both games but cs2 is currently unplayable above 25k elo since its almost guaranteed to have 1 out of 10 players cheating. While i only encounter a few cheaters each season in immortal in Valorant.
I mean TF 2 is 16 years old. They just don’t really support it anymore. I can’t comprehend how it’s still in or close to the top 10 steam games by player count when it’s been dead for years.
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