Impossible Creatures - an RTS where you slurp up DNA from local wildlife and use that to create weird hybrids of multiple animals, then produce those as units that you control to complete missions. Great concept but I think it ended up being a bit unbalanced.
Papers Please - pretty unique gameplay in that you had to literally read through paperwork and approve/reject people at a border crossing. Good social commentary.
Exapunks is a programming puzzle game set in a retrofuturistic cyberpunk world with early '90s aesthetic. The tutorial is in a form of an in-world zine. For me it was very immersive.
Wow. I’m super impressed with all the suggestions here. I’ll add a few of my own that haven’t been mentioned yet.
Her Story - you query a police archive database for video clips, eventually revealing the plot. Kind of a mash between a murder mystery book with the pages out of order and Google. If you like it, check out Immortality
What Remains of Edith Finch - all you can do is walk around a very unusual house. The narrative reveals itself as you do so. That narrative is fantastical and heartbreaking and also very sweet.
Crawl - multiplayer game - you are all trying to escape a monster and trap filled dungeon. One of you is alive and the rest are spirits who can possess the monsters and traps. Any time a spirit kills the living player, they become the living player. Unique boss fight at the end where multiple spirits control parts of a huge boss monster.
Thanks for that! I actually had to put the game down for several months because my child had just been born and I couldn’t handle one of the scenes in the game. It was heavily telegraphed, so I had time to stop the game before anything upsetting happened. And when I went back to it months later it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. But yeah, it’s a game about the death of many family members, told through metaphor and fanatical imagery.
In a similar vein, Not For Broadcast. Pick what camera feed to show, what to censor, etc. Will admit I haven’t played it myself and am going off the Steam description page, but it seems pretty unique mechanics-wise.
I have this game and it looks to be amazing, but OMG I can’t keep up with the pace of dealing with the cameras and censoring stuff. I want to love it but I’m just not quick enough.
It definitely fits the criteria that op wanted tho, good call
Persona - a turn based Pokémon-like RPG fused with a social simulator. Your main way of getting stronger isn't by simply levelling up (although it helps) but by fusing multiple monsters that you catch and spending your limited time available with comrades.
SteamVR in Flatpak functions but you will get rediced performance because it can’t set CAP_SYS_NICE for vrcompositor. I haven’t checked if setting it manually could work though
I don’t see how the gameplay helps with the programming tasks, and I don’t see how the programming tasks enhance the gameplay. Let’s assume the game is already finished, I think the game part would be improved by replacing the programming part with a simpler, more rewarding mechanic. And the programming part could be improved by getting rid of the gameplay, as it would remove distractions. Pulling off educational games that people actually want to play is notoriously hard because of conflicting goals. IMO you should aim for a more integrated experience with in-game “coding” and direct feedback.
Faster than light - manage crew in a 2D strategy environment and jump around in space. Pretty unique gameplay which only recently got some clones.
Teardown - Work as criminal stealing stuff, but the clue is you can destroy everything and you need to create smart parkour to steal stuff right in time before the cops arrive. Also you can sandbox play it if you get bored.
Terra Nil - Bring back nature to a destroyed earth, with relaxing and calm mechanics. Highly recommend.
Others: FEZ, solve puzzles. Deep Rock Galactic, because dwarfs being this much dwarf is just dwarftastic. Rock and Stone!
I have a HTPC setup for steam gaming using Micro OS. I haven’t touched it in a few months, but for the earlier parts of this year I frequently played Dead Cells, Art of Rally, Bloodstained, Vampire Survivor, Stardew Valley, games like that.
I used a couple of PS4 controllers via Bluetooth, just using the touchpad on the controller for if I needed to use a mouse cursor on the desktop or something.
One gripe was that I couldn’t get MicroOS to auto login, so I had to keep a keyboard next to the tv so I could sign in everything I wanted to play a game.
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