Occult Crime Police is a fantastic free offering for those looking for a bit more Ace Attorney. It mostly follows the gameplay of Ace Attorney games, in which you investigate murder scenes involving strange, paranormal phenomena, and then discover contradictions in people’s witness accounts to uncover the culprit. It’s a bit easy, but maintains some great humor and charming animation production value.
Continuing this in the same thread as it’s a bit topical:
Are you a fan of Love Live! School Idol? Me neither! I basically knew nothing about it at all. Regardless, Gyakuten Live is an incredibly detailed cutesy Ace Attorney style game, in which the characters of the show gather for “school trials”. Though you may need to put up with a cutesier all-girl cast, and the stakes are much lighter and involve things like stolen possessions rather than murder, the mysteries end up having a surprising number of twists and even some heartfelt motives at the end. Features a fully custom soundtrack and LOTS of custom artwork, matched with some traditionally silly Ace Attorney humor.
So far, THREE cases are available, and each features a different prosecutor. The game’s page lists plans to continue up to 6 episodes.
In ItchIO’s standard, the game is “name your own price” - so you can choose to download it for free. It’s unlikely to come to Steam since it technically infringes on an anime/manga without permission.
One more coming if my AA recommendations are well received.
Adding one more to the Ace Attorney spinoff block:
Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is a well-written fan spinoff of the AA formula, taking place in a fantasy universe where magic is real, but mostly the domain of the nobility. Trials are a form of theatre, where the nobility knows how to tip the scale, but your mentor knows how to tip them back.
It introduces some very enjoyable mechanics, in which knowledge of each spell’s effects and conditions constitutes its own evidence. Tyrion bears his own magical ability that lets him view the thoughts of witnesses. He is also accompanied by the defendant of his first case, a mercenary-mage named Celeste, who gets a lot of investigation banter with Tyrion, much like Maya and Phoenix.
Five cases in all, and none of them are shortened crapshoot cases, nor is there a downer ending; all the major threads conclude with satisfying endings, and the developer hopes to make a sequel from the world they’ve built.
Oh, and as is common for AA games, take a listen to “Eye of Horus”, the game’s equivalent of the “Objection!” theme when Tyrion nails a contradiction. The game’s soundtrack as a whole has some real bangers, for both the high points and the emotional pulls.
The Masterplan is a true heist game. You know that fantasy of playing out a heist from Heat? This is that game. It’s top down, and you control all of the members of the crew. You pick your time to initiate the heist, you hold up people at gunpoint, you prevent them from being a hero, and you try your best to get out with the best score that you can. It’s a real bummer that this team never got to make another game.
To be honest, I lost interest in Minecraft about 10 years ago, and never played with mods. I’ve seen some hilarious playthroughs on YouTube though, I really enjoyed the custom animations RubberRoss made.
But how about the Infinity matter dominator sword mod? It contains some of the most convoluted and basically unachievable crafting recipes Ive ever seen, just scroll down and enjoy the ride
Magnetic By Nature is a 2D platformer where you are generally using either attract or repel mechanics. I came across this game on the PAX East show floor, and it really wowed me. I may be one of only a few hundred people who ever played it. There’s a bonus chapter, after the credits, that was kind of bullshit, but the 7 or so hours of gameplay before it was fun, challenging, and unique. Initially available for like $15, it’s now down to $1, and it’s a steal at that price.
Spectrobes, spent a ton of time in all 3 games as a kid. Apparently the 3rd game sold pretty poorly even though I would argue it was probably the best of the 3. It had just about everything one would want from a pokemon rpg, it even allowed for 2 players! Super upset that Disney killed it :(
New entry should absolutely follow the footsteps of the 3rd game (origins). Only thing I would hope that is improved is some of the terrain paths were kinda narrow and hard to accurately maneuver the horse-like mount around. That super frustrated me as a kid as it was much faster than walking, but all the time you ended up losing from getting caught on terrain, having to dismount/dismiss the mount, turn around, then resummon/remount made it more efficient to just walk.
The combat was fun enough on the 3rd, but my absolute favorite part was the excavation of fossils. Trying to go as fast as I could while also being super careful to not damage the fossil and having that linked to better stats for spectrobes was SO much better than breeding/catching new pokemon to me. It felt much more engaging than hoping for good rng.
If they won’t make a new one, the least they should do is remaster the games for switch. Which they also probably wouldn’t have to do much for the remaster as I would argue even the original version looks the same/better graphically than the latest pokemon releases for switch.
I didn’t play the one on the Wii, but from what I’ve seen, I think I’d prefer a mix of all 3 games. I feel like the combat had slightly more depth on the DS games, but Origins did more in 3 dimensions and had a Spectrobe follow you in the overworld.
I don’t remember much about the combat from the ds games other than the enemy ai could be cheesed by running around the perimeter of the battle arena while waiting for abilities/geos to cool down. If they had a better ai or higher difficulty I would take any of the combat options though!
Edit: found old ds and first game, played for a bit and the combat is alright, would definitely benefit from a lock onto enemy feature, and better enemy ai. The circling the perimeter works even better than I remember and allows for easy battles. The movement in combat also has some drift to it which I remember disliking alot back in the day. Also the using geos as an ultimate weapon in battle is still satisfying, upon using one you get a sick cut scene of the ultimate spectrobes you used and brings back lots of memories of using them in tough battles to turn the tide! Forgot about how you level 3 separate stats which each can add levels to the spectrobes which made building specific stat based spectrobes super engaging. Also the incubator rooms (4 of them!) allowed you to feed the minerals you excavated to the spectrobes. Also the excavation mini game is lightyears ahead of what pokemon implemented in Gen 4 and way more engaging! Using the ds mic to blow away debris brought a smile to my face all these years later. This honestly should have been the pokemon killer it was made out to be.
Heaven’s Vault is a game about archaeology and translating a dead language. You explore a unique solar system and discover ruins, in which you uncover artifacts, and bits of text. Through context clues, you translate the passages to uncover the storyline. It’s not difficult, so if you’re looking for a puzzle, this won’t really do it for you, but it’s more of a narrative experience. If you aren’t sure about a word or phrase, you can give it a guess (based on assigning words from a collection of possible translations to specific symbols), and the game will remember that choice and let you slowly revise your translations as you find new text that rules out prior incorrect guesses. There’s an interconnected storyline with multiple paths to follow, and a very unique world - haven’t seen anything like it in other games.
The game has a NG+ mode wherein you start with all of your translations from the first playthrough intact, but, most of the bits of text are considerably longer and more involved, letting you use your prior knowledge to uncover more of the story and the lore of the world, which is also neat.
Didn’t know that! Was going based off of the review score; 1600 reviews in 5 years seemed pretty little-known. All the same, don’t mind the downvotes - that’s the point of the thread after all. :)
This sounds really interesting. I'm gonna put this on my wishlist in hopes it goes on sale or something. Can't justify $25 right now due to circumstances.
If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy Chants of Sennar! It’s also about translating languages; it’s more puzzle-oriented and less story-based; there’s a story to uncover, but it’s not as clear-cut and narrative driven. Still a great game, however!
A first person scifi FPS-RPG. Developed in Ukraine. Very unique experience wrapped inside of a concept that’s been done before. High slavjank tolerance required.
Arc the Lad in the art of the originals set after III. To be clear, Twilight of the Spirits would still be canon, but it’s also 1,000 years in the future.
It can be hard to encourage people to only do this for the obscure - and can sometimes lead to moments of “Witcher 3 / Factorio Unknown Indie Darling” moments. The dream is for threads like this to not contribute to successes that are already basically “lightning in a bottle”, but focus attention where developers haven’t seen so much of it.
Fair points, but I can’t participate in this thread because I’m on an instance that doesn’t allow down votes. The up vote solution is at least a bit more inclusive
Wait, I thought that only applies to communities on that instance, not to a case like this, where you are on another instance? Are you using an app or a browser based way to access the fediverse?
In Grotto, you play the role of a soothsayer living in a cave who is occasionally visited by members of a tribal society living nearby. They come to you with problems, and they want you to present your opinion, but you can’t speak. You have access to constellations of stars, which each hold different meanings, and you must present your answers in the form of a single constellation, which the petitioners are left to interpret.
You’ll feel a bit of frustration as your intended message is missed completely in favor of something that the petitioner wanted to hear, and the same constellation might mean different things to different people, but that’s just part of the game. The story unfolds around you and its progression is communicated to you only through the explanations your petitioners give for their visit. Each is a uniquely unreliable narrator, so what you believe is for you to decide.
Two endings, and an interesting story with some occasionally unexpected consequences that might make you feel bad, so if a game giving you a case of the sads is unappealing, maybe take that into consideration.
Final Profit: A Shop RPG is an RPG about a deposed elf queen who opens a humble shop and slowly advances through the ranks of the Bureau of Business with the eventual goal of defeating Capitalism from within. It’s unique. It has some incremental game like mechanics, and can get a little repetitive in the mid-game, but it has a surprisingly compelling story and a lot of unfolding mechanics that keep it interesting all the way through.
Roughly a 30 hour playthrough with many endings, NG+ and some optional challenge modes that remove or change some of the most obvious strategies for advancement, so if you finish it and still want more, you can play through again with a somewhat different experience.
Man this made me feel guilty downvoting. Great game, a real surprise packet for me, think I got it in a Humble Bundle and tried on a whim and had a great time.
Think it’s an Aussie dev (single person?) too, and still getting pretty frequent large content updates
The dev is also very responsive! I left a (positive) review with some critical feedback and they commented on it very quickly and had a bit of a dialog with me about the comments I’d made; they ended up revising the Steam page based on review feedback (mine and others), too, which made me want to support them even more!
It’s unfortunate that RPGMaker games have such a consistent and distinct aesthetic, it’s really obvious when a game was made with the engine, and a lot of the reviews mention it, too.
That said, this is definitely one of the best RPGMaker games I’ve played. They really stretch what’s possible with it. Can’t get away from that look, though.
The worst part is, there are certain ways a top down spritework game can look unique, and even put some personality on the characters. But the classic NES RPG look just seems so arcadey and wrong to me.
Avorion - In which you command and build a spaceship designed by yourself (or others on the internet). Soon you have AIs you command and space stations you own. The game allows you to lean as much or as little as you want into the fleet command and economy aspects. If you want, you can just pilot one big-ass ship and do it all alone.
I had a good amount of fun with this game, it's a shame I have to downvote it. It was a little difficult to get into at first, but I stuck with it and had a lot of fun. I chose to develop a big-ass ship like you speak of and eventually became a lumpy Death Star knockoff.
Honestly 5 had a lot going for it. It removed radio tower puzzles. It way cleaned up on absurd collectaton mechanics of 4, which had gone way too overboard. The survialist bunkers were a neat mechanic to replace a lot of collectaton stuff. I actually enjoyed the side games like the fishing. The gunplay and the customization was iterated on and improved. The editor where you could make your own missions and post them online was really cool (I made a lot of super complicated stealth missions).
The vibe of the game was pretty good, and the villains were engaging enough. It’s really just the main plot that falls to pieces and only at the very end does it become impossible to ignore how dumb it is.
I think that in mechanical design, 5 is a straight improvement on 3 and 4.
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