Noita, a precedurally-generated fully destructible, with physics, pixel-graphics action rogue-like game where you play as a mage going through the various layers of a dungeon with the use of your spells that one can spell mix and match with a wand system that can provide the player with interesting and wacky spell combinations.
I’m playing through Turbo Overkill right now which has the high-poly model and smooth animations but gritty low-res texture thing going on, and I like it. I’d take stylized textures that are visually interesting over boring photorealistic textures in most cases.
Nightdive’s System Shock remake is probably my favorite example of that same aesthetic.
I think games with sprites are great, but I can't say the same for low poly 3d games. Not every 3d game needs to have super high fidelity with millions of polygons making up each character's face, but I think games using n64/ps1-style models is a bit too far in the opposite direction.
There’s a game with pre-rendered backgrounds called Alisa. I always really enjoyed the pre-render look. The excitement of reaching a “cinematic FMV” that moves the story in a PS1 game is very different from standard cutscenes.
I need to mention the Enigma Trilogy here. It uses the retro graphics so well to its advantage to create a strong horror atmosphere that I don’t think could have been done anywhere near as well with high fidelity graphics.
I enjoy games that go for retro graphics, because with today’s technology they can do so much more with less.
As far as suggestions: any boomer shooter (Selaco, Supplice, Incision), others people have already mentioned in this thread like Signalis and Dread Delusion, and more like Tenebris Somnia which mixes 8-bit pixel graphics with live-action cutscenes.
I did see a few low-poly, very PS1 or N64-looking indies recently, even going as far as mimicking the weird texture wobbling from the PS1.
But Penny’s big breakaway is not really low-poly, or something that looks like 5th gen/PS1. Not graphically anyway.
Though it’s mechanically rather retro, with the focus on move combos, scoring and speedrunning. It’s almost more of a linear kind of skate or jet set radio-like game than a platformer.
You should check out path of exile 2 it seems like they might be addressing a lot of your concerns with the genere. And GGG (the makers of poe2) are actually a really good company to support
Signalis (low-poly (not that you can notice), low-res, CRT effect)
CrossCode (2D, low-res)
Valheim (low-poly, low-res, still graphically intensive due to lighting)
Lethal Company (low-res, bitcoin miner levels of GPU load)
Super Alloy Ranger (2D, low-res)
Terraria (you know Terraria, don’t lie)
Iconoclasts (2D, low-res)
Starbound (Terraria, but a bit worse and in space)
I don’t think these games aim for nostalgia, nostalgia alone is not a good reason to choose low-poly or low-res graphics.
Low-res textures and sprites have the advantage of being much easier for artists not only to hand draw, but to explicitly choose what details to give to a certain surface.
3D games with low-res rendering also have their own appeal, like you say: they tell you what you’re looking at but still leaves your imagination the burden of filling in the details.
To me low-poly models don’t really have their own appeal, unlike pixelated visuals, however I also don’t mind them at all.
I still occasionally play games like Perfect Dark and TLoZ: OoT on their recompiled PC ports, they look good despite their low-poly nature because they don’t need high-poly models and their animations would look uncanny if they did (goofy ahh textures though).
However, there are some retro effects that I find to be straight up ugly: Signalis applies a CRT effect occasionally, which I can’t say I’m fond of.
Well if you liked PoE I doubt you’ll like D4. It’s a much simpler game. Sadly my only advice is to try GD and Last Epoch again. I’ve got hundreds of hours in the former and I just got 10 hours into the latter.
Last Epoch feels like a more approachable PoE. I thoroughly enjoy how the skills interplay with one another, but I still prefer the itemization in Grim Dawn.
The only reason I’m not playing GD currently is because I have too many QoL mods installed so my cloud saving doesn’t work, but I can cloud save for Last Epoch for my steam deck lmao.
Season 4 is a lot more fun, but I still think D3 is a better game. But if you compare D4 to what D3 was like at after release, D4 is in much better shape. It’s definitely heading in the right direction, and I suspect that the expansion in August will make it much better, similar to how D2 and D3 did.
Back to season 4, I leveled to max level, maxed out the battle pass, and experienced all of the content and that was good enough for me. I want really interested in sticking around to switch to better build and get the best gear.
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