Still top 10 right now in concurrent players on steam. Every other game on the tier list is a free to play game or Dune(with less players than Nightreign) and Dune is a big IP with a multimillion movie trilogy. Calling it flop is absurd.
I’ll throw in a few that I enjoyed (all pc with a controller):
Hollow knight (probably the common favorite). Fun gameplay, interesting story, felt like a great entry into the genre as someone who didn’t like them previously.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Really interesting farming mechanics to unlock new skills and fun combat. I think I liked this one mostly for the gameplay and don’t remember the story much.
Grime. This one felt really, really clunky at first. However, like most games in the genre, it really picked up at one point and I enjoyed the whole experience. I think there were some sections that really dragged on but overall a fun game with interesting movement, mechanics, and enemies.
Ori and the will of the wisps (don’t love blind forest personally)
Blasphemous 1 and 2
Pretty much all the 2d metroids, especially Dread
Guacamelee 1 and 2
The messenger kinda
Steamworld dig 2
Animal Well
Oh and what I like about them. Exploration is 90% of a good metroidvania for me. Unlocking abilities and finding secrets in old locations is just my favorite gameplay loop. I don’t tend to love super linear metroidvanias a-la Metroid fusion, though it’s still a good game. But exploration usually can’t be all of it. Combat if it’s there should be decent at best, puzzles are always good. But really if exploration isn’t there just right I probably won’t love it. Also most of these I play on steam deck / PC. Except metroid
“released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on May 30, 2025. It received generally positive reviews and sold 3.5 million units.[1]”
So, first, it doesn’t matter how many concurrent players it has, it sold 3.5 million so it’s not a flop.
Second, it was released on 5 platforms, you are looking at concurrent players on Steam only.
I see most of my faves have already been covered by others, so I’m going to add the Metroid Prime games. Unlike the mainline Metroid games, which are awesome in their own right, the Metroid Prime games are played from a first person perspective.
You still get to explore, you still get power-ups, but because you can scan almost anything with Samus’ visor, there’s some actual worldbuilding, which the mainline Metroid games didn’t really start doing until Metroid Fusion (which was alright, but Metroid Dread did a better job at worldbuilding, I feel). As for the platform, I played the GameCube versions on the Wii.
Pretty much every single game has a massive drop off in concurrent players after the initial spike. That’s just how humans work, not everyone who tries something will like it.
I bounce around and go through “phases” of games I like to play quite regularly. Sometimes I like boomer shooters, sometimes I like platformers, sometimes I like RPGs, sometimes I like a weird mix of all of them.
I was going to say outer worlds as well (outer WILDS is a fantastic game IMO) the game was entirely competent, just unimpressive in every way. Except Pavarti, she is a precocious sugar dumpling and must be protected at all costs.
Actual conversation had with my wife, who was watching me play near the end:
“That chick is cute. I bet her romance is adorable!”
“She’s aromantic and asexual, you can’t romance her.”
“I bet her quest line is fun”
“Nope. It’s a really boring fetch quest where you set her up on a date with some bland woman old enough to be her mother. She is also very obviously sexually and romantically attracted to this woman.”
“…huh.”
I love Parvati but Drinking Sapphire Wine is a terrible quest.
I thought The Outer Worlds was violently mediocre, and yeah, its really long uninteresting fetch quest, but:
Parvati says she’s not interested in physical affection, but I don’t recall her ever saying she was aromantic. The closest thing I remember is that she feels like she’s better at dealing with machines than people, which definitely doesn’t mean the same thing.
I also don’t recall her ever saying anything sexual about Junlei?
how old does this woman look to you that you think she could have a 28 year old daughter?
The quest was nothing new sure, but the reason I’m doing the quest? I want her to have the best dam date ever. I just wanted to see her happy and help her get ready for her date. Not sure what they were talking about with her being aromatic, don’t remember that. And about the age thing? not sure what they meant by that either, she looks the same age as Pavarti to me.
There was an old one on the first sega console controlling different knights on a board. It was the first game of its kind i played but could never remember what it was.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne