Monster Hunter Rise and Deep Rock Galactic! Trying to increase my master rank and unlock all the Risen elders. Doing event quests that interest me, and finally taking a jab at arena quests.
DRG is just fun as hell and it's kinda relaxing at the same time. Not too far into it but greatly enjoying every moment.
I've never heard or seen anybody else mention Suzerain. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure political strategy game, which is pretty unique. You are the new leader of a fictional nation wrestling with corruption. Your decisions will affect the outcome. Game is only $6 on Steam right now and is well worth it.
Also worth mentioning Ostriv, a beautiful city-builder in which you build an 18th Century Ukrainian village, complete with individual little villagers wearing their villager clothes. It's lovely and made by ONE GUY, as best I can tell? Also, last I saw, the entire game was somehow under 1 GB, if I remember correctly. It's absurd.
It’s old enough that I can’t attest to how hidden it was/is, but Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery is likely the greatest 3 hours I’ve spent in a single videogame. It’s chock-full of confidence and style and atmosphere. The story is nothing unique but the presentation is everything. Pixellated graphics contrasted with vivid sound design and a glorious soundtrack. I love everything about it.
I’d recommend dabbling in the tcg live app on mobile/pc, i believe you can enter your deck codes if you still have them & practice with the current legal standard
Creeper World: A mix of tower defense and rts (with pause function) against a ever expanding goo called creep. The fourth installment is 3D and the next one will be a side-view spinoff.
Tales of Maj’Eyal: Quite popular among the people who are into traditional roguelikes, but I very very rarely see it mentioned outside that community. It’s definitely the (nearly) traditional roguelike I put the most time into thanks to its class/ability system that bridges the gap between roguelike and turn based rpg really well.
The Captain: Technically not indie as it was published by Tomorrow Corp (of World of Goo/Little Inferno/etc. fame) instead of the devs themselves. A mix between old school point and click game, but as a highly episodic space adventure. You travel from planet to planet on an overarching mission and each planet has its own interactive short story. Some are longer, some are very short and you never quite know what you’ll find before you land. All of the short stories have multiple endings depending on how you tackle the moral dilemmas it throws at you.
Infinity Wars actually released before the rise of Hearthstone and also before the popular Avengers movie of the same name. It is to this day one of my favorite digital TCGs, and I played so many of them. Before I get into the main thing that I love about it, I wanna mention that every single card’s base version (colorless) is free, anyone can build any deck for free the moment they pick up the game and be 100% competitive with everyone else. The only thing they monetize is bling. Unlike in most mainstream TCGs both players do their turns at the same time in secret, once they both lock in, their moves play out. This gives way for some insane mindgames and outplays that eclipse those in any other TCG I’ve played. It is a bit rough around the edges, so it might be more of a “hidden diamond in the rough” than a hidden gem.
Bombernauts is a really fun party game. To sum it up in one sentence: “Imagine if Bomberman was a platform fighter.” If you have friends to play with it, buy it on a sale, crank powerup drops up to the max (they stack, which took us hours to figure out), maybe download a mappack and I’m sure you’ll have a blast if the trailer looked any fun to you. There’s virtually no chance to play it with strangers through as it is super dead.
Lastly I wanna give a shoutout to Clonk. Clonk is (or was) a 2D sidescrolling game-series that is visually reminiscent of Lemmings. The gameplay is a sort of mix between Minecraft or Terraria (predating it by many many years) and very very very low-pop RTS. It’s a mission based game where you control around 1-3 Clonks (the lemmings) and has full online multiplayer support. The missions can range from “build a base in this active volcano”, “take out the enemy team’s castle”, “win this wizarding duel” to “build a bridge across this canyon”. What made it truly unique was the community and community creations though. It was created with the explicit purpose to be customizable and users made many, many different maps and modes. It was to me what Minecraft was to the kids in the generation after me (without all the content creators, of course). Some people made an entire RPG in it. Others made what was essentially Among Us, just to give you an idea. Sadly the spiritual open source successor Open Clonk could never recapture the magic for me, and I guess I’m not alone in that because it pretty much died around 5 years ago. If I could make one game popular overnight, it would be Clonk. It did warm my heart to see that some of the celebrated custom map/mode creators from back then ended up getting into gamedev. One of the games developed by someone I remember from back then is Vintage Story.
Holy fuck I rambled a lot about Clonk and I still feel like I’d have so much more to say but this isn’t the most fitting thread for that.
shoutout to nice explanation and link. I’m like 5k hours into Tales of Maj Eyal, and confirm it is excellent, especially after unlocking the adventurer, which allow to combine any of the 100+ skill trees.
I will try Infinity war, seems up my alley and less grindy then MtG
Hacknet. You play as a novice hacker who investigates the disappearance of a character by hacking into other people’s computers to gather information.
The hacking mechanic is fairly realistic and requires you to use the terminal a lot, so it really makes you feel like a hacker. Pretty short and sweet game, and the soundtrack is pretty good as well
Oh, I really love Hacknet! Played the main game and the DLC. Discovered it one day while browsing Rémi Gallego’s (aka The Algorithm) discography, and found out that he did some tracks for the OST
Just recently started Lunacid, and I’m having a blast. I’m a fan of dungeon synth and its subgenres, and I"ve been looking for a game that has those vibes for quite some time. This one seems to fit the bill quite a bit. And I also have wanted to check out King’s Field, but was afraid that it might be too dated to be enjoyable; Lunacid seems like a fresh take on that dungeon crawler style of gameplay. The only thing the game lacks imo is a dedicated pause button
Antichamber is hidden gem or simply forgotten? I don’t know how much attention it got in its time.
It’s a puzzle platformer but I was feeling my brain bend the whole game. And at the same time I never felt like the new mechanic was explained too little or something was artificially dragged out. Very good design.
Antichamber is great. Feels like a completely different universe with its own set of rules you need to discover. Also really interesting to see a puzzle game with an almost metroidvania-like progression, with the gates being your own knowledge of the mechanics.
Hosted a multiplayer world and didn’t have any serious issues, but according to everyone else playing with me it was laggy as shit (and I’m kown for having the best internet in my group)
Despite trying I never got Into pokemon as a kid so my judgment isn’t worth much in that regard, but it’s still very much an unfinished game, as everyone buying it should know in advance.
It was fun but I probably never would have bought it without friends to play it with, and I probably won’t launch it again until it’s far more complete.
Hmmm… how about the Rusty Lake games? They’re weird. Or maybe Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk? Adventure puzzler and VN respectively.
I probably have a few more if I think about it. My friend and I randomize my steam list to decide things to play and there were quite a few interesting ones I got from who knows where-- bundles and bundles.
And they’re also linked. It’s a really cool rabbit hole to go down. Definitely recommend them to people who are into games with some meta elements to them!
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