I don’t know if Gothic 1 and 2 qualify as true cult classics or not, but clunky controls and interface aside, these are two of the best games I have played in my life. Gothic 2 especially. The games offer an atmosphere like nothing I’ve ever played. The soundtrack, themes, and overall color pallete provide this rich and stirring ambience that always manages to make me feel as though I’m exploring an ancient pine forest on a dark, rainy day. See for yourself.
You can feel the spirit of the entire franchise contained within the first two minutes of that audio track, perfectly encapsulated. It was an entire world apart and years ahead of its time. If it resonates with you, then these games are absolutely worth the initial difficulty of figuring out those ridiculous keyboard controls. But if you’re really struggling with them, just read up on the Gothic 1 storyline and then skip straight to Gothic 2. It picks up right where the first leaves off. You won’t miss a tremendous amount, and the controls and gameplay are infinitely improved. However, sticking G1 out long enough to figure out what you’re doing will make G2 far more rewarding when you reunite with various characters and revisit previously explored areas.
A studio is remaking Gothic 1, but everything I’ve seen of it so far is about as faithful to Gothic 1 as The Dark Tower movie was to the books. They’ve massacred it. So stick with the originals.
To latch on to this: the first Elex, a game by the same studio as the Gothic series, is, despite the average reception by critics, THE definition of a flawed masterpiece! So many things to criticize (too difficult early in the game, bad cut scenes, flawed combat) but the main focus of the game, the open world filled with tons of monster and people to interact with, is just great! I loved how exploration is encouraged and rewarded, how there are meaningful desicions and characters that can be killed off. The world is huge and all though the general atmosphere is post apocalyptic, the developer somehow managed to fit a middle age type fraction and a science fiction type (Clerics) fraction in to the game. Also smaller groups you can’t join.
Elex has a very special place in my gamer heart and all though I can’t flat out recommend it to everyone I would say if you have a soft spot for open world games that do not play like the average Ubi game and don’t hold your hand the whole time, I say: check it out, it’s pretty cheap in most places!
The original Leisure Suit Larry series, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Myst, Half-life, Doom, Quake, Lemmings, … For more fire up your retropie or recalbox on a raspberry pi.
A metroidvania with time travel elements, you are a robot that can see the future investigating a planet, every time you save it creates a vertice in a timeline tree where you can jump around. I wish it was more ambitious but with the small team and budget, it did what it wanted pretty well, with my critique being a lack of polish in a few areas.
A hard sci-fi 2D space mining sim.
“A physics-based mining sim, set in the thickest debris field in Sol. Every action has a reaction, lasers are invisible without a medium, and your thrust is a potent weapon. Find trade, adapt your equipment to your playstyle, hire a crew to help. Unravel the mysteries of the rings, or just get rich.”
∆V is absolutely fantastic! It just got 1.0 a couple weeks back and the dev is super down to earth, hope people check this out and it becomes a bigger hit.
Last game I played on it, yesterday, was Just Cause 3. It’s… not great. The game just doesn’t run consistently enough and is too CPU heavy.
I recently played Red Dead Redemption 2 on it, that was great. Surprisingly so. I’m playing Skyrim now. I’ve had the game for years but never took the time to properly get into it. I beat the main quest and messed with mods back in the day but that’s it.
Now, I’m playing it vanilla and I want to just go deep into the game, completely ignoring the main quest, I don’t want to be the hero, if the universe needs saving, it can find someone else. Khajiit have caves to explore and stuff. Oh and the new Survival Mode is neat!
I don’t have any advice, but I’m seeing bugs even in Windows. The right click menu in the system tray isn’t sized properly so half of it is cut off and there’s no way to select the cut off menu options, even with keyboard input.
I have to open up the entire app just to exit steam. I’ve seen other UI bugs too.
I think the new UI is nice overall but it’s very buggy. Might not even be an issue with Linux, just a buggy app.
even in Windows. The right click menu in the system tray isn’t sized properly so half of it is cut off and there’s no way to select the cut off menu options
Maybe this will fix your issue? It enables the full right click menu without the “show more” garbage. I’m on windows 11 22h2 and it’s working fine for me. Never had an issue with it that I’m aware of.
edit that I misread your message and this isn’t really relevant at all to your issue. but the “show more” button is super annoying so i didn’t delete my reply incase someone else is annoyed by it.
I really love sunless sea and sunless skies. They are so beautiful and story rich. Extremely simple game mechanics. You basically explore an unknown map, uncover the story, make choices and allegiances and do your best to survive.
I personally found Sunless Sea to get boring after a while to the point of giving up on it. I think DREDGE might be more appealing, though I haven’t played it: store.steampowered.com/app/1562430/DREDGE/
DREDGE is great, and does overlap with Sunless Seas in some ways, but is nowhere near as story driven (or weird). That said, it’s a lot easier/more forgiving, and has a simpler (and potentially more engaging) main gameplay loop.
I love the Sunless/Fallen London setting, and really wish Seas had some of the improvements of Skies, as I think I prefer the setting of Seas, but I’ve found it hard to go back to, having played Skies.
Acid Spy is a first person stealth action game set in a cyberpunk universe. Infiltrate heavily guarded bases and take down your enemies with skill and finesse. Master the art of quick, deadly stealth to become the acid spy.
The Age of Decadence is CRPG set in a post-apocalypse ish, in which an analogue to the Roman Empire ruled most of the world until the collapse of civilisation, now it’s mostly city states struggling to survive and reclaim the old magitek of the empire.
Underrail: Life on earth’s surface has been made inhospitable ages ago, and the remains of humanity now live in the metro system called underrail and the caverns around it.
Both are isometric, turn based games that focus on combat and exploration. And they are hard. Builds are incredibly important, almost min maxing but they have a wide range of viable builds, especially the first one where you can play the entire game without fighting a single battle, all through alternative solutions and skill checks.
Have you played Colony Ship, by the same devs as Age of Decadence? I’ve been keeping an eye on it for a while and looks to be real close to its 1.0 release, but I’ve not heard or read a lot about it.
When I was a kid, I used to “play” Operation Flashpoint. I remember being too dumb to realise that the mouse was used to move the camera so it was basically me moving around with arrow keys and strafing to see a little to the left and right.
RUINER: Isometric twin-stick shooter with a 10/10 soundtrack. Basically zero advertisement, i only ever found out about it because I listen to similar music and got the soundtrack reccomended to me by the YT algorithm.
The Ascent is a longer game and leans harder into RPG elements than Ruiner ever does. For me, Ruiner ran better and like @Catastrophic235 says, the music is incredible. Blows The Ascent’s soundtrack out of the water. Ruiner might have slightly tighter controls too, but I’d have to replay to confirm since I played it with a mouse/keyboard while I played The Ascent with a controller.
Never played the ascent but heard it was meh. Controls for Ruiner were pretty tight, my only complaint is that I’d sometimes get caught on an object/wall that wasn’t very easy to see, but it was never more than a minor inconvenience.
I’ve seen Tametsi, Hexcells, and Bombe continually recommended online as hidden gems but I’ve put off buying any because I’m not much of a Minesweeper fan. I should really give them a try sometime though, since I think the luck aspect is my least favorite part of Minesweeper. Thanks for sharing!
I bought Tametsi recently based at another recommendation thread. It’s really good - it eliminates the big issue with minesweeper which is that sometimes you have to guess. In Tametsi you always have enough information for your next move which completely changes how it feels. It almost ends up feeling more like Sudoku with the “ok so if that’s true then that can’t be true” type steps in logic.
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