If you like Horrified, you should try and track down the Ravensburger Wonder Woman game. Similar style but has an awesome mechanic to prevent coop quarterbacking.
Players strategize using a set of face up cards, but receive some face down cards afterward and have to program 3 actions using the whole set without communicating, adapting plans based on the newly revealed cards. Then each action plays out simultaneously for all players. It makes sense in action and is really quite elegant. I’m a big fan.
Cottage Garden is very satisfying. You Tetris together garden pieces to fill plots and you can cover a single spot with a sleeping kitty. There’s scoring and competition, but it’s not antagonistic in any way.
I’m also a big fan of cooperative games in general.
It’s hilarious and incredible how we still haven’t made a Metroidvania game that solidly and undeniably bests the game that added the -vania in the first place.
Max Payne 2 is one of my favorite games of all time on any platform. Great memories. I don’t like how Remedy went so far down the artsy unintelligible plotting road after that, but they’re still one of the best developers out there in my opinion.
Binding of Isaac is some OG classic stuff if you haven’t played that one, and Neon Abyss is a fun side-scrolling game on a similar vibe. Rogue Legacy 1 (very OG) and 2 and Dead Cells are also side scrolling , with a dash of Metroidvania.
If you like Slay the Spire, Astrea is the same thing but with dice, and Monster Train also scratches the same itch.
To this day, if I turn to my best friend and say “sup”, his response will either be “Oh, not much, just… keeping it real.” or just “Word.” Vice versa as well.
These are the exact responses Seaman gives, which we deliver with proper intonation and all.
I remember them boasting that an architect contributed to the level design. Turns out, real world environment design didn’t map to early 2000’s game design very well.
Now designing a modern VR game or something, that might be a different story.
I agree that there’s a ton of good stuff coming from the indie scene and also some amazing modding of existing games out there (check the Flat2VR discord - they just modded full VR support with motion controls into Silent Hill 2 Remake), but despite all the complaints about the PSVR2 library, there is more than enough gold in there to keep a lot of people entertained for a very long time, and some of it is truly AAA stuff. The headset itself is extremely well designed and easy to pick up and play, and the amount of tech you get is pretty nuts.
I’ve heard it’s pretty minimally supported on the PC because they’re kind of trying to get away with building half of a bridge (spoiler: it won’t work) but even without features like haptics and eye tracking, it’s a reasonable baseline headset. There may be some Bluetooth inconsistencies for some though, if I remember correctly.