This might be a slightly unusual attempt at a prompt, but might draw some appealing unusual options.
The way it goes: Suggest games, ideally the kind that you believe would have relatively broad appeal. Don’t feel bad about downvotes, but do downvote any game that’s suggested if you have heard of it before (Perhaps, give some special treatment if it was literally your game of the year). This rule is meant to encourage people to post the indie darlings that took some unusual attention and discovery to be aware of and appreciate.
If possible, link to the Steam pages for the games in question, so that anyone interested can quickly take a look at screenshots and reviews. And, as a general tip, anything with over 1000 steam reviews probably doesn’t belong here. While I’d recommend that you only suggest one game per post, at the very most limit it to three.
If I am incorrect about downvotes being inconsequential account-wide, say so and it might be possible to work out a different system.
In Grotto, you play the role of a soothsayer living in a cave who is occasionally visited by members of a tribal society living nearby. They come to you with problems, and they want you to present your opinion, but you can’t speak. You have access to constellations of stars, which each hold different meanings, and you must present your answers in the form of a single constellation, which the petitioners are left to interpret.
You’ll feel a bit of frustration as your intended message is missed completely in favor of something that the petitioner wanted to hear, and the same constellation might mean different things to different people, but that’s just part of the game. The story unfolds around you and its progression is communicated to you only through the explanations your petitioners give for their visit. Each is a uniquely unreliable narrator, so what you believe is for you to decide.
Two endings, and an interesting story with some occasionally unexpected consequences that might make you feel bad, so if a game giving you a case of the sads is unappealing, maybe take that into consideration.
fantastic game by the makers of Laika, check out their whole ludography
Occult Crime Police is a fantastic free offering for those looking for a bit more Ace Attorney. It mostly follows the gameplay of Ace Attorney games, in which you investigate murder scenes involving strange, paranormal phenomena, and then discover contradictions in people’s witness accounts to uncover the culprit. It’s a bit easy, but maintains some great humor and charming animation production value.
Adding one more to the Ace Attorney spinoff block:
Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is a well-written fan spinoff of the AA formula, taking place in a fantasy universe where magic is real, but mostly the domain of the nobility. Trials are a form of theatre, where the nobility knows how to tip the scale, but your mentor knows how to tip them back.
It introduces some very enjoyable mechanics, in which knowledge of each spell’s effects and conditions constitutes its own evidence. Tyrion bears his own magical ability that lets him view the thoughts of witnesses. He is also accompanied by the defendant of his first case, a mercenary-mage named Celeste, who gets a lot of investigation banter with Tyrion, much like Maya and Phoenix.
Five cases in all, and none of them are shortened crapshoot cases, nor is there a downer ending; all the major threads conclude with satisfying endings, and the developer hopes to make a sequel from the world they’ve built.
Oh, and as is common for AA games, take a listen to “Eye of Horus”, the game’s equivalent of the “Objection!” theme when Tyrion nails a contradiction. The game’s soundtrack as a whole has some real bangers, for both the high points and the emotional pulls.
This is SOLID GOLD holy shit
edit: OKAY I FINISHED THE FIRST CASE ABSOLUTELY PLAY THIS
Continuing this in the same thread as it’s a bit topical:
Are you a fan of Love Live! School Idol? Me neither! I basically knew nothing about it at all. Regardless, Gyakuten Live is an incredibly detailed cutesy Ace Attorney style game, in which the characters of the show gather for “school trials”. Though you may need to put up with a cutesier all-girl cast, and the stakes are much lighter and involve things like stolen possessions rather than murder, the mysteries end up having a surprising number of twists and even some heartfelt motives at the end. Features a fully custom soundtrack and LOTS of custom artwork, matched with some traditionally silly Ace Attorney humor.
So far, THREE cases are available, and each features a different prosecutor. The game’s page lists plans to continue up to 6 episodes.
In ItchIO’s standard, the game is “name your own price” - so you can choose to download it for free. It’s unlikely to come to Steam since it technically infringes on an anime/manga without permission.
One more coming if my AA recommendations are well received.
Ooh, I’ll play.
Final Profit: A Shop RPG is an RPG about a deposed elf queen who opens a humble shop and slowly advances through the ranks of the Bureau of Business with the eventual goal of defeating Capitalism from within. It’s unique. It has some incremental game like mechanics, and can get a little repetitive in the mid-game, but it has a surprisingly compelling story and a lot of unfolding mechanics that keep it interesting all the way through.
Roughly a 30 hour playthrough with many endings, NG+ and some optional challenge modes that remove or change some of the most obvious strategies for advancement, so if you finish it and still want more, you can play through again with a somewhat different experience.
Man this made me feel guilty downvoting. Great game, a real surprise packet for me, think I got it in a Humble Bundle and tried on a whim and had a great time.
Think it’s an Aussie dev (single person?) too, and still getting pretty frequent large content updates
The dev is also very responsive! I left a (positive) review with some critical feedback and they commented on it very quickly and had a bit of a dialog with me about the comments I’d made; they ended up revising the Steam page based on review feedback (mine and others), too, which made me want to support them even more!
I really can’t handle the RPGMaker look of it.
I’m willing to give it a try though
It’s unfortunate that RPGMaker games have such a consistent and distinct aesthetic, it’s really obvious when a game was made with the engine, and a lot of the reviews mention it, too.
That said, this is definitely one of the best RPGMaker games I’ve played. They really stretch what’s possible with it. Can’t get away from that look, though.
The worst part is, there are certain ways a top down spritework game can look unique, and even put some personality on the characters. But the classic NES RPG look just seems so arcadey and wrong to me.
I think the To the moon series hides the fact that it’s RPG Maker rather well
Definitely another great one!
Moonlight Pulse (83 reviews)
Metroidvania with character-switching
This 2D platformer metroidvania has memorable characters and very cool worldbuilding. You switch between characters to match their abilities to the right situations. They live on a living, planet-sized creature and are fighting off the parasites that are slowly killing their creature-planet. You’ll swim through its blood vessels and explore its organs.
It’s not super long—I finished the story in 9 hours. It’s just about the right length to satisfy.
Magnetic By Nature is a 2D platformer where you are generally using either attract or repel mechanics. I came across this game on the PAX East show floor, and it really wowed me. I may be one of only a few hundred people who ever played it. There’s a bonus chapter, after the credits, that was kind of bullshit, but the 7 or so hours of gameplay before it was fun, challenging, and unique. Initially available for like $15, it’s now down to $1, and it’s a steal at that price.
Quest Master. Mario Maker meets Zelda dungeons, done well. It deserves way more attention than it’s currently getting, and it’s pretty fun with huge potential despite being early access.
This looks rad!
On a similar note I Wanna Maker which is more or less Mario Maker but free and tonnes of developer created and user created levels to play through.
Oh, that is great. I have fond (painful) memories of I Wanna be the Guy, and this seems right up my nostalgia alley.
I like this stuff and I wanted to get either this or Super Dungeon Maker.
But kinda hard to pick a side since they both look like they have overlapping small communities. And games like this, communities are the only reason to play.
Pick Quest Master. The developer is extremely active and responsive to community feedback and requests. There’s even weekly content updates.
Sold.
A first person scifi FPS-RPG. Developed in Ukraine. Very unique experience wrapped inside of a concept that’s been done before. High slavjank tolerance required.
I don’t have any suggestions but I do like this prompt and I see a lot of games I’ve never heard of
I don’t either but this is such a great discussion. I’ve come across quite a few interesting sounding games here. Thanks OP.
Aw yeah! This is where my knowledge of absurdly good but extremely niche games comes in. I think I’ll make multiple replies to this comment.
Think enter the gungeon combined with superhot, but simplified a lot. It’s a turn based bullet hell, and an excellent arcade game playable in the browser.
EDIT: I’d also like to take this oppurtunity to talk about flashpoint. Flashpoint is a massive archive of basically every flash game and animation, and you can even play them again.
However, in addition to flash projects, I also noticed that flashpoint also archives HTML/HTML5 games… but only a subset of them. Although flashpoint’s primary purpose still is as a flash archive, it can also be used as a curated list of HTML5 games.
Here is a website that lets you search the flashpoint database
This site has a few high quality browser games. The one I come back to is X Type, a bullet hell shoot-em up that has ever expanding enemy ship sizes, and never ends. It gets hard fast.
I also like Xibalba, which is a Doom/Wolfenstein style game playable in the browser.
The creator also did a rewrite of quake in 13 kb of javascript
That guy’s seriously talented!
Among the things he’s made, he’s also made some really nice, easy to understand, high-speed compression formats (QOI/QOA), as well as a public domain mpeg decoder.I’ve used all three for various projects and I’d highly recommend that most software developers check them out. If only for the learning experience.
A fnaf fangame that is close enough to feel like fnaf, but has a twist: Every single level also involves a puzzle. While trying to survive enemies fnaf style. Although I’ve never played this game, I LOVE watching it on Twitch. I like to call it “Human’s can’t multitask: The Game”.
Also by double speak games, and open source gridland is a variant on the match 3 style. During the day phase, you accrue and store resources, and build stuff. During the night phase, you fight.
A wonderful and life changing experience.
I like to link it without the ending title, like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1944240/ because it’s funnier when people can’t see the game title in the link.
Open source idle game, playable in browser. No clicking, just watching numbers go up.
Gameboy roguelike that is simple, but very elegant.
Sadly, since romhacking went down, I don’t think it’s possible to find the translation patch for it, unless they uploaded it to the internet archive.
Gameboy puzzle game. Very high quality.
Always love to see Mole Mania get some love. One of Shigeru Miyamoto’s earliest titles he worked on also
A simple but elegant io game. You are a ball, and you want to knock other balls to the ground.
One thing I like is that rounds in small, 4 person lobbies, rather than the massive worlds of other io games. Although you can’t really make friends, you can know personas, and it’s more personable.
Fun arcade bullet hell survivors (think vampire survivors) type game. Dodge bullets, and survive as long as you can.
Learn the pleasures of loving another human, and the pain of being a programmer — at the same time!
Fork of the older warsow, open source movement shooter. Think quake.
Sadly, it seems to be dead on steam.
Simple bike racing game, although the player is very fragile, which adds some difficulty. Playable in browser.
All the maps are user created content.
this game is really fun
Open source idle game, but not quite. It eventually expands beyond watching numbers go up, into a sort of roguelike, where you can wander the world and collect stuff. And die. Die a lot.
A Dark Room was where I first saw the @ symbol used to represent the player character.
A short questionaire game that demonstrates the difficulties of poverty.
Spent
This game hurts, got a bit of water in my eyes. Hit me in feeling bruh.
Addictive arcade game about archery. Reminds me of flappy bird, not in the raw mechanics, but in the way they are both addicting in the same manner.
A webgl/browser based 3d dungeon crawler with proceduraly generated levels.
Absolutely obligatory, the simply named “The Game” is a work of art, and truly a life changing experience. You’ll never think about things the same after experiencing “The Game”.
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So I have seen this came come across my radar several times and knowing that I am not actually a huge fan of this type of game but really enjoyed Verlet Swing do you think you would still recommend this game on fun and vibes alone?
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Oh verlet seing is a super indie darling but it’s got a strong vaporware synth vibe so I was wondering if it felt similar. But that’s still a glowibg review.
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Golf Club Nostalgia(917 Reviews)
This is a game that isn’t here for the game play. I think if you are paying at all attention to the boring dystopia, or climate collapse communities then this will hit in a way that is hard to define.
Its a golf game. Simple, could be played on a phone really, but you have to have the sound on for this one.
You are a member of the elite refugees who have fled to Mars and only return back to Earth to use the husk of a planet for a round of golf. And your companion is a lone radio broadcast from Mars of what they have left, which is stories and the rare music that was saved.The combination of overwhelmingly good world building and consistent vibe even down to the level names and journal entries hits like a train and made me cry at least a couple times.
It made me feel nostalgiac for a world that has not yet come to pass and is a great on sale pick.Sadly, it’s not available on PC, but it is available on Nintendo Switch (US eShop page linked above) and PlayStation 4 (and PlayStation 5 through backwards compatibility).
It’s a sci-fi game made by the creators of some games you might’ve heard of in passing (namely Dragon’s Crown, Odin Sphere, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, etc.), Vanillaware. I can’t go into any details about the game itself because of spoilers, but I will say it is quite simply the best and most uniquely told story I have ever seen in a game. It’s a game you have to experience for yourself. You should go into it as blind as possible, too.
I will say the English dub of the game is also surprisingly good, considering it was recorded almost entirely in COVID lockdown. The Atlus West sound engineers (Atlus published the game in the west) must’ve worked some incredible magic to get it to sound as good as it does.
If you liked this I really hope you’ve dug into 1000xRESIST. They’re not super similar but enough so that I think if you liked 13 Sentinels you’d probably like it also
I’ve started playing through it, but I’ve got other games currently that I’m focusing on (currently Trails in the Sky FC, then Persona 3 Reload: The Answer, and then Metaphor ReFantazio).
Ah, a fellow Into the Aether listener perhaps? Or maybe just a big JRPG fan 😁
I gotta check out Trails at some point. The whole tetralogy thing kinda puts me off in the same way Yakuza does but you gotta start somewhere I guess!
Yeah, I’m just a big JRPG fan.
As for the Trails series, I’ve been told that the best place to start is (understandably) the beginning. Play in release order. The first three games are in 2.5D (as opposed to 3D), but they actually hold up really well.
Most people (myself included) will recommend that you use a spoiler-free guide to avoid missing hidden quests and collectibles (such as a book series you’ll collect in its entirety over the course of the first game). I’m using this spoiler-free guide for my playthrough of the first game.
It’s also recommended that you go around talking to every NPC in the town you’re in every now and then. Dialogue updates as the main quest advances and, at times, if you’ve had an interaction with an NPC in (for example) a side quest and that NPC later pops up in the main quest, the NPC will remember that interaction from the side quest. Some NPCs also pop up in later games with their stories continuing (or so I’ve been told).
Almost every single Trails game is also available DRM-free with achievements on GOG. The only one missing is the latest game (which has a “coming soon” page). The series goes on sale on GOG pretty frequently, too.
Also, examine every chest twice: once to open it and once to see the “empty chest” dialogue. The English localizers noticed that, in the Japanese version of the game, instead of having the empty chests call a single line of dialogue multiple times, each chest had its own line to call. (It was the same thing copied and pasted every single time.) So they had some fun with it and made nearly every empty chest have unique dialogue.
Also, just today, during the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st, a remake of the first game in full 3D with the modern Trails aesthetic, was announced for a 2025 release worldwide. Though I don’t know how faithful it’ll be to the original game or to its localization. So you could wait for that if you want or just play the original trilogy immediately. But, again, the originals still hold up really well.
Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure 2 Classic (aka LBA2 or Twinsen’s Adventure)
You are Twinsen, a little tank-like controlled character that’s about to go on an adventure to save his planet!
The tank controls may be getting a bit used to, but you can jump, roll to the side, hop backwards, etc, so you can apply some creativity to your movement. Shout out to the Magicball Network for staying alive all those years!
Go out there, meet a godess, defeat a dictator!
Maize, a point and click/walking simulator/puzzle game about a secret military project to create sentient corn. Quite possibly the silliest game I’ve ever played.
Link doesn’t seem to work for me because the parentheses breaks the link.
Here’s the steam link for anyone else
That’s weird. The link should be to the Wikipedia entry but thanks for making a steam link too!
It is actually a Skyrim mod but basically a complete game that just happens to be built upon Skyrim. It features full professional quality voice acting in German and English, new game systems inspired by the Gothic series, a setting separate from Elder Scrolls, and a story that gets close to the quality of Planescape Torment or Disco Elysium. I can’t recommend it enough.
Ooh I still haven’t tried this. I wonder if it has any issues with Skyrim VR.
It takes some fiddling, but it works, and is fantastic!
It probably works with some tinkering. I would recommend completing it once the way the modders intended since they likely never tested their game with VR in mind.
