What are some hidden gem games you've played? The ones you think don't get enough love and deserve more attention.
What are some hidden gem games you've played? The ones you think don't get enough love and deserve more attention.
What are some hidden gem games you've played? The ones you think don't get enough love and deserve more attention.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is probably my go-to hidden gem. I keep nagging about it but it made a big impression on me. The writing was particularly impressive, with good prose in a distinctive tone and interesting world building plus some cool cosmic horror and Lovecraftian undertones. Beautiful pixel art - especially the splash screens - and some very nice CRT emulation filters that I recommend using as they really bring the look of the visuals together. Very fun - if a tad simple - turn based gameplay, plays a bit like a retro RPG but without the clunk. Appropriate amount of character customization for the length of the game with small skill trees, background choices and dice rolls in dialogue to make you feel like your character is your own. At around 20h it's a pleasantly short experience for a CRPG too, and what's nice about it is how concise it is - there's no filler and no grinding.
Esports Godfather was by far my surprise hit of last year. Came from absolutely nowhere and really charmed me, and I still think it's criminal that it's so underrated. The name is nonsensical yes, and at first glance you probably think it's a gimmicky word soup: MOBA-themed deckbuilder/autobattler/management game? But trust me it plays way, way better than you think. Yes, the translation is not great. Yes, the AI could use work and the game really isn't all that hard. But god damn if the game just isn't so much fun to play. From building a deck full of players and card combos that work with your preferred heroes to draft to fiddling with the Backpack Battles-esque block-rotating training minigame (that gets increasingly complex) the game is just an absolute blast. You get all the goodness of a MOBA but without any of the toxic teammates!
The post launch support has also been fantastic, and I've been meaning to return to it for quite some time now as they keep adding new mechanics and features. They did use AI art for the player portraits, but claimed to have trained the model on their own art? Do with that what you will. The art for all the rest, like cards and heroes etc is human made.
Everybody knows about What Became Of Edith Finch, but I want to talk about Giant Sparrow's other game: The Unfinished Swan. This is such a charming little light puzzler/exploration game with a fantastic picture-book aesthetic and a lovely story about loss, creativity and discovery of the unknown. The art direction is absolutely immaculate and there are several interesting mechanics at play that I found real joy in using to explore. The paint-splashing in particular is very unique and worth experiencing on its own, with perfect ludonarrative resonance of filling in this unfinished world. It's a short and linear game - you can probably finish it in one sitting on a weekend - but it doesn't need to be longer. A beautiful and surprisingly emotional journey that's stayed with me for quite a few years now.
I really suck at CRPG and I got stuck early in BG3. SKALD looks interesting and I am hoping it is more simple than BG3. Might give it a try. Thanks.
I didn't fiddle with them and just played on default, but SKALD has very extensive and granular difficulty settings. I forgot to mention that. You can tailor the game to be as easy as you want it I think, and I even think it has built in cheats to like, win combat instantly with the console you can bring up with the Tab key.
Heaven's Vault is one of my favorite games. I love finding items and translating things! I've tried Chants of Sennaar. It's not the same because Chants needs me to have some ability to avoid the mean guards occasionally lmfao.
I also like Astronaut: The Best. It's quirky. Often my missions fail horribly. But I like trying!
Heaven's Vault looks beautiful. I tried Chants of Sennaar but its puzzles were a bit too cryptic for me. I will see if Heaven's Vault is better.
I've played Heaven's Vault a lot and I can say, early on, you'll be guessing a lot. But once you add more words to your...bank? it gets easier.
There's also new game + where you keep all your words and generally get longer phrases. The map also starts out a little more filled in depending on where you went in previous games!
Only one save though, and it's automatic.
First one that comes to mind is Your Spider. It feels like an injustice that it only has 13 reviews on Steam.
A couple others:
Withering Rooms looks absolutely incredible and is on my wishlist, I'm just waiting for a sale. I'm super pumped to try it.
Your suggestions are great! I had never heard of any of those before. How do you manage to discover so many obscure games?
Withering Rooms looks great. I've added it to my wishlist now.
The Eternal Castle's CGA graphics is so nostalgic to me.
Praey for the Gods - how does it compare to Shadow of the Colossus?
A lot of these I found just by going through the queues on Steam. I also sometimes just like browsing games sorted by newest first to see what new indie stuff there is. Most of them don't appeal to me, some look absolutely terrible, but sometimes I find a new favorite that nobody else seems to care about.
Praey for the Gods has some different mechanics such as having minor enemies to fight, effects from cold weather, and crafting weapons to fight the minor enemies. But the boss fights work basically the same way as in SotC. There's not as many of them though. Maybe like 7 or 8.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_Neon_Sea
I really enjoyed playing this. It was a great neo-noir point-and-click with a great vibe and art.
The entire remastered Marathon trilogy (Marathon, Marathon 2, Marathon Infinity) is free on Steam if you want an old school style first person shooter.
Or another one, Star Wars Dark Forces got a remaster too and it's a nice FPS set in the Star Wars universe.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - pretty much influential to many modern games like Horizon that really didn't get the love it deserved when it came out.
Beyond the Beyond - the first JRPG to release in the West on the Playstation. a difficult game (the random encounters can be brutal and frequent) but had a good story and a neat battle system.
Ranger-X - one of the best action side scrollers of the 16bit era and easily one of the best Genesis games.
Wet - fun and goofy action game with an awesome style and soundtrack. the combat can get a be repetitive but it's a quirky and fun game.
Sins of a Solar Empire - One of the only games I can easily sink 8+ hours into in a single session every time I play it. Used to be my go to "lazy saturday afternoon" game or a game I'd play if the internet went out.
Surprised to see Beyond the Beyond here. It's got very poor reviews. But I like its art style.
Which platform is Wet? (that didn't sound right...)
Hmm… difficult to qualify what a hidden gem is in this day and age because any game without mainstream appeal can be a hidden gem if you're not into its genre.
Any shmup fan must have heard of Hellsinker, for example, at some point, but you probably haven't if you're not into shmup.
My favorite hidden gem though is The Red Star on PS2. Seamless transition between twin-stick shooting and belt-scrolling brawler, and almost equally entertaining in both modes. You unlock skills and get ranks at the end of every mission, which's very Japanese even though it's developed and published by a western studio.
The Red Star looks fun!
There's a new site dedicated to this concept. It's like a dating app for games. You swipe on games you like and it starts to suggest more obscure ones that have similarities: https://www.ludocene.com/
I'm playing https://www.spiralknights.com/ right now. It just got new insect cosmetics.
Also, this is an MTG simulator with a huge number of cards: https://card-forge.github.io/forge/ You can access all cards right away in Constructed mode and test your deck ideas vs bots.
//edit
Both are multiplatform and work on Linux btw.
A Robot Named Fight is a really creative, procedurally-generated roguelike metroidvania.
I know that's a crowded space, but I think it stands out for it's unique premise and setting and the subtle anti-authoritarian subtext.
Tunic
You play as a little fox guy in a tunic, exploring the world to release a character called The Heir, and you can collect pages of a digital instruction manual that kinda breaks the fourth wall. Fantastic game!
Alien Squatter
Stardew Valley style energy/time system that limits how much you can do in a day. Explore a rundown alien slum making friends and earning money. Multiple endings, playable races, great writing/music/vibes.
Doronko Wanko
『DORONKO WANKO』 is a DORONKO Action Game. In this game, You can become a cute, innocent Pomeranian, make your master's home messy and dirty. "Will the master be angry with me?" Don't worry. Because you are a sweet doggie.
As Dusk Falls
Explore the entangled lives of two families across thirty years in an original interactive drama from INTERIOR/NIGHT. Starting in 1998 with a robbery-gone-wrong, the character's lives depend on the choices you make.
Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime
Rather than being a turn-based RPG as is typical of games in the series, Rocket Slime is more action-oriented. Gameplay consists primarily of gathering parts to build tanks and then pitting those constructions against those of the enemy. The player views Rocket Slime from an overhead view, and controls Rocket entirely with the face and shoulder buttons.