With the Steam sale running, this seems like a good time to try this thread again. We don’t often use the downvote button much in Lemmy, but the idea is this: Do your best to present game suggestions that no one has heard of before. If, in reading other people’s suggestions, you spot one that you’re familiar with, then put a downvote on it. Ideally, if the game is past a year old, it may have a discounted price during the Steam sale, and others will be able to check it out.
I’ve made this thread once before and it generated some good suggestions, but the rate of indie publishing on Steam has only accelerated with time, so it seems to be worth trying again.
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I’m glad to see these threads again! They’re fun.
Ash & Adam’s GOBSMACKED (37 Steam reviews)
This is a single-player arcade FPS. You battle robots in a series of arenas with a set of wacky weapons, with shops in between. At the start of each run, you have to buy yourself a starting loadout using the money you got from previous runs, but you can’t choose the same items as your last run. Buying an item for the first time at a shop unlocks it so you can choose it as a starter in a future run.
WORMHOLE (51 Steam reviews)
WORMHOLE is next-level Snake. I’ve written about it before! There are powerups, wormholes (obviously), and increasingly complex and cramped levels. The game’s graphics and music get more intense over time and it becomes an oddly hypnotic action game.
Reassembly, a fantastic and beautiful simple shipbuilder with a great modding scene. My go-to game when I’m high and just want to chill with some pretty particle explosions…
(should we be upvoting the games we haven’t heard of? Or just downvote only?)
I liked that game until I realized that the enemies were just spawning random attacks rather than playing against a peer level opponent, which meant there wasn’t any strategy involved in taking the enemy positions. It’s just whack a mole on the attacks on you while you take their bases (also defended by random fleet spawns).
That’s a fair criticism - there’s mods out there that improve the AI situation, but I don’t know of one that really changes the fundamental nature of the gameplay eventually becoming progressively moving through the map.
I have longed for years for the devs to revist the game and add something like a campaign or story mode - or to make it more focused on survival and exploration. Pretty much a total overhaul I realize, but still I dream…
Yeah, the game was exactly what I wanted prior to realizing how the enemy AI worked, but then it just took all the wind out of my sails and I didn’t even want to scale up to overwhelm that increasing resistance. That momentum is what I love about strategy games, where at some point you get over the hump and things get easier because you’re strategically dismantling your opponent’s war machine. They should obviously push back, which then becomes a part of your strategy, where to defend to prevent a halt to that momentum as much as where to attack to continue building it.
Grabbed, thanks for bringing it up! Looks really interesting :)
A game that holds a fantastically emotional spot in my heart is Jason Oda’s CONTINUE?9876543210. It has a mixed rating by the general public, but holds the very core of my faith.
At the start, a video game character dies, and is scheduled for deletion. Eventually, the garbage collector that filters through the computer’s RAM, deleting levels that have served their purpose, characters of memory damage and mangled speech, and reflections on what it it is to be dying, all deleted. The goal of the game is to find peace in the milliseconds of afterlife, however that happens.
we all fear deletion
those who were deleted
i took with me
their lightning, their prayerhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/263340/Continue9876543210/
(yes! I got a downvote! Someone else knows this game!)
9€??
I should reorient myself into "game"dev
Any idea why “This item is currently unavailable in your region”?
Because your region isn’t my region?
Thanks! I just wondered what could be in the game that triggers banning it in my region.
Could be a licensing thing. E.g. there are quite a few online Steam games that are not available in Europe, but are in North America.
The game’s been dead and without updates for a decade, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
It’s something I pass through about weekly though. It’s a good game to keep my head on my shoulders with.
Eh, I don’t know how well the game is known, but I’ll throw out A Robot Named Fight, since looking at Metacritic it seems like it never got much mainstream attention. It’s also (unsurprisingly) on sale right now, only $3.24 in the US.
Anyway, the game is a metroidvainia roguelite mashup. The gameplay is more the Metroid side of “metroidvania” being very obviously inspired by Super Metroid. You traverse a randomly generated map, getting unlocks for future runs by accomplishing various things though out that run, think Binding of Issac’s item progression.
Excellent game! So satisfying when you get a run that totally breaks everything! And it just got a true online coop mod! Previously you could play with one Fight and up to three players could be Orbs.
King of kings: the early years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Kings:_The_Early_Years
A mediocre set of platformers interspersed with bible trivia. I played the crap out of them because it was the only thing other that super Mario we had.
Later we got Joshua and the battle of Jericho. A bomberman clone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_&_the_Battle_of_Jericho
What a great post idea, thanks OP!
My contribution is NeonXSZ, a 6DOF open-world ARPG by a solo dev. It’s been a decade since it released, but IIRC, the dev cited Quake and Diablo as primary inspirations and the game has a native Linux version.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3392510/Zexion/
A neat metroidvania with a built in randomizer.
An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs
This is a delightful little indie game where you have to talk to stock photos of dogs and complete little unhinged quests. It’s been on gdq in the awful block with the dev before, but only 221 reviews as of now
Ex-Zodiac - retro star fox inspired rails shooter
funnily enough I only found out about this game from listening to +TEK
Sword of the Necromancer : Resurrection.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2782880/Sword_of_the_Necromancer_Resurrection/
Best played co-op. Wonderful story with a great ending. Truly beautiful and solid game play. Short 12hr game to 100% complete.
Only like 150 reviews.
Space-themed strategy puzzle game.
ODDCORE (939 Steam reviews, Early Access)
Roguish boomer FPS where you travel to liminal spaces to shoot all the monsters. They’re not scary if they’re dead! Instead of having a map of encounters, you get 5 minutes to do as much as possible. Once you’ve cleaned out a space, you jump to the next world… unless your teleport gun glitches out and takes you someplace very weird. At any time, even during combat, you can jump to your home base to buy upgrades or extra time credit.
Overload
Spiritual successor to Decent 1, 2, and 3. Made by the same devs.
Another one I feel bad downvoting! It’s not got the same gritty technopunk feeling as the Descent games, but gameplay and visuals are just as good if not better.
Maybe Ten Bells
Solo dev who was pretty sad that it had slow traction on release because he put so much work into the game. I can see it now has over 500 reviews, so perhaps he got the reaction he wanted!
I’m not familiar with anomaly horror as a genre, but it sounds like a very well-made game. I’m scared that I’d be too scared though
After reading a good review I tested it with my horror-loving gf, but we found it kind of mid.
