There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Recommendation engine: Downvote any game you've heard of before

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.

silverchase ,
@silverchase@sh.itjust.works avatar

Toodee and Topdee (559 reviews)

Puzzle platformer/block pushing hybrid

The 2d platforming world and top-down world have smashed together. You control one hero from each dimension, who share the same space in the levels. You switch between platformer and top-down modes and must get both characters to the goal. The boss levels are hard but very cool, combining action and puzzles.

Also features local 2-player co-op and a generous assist mode.

Cocodapuf ,

That looks really cool!

Jordan117 ,

ECHO (2017)! It’s an indie game with AAA-feeling production quality from a tiny Danish studio that sadly went bankrupt after the game only sold a few thousand copies. I played it during lockdown on an old recommendation from MetaFilter and it has since become one of my favorite hidden gem titles.

Trailer

You play a bounty hunter named En (voiced by Game of Thrones star Rose Leslie) who wakes from hibernation when her spaceship arrives at a legendary artificial planet said to hold the secret to resurrection and eternal life. When she arrives on the surface, she soon discovers that its interior is a vast, abandoned baroque Palace, straight through to the core. As she wanders the infinite halls guided by her witheringly sarcastic AI London (voiced by Nicholas Boulton), she is surprised to find the Palace generates hostile clones of herself that hunt her down and copy her actions in a unique spin on the stealth genre. Gameplay consists of trying to navigate through various beautiful, byzantine concourses, collecting artifacts and unlocking elevators that lead deeper into the secret at the heart of the planet.

You may or may not enjoy this based on how you feel about stealth games with minimalist combat, but for me the challenging adaptive gameplay combined with the evocative score, compelling voice acting, intriguing story, and gorgeous environmental/sound/UI design made this a really nice surprise. (And while the studio might be dead, I’m really hoping the plans to turn it into a movie eventually rise from development hell.)

kautau ,

This is an incredible game I highly recommend, but I had to downvote because rules

silverchase ,
@silverchase@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

Paradachshund ,

This one isn’t super new, but Druidstone. It’s a story based tactics game with some RPG elements and it’s just excellently done. I’ve never heard anyone else mention it and I think more people should know about it.

SandLight ,

It was pretty good, but I got stuck on an annoying mission and dropped it. Really wish that dev had just made grimrock 3, but I respect not wanting to do the same thing over and over…

ABCDE ,

Return Fire was a head-to-head military shooter, with a choice of four different vehicles of destruction, and is played split-screen on PC with one keyboard. I think I only ever had the demo but it was fantastic.

mox ,

If I am incorrect about downvotes being inconsequential account-wide, say so and it might be possible to work out a different system.

Wouldn’t “upvote if you have never heard of it” accomplish the same thing?

I guess it would depend on people reading and following the instructions, instead of just upvoting games they like. Maybe that’s a bit much to ask. :P

Katana314 OP ,

It can be hard to encourage people to only do this for the obscure - and can sometimes lead to moments of “Witcher 3 / Factorio Unknown Indie Darling” moments. The dream is for threads like this to not contribute to successes that are already basically “lightning in a bottle”, but focus attention where developers haven’t seen so much of it.

scops ,

Fair points, but I can’t participate in this thread because I’m on an instance that doesn’t allow down votes. The up vote solution is at least a bit more inclusive

ABCDE ,

Wouldn’t “upvote if you have never heard of it” accomplish the same thing?

That is also what is happening.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

Gridworld - a simulation game made up of a grid, as the name suggests. You can control the size of the grid, and what spawns in it. The core of the game are these tiny creatures that each take up 1 square. They have varying nodes on them that represent traits and abilities. Under the hood the game says these have to be “wired” correctly by the neural network to make a creature act right. So basically you let this thing run for hours and eventually get little square creatures that eat plants and maybe each other to live.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Concord is a…nah, I’m just kidding. I’ve never played it, and I don’t intend to. It has fewer than 1000 reviews though.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Cannon Brawl is a unique kind of RTS where it’s sort of like StarCraft meets Worms. You need to expand something like “the creep” from the Zerg in StarCraft in order to build, but you can also destroy the terrain under your opponent like in Worms. I kid you not when I say this has been one of my go-to local multiplayer games for a decade, and it rules.

BombOmOm ,
@BombOmOm@lemmy.world avatar

Avorion - In which you command and build a spaceship designed by yourself (or others on the internet). Soon you have AIs you command and space stations you own. The game allows you to lean as much or as little as you want into the fleet command and economy aspects. If you want, you can just pilot one big-ass ship and do it all alone.

subignition ,
@subignition@fedia.io avatar

I had a good amount of fun with this game, it's a shame I have to downvote it. It was a little difficult to get into at first, but I stuck with it and had a lot of fun. I chose to develop a big-ass ship like you speak of and eventually became a lumpy Death Star knockoff.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

The Masterplan is a true heist game. You know that fantasy of playing out a heist from Heat? This is that game. It’s top down, and you control all of the members of the crew. You pick your time to initiate the heist, you hold up people at gunpoint, you prevent them from being a hero, and you try your best to get out with the best score that you can. It’s a real bummer that this team never got to make another game.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

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.

setsneedtofeed , (edited )
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

The Precursors.

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.

KoboldCoterie ,
@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social avatar

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.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •