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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

Taiji (906 reviews)

Nonlinear discovery-based puzzles

If you liked the puzzle design of The Witness, you’ll enjoy Taiji as more of that but with scenic pixel art.

Instead of a linear sequence of tutorials and puzzles, Taiji is open-ended. You can wander wherever you want, solve the puzzles you stumble upon, and ultimately discover this place’s secrets. Sometimes you find a puzzle that you don’t understand, so you’ll just have to leave it for later, when you’ve learned more puzzle mechanics. It’s like a metroidvania but gated by knowledge instead of abilities.

All the puzzles are built on grids of tiles that you can turn on or off. There are no tutorials; you have to figure out the puzzle mechanics on your own, hinted by environmental details.

shrodes ,

Taiji was waaaaay harder than the Witness for me personally, but great choice. The vibe and music and what not is super chill also

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…

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.

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

DrowningInteger ,

I don’t have any suggestions but I do like this prompt and I see a lot of games I’ve never heard of

helloharu ,
@helloharu@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t either but this is such a great discussion. I’ve come across quite a few interesting sounding games here. Thanks OP.

pivot_root ,

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.

shrodes ,

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.

shrodes ,

Tametsi

Simple premise is basically Minesweeper, but all the puzzles are handcrafted with some neat designs and concepts that will stretch your puzzle solving to the limit. Also importantly, no guessing required to solve and it’s dirt cheap for the amount of hours of puzzles you get!

Mad_Punda ,

Calcium Contract is a boomer shooter with a pretty unique rewind feature. Humorous with old school feels, but for a modern time. It’s a one man project.

JackbyDev ,

HyperRogue has 352 reviews. It is a rogue like that is played on a hyperbolic plane rather than a euclidian one.

If you’re not familiar with hyperbolic geometry, don’t be fooled by the videos. It has the illusion of looking like it is on a sphere in many of the videos. It’s not! Also, you don’t need to be some master of hyperbolic geometry to play. I don’t really understand it but can still play the game well enough.

Essentially, imagine a hexagonal grid. Now, replace some of those hexagons with septagons (7 sided). The further away you get from a point there will be way more tiles in the hyperbolic grid than the euclidian.

The UI is pretty bad, the menus are pretty icky. Those are my only real complaints.

The game is charming. It has.a very retro feel to it. The music reminds me of something of hear from an old school point and click game or RuneScape. The graphics are minimal but charming.

The mechanics are easy enough. You get hit and you die. Most enemies die in one hit. There are no weapons or stats. It’s more like chess in a way. The game will also not let you accidentally move somewhere you’d die, so, yes, very much like chess with checkmates.

Because the game is so simplistic you can get into a flow state where you quickly move and attack enemies. It’s very satisfying to play.

silverchase ,
@silverchase@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hyperbolic bonus: Hyperbolica, a first-person walking simulator set in a universe with hyperbolic geometry. You do odd jobs and play games that explore the strangeness of this geometry. Also, there’s a slight digression to explore spherical geometry as well.

JackGreenEarth ,

Hyperbolica is much better than the rogue game

tlo ,

Cozy Space Survivors is a short (few hours) cozy survivor-like indie game with pixel graphics. A run is only ten minutes, so it works also for people with not too much time. It is developed by a single person and it is his first release.

HeavyRaptor ,

Tactical Breach Wizards

It’s made by the Developer who made Gunpoint and Heat Signature (also amazing games if you somehow haven’t heard of them BTW).

It’s a turn based tactics/puzzle game where you command a squad of wizards with different magical abilities to dispatch a room full of enemies. A bit like Into the Breach but hand crafted scenarios, not procedurally generated.

It also has a fun story, character customisation, and ability unlocks. Almost every scenario has a bunch of optional extra goals, so you decide how hard you want to wreck your brain. Highly recommend it!

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

Grand Theft Auto IV

It’s a little known game from a small publisher originally located in Scotland.

The main premise is that you drive around a city as quickly as possible and go bowling with your cousin. Think Big Lebowski meets Driver. You can also play Pool and Darts in various locations around the town, and earn money doing small side jobs such as being a taxi driver or a paramedic.

tigeruppercut ,

Doom II

…wait don’t downvote yet, you’ve gotta play it with the new ray tracing mod

all-knight-party ,
@all-knight-party@fedia.io avatar

Voices of the Void a free (likely while it's in pre-alpha) light simulational game about receiving outer space signals and recording them to sell. You use the currency to clean up, upgrade, and decorate your small facility while moving around the Swiss forest valley you're in to repair and upkeep the satellite dishes that make the operation function.

It sounds very purely simulational, but there are a lot of secrets and interesting signals that are more than signals. It's also an Unreal engine game, but features a lot of Source engine love, for example the art style is reminiscent of Half-Life 1, all of the sound effects are EXTREMELY Source game nostalgic, and there's crouch jumping.

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