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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clanfolk, a (very alpha and also very playable) game that draws clear inspiration from Rimworld, but has a kind of tech progression that feels spiritually similar to bootstrapping a factory in Factorio, while being set in the Scottish Highlands.
Martha Is Dead is a grim psychological triller about twin sisters, set in Italy at the end of WW2. It’s not about war, however. This game left me with deep emotions no other game could do. Heed the warnings given by authors, though. It may come too disturbing to some people.
Azimuth is a metroidvania game, and something of an homage to the previous greats of the genre (Super Metroid in particular). You will need to pilot your ship, explore the inside of the planet, fight enemies, overcome obstacles, and uncover the storyline piece by piece. Azimuth features a huge game world to explore, lots of little puzzles to solve, dozens of weapons and upgrades to find and use, and a wide variety of enemies and bosses to tangle with.
It is open source and available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Evochron Legacy if you want a space game that also lets you fly down onto planet’s atmospheres, with the appropriate air drag limiting your max speed.
I should probably try playing it again sometime, it’s very rough around the edges, but can be fun for people that enjoy ship piloting in space.
To me, Ctrl Alt Ego is not well known enough. It is an immersive sim in the style of Prey. You play as a robot roaming a station, where your Ego (like a spirit) can pass into and control all sorts of objects to solve puzzles, evade, control or kill enemies. The graphics aren’t impressive (it was made by a 2-person team) but the gameplay is so interesting and the story is surprisingly compelling and funny!
Encased is a CRPG, heavily inspired by the classic Fallout games, bringing it’s mechanics into the modern age. It’s story is based on the classic book “Roadside Picknick” (known for being the inspiration of the Stalker series) and is very well written. It has a story narrator, similar to the Divinity: Original Sin games and a very in depth character creation. At the start you choose a department of a research company to work in, which will change the way you interact with many characters, adding some replay value. Anything more I could say would be a spoiler, but the entire beginning (first half to one hour) is an absolute banger.
It’s my favorite indie game of the last few years and at the time of writing this, it is currently 90% of on steam, an absolute bargain
It’s a Block Pushing Game is a sokobanlike from the creator of Baba Is You. It’s relatively short but has multiple novel mechanics. I enjoyed it enough to create a curses client for it.
PS: If you like Baba Is You, Hempuli publishes multiple new games per month, mostly clever sokoban-likes, at https://hempuli.itch.io/
Spheres of Chaos is an old asteroids based game that really ups the ante on trippyness and cool sounds
I should warn you though that it is very flashy, so epilepsy warning is in order
Underhero is a RPG. There is (bad) 2D platforming and an interesting blend between turn based and real time battles with decent amount of player expression, but I find most interesting the writing and scenarios you will find yourself in during the game. You play as an Underling after the Hero has an unfortunate accident after all, and while technically a silent protagonist, all entries in the journal/hint system/to-do list are just brimming with personality.
I swear I first saw this game in list of “Paper Mario-likes”, but I can’t find a single video with that topic that mentions it, and now I realize that it only has like 600 reviews on steam.
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.
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.
Sulphur Nimbus: Hel’s Elixir, a $6 (currently) game on itch.io. It started from the idea of an MLP fangame, but early in development evolved into an original setting.
This is a 3D physics platformer adventure with an unhindered flying character. Your hippogriff, Sulphur Nimbus, is an aerial photographer aboard a cargo ship, which is passing a mysterious atoll on the way to their destination. The crew want you to get pictures of the island, which has a castle that’s been abandoned for decades. Unfortunately, after flying over there, a nasty storm builds up and you get zapped by lightning. After a flashback tutorial on how to fly, you wake up on the island shores, your wing is injured, and you have to run to safety, finding out this place is dangerous… so dangerous a resident dogicorn (like a hippogriff, but it’s half dog and half unicorn instead of half bird half pony) has to rescue you when a lovecraftian horror tries to take you down into presumably Hel. Waking up in a castle room, your wing is healed, and you can fly again.
Now the game begins. Clear the boss monsters and rout them out of this island, area by area. Break the curse that binds you to this island. Find out what happened here.
What’s unique about Sulphur Nimbus is the movement. Running, fighting, and jumping has physics to it, allowing for some parkour stuff to be possible, like running up steep inclines and wall jumping. Flight is realistic. There are no arbitrary limitations, other than a regenerating “flap” stamina. If you can get enough speed to take off, and if there’s enough room to maneuver, you can fly. Level designs include lots of caves and enclosed spaces, but also lots of open areas, so being able to fly is a requirement to get through it, while also a challenge. While the game is designed for kb and mouse controls, honestly, a gamepad works very well with this game and is preferred. It also is cross platform, as it is made in java, and includes Windows, Mac, and Linux. The source code is on sourceforge and allows you to build the whole game yourself if you are so inclined.
There’s no other platforming adventure game that attempts this, and I have tried every “become birb” game out there. They all are either bird simulators or use flight as a fast travel, but not as a core gameplay mechanic like this.
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.
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.
