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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A Family of Gravediggers
Wow in this thread I don’t know a single game
Let me try with this game that I bought a decade ago for 1€: Pizza Express - very nice chiptune music that matches the gameplay that is a mix between a visual novel and a simulation
The Dweller - you are the eldritch monster hidden in the ruins, hunting down archaeologists, mechanically a puzzle-platformer (may have served as the inspiration for Carrion)
Monster Loves You! - monster-raiser CYOA RPG with meaningful decisions
Eh, I guess I toss out one of my favorite DS games as a break from my previous Steam recommendations, so Retro Game Challenge 2, the fan translation of GameCenter CX: Arino no Chōsenjō 2. This actually may get downvoted a fair bit, because the Game Center CX show that inspired the game has a dedicated cult following in the United States and Retro Game Challenge 2 has been played by some fairly big streamers.
Anyway on to the game itself. Retro Game Challenge 2 is a collection of NES and SNES styled mini games loosely bound together by a fairly non-nonsensical meta plot and a ton of nostalgia. You’re assigned “challenges” for the various games that you have to beat, think NES Remix if you’ve played that, it’s actually from the same developer. But not only that there’s a ton of nostalgic little touches, all the mini-games have in game “manuals” to read, there are also in game “gaming magazines” that offer tips and tricks for the games you play, as well as hinting about “up-coming” games. There’s also a “daily challenge” which is a… well challenge that is issued daily, with difficulty that ramps up as you beat them.
The best part of the whole game/micro games is that you can freely play them after they’ve been unlocked. None of the NES Remix’s “We’ve got the whole game here, but you can’t do anything but the challenges” bullshit. You want to play though the entirety of the ten-ish hour NES styled JRPG? Go for it. Indieszero also included some “challenge mode” versions of games from the first Retro Game Challenge game.
Anyway, as the wall of text may have clued you in, I really like this game.
Message Quest - a silly little medieval PnC adventure with a stained-glass art style and a lazy squire as protagonist
Home - an atmospheric horror walking simulator with pixel graphics. I remember the story blew my mind when I played it a decade ago.
If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers - left my favourite for last, a free pixel art PnC horror adventure with beautiful graphics and great writing. I was so blown away that a game of such high quality was free, that I ended up buying the supporter pack :)
In Other Waters - a fairly unique exploration adventure with timed-puzzle elements and survival mechanics. The graphics are very stylised, so the experience is more like reading a book. I played about 5 hours and mostly enjoyed it, but did not finish it because the survival/timing pressure got too stressful as I progressed through the story.
Cinders - a low-fantasy exploration of the story of Cinderella, as a non-anime visual novel with many decisions and endings
And my last post since I could recommend games for days xD.
Demonstar: Original Missions (1999 re-released in 2024 with some fine upgrades) not on sale but only 3 euros.
Not sure if this qualifies for the thread but on my phone, I’ve been playing Afterplace. It’s a Zelda-like designed for portrait playing. Great little time sink.
Supercow originally released in 2005 or something.
Re released: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1883570/Supercow/
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.
I discovered totally by accident Proverbs.
Proverbs is a picross/minesweeper hybrid featuring a single ENORMOUS puzzle, inspired by Bruegel the Elder’s 1559 painting “Netherlandish Proverbs”.
In short, it’s minesweeper with a twist. It’s pretty relaxing, you can do it while listening to podcasts or YouTube. Also, what I like is that you never have to make hypotheses. Everything is solvable just by looking.
