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Recommend some obscure games we'd never play otherwise
Wordherder
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This Christmas, I'd like to spread the gift of obscure game recommendations - I've gotten plenty from this board over the years that have exposed me to games I loved but never would have tried otherwise, and I'm sure you have too. So let's all do it in one place!
I'll start. 428 Shibuya Scramble is currently on sale for the PS4 ($7.49) and Steam ($9.99). Basically it's the mother of all visual novels from Spike Chunsoft. Aside from being really good, the things that make it stand out are that it's huge, and that it tells its story with tens of thousands of slickly shot and edited real-world images. Like this:
It's the story of an array of characters trying to overcome their personal challenges within Tokyo's Shibuya district. These characters include:
-A detective attempting to solve a kidnapping/ransom case.
-A former gang member who stumbles into the kidnapped person and decides to help.
-An extremely crusading journalist trying to save a failing magazine.
-A scientist in a crumbling marriage who gets blackmailed.
-A woman who is stuck in a cat mascot costume.
These characters, and literally dozens of other characters, weave in and out of each other's stories. And as the character descriptions imply, the tone meanders all over the place, from serious to silly to tense to melancholic to horrifying to funny to inspiring and on and on and on. The main gameplay comes from making various decisions at critical points that can advance their plots, as well as the plots of other characters. For instance, a character choosing to run into traffic could cause a traffic jam, preventing another character from reaching their destination. You'll collect over 80 bad endings that include so many sudden deaths, but also very, very silly situations.
Oh, and it's superbly translated. The detective writes down bits of advice to himself in a book. Each bit of advice is called:
... a "dick dictum."
If all that sounds remotely appealing to you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out.
What about you, what would you recommend?
I'll start. 428 Shibuya Scramble is currently on sale for the PS4 ($7.49) and Steam ($9.99). Basically it's the mother of all visual novels from Spike Chunsoft. Aside from being really good, the things that make it stand out are that it's huge, and that it tells its story with tens of thousands of slickly shot and edited real-world images. Like this:
It's the story of an array of characters trying to overcome their personal challenges within Tokyo's Shibuya district. These characters include:
-A detective attempting to solve a kidnapping/ransom case.
-A former gang member who stumbles into the kidnapped person and decides to help.
-An extremely crusading journalist trying to save a failing magazine.
-A scientist in a crumbling marriage who gets blackmailed.
-A woman who is stuck in a cat mascot costume.
These characters, and literally dozens of other characters, weave in and out of each other's stories. And as the character descriptions imply, the tone meanders all over the place, from serious to silly to tense to melancholic to horrifying to funny to inspiring and on and on and on. The main gameplay comes from making various decisions at critical points that can advance their plots, as well as the plots of other characters. For instance, a character choosing to run into traffic could cause a traffic jam, preventing another character from reaching their destination. You'll collect over 80 bad endings that include so many sudden deaths, but also very, very silly situations.
Oh, and it's superbly translated. The detective writes down bits of advice to himself in a book. Each bit of advice is called:
... a "dick dictum."
If all that sounds remotely appealing to you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out.
What about you, what would you recommend?
Why the crap did I ever make my original name "cloudeagle?"
Wordherder on
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Slay the Dragon! Is a free student project you can probably beat within an hour. It is cute and imaginative and can be a great introduction to top down platformers/hack-n-slashers for kids. It's also the only game where a boy wears a big pink dress and it isn't used as some kind of moralistic story. It's just a young kid with a pink dress on.
It's pretty goofy and was kinda superceded by it's less obscure sequel but it's kinda fun also
Mouthwashing: PSX aesthetic horror game about an interstellar shipping crew that gets stranded for months after a wreck. Maybe not super obscure now, but worth the recommendation either way.
Daemon Masquerade: Freeform corkboard-em-up mystery game about finding out the identities and Daemonic powers of various characters as they bounce around town and interact with each other. Probably the best implementation of a freeform solve-it-yourself I've seen, and it also has a giant bestiary of daemons to look through which is very funny and aids in the "you've got a ton of info and need to whittle it down" vibe.
Until Then: Beautifully animated coming of age visual novel about a boy dealing with normal high school life in the aftermath of a catastrophe. The climax of the first half of the game had multiple moments I could argue are the most heart-rending things I've ever seen in a video game.
20 Small Mazes: A free game with a bunch of mazes, all with their own unique rules, you slide around the page, slide around in, and generally experiment with
VSCS-II: An internet-em up in a DOS-style operating system about dealing with government crackdowns on the sharing of information, which also contains a handful of really fun/clever minigames.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/787710/Comrades_and_Barons_Solitaire_of_Bloody_1919/
Also The Forgotten City. Is a completely different aesthetic from Outer Wilds but in some ways very similar. https://store.steampowered.com/app/874260/The_Forgotten_City/
Noir Syndrome was a procedural roguelite detective game from a number of years ago that I got a lot of fun out of. https://store.steampowered.com/app/299780/Noir_Syndrome/
I’m not sure Raging Loop is “obscure” but it’s one of my all-time favorite Visual Novels with at least some illusion of player choice in a way similar to the 999 games. It’s also very long and meaty. I think I spent 60-80 hours seeing everything the game had to offer. https://store.steampowered.com/app/648100/Raging_Loop/
And I’m recommending Raging Loop now because an English version of a sister game from the same company (Kemco) is finally coming out in 2025. Death Match Love Comedy! (DMLC!). The NON-ENGLISH version is here but I don’t recommend buying it yet because I’m not sure if the English version/translation will be added to it or not or if it will be sold as a separate store item (though I think it likely that it will be added to this listing as it recently updated with English title cards): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1265570/Death_Match_Love_Comedy/
Gnosia is also a Visual Novel that masquerades as a sorta quasi procedural/999-esque mafia/phalla type game that you play solo against NPCs to progress the story. It’s very unique and intriguing and was one of my favorite games when I beat it on the switch a number of years ago. I repurchased it on Steam purely to support the publishers/developers even if I never end up playing it again. I also really love the atmospheric soundtrack. Apparently Gnosia is also getting an anime TV adaptation in 2025 that I didn’t even know about until now. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1608290/GNOSIA/
I’m posting all this from my phone but I’m sure there’s more I can recommend later from my computer.
The more time you spend moving blocks the more you realize that it's about a lot more than moving blocks
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive
I don't generally like horror games but this one was incredibly compelling to me. It's a pixel art point and click post apocalyptic horror game. Don't want to spoil anything, but it's good.
Flashback
This is still available on GOG and I think also Steam. It's a mid-90's era platformer. It's pretty short by today's standards, but the action is fun and the art and music still sucks me in after all these years. It's a sci-fi cyberpunk kind of theme, and I think the game just looks great. There was a 3D sequel called Fade to Black which was rather not too good and a modern remake which I haven't played.
Tip: go into it as blind as possible, but play at least long enough to get into space. (I've seen negative reviews that indicate the person did not reach that point, which means they got mad/impatient with the tutorial section, and bailed before ever getting to the meat of the game.)
For truly obscure, I think only one of my favorites would qualify (Pixeljunk Eden), but I'll list the rest for context to my taste. Maybe some are new to you!
Elden Ring
Journey
Katamari Damacy
Okami
Outer Wilds
Shadow of the Colossus
Ah! Audiosurf, if you like rhythm games. I have.... 130hrs played according to Steam. I haven't played in a long while, but it would be easy enough to pick up again, I'd just have to use mods or pick easier songs to compensate for some issues.
The modern remake was decent.
There’s also Flashback 2 from 2023 which is not Fade To Black but is a sequel. I don’t own it yet and it got Mostly Negative reviews but I may buy it out of curiosity some day: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008420/Flashback_2/
unlike Void Stranger, it is only about pushing blocks.
And it gets real fucked up about it
http://www.audioentropy.com/
okay but is Outer Wilds the one where the marketing makes it look like Destiny or the one that's like kind of cartoony and you hop from planet to planet and you have to avoid flying into the sun even though that's actually quite easy to do in real life
Outer Wilds/Worlds and Path of Exile/Pillars of Eternity are two pairs of games where i never played any of them and i genuinely don't know which is which
Outer Worlds is the one everyone's forgotten about. Outer Wilds is the indie darling.
i think that answers my question
The Outer Worlds is an RPG from Obsidian, it is a satirical space RPG in the vein of New Vegas. I have not played it myself but the impression i have from people who have is that it is a serviceable one of those but if you're looking for another New Vegas it ain't gonna give it to you
Outer Wilds is a first person exploration game about exploring the solar system. The entire system operates on a very deterministic clock that resets every 23 minutes, after which the sun explodes. you have to use the time loop to figure out how's come the sun is exploding and ideally, you know, stop that from happening. It is one of the most unique, wonderful games I have ever played, it is generally very light and funny but the ending made me full-on ugly cry
http://www.audioentropy.com/
now i am pretty sure that answers my question
Outer Worlds is to Fallout the same as Dragon Age was to Neverwinter Nights
RPG studio worked on an existing IP and for reasons decided they wanted to make the same game without being beholden to the company which controlled it
no you were right you can also very easily fly into the sun in outer wilds, if you get too close to it your ship isn't strong enough to escape its gravity
a lot of that game is learning about all the ways that space can kill you
http://www.audioentropy.com/
But seriously, the physics simulation is a thing of beauty and necessity to the game, but mostly background until you think about it.
It is legitimately one of my favorite games, top two on a given day.
That's your prerogative, of course, I just find it a bit ironic.
e: tbf, quoting chanus quoting me.
i lead it there so i suppose that's my fault
It was a solid ~12 hours or so, even if the combat is pretty lacking. Can be a little rough early on, since it only has saving, no checkpointing or anything. Die and you better have saved recently. But you get so strong it becomes pretty easy.
A well-told story is generally worth the time even if you know the gist ahead of time; I just remember the feelings I got on experiencing Outer Wilds without any fore-knowledge, so I try to preserve that for others, as well.
No one has done anything wrong!
Speaking of which, I need to contact iam8bit and get a disc that actually has all the content. O:< (They sent two, neither of which is correct.)
You play as Artemy Burakh, a young surgeon who just graduated medical school. At your father's urging, you return to your home, a remote village on the Russian steppe, originally home to a native tribe before it was colonized by Europeans (Artemy is of mixed descent). The day you arrive, you discover that your father was murdered, and you are immediately suspected of the crime. Worse yet, a plague is breaking out, a disease that may or may not have a supernatural component, punishment from the native god for desecrating its land. You have to navigate the complex social tensions of the town while working to combine your medical schooling with your people's traditional folk medicine in order to produce a cure, with the knowledge that if things get too far out of hand, the state government will arrive and burn the entire village down to prevent the disease from spreading further.
At least, that's what you're supposed to be doing. More often than not, you'll have to put those concerns on the back burner while you scrounge for food and clean drinking water and make time to sleep. The game's a survival simulator and on the default difficulty, it is punishing. You might even get the plague yourself, and have to deal with your meters draining faster as voices whisper to you about how hopeless it is to try and save a doomed people. You'll die, and you'll die a lot, and every time you do, you'll wake up on a stage, with a mysterious theater director chiding you for doing such a bad job at playing the role of Artemy Burakh.
This game is... I mean, it's everything. It's tense and tragic but it also knows when to cut all of that with humor. It's loaded with Big Ideas in a way that you just don't see from video games very often. The difficulty is punishing, but it's also purposeful, because when you finally manage to claw out even a small victory, when you manage to trade enough lint for enough moldy cheese to fill your stomach enough to save a single life with nothing but a rusty scalpel and a handful of weeds from the neighbor's backyard, it feels incredible. The game's chock-full of memorable characters and tense decision points and crazy secrets and I truly, truly cannot recommend it enough.
If you like games like mass effect or the modern fallouts or whatever then i really think you're obligated to check out Pathologic 2. Don't worry about the "2," either, the game is really more of a remake of Pathologic 1 than a sequel.
And if you start now you'll be able to wrap it up in time to play Pathologic 3 next year!
http://www.audioentropy.com/
the game is kind of janky on PC
when the console versions launched they were basically unplayable. I haven't looked to see if they've fixed them, but definitely play it on a computer.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
in my defense those are things that sort of pop out to you as soon as you start playing
but yes you're right the less you know about it going in the better
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I've been good friends with the dev of this game for ~25 years so I'm about as biased of a source as is possible. That being said, if you enjoy the character building aspect of RPGs and want a game where you can do that and create dozens of very unique builds over the course of like a half hour I don't think there's any better option out there.
An option if you don't trust my biased opinion but want something that fills the same niche is Spellmasons. It's a neat game where you learn new spells and combine them in interesting ways. I do feel like all builds start to converge on a few powerful options once you get later in the game, but it does have mostly functional multiplayer which is pretty fun.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/794600/LET_IT_DIE/
This game is hard to explain a bit. It's probably the best "arcade" game you could play at home and it's developed by Grasshopper Manufacture. Essentially there's a tower and you're there to climb it while guided by Uncle Death. Probably one of the best "Freemium" games I've ever played. You can die in the tower, and can only come back through being rescued by another of your fighters, choose to lose everything on your corpse but get it back or paying a death metal (a quarter) to resurrect. Others are climbing too and you can encounter their fighters while in the tower normally and through raids by others too. . You get more than enough resources to never have to actually pay for anything through quests n' rewards n' such. Oh and the soundtrack is killer and pretty extensive. Turn on the radio if you're climbing the tower!
It's an action game based off of Christian apochrypha. And also a 3d platformer. And 2d platformer. And racing game.and has old school bosses that blink and attack in patterns.
Plus it has a distinct art style and batshit insane story.
but they're listening to every word I say
This is a narrative adventure game (don't expect many puzzles), which starts when an aging delivery driver asks for directions at a strange gas station. He's directed to The Zero, a surreal highway that runs through Mammoth Cave. Along the way he'll pick up an entire ensemble of people with strange, sad stories that are all trying to use the Zero to get somewhere.
It's a truly beautiful story, one of those "you can only do this in video games" kind of games. Gorgeous visuals, fantastic soundtrack, feels maybe a little bit less like a bolt of lightning than it did back in like 2013, but it's still truly, truly excellent. if you fell off somtime during the game's painfully slow episodic release schedule then you really owe it to yourself to get back in there. It's an absolute gem.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Ironically the reason why it's so easy to fall into the sun is because your ship is INCREDIBLY powerful. Like, the amount of thrust is just so vast that you can go from "orbital velocity" to "slowly falling into the sun" in like ten seconds.
That's not easy to do in real life!