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Posts
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2420350/The_Mildew_Children/
The other game, and still one of my favorite games of the last five years, is Black Book. When her love commits suicide and is therefore condemned to hell, Vasilisa makes a deal with a demon to open all the pages of the Black Book and return he’ll bring her betrothed back to life.
In gameplay you take on the role of a witch in 19th century Slavic Russia. As both a pillar of the community but also a mistrusted figure, people come to Vasilisa for help with their problems: from an imo breaking plates to a demon murdering people at a sugar mill, and many other varied situations. You make choices, and decide how you will manage your disparate roles as a witch while learning about the real beliefs and culture of 19th century Slavic Russia. This game feels like it was designed by an anthropologist, and has a works cited page for the in depth work the designers did for the game to feel authentic and real. It rules.
When you do get into combat you use a deck you’ve crafted of spells to string along attacks to fight enemies. The deck building in this game is very good, with a myriad of viable strategies for how to build your spellbook.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1138660/Black_Book/
One Finger Death Punch
It's a wonderfully arcadey two-button beat-em-up that's currently €1.24 on Steam.
The second thing that came to mind, after seeing Iji recommended (also a great game!), is Daniel Remar's other games, particularly Garden Gnome Carnage.
There's nothing quite like a grainy 360p YouTube video from 2007.
You can get it for free from his website (which also has other great games like Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt), or you could just warp back in time and play the flash version on Newgrounds.
And speaking of Newgrounds, of course, this is where I recommend the Flashpoint Archive.
That's (almost) every single flash game (and animation!) out there, kept alive and playable through a huge preservation project. And not just Flash, either - a ton of old web games from all sorts of engines.
Did you grow up playing weird games on the Lego and Cartoon Network websites like I did? They're all there.
Did you spend way too much time on Newgrounds or Kongregate or whatever? If they weren't paid games, they're probably in there somewhere.
You can get a ~1.9-3.5GB installation if you want to just download games as you find them in the listings, or (if you're a hoarder) you can torrent the full 1.68TB install.
So the early 1900s were a wild place. The world was in turmoil, the industrial revolution was still tearing down traditions and nations left and right, and basically a lot of wild shit was going on like that little WWI thing. This game is not about WWI. It is about a professional army that fought in Russia against the Central Powers, but with no nation of its own until after the war. This was the Czechoslovak Legion which, up until WWI, was an ethnic group with no nation. However, they ended their part in the war to find out they actually had a home nation to return to now. The problem? They were in Russia. And their new home country was on the other side of the Eastern Front, which was still contested. Being tough bastards, they shrug their shoulders and go "okay, we'll just go the other way around the planet to get home".
Which is what they did.
Except this is also right when you've got that minor little Bolshevik Revolution kick off and Russia plummets into civil war and suddenly you've got different groups eyeing this very large well-equipped professional army, probably the largest and best army left on that side of the front at this point, and the White loyalists want them out and the Red revolutionaries want to force them to stay and fight for them until both sides change their minds at various points. To which the army says "fuck that" and proceeds to take over the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Yes, that railroad. The one that runs from Moscow in the West allllllll five-fucking-thousand-something miles to the Pacific Ocean. Did I mention the army had some 70,000+ people? This was an army army. And they made it! The Allies provided a fleet of transport vessels, picked them up in Eastern Russia, ferried them across the Pacific, transported them across the US, ferried them across the Atlantic, and then transported them to their new homeland in what was then Czechoslovakia (and is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia).
And this train ride is what Last Train Home is about. It's an awesome mix of building up your train to keep everybody alive, gathering resources, and doing a number of missions tactically commanding a team in combat. It's got neat stuff like being able to help local civilians as additional objectives. Of course it's not historically perfect, but it's highly atmospheric and does feature the major points of history like how the Czechoslovakian Army was betrayed by the Russian factions at least once each, but neither side was strong enough to contest the Legion.
Overall it's an impressively good game about a historical event I had never even heard of despite being one of the most interesting events related to WWI (I'm from the US so we only get the "'Merica!" version of history in school, wherein nobody else does anything worthwhile except 'Merica!). It's realistic enough that there was even an attempt to ban its sale in Russia for disagreeing with state history, which should give an idea of where the game falls on the "truth versus story" spectrum.
Why.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/297490/Spy_Chameleon__RGB_Agent/
My hype pitch: Lolo x Metal Gear in a PS2 era candy shell
Swapper
https://store.steampowered.com/app/231160/The_Swapper/
Platformer puzzler
Marlow Briggs
https://store.steampowered.com/app/249680/Marlow_Briggs_and_the_Mask_of_Death/
Epic action
Steam ID: Good Life
Shady Knight - Dark Messiah of Might and Magic meets Dustforce?, Neon White? with a splash of Devil May Cry/Bayonetta. Look at this sick trailer!
Everything in this trailer is just someone playing the game normally! You're just constantly doing cool stuff while playing!!!
that's the neon white / dustforce connection in my mind, but i don't really know what to call that - speedrun games? but it's not *really* a speedrun game, you just have the leaderboard there if you want to be insane (and actually one of my 'complaints' about shady knight is that it doesn't have a medal system like neon white, where you can compete against the developer instead of having to compare yourself to the absolutely cracked sickos online)
Ah, Pseudoregalia is quite solid. Very good movement - I know we're used to PS1-looking games controlling like tanks with spiked treads, but Pseudoregalia runs smooth as butter, genuinely one of the better 3D movements I've tried. It's fairly short and easy but very enjoyable and *absolutely* worth it for its low price.
(Also anyone for whom the main character being a furry OC is a downside should consider a little less cowardice in their life, if you ask me!)
Naw but really. There are game events tied to it mechanically and narratively. Part of the gameplay is figuring out the how and why.
It's not a hardcore game or
A Short Hike: gorgeous and very chill exploration game. It’s unstoppably cheery and just a wonderful time.
Firewatch: neat mystery game set in the woods in Wyoming. You are a park ranger tasked with being a lookout for forest fires, and weird shit is happening. Pretty short and well executed.
Max and the Curse of Brotherhood: this was a cool platformer I found on Games with Gold a long time ago. You can manipulate wind/water/vines and use it to get across various levels to rescue your brother.
Sayonara Wild Hearts: possibly the weirdest game I’ve played in a while, it’s very surreal and has a kickass soundtrack.
Edit: Honorable mention, Celeste is an absolutely incredible platformer with great movement, great story, great music, and a great challenge to boot. Not really obscure but I will always sing it’s praises.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
There is a sidequest in pathologic 2 that made me seriously wonder if the game had been tapping into my microphone the entire time
Im fairly certain it doesn't
Fairly certain
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I've got A Short Hike on my wishlist despite finishing it on gamepass. Mostly because I want to throw some money at the developer, partly just to replay sometime. Super charming, and soundtrack to match. Same story with Unpacking. And TOEM.
Yes, it's a high school otome dating sim where all the hot boys are literal non-metaphorical birds.
It is also legitimately good, has some really fun writing in it, and the secret final route (unlocked by dating ALL the boys, of course) is a real banger.
Metamorphosis, which is as accurate to the Kafka book as Dante’s Inferno is to the Kafka book. But you get to play a cockroach and wander around weird surreal landscapes. Currently 80% off on Steam.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
The sequel to OFDP is also good.
With full 16 color Enhanced Graphics Adaptor (EGA) graphics, these graphics will be some of the best you've ever seen*:
*Statement only applicable to the blind.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1220150/Blue_Fire/
My review from a couple years back:
The good:
* A good 3D platforming game for PC comes out once every few years. This is one of them.
* The control is very precise; the game might ask you to jump between very small crumbling platforms in midair, but this works a lot better than you might think.
* Some of these levels are extremely large, which I appreciate.
* There's some nice Hollow Knight inspirations in the aesthetics.
The bad:
* There's a few instances where you'll activate a lever, then have X seconds to get through a platforming challenge. This works fine; the issue is that if you mess up and want to restart early, it works like "Hit lever, cutscene showing door at the end closing plays. Hit lever again, cutscene showing door at the end opening plays." Those cutscenes are a bit too long, and get old by the second or third time you see them.
* The game is overly linear. It opens up a bit at the end, where you get a choice of two whole areas you can go through in any order, but that's about it. Otherwise, it's going to the new area that just opened up, beating it, and getting a key to the next area.
* There's no map, which gets a bit weird since a few characters might refer to something being to the North, for example.
The difficulty:
There are a few different pieces of the game, and I'll talk about each one in turn:
* The combat was a bit annoying to get the hang of; even after completing the game, I still felt like I was just brute-forcing my way through the combat instead of gaining any sort of mastery. (And it feels like the combat could be mastered.) On the other hand, healing items are easy to acquire, and spending a few thousand coins on extra healing slots will sort you out for the entire game. So I got hit a lot in combat, but then just healed that right back again.
* The bosses are, honestly, fine. Again, you have access to a good stock of healing, so I got through most of them on my first try, albeit with substantial healing; there's no expectation that you'll take a few tries to figure out the boss first. The bosses I died on were more due to trying to leave the healing to the last minute than anything else. Even the final boss went down first try, and I had trouble figuring out a couple attacks.
* The platforming in the main game is more difficult than in most platforming games, but it's not *that* bad.
* The platforming in the void challenges gets significantly more difficult than in the main game; you'll be going through areas that resemble a 3D Meat Boy level, and there's never quite enough checkpoints. However, these are optional. They do give you an extra heart each, but the only reward for completing all of them is cosmetic. If you skip over the hardest 4-5, you'll still be in fine shape combat-wise, while cutting out some of the hardest platforming the game has on offer. (Though even the void challenges aren't as bad as they look, and you're not out anything other than time if you attempt them and fail a few dozen times.)
There's also free DLC that has a bunch of hard platforming challenges.
Dungeons of Dreadrock (puzzle, I guess).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1896880/Dungeons_of_Dreadrock/
My review from a few years back:
This mostly works. The biggest issue is that this is a bit of a weird combination where I can solve a puzzle but fail on the execution a few times, or get stuck on a level because I didn't notice a hidden element. And I'm not just talking about loose bricks in the wall, but, for example, scripting on enemies that cause them to do something unexpected. Someone looking for a puzzle game would want an undo option, more discoverability, and a more generous attitude towards timing, while someone looking for a dungeon crawl will find a puzzle game. The controls also have issues. A controller isn't quite precise enough, while the keyboard controls are weird. (You can only remap joystick buttons, not keyboard.) This is originally a mobile game, and I'm blaming the controls on that.
On the plus side, the hint system is excellent, proceeding from general hints to a step by step guide on how to actually solve the level, so even when the game gets a bit cryptic you're unlikely to get stuck.
And All Would Cry Beware!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071510/And_All_Would_Cry_Beware/
My review from earlier this year:
The story, told in collectable logs, is good. In combination with the general vibe of the map, it reminds me of a sci-fi short story from the 80s or earlier, based on the exploration of an unknown world filled with the weirdest stuff the author could think up.
In the end, it's very much an indie game, but it's cheap, not that difficult, and quick to play through.
Hand of Doom
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924400/Hand_of_Doom/
It actually works, though? It's more an adventure game than a dungeon crawler, and never really gets frustrating, thanks to being developed this millennium by people who actually know what they are doing.
Some others I don't see a review for:
Dungeon Warfare (1 and 2, but start with 1): Basically a 2D Orcs Must Die game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/355980/Dungeon_Warfare/
Supraland: 3D Metroidvania taking place in a sandbox. Literally. Cool environment, and it uses the Metroidvania elements extremely well. Haven't played the followups yet, but they exist.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/813630/Supraland/
Escape Goat 2
https://store.steampowered.com/app/255340/Escape_Goat_2/
Charming pixel puzzler, with a difficulty that feels just right. 1 is good also, but 2 is just a lot more.
The Momodora games, specifically Reverie Under The Moonlight, Moonlit Farewell, and the spinoff Minoria.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/428550/Momodora_Reverie_Under_The_Moonlight/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1747760/Momodora_Moonlit_Farewell/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/940910/Minoria/
Pixel Metroidvanias. A tad horny, but nowhere near as much as the Shantae games or recent other genre entries that went well overboard. Good game feel, excellent art, good music, quick completion times (with bonus challenges available if you dig them).
Doronko Wanko
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2512840/DORONKO_WANKO/
Become a Pom, destroy your owner's house mischievously. It is actually free, and not "free" in the way a lot of games are (with ads or gacha or whatever).
The FAR series, Lone Sails and Changing Tides
https://store.steampowered.com/app/609320/FAR_Lone_Sails/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1570010/FAR_Changing_Tides/
2D games where your protagonist uses a cumbersome but powerful vehicle (a truck of sorts in the first game, a boat/sub in the second) to travel a long distance, alone (hence, FAR). Puzzle games, but pretty gentle about it, it's much more about flow state and experiencing the world/imagining what's been happening in it.
Holocure
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2420510/HoloCure__Save_the_Fans/
Probably the least obscure game here, but it's the even more unhinged fan game version of Vampire Survivors. Where VS has focused on insane numbers of characters and new weapons, Holocure is full of fan service for very distinct characters who have a more distinct and unique playstyle compared to any VS characters. And also entire sub games as bonus content, such as a Jump King style tower and an Animal Crossing style hub with fishing and farming. This is also free.
Cloudpunk has you playing as a futuristic delivery driver. You spend the majority of the game in your taxi but you can get out and explore on foot as well. Voxel graphics but that never bothered me.
Dodgeball Academia is a shounen style game about going to a school for dodgeball. People get super powers and the characters take it way to seriously.
Banner of the Maid stars a young woman fresh out of military school and assigned her first role as a leading officer during Napoleonic France. The game is actually pretty fucking hard which is maybe why it didn't get that much traction because damn is it cool. I am not an expert at that historical era but from my POV they did a decent job slotting this into the real life military conflicts of the time. The combat is similar to final fantasy tactics, except the units have fixed classes. Although you can upgrade and customize them into a higher tier of class they cannot change at that point.
Kaichu is a dating sim for Kaiju. It's really simplistic and mostly just a short, cute, goofy time but it's also pretty cheap so why not.
I would also second the Sayonara Wild Hearts suggestion. Very cool game and the soundtrack is awesome.
PSN:Furlion
Banner of the Maid looks like it pulls a lot from Langrisser(armies fighting once the unit attacks).
Thomas Was Alone is a masterclass of storytelling through narration.
The entire game is just controlling different colored shapes with different special abilities, but the narration gives all of them their own personalities and hopes and dreams.
It was very satisfying, and I highly recommend it.
There aren't actually armies. You're controlling individual characters and the troops shown during attacks are just representing the unit's HP.
People don't even remember Red Dead Revolver
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Just so long as they remember Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, the greatest cowboy game of all time.
I'm 90% sure melee weapons in Lunacid are just doing a single line trace of an appropriate distance for your weapon straight out from your on-screen crosshair and seeing if you hit something relevant, no collision or anything for the weapon, accidentally place your cursor under an armpit and you miss completely with your greatsword.
Obviously help is help when you're working on a game, but it still stuck out to me that that was the contribution since those two things are what I'd consider the somewhat underwhelming part of Kira's games (with the good parts being 'pretty much everything else').
https://www.jydge.com/
The website seems to imply that the game is never coming back in the original form, but they're basically doing a 1.5 remake with new stuff in it to avoid whatever issues they were having. The new game will be called JYSTICE
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Yeah, that's also kind of how Langrisser does it.
The rumor seems to be that they were threatened with a lawsuit for being too close to Judge Dredd. But I'm a little skeptical, as I don't think they're that similar.
Which one did I play (or play the demo of [from a magazine disc] on my PS1) back in the day?
You play a leccy stationed on a Scottish oil rig in the 70s. Shit goes down when the site manager pushes the crew to drill too greedily and too deep.
It's extremely linear, but the amount of detail put into the world is fantastic. Every area of the game feels lived in, functional, like it's there for a purpose and not just a level in a game. The sound design is deeply unsettling and haunting even before things go sideways, but also isn't afraid to just sit in moments of quiet sometimes.
The VA is superb and, being almost entirely a Scottish cast, doesn't shy away from leaning right into Scots in the dialogue.
The horror elements are not really anything new or groundbreaking, but are paced nicely and do contribute to some pretty neat (and honestly gorgeous imo) setpieces.
Probably one of my favourite games of the year that I've seen almost zero reception for.
Steam ID - VeldrinD
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver are the only ones that came out on ps1:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/2207/blood-omen-legacy-of-kain/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1525/legacy-of-kain-soul-reaver/