Obscure Games Recommendation Thread

Some very underrated underground vidya:

Skyrim

GTA V

The Witcher 3

I found this little open world indie game called Minecraft, you should try it out sometime

Heroes of Might and Magic

Warzone 2100 is still the greatest rts ever made

Creeper World 3, interesting take on the tower defense genre, you use your towers to expand and take over territory until you can beat the level. 4 has been released but I don't think it's as fun as 3

Vampire Survivors Fun game that doesn't take a whole lot of focus or energy, you just have to dodge enemies while the game attacks for you and you choose upgrades

Gunpoint tactical 2d strategy game about breaking into buildings and killing people and rewiring security systems, neat mechanics and fun

Once the finished version is released, Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator, you make and sell potions and gather ingredients through a few different minigames, you have to discover what each thing does and figure out the most efficient way to make potions. I played the initial release and it was fun, once the final version is out it should be pretty good.

And if you're neurodivergent a frequent rdrama user:

Baba Is You, There's some redditor circlejerking about this one but it's still a good puzzle game, you push sentence fragments around to change the ways levels work and it can get pretty difficult.

All of the Zachtronics game collection, they're all puzzle games that start relatively easy and end up very difficult. Each one has very different mechanics and keep you thinking. I think the best ones are Inifinfactory and Opus Magnum.

You said "obscure," and I intend to deliver...

Freeman: Guerilla Warfare - a mashup of Mount and Blade and the ARMA series. You get all the verbs of M&B, but with modern guns instead of horses, and the whole thing set somewhere in Slavland. Random-encounter battles are fought with an ARMA- or Ghost Recon-style tactical map that is really a sight to behold. Player progression is much faster in Freeman than in Mount & Blade; you'll be in the late game, the part where you're conquering cities and founding your own faction, before you know it.

Edit: Mount and Blade itself is very well-known these days. I'm not complaining -- but Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword is at least a little shorter on reviews.

Sorcerer King: Rivals - a fantasy 4X strategy game. You're playing as one of the vassals of an evil overlord who has already conquered the world, and is now working on a spell to consume it and turn himself into a god. The situation sounds hopeless, and it would be, except for one thing: the titular Sorcerer King is a chump. This game's writing is good.

Queen's Wish: the Conqueror - play as a layabout prince of a currently strong but historically very shaky empire, suddenly sent out to reconquer an island continent that your people were kicked out of by unknown forces a few decades back. Base-building and base-expansion are a big part of this game; it feels like a major improvement to the Baldur's Gate style of Western RPG.

Legends of Eisenwald - a fast, brutal, Heroes of Might and Magic-adjacent medieval RPG. I say "medieval" instead of "fantasy" because that's what it is: it's set in a fictitious region of high medieval Germany, and feels like a spiritual successor to Darklands. The soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission.

Star Traders: Frontiers - this game is teetering on the brink of greatness, but it's only teetering on that brink. It almost manages to be a classic. But then it falls over in the wrong direction; ultimately it's dreary and drab. What does it get wrong? I don't know, but the game's enjoyable to learn, and the puzzle of where it fails is an interesting one to wrestle with.

Black and white 2

You Are Empty — the granddaddy of Eastern European FPS jank. Released in 2006, it depicts a post-apocalyptic unnamed Soviet city filled with mutated citizens still wearing their job uniforms as they try to kill the player. It feels so similar to Bioshock gameplay and atmosphere-wise it is crazy that You Are Empty actually predates it. Half of the developer team would later on work on the Stalker trilogy, so it is somewhat the spark that ignited the ukrainian fps industry (Stalker and Metro games). I tried to find any non-malware links to purchase it, but seems like the game was taken off steam years ago and no other reputable site wants to deal with it. Search at your own risk.

King of Dragon Pass and its prequel Six Ages — manager games where you take on the role of a tribe’s elder, as you have to guide your people through a fantasy post-Bronze age collapse setting with dragons and beastfolk. Seemingly passion projects, because the prequel came 19(!!!) years after the release of the first game. They are planning to make a third game, but many suspect that the devs will just George R R Martin it.

I couldn’t think of a third entry so here’s a good collage of obscure games.

It’s old af but I still replay it with my nephews n nieces:

guacamelee side scrolling couch co op platformer with great music

Some of these games look like they belong on Game Dungeon.

Class of '09 is one of the few VNs I can tolerate

Westerado Double Barreled is also fun for a budget RDR

Garlic is pretty good platformer

LOVE 3 is also a pretty good platformer but feels completely different than Garlic

Huntdown is a good run and gun that deserves more attention

Original War is an underrated RTS

Ratz Instagib is a multiplayer FPS that needs more attention

Titan Souls is kinda like a 2.5D shadow of the colossus boss rush game that goes on sale for pretty cheap

Play giants citizen kabuto instead of any of this bullshit.

Snapshots:

Valdis Story: Abyssal City:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Hypnospace Outlaw:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Toree 3D:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Toree 2:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Broken Reality:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Eversion:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Know By Heart:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Tunic:

• archive.org

• archive.ph (click to archive)

• ghostarchive.org (click to archive)

Underrail. Its like fallout 3 but good.

I'm a strategy game nerd so here are some of my favorites.

Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa - One of the best beginner wargames out there, it's easy to learn, has a great ui, and is long but not too long. The only negative is it really only has one campaign, the game is built around the German campaign with the Soviet one being less in-depth and also less fun.

Unity of Command II - A fantastic turn base strategy game, once again easy to learn and has a great ui. The levels are all built well will killer short turn lengths which allow the AI to feel really intelligent. If you like the base game the DLC is just as good.

Gary Grigsby's War in The East 2 - Only a recommend for people that love wargames is the A tier for detail and depth. No game more accurately portrays the Eastern Front more realistically. However, it has a lot of the generic wargames problem, it's overly complex, hard to understand, and a UI from the 2000s. Still this most recent game has made improvements with most of these problems with the option to allow the AI to takeover air warfare and logistics(some of the most esoteric game systems).

Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War is weeb kino

The fact that there hasn’t been a spiritual successor to Descent is a tragedy.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/273570/Descent/

Another one: patapon on PSP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patapon

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Grand Theft Auto V

The Vitcher 3: Vild Hunt

🍕award

Here's the thing. You said a "jackdaw is a crow."

Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.

As someone who is a scientist who studies crows, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.

If you're saying "crow family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens.

So your reasoning for calling a jackdaw a crow is because random people "call the black ones crows?" Let's get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too.

Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A jackdaw is a jackdaw and a member of the crow family. But that's not what you said. You said a jackdaw is a crow, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the crow family crows, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds crows, too. Which you said you don't.

It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?

Rimworld (with mods)

I don't know if it counts as obscure but Wargroove is fricking awesome if you miss Advance Wars. It's fantasy instead of modern military but otherwise identical.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/607050/Wargroove/