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.
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.
I always like to give a mention to Your Spider. There are very few reviews (one of which are mine), but the game definitely deserves more attention.
Tinykin
I know you said less than 1,000 reviews but this is at 1,500 so I think it just squeaks by.This game for lack of a better description, adorable and over too soon.
Like a mashup of pikmim, Spyro 2, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It’s got lots of fun platforming and new puzzle mechanics in an ever adding open world that is a true joy to traverse and cute silly little side plots that make for rather grand set pieces when it all comes together. I got 100% in 12 hours but also collect-a-thons are my jam and I was plowing through the game with grin on my face for everything but the platinum time trials.
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.
Children of a Dead Earth is a tactical space game with n-body Newtonian physics. This means that on the surface it is very similar to something like KSP, you can do things like orbit a Lagrange point. In addition, you can design all the parts of you spacecraft and weaponry down to the materials they use. If you can make a fuel tank made out of aerogel work with the laws of physics, then you can use it. For example, I made a coilgun that fires nukes which was devastating at close range but the low velocity of the nukes made them easy to dodge at long range and without any thrusters, they cannot course correct.
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.
ECHO (2017)! It’s an indie game with AAA-feeling production quality from a tiny Danish studio that sadly went bankrupt after the game only sold a few thousand copies. I played it during lockdown on an old recommendation from MetaFilter and it has since become one of my favorite hidden gem titles.
You play a bounty hunter named En (voiced by Game of Thrones star Rose Leslie) who wakes from hibernation when her spaceship arrives at a legendary artificial planet said to hold the secret to resurrection and eternal life. When she arrives on the surface, she soon discovers that its interior is a vast, abandoned baroque Palace, straight through to the core. As she wanders the infinite halls guided by her witheringly sarcastic AI London (voiced by Nicholas Boulton), she is surprised to find the Palace generates hostile clones of herself that hunt her down and copy her actions in a unique spin on the stealth genre. Gameplay consists of trying to navigate through various beautiful, byzantine concourses, collecting artifacts and unlocking elevators that lead deeper into the secret at the heart of the planet.
You may or may not enjoy this based on how you feel about stealth games with minimalist combat, but for me the challenging adaptive gameplay combined with the evocative score, compelling voice acting, intriguing story, and gorgeous environmental/sound/UI design made this a really nice surprise. (And while the studio might be dead, I’m really hoping the plans to turn it into a movie eventually rise from development hell.)
This is an incredible game I highly recommend, but I had to downvote because rules
When a publisher goes bust, who gets the money from game sales after that point?
Cozy Space Survivors is a short (few hours) cozy survivor-like indie game with pixel graphics. A run is only ten minutes, so it works also for people with not too much time. It is developed by a single person and it is his first release.
I’ve bought so many Survivor games and many are so bad.
This one looks like it’s trying something unique. I’ll take it for a spin.
What are your picks of the genre?
I’ve also tried a whole bunch, my favourite is probably Rogue: Genesia, I really like the challenges and metaprogression over some of the other titles I’ve tried
Cannon Brawl is a unique kind of RTS where it’s sort of like StarCraft meets Worms. You need to expand something like “the creep” from the Zerg in StarCraft in order to build, but you can also destroy the terrain under your opponent like in Worms. I kid you not when I say this has been one of my go-to local multiplayer games for a decade, and it rules.
This is the first comment I’ve found talking about a game I’ve played. Had a lot of fun playing cannon brawl it feels wrong to downvote your comment.
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!
This one is really fun and very underrated indeed. It gives you a level with an objective, how you solve it is entirely up to you. You can sneak to the objective, shoot your way through or cause mayhem by stacking boxes, explosive barrels and more. Also, the achievements on steam are all pictures of the developers cats.
Yep, it lives up to the best of what immersive sims set out to be. You have point A, point B, and a million ways that you can go about getting from A to B
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
Our Adventuring Guild doesn’t look like much on its cover but it scratches all the management sim and tactics RPG urges that I enjoy, while also having some surprisingly cute writing (while still mainlining the classic fantasy RPG themes)
The whole things just a massive labor of love from a relatively small indy studio. At one point it was an RPG Maker game that was delightfully well polished in terms of story, art, and environment. After the devs got tired to rpg maker limitations, they ported the whole thing to Unity and re-released it as a free Enhanced Edition update. Childhood me played the shit out of GBA Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and it very much scratches that JRPG itch.
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.
