I thought of another one. This is an odd one, because I think the dev is actually quite well known: it's Yahtzee Croshaw, formerly of Zero Punctuation and now of Fully Ramblomatic. He's made a number of games over the years, but one that almost nobody ever mentions anymore is Poacher. (Note: link is to Archive.org rather than Steam; I don't think the game is available on Steam.) I didn't actually beat this one, as it ramps up quite a bit in difficulty as it goes on, but the basic controls and whatnot are very nice, and the humor is great. Here's Wot Rock, Paper, Shotgun Thought about it, since it's a bit of a faff to actually install at this point and Archive doesn't offer reviews and whatnot.

Mega Knockdown a turn-based fighting game that successfully adapts the best part of fighting games: throwing rock four times in a row because you've gotten in their head well enough to know they're gonna throw scissors four times in a row.

(note the above is an old clip, the placeholder frames have since been filled in)

Maybe Ten Bells

Solo dev who was pretty sad that it had slow traction on release because he put so much work into the game. I can see it now has over 500 reviews, so perhaps he got the reaction he wanted!

similar game play to goose game, but your a penguin, trying to break into the research station and act like you belong for as long as possible. as you always wanted to be an academic.

your penguin might do things like choose recordings from a tape recorder to convince your "colleuges" in a conversation (they sound like the peanuts teacher though) that you are one of them. wearing cute costumes to blend in (lab coat, twead sweater, glasses, etc). if you are caught doing penguin things (waddling, eating raw fish, etc) you are kicked out as the lab has a strict no penguins policy.

if your duration in the lab exceeds the top x % on a weekly leader board you get accepted in to a school and the game moves to a school setting. except your penguin is competing with a mix of other penguins (other players) and actual students (npcs) to stay in the program. you can collect recordings in your recorder and change costumes. you can understand other peguins, but the actual students again sound garbled. if your likeability score gets low enough it is discovered youre a penguin and you get thrown out, as the school has a strict no peguin policy. you are released in the icy wasteland and you have to start your academic career over. if you last long enough in school you graduate the game gives you an nft which can be submitted on a website to verify, which you can brag about in the real world! you have an nft!

if you log in after this your Penguin is stuck in an office with students saying garbled things, you play your recorder, they always accept what you say as you have tenure. you can look out the windows at children playing. raising the question did your penguin really want to get in to academia, to be accepted, or something else...

Little Rocket Lab - fun factory builder with Stardew valley vibes

Hellkind free short artsy horror themed top down walking sim

WORMHOLE (51 Steam reviews)

WORMHOLE is next-level Snake. I've written about it before! There are powerups, wormholes (obviously), and increasingly complex and cramped levels. The game's graphics and music get more intense over time and it becomes an oddly hypnotic action game.

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.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/296010/NeonXSZ/

A game that holds a fantastically emotional spot in my heart is Jason Oda’s CONTINUE?9876543210. It has a mixed rating by the general public, but holds the very core of my faith.

At the start, a video game character dies, and is scheduled for deletion. Eventually, the garbage collector that filters through the computer’s RAM, deleting levels that have served their purpose, characters of memory damage and mangled speech, and reflections on what it it is to be dying, all deleted. The goal of the game is to find peace in the milliseconds of afterlife, however that happens.

we all fear deletion
those who were deleted
i took with me
their lightning, their prayer

https://store.steampowered.com/app/263340/Continue9876543210/

(yes! I got a downvote! Someone else knows this game!)

I'm glad to see these threads again! They're fun.

Ash & Adam’s GOBSMACKED (37 Steam reviews)

This is a single-player arcade FPS. You battle robots in a series of arenas with a set of wacky weapons, with shops in between. At the start of each run, you have to buy yourself a starting loadout using the money you got from previous runs, but you can’t choose the same items as your last run. Buying an item for the first time at a shop unlocks it so you can choose it as a starter in a future run.

Total Distortion is a point-and-click adventure that combines music video creation, business simulation, and surreal humor. Players build music videos, battle guitar monsters, and navigate a strange dimension, all in pursuit of earning $1 million.

Underhero

I found the game through a review recommending it to "Paper Mario" fans, but that video was so obscure I failed to ever find it again. The platforming is jank, the story compares unfavorably to another game with the same first 2 syllables, and the switch port is terrible with its load times. But I like the combat system, and while it starts fairly generic, each area becomes more and more visually intersting. Also we play as a silent protagonist, but they still gave them so much personality in the form of a hint system notebook, most devs would do hint systems as generically as possible to not confuse anyone, but I love them for not doing that.

A true flawed 7/10 game.

Reassembly, a fantastic and beautiful simple shipbuilder with a great modding scene. My go-to game when I'm high and just want to chill with some pretty particle explosions....

(should we be upvoting the games we haven't heard of? Or just downvote only?)

Eh, I don't know how well the game is known, but I'll throw out A Robot Named Fight, since looking at Metacritic it seems like it never got much mainstream attention. It's also (unsurprisingly) on sale right now, only $3.24 in the US.

Anyway, the game is a metroidvainia roguelite mashup. The gameplay is more the Metroid side of "metroidvania" being very obviously inspired by Super Metroid. You traverse a randomly generated map, getting unlocks for future runs by accomplishing various things though out that run, think Binding of Issac's item progression.

Elder Scrolls Skyrim, really niche indie game. Just kidding!

Nikoderiko - really fun platformer that's kind of a mix of Donkey Kong and Crash. Currently on sale on gog (linked) and steam

Crushed In Time

A point and click in the same vein as There Is No Game by the same studio, that came out recently and that I haven't seen people talk about at all, unfortunately already past its introductory offer

Ed-0: Zombie Uprising - A japanese 3rd Person Zombie Action Roguelike. It's silly, it's fun, it's pretty hard sometimes!

This is probably a bit cheating since it just came out, but we had A Fox Tale on our wishlist since 2021 and it apparently actually came out a couple months ago and we completely missed it!! I immediately went and grabbed it and yeah, it is good. Fox platforming, great story, really good level design and gosh the ART is just so good!

-- Frost

Project Gorgon or, as I like to call it, Project Gorgonzola. Its an indie MMO, but its possibly my favorite MMO and I play a lot of them. Its very unique feeling. Has a lot of jank, but also a lot of charm. Come play with me :3

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs

This is a delightful little indie game where you have to talk to stock photos of dogs and complete little unhinged quests. It's been on gdq in the awful block with the dev before, but only 221 reviews as of now

Recursed is a very difficult puzzle game about recursion.

Ex-Zodiac - retro star fox inspired rails shooter

King of kings: the early years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Kings:_The_Early_Years

A mediocre set of platformers interspersed with bible trivia. I played the crap out of them because it was the only thing other that super Mario we had.

Later we got Joshua and the battle of Jericho. A bomberman clone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_&_the_Battle_of_Jericho

Wintermoor Tactics Club, part tactical rpg part VN. Very cute and lots of fun

EDIT: https://store.steampowered.com/app/917840/Wintermoor_Tactics_Club/

Angels Fall First

A large scale, sci-fi, squad based FPS that’s been in development for about 10 years. Battles scale from individual soldiers all the way to pilotable battleships that can be boarded and sabotaged from within, and everything in between.

Total labour of love by the developers. It will soon be leaving early access.

zero-k is very nice, opensource too. I think it started as mod for total annihilation or supreme commander and developed into its own thing.

Weirdlands

Message Quest - a silly little medieval PnC adventure with a stained-glass art style and a lazy squire as protagonist

A short little puzzle platformer: Leap Year. To complete the game, collect all of the calendar pages scattered throughout the level. But beware, there’s fall damage. While your jump is two blocks high, you can only survive a one block fall. There’s more to it, but spoilers…

F2P (not gacha) but pretty good imo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/802930/The_Rainsdowne_Players/

Esports Godfather is one hell of a genre soup: deckbuilder/autobattler/management game/single player MOBA? But trust me, it play way better than it sounds - at least if you're into deckbuilders and management games. My only criticism was that it is a little too easy, but even given that it was easy to sink a lot of hours into it. It's just fun making combos between heroes in battle, setting up the perfect deck through your players or engaging with all the million subsystems in the management mode side.

They did use AI art (supposedly trained on their own work) for the player portraits, so do with that what you will.

Sword of the Necromancer : Resurrection.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2782880/Sword_of_the_Necromancer_Resurrection/

Best played co-op. Wonderful story with a great ending. Truly beautiful and solid game play. Short 12hr game to 100% complete.

Only like 150 reviews.

I learned a shitload about geography and culture from an old board game called "Globetrotters".

I'll throw in another one, why not. Withering Rooms is one of my absolute favorite games I've played this year. It's an action/light horror roguelike that ends up being a very unique experience despite clear inspiration from games like Silent Hill and Dark Souls. For a solo developer game (who even wrote the wonderful music himself) it's a seriously impressive game, especially with the amount of small QOL touches. I thought the puzzles were intuitive personally, but I loved and appreciated that there is both an in-game "Puzzle Oracle" consumable if you are stuck, and a tiered hint section on the website if you need a nudge.

There's a ton of builds you can do, from various magic builds to melee and ranged and traps and more. The story is also very interesting, the world building is excellent and I enjoyed the writing. It really nails a certain vibe that very few games get right. For me, exploring this unique and interesting but dangerous world filled with a cast of weird and strange characters gave me similar emotions as playing Dark Souls 1 the first time. And it's hard to give higher marks than that.

Amazing game.

No More Mages is a very short (for now) but also very inexpensive (for now) beat-em-up platformer in early access that was made by a fellow lemming. He made it known to me in a comment a few months back, I picked it up, finished it quickly, but definitely felt it had been worth tossing a couple of dollars at a fellow Fediverse user for! I’m looking forward to what happens with it in the future.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3392510/Zexion/

A neat metroidvania with a built in randomizer.

I've recommended this before, so it's possible people will have heard of this from me, but Gateways by Smudged Cat Games is pretty great. It's a puzzle platformer but it gets very, very complicated as you go on, especially once you unlock the ability to use all the different mechanics at once. It's a pretty smooth learning curve up to that point, though.

The Sea Will Claim Everything / The Lands of Dream - a very crusty "window" into another world, made by one of the writers for The Talos Principle. Quite personal, too, as you'll find out if you stick with it.

As a separate comment: Iji

Freeware game and an awesome gem. Great soundtrack, too

Can I suggest a game that isnt even on steam?

Handkerchief

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