Obscure Games That Deserve More Attention?

[Mr Masker]

I'm bored, so here's a fun topic...

 

For the past while, there's been the general rhetoric of, "games aren't fun any more" and/or "games used to be so much BETTER X years ago". Personally, I feel these people are usually searching extremely narrowly, usually only acknowledging the big titles (or titles that suit their argument).

 

I think that, like any form of media, you can find good and bad games from any year if you look in the right places. I feel that the growth of Indie games overtime has made this all the more clear, as loads of small, but passionately made, games come and go. Even in gaming's "best" and "worst" years, good games still fall to the wayside, usually to be rediscovered by some Video Essay Person to make a 2-hour video on.

 

But, rant aside, what are some OBSCURE games that you've played/are playing that you'd recommend to others?

Ignore the bit about Indie games, it doesn't have to be that specifically, I was just making an example from my own experience. Just games that aren't that talked about, but you really enjoy. I might interject with my own games, once I can think of one that actually fits the definition of, "obscure".

Edited May 29 by Mr Masker
I'm a chronic perfectionist, sorry

[Skullzrawk9]

Squirrel Stapler is a short, surreal horror game. It’s created by David Szymanski, who also made Dusk, Iron Lung, and Gloomwood. The game is based around quietly hunting squirrels in a forest and stapling them to your wife who may or may not be dead. Also, God is coming in 5 days.

 

Cruelty Squad is an immersive sim that is also surreal and is known for its strange, psychedelic graphics and wonky controls. If you can get past its deliberate assault on the senses, strange control scheme, and poor balance, it’s a genuinely fun shooter, with a wide variety of character upgrades (some are useless jokes, others are powerful enough to break the game), off-the-walls story, and fully interactive stock market (which fluctuates based on actions you take throughout).

Edited May 29 by Skullzrawk9

[DankMetal]

Psychopomp and Disillusion ST, if you like dungeon crawlers (and RPG), surrealism and horror, then both games are for you.

Psychopomp is free on steam, and Disillusion is in a beta state AFAIK, so you don't have any excuse to not try them.

[VICE]

Inscryption

Card game with a twist.

 

If you thought myhouse.wad was wild, you've seen nothing yet.

[Monocled]

Rivals of Aether is an awesome pixel-art 2d fighter game, And with its steam workshop you can pretty much play as almost any character you can think of.

[chexwarrior]

Caves of Qud is an ambitious roguelike taking place in a distant future that I can only describe as being like the Dying Earth stories.

 

 

[Mr Masker]

21 minutes ago, Monocled said:

Rivals of Aether is an awesome pixel-art 2d fighter game, And with its steam workshop you can pretty much play as almost any character you can think of.

Rivals' Workshop is so cool, so many amazingly made characters on there. Unfortunately, I have no one on Steam Friends who own it too, but messing about with Custom Characters in Single-player matches can be fun too.

 

13 minutes ago, chexwarrior said:

Caves of Qud is an ambitious roguelike taking place in a distant future that I can only describe as being like the Dying Earth stories.

I've wanted to get into Qud ever since I saw a review of it. I seems like the Dwarf Fortress kind of game, where it's got loads to figure out and learn. Maybe eventually I'll give it a proper look.

Edited May 29 by Mr Masker

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Head. Extreme. Destruction. Zone.

 

[quakis]

Void Stranger, is one of my favourite games from 2023 and without a doubt one of the best games I've played in a long while. It looks like a simple Gameboy style Sokoban puzzle game, but has so many layers and layers brewing under the surface, it was an incredibly satisfying experience figuring everything out. Stellar soundtrack too.

 

La Mulana and La Mulana 2, puzzle/action platformer series where everything around you could be a vital clue to solving a mystery be it in the current area or several hours from now. The games feel ever more increasingly complex as time goes on as puzzles are narrowed down, while many are left unsolved across the many areas. Combat/Bosses can also be quite tough and unforgiving. There's no other games quite like what the La Mulana games pull off that feel like an indepth archeological adventure. The second game might be a little easier for newcomers to get into with its quality of life improvements.

 

Sekiro, while not obscure when speaking of FROMSOFTWARE in general, it's one game of theirs that often gets forgotten about amongst Dark Souls, Bloodborne or Elden Ring discussions. I consider it their best work with highly satisfying combat mechanics and great boss fights. There's some really nice locales to explore without going overboard with world scale which put me off playing most of Elden Ring. Sekiro a much tighter focused game.

 

Will also vouch for both Cruelty Squad and Caves of Qud already mentioned from earlier posts. There are others but these are the most notable from the top of my head right now.

 

I've never agreed with the "games aren't fun any more" notion, always finding something neat coming out every year and it's typically from the indie scene. Haven't given much attention to the vast majority of the AAA scene and the major publishers for many many years now and honestly don't miss any of it.

Edited May 29 by quakis

[kalensar]

Freeciv-- Open Source game based on Civ 2

Star Control 2 Ur Quan Masters-- Open Source available-- HD Mod version is amazing

Master of Orion 2-- Deserves a Open Source port rather than only being available for DOS/DOSBOX

Star Control 3-- IT deserves all the criticism it gets, but its also sorely overlook. Dang Fun Game.

Battle for Wesnoth-- a "classic" for Linux gaming.

UFOAI-- Based on XCOM and made using Quake Engine.

 

[Not Jabba]

One of my favorite games is Knytt Underground. It's basically a Metroidvania without the item gating or combat -- it just lets you loose in this gigantic underground world and you go wherever you want. Very moody with lots of feels.

[ASD]

Super Skelemania. It's a mini-metroidvania designed for speedrunning.

[Mr Masker]

10 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Head. Extreme. Destruction. Zone.

 

This feels like a game I'd be playing in a deep dream, then wake up and realize it never existed. I still have no idea what's going on.

9 hours ago, quakis said:

I've never agreed with the "games aren't fun any more" notion, always finding something neat coming out every year and it's typically from the indie scene. Haven't given much attention to the vast majority of the AAA scene and the major publishers for many many years now and honestly don't miss any of it.

Cheers to that, it's such a silly thing to say about such a large and growing genre. Like I've said, you really just need to look in the right places. And personally, here, I've found a lot of interesting games to look into.

 

9 hours ago, quakis said:

Void Stranger, is one of my favourite games from 2023 and without a doubt one of the best games I've played in a long while. It looks like a simple Gameboy style Sokoban puzzle game, but has so many layers and layers brewing under the surface, it was an incredibly satisfying experience figuring everything out. Stellar soundtrack too.

Interesting. Looks like one of the GB or GBC Zelda games, but as you and some reviews are saying, there's seemingly more to it than that.

[Daytime Waitress]

13 hours ago, Skullzrawk9 said:

Squirrel Stapler is a short, surreal horror game. It’s created by David Szymanski, who also made Dusk, Iron Lung, and Gloomwood. The game is based around quietly hunting squirrels in a forest and stapling them to your wife who may or may not be dead.

 

That festering carcass nailed to your wall? She dead.

 

But yeah, I'll second this one. Dusk is one of my fall-time faves - it got me back into PC gaming (and by a way abouts, Doom) - so I was obviously predisposed to giving Squirrel Stapler a fair shake, but I had an absolute blast streaming it for a small group of mates who would otherwise have passed by Weird Horror Game with A Sub-2-Hour Runtime.

 

I really enjoy how every facet of this game is, if not completely contrary, at least in a state of strong and constant juxtaposition: meditative, ambling hunting-sim pace contrasted with intermittent intense enemy encounters; an overarching time-limit and small environment, but strong encouragement to explore every nook and cranny; narrative progression that is often just plain text dumps, yet doled out incrementally to give a sense of anticipation; fever-dream PSX-era visuals that require imagination to give them life sat alongside genuine existential terror.

 

You begin each day with the voices in your head demanding you staple more woodland rodents to your corpsewife, then you busy yourself with mundanities like collecting your daily ammo and hunting squirrels that are riddled with a disease that makes their pathfinding real jank, and then you finally flee back to your home before nightfall, when something larger and faster than you can comprehend will rend you limb from limb.

 

Then you wake up and do it all again.

 

I think any assetflip/memegame/one-note joke would have coasted on that, but the five day time-limit (very Majora's Mask) and anticipatory aspect of wanting to see the protagonist slip further into madness both tie the simple gameplay together better than if this were a title in lesser hands. When a game starts you off on the floor of a shack and tells you you have to staple woodland creatures to rotting remains and then proceeds to become even more unnerving, the developer has absolutely done their job well.

Edited May 30 by Daytime Waitress

[Tetzlaff]

Project Eden, an action-adventure by Core Design, released 2001. Great setting and atmosphere and really nice puzzles, where you need to cooperate with your team members, who all have different abilities. Only thing that could have been better was the combat, which was a bit under-developed and tame.

 

Here's a video:

 

[Gravepicker]

On 5/30/2024 at 3:07 AM, Not Jabba said:

One of my favorite games is Knytt Underground. It's basically a Metroidvania without the item gating or combat -- it just lets you loose in this gigantic underground world and you go wherever you want. Very moody with lots of feels.

Absolutely recommended on my part. If I remember correctly (I played it around 7 or 8 years ago) it had a conversation system in which your character is mute, but you can let either one of you two faerie friends talk at any given time, one of them being more aggressive and distrustful and the other being nicer and more caring. I wouldn't, from memory, say that its a masterpiece of storytelling, but a pretty neat spin on the "your character has 2/3 personalities and you can choose which one to use in every social interaction" trope of say, Mass Effect or The Walking Dead. As a platformer/metroidvania it was solid, I remember enjoying it through to 80/90% completion. I should probably revisit it and try to finish it.

 

On 5/29/2024 at 11:41 PM, Skullzrawk9 said:

Cruelty Squad is an immersive sim that is also surreal and is known for its strange, psychedelic graphics and wonky controls. If you can get past its deliberate assault on the senses, strange control scheme, and poor balance, it’s a genuinely fun shooter, with a wide variety of character upgrades (some are useless jokes, others are powerful enough to break the game), off-the-walls story, and fully interactive stock market (which fluctuates based on actions you take throughout).

Not much to say about this one other than just try it. It was a pretty grueling experience for the first two hours for me, but once you get used to the graphics, sounds and controls, you get one of the most bonkers (dunno if in a good or bad way) criticisms of capitalism I've seen in long while. Oh, and once you have most of the unlocks you become satisfyingly overpowered.

 

As for my contribution to the topic, I'll go with Devil Daggers, an FPS in which you are trapped in an arena killing increasingly more foes. You die in one hit, and while the waves are somewhat randomized, you can guess what's coming next with like 90% certainty once you know the game. The objective is to survive as long as you can, with the WR being at 45mins last time I checked (ages ago though). I didn't play it that much because I was pretty busy IRL at the time, but learning how to survive for longer and longer was pretty fun. I hear there's a sequel/spiritual successor by the same developer/team, but can't remember it's name from the top of my head and haven't played it.

 

edit, to Maribo's reply: thx for the corrections. I certainly didn't remember it properly, but I could have researched it a bit before spreading falsehoods.

Edited May 31 by Gravepicker
unreliable memory, laziness ;-P

[Maribo]

20 hours ago, Gravepicker said:

As for my contribution to the topic, I'll go with Devil Daggers, an FPS in which you are trapped in an arena killing increasingly more foes. You die in one hit, and while the waves are somewhat randomized, you can guess what's coming next with like 90% certainty once you know the game. The objective is to survive as long as you can, with the WR being at 45mins last time I checked (ages ago though). I didn't play it that much because I was pretty busy IRL at the time, but learning how to survive for longer and longer was pretty fun. I hear there's a sequel/spiritual successor by the same developer/team, but can't remember it's name from the top of my head and haven't played it.

Some minor corrections here: The spawns (as in, what enemies spawn and when, visible here) for the game are 100% deterministic, but their locations are "randomized" to a degree. They follow a rough pattern of alternating what "side" of the arena they spawn on, with some amount of offset. This is most noticeable in later loop waves, because Thorns pop up in a distinct Y pattern (unless they have a wonky extreme offset). World record is just shy of 21 minutes, visible here. And the spiritual successor by the same team is HYPER DEMON, which is an inversion of Devil Daggers' "survive as long as possible" goal: "kill everything as quickly as possible". Wonderful games by a wonderful team.

[Egg Boy]

Not super obscure, but some stuff you may have overlooked that I quite like.

 

Amnesia: the Bunker

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
N++
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Custom Robo (childhood classic, probably not actually that good)

[Mr Masker]

On 5/30/2024 at 12:25 PM, Tetzlaff said:

Project Eden, an action-adventure by Core Design, released 2001. Great setting and atmosphere and really nice puzzles, where you need to cooperate with your team members, who all have different abilities. Only thing that could have been better was the combat, which was a bit under-developed and tame.

 

Here's a video:

 

Even though I never grew up with them, there's such a charm to these early 2000's PC games. Stuff like Deus Ex, the early Hitman games, Kotor, Morrowind, etc just give off a certain style that I don't see replicated super often. Might give that video a watch!

 

8 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

Not super obscure, but some stuff you may have overlooked that I quite like.

 

Amnesia: the Bunker

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
N++
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Custom Robo (childhood classic, probably not actually that good)

I played a bit of Juarez, seems fun. Maybe I'll come back to finish it. I think I brushed it off a bit at first, as just another FPS game, but it's actually a fun time

 

I think I remember seeing N+ on the Xbox Live Arcade Store, never really looked to see what it was though. Maybe I'll give it a look.

[yakfak]

insanely into an old atari st game called Sundog

I guess it wasn't obscure back then, just moved beyond

except it has some exceedingly simulationist systems and moments where you realize that the game's data by itself is fun

eg all the random town layouts (posted by horny for daggerfall gang)

[whybmonotacrab]

I actually just made a list of about 60 hidden gems I've played over the years with descriptions of each in the notes. They are almost all modern indie games too!

Edited May 31 by whybmonotacrab

[Mr Masker]

27 minutes ago, whybmonotacrab said:

I actually just made a list of about 60 hidden gems I've played over the years with descriptions of each in the notes. They are almost all modern indie games too!

This is super cool, I'd love to make something like this! I'll be sure to check out some stuff on here.

[LegendaryEevee]

Monster Rancher (where I got the Ragnarox persona to begin with).

 

Jersey Devil (severely underrated exploration Platformer).

 

Um-Jammer_Lammy  (was overlooked by Parappa the rappa.  This chick metal version had so much cooler songs).

@Mr Masker

[dasho]

I have no clue if it's obscure, but One Way Heroics is one of my favorite roguelikes.

[Bobby :D]

None of these games are particularly obscure, but whatever :P

Rain World
Not the most obscure game, but one of the best I've played relative to it's popularity and impact. It's a gem of a survival platformer (hell of a genre fusion), and it streamlines and iterates so many aspects of both formats into one of the most effective and provocative experiences I've played to date. You'll hear people describe it's vibe as "being a small creature in a bigger, dangerous, and sometimes beautiful ecosystem", and they are selling it short.

Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime
Fun-as-hell couch co-op game where you pilot a space ship with other equally space-flying-incompetent friends and try to save some goofy little creatures from the deadly vacuum of space (and robots, lots of asshole robots). You could play it solo, but good luck, it's already pretty tense with other people.

Metro 2033
Slav Jank, the "survival" shooter for people who enjoy dying every 2 seconds. The thing that this game goes for mostly is atmosphere, crawling derelict tunnels and cities post nuclear-ruin is depicted as a persistently nerve-wracking experience, every level you wonder if you are going to be put down by the monsters, the people, the radiation, the broken buildings, or even the specters of the war itself. Of course, because it's Slav Jank, it's also unintentionally hilarious, especially with the English dub and the "stealth" gameplay.

Ok now for the kind of obscure games

Last Blade 2
SNK are the GOAT, and this is one of my favorite fighting games of all time. If there was a game that fits the word "anime fighter" while being the complete opposite of what an "actual anime fighter" is, this must be it. Taking place in an alternate fantasy feudal eastern asia, you fight each battle with an ebb and flow that can be as cautious as Samurai Showdown, or that can erupt as fast as any modern fighter, but it's done with the grace and presentation of theater; music swells and anchors the vibe, the backgrounds burst with life depicting scenes of moonlit cities, radiant outdoors, and burning villages, grounding every fight in the perilous and emotional. The roster is one of my favorite in any fighter; sword fighters, club smashers, hand-to-hand (or leg-to-leg) fighters, magic wielders, asshole pompadour guy, and my favorite, turtle fishing guy, and so many more, comprise this colorful set of fighters. The games most interesting mechanics are the Type Select and Deflect system, Type select lets you pick between power - stronger hits and combos with less chaining potential, and speed - lowered power for the benefit of excellent combo chaining, letting you pick the tempo of your character. The Deflect system lets you parry away sword/primary attacks but gets beaten by the off hand attacks, universal charged attacks, and grapples; sounds pretty modern, but this game came out in 1998. Also, it's damn beautiful, probably the best looking Neo-Geo/SNK game, and that's a console that has KoF and Metal Slug.

Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom and Shadow of Mystara
My favorite Beat'em'up right next to Streets of Rage 2/3 and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Capcom did an incredible job representing the magical world of DnD and also managed to make an incredible game out of it to. Like DnD, you play a wide variety of classes, expect instead of an 1:1 RPG you play with beat'em'up systems modulated by the class system; you can cast spells, use items, equip rings, and have class specific attacks and combos (in the case of Mystara) that make everyone both have a role to play while being able to mosh the mobs like any other game. The world locals and the enemies are filled with lots of classic DnD archetypes, there's even a red dragon to find that will murder you so bad the game had to put like 3 warnings before you try to fight it cause you're quarters would just disappear before you eyes. Despite never really getting into DnD, this game really does it's best to make me want to make some character sheets.

Edited May 31 by Bobby :D

[Wahrnehmungskrieg]

I used to use freeindiegam.es to find interesting stuff and that site is still up and still worth perusing. One thing I found from there I play still and I've never seen anyone really talk about (even in puzzle communities) is a game called Panic Mission (https://hsp.tv/contest/hspcontest407.zip). Maybe to the modern puzzle scene there's a lot of cruft but it's a real gem. Lots of other games I loved too, but most far too sexually explicit to talk about here.

 

One of the people who ran that site, Stephen Lavelle/increpare, who you may be acquainted with from his commercial releases like Stephen's Sausage Roll, has a lot of interesting gubbins on his site to explore. Every puzzle game of his is worth a look-see but games like Missing, Universal History of Light, Opera Omnia, 2plus3, a story about a cat, In Heaven, untitled flickgame 3, Kristallnacht, Worst Guest, amongst many many others, I thought were very interesting.

[DoomGappy]

Iji is a platformer shooter that has an intricate gun upgrade system and interesting story. The feeling of playing the game is one of despair and desolation. It's available for free, but it feels like a ripoff, honestly. 

Curiously, just found that Remar has made some Doom levels, I'll have to try them out. 

[CyanTheGojiFan]

most of these likely aren't obscure but in the grand scheme of the gaming sphere, they feel kinda obscure to me.

 

Micro Mages: an NES game by MorphCat Games you can get on Steam (link) and as an actual physical cartridge on the creator's website (link)(are there too many links?). simply put, it's a vertical platforming NES game that only uses 40KB of space, and with it, there is a good amount of content within it, it even has 4-player multiplayer (the only other game I can remember that has 4-player support is the nightmare on elm street, but let's act like that doesn't exist) The creator has also made a few other games for the NES on his website for free too.

 

Plok: honestly a game that has gotten love over the years, it is probably on my mind considering what sadly just recently happened, but I think this game deserves all the love it could get, it is fun, challenging, and obviously has a kick-ass soundtrack done by the Follin bros. Tim and Geoff, It was so good that even Shigeru Miyamoto saw the game in action, he had a strong interest in it and said it would be the third best-selling platformer behind Sonic and Mario... I think idk I just heard that fact somewhere and decided to believe it. (and believe it I shall)?

 

last (I think) is FreeDoom, yeah pretty dumb one to end on since a huge chuck of people on this DOOM WEBSITE would know about its existence, and if not, they probably would of least seen the FreeDoom thread down below on the front page and went ".................. OH, the name is like freedom and Doom mixed together oooooh... what the fuck is FreeDoom". but just like the other two games I've listed, there's a lot of hard work put into a Free-Doom clone/game (see what I did there) that has levels and music just as good (and, to me personally, sometimes even better) as the original

 

 

Edited May 31 by CyanTheGojiFan

[taufan99]

Does this count? Radix: Beyond the Void

It's basically a poor man's Descent, with lack of actual 3D and 6DoF, but that doesn't mean it plays terrible. In fact, it's far less nausea-inducing and more balanced in term of controls, which might make it all the more accessible for new players alike. What it lacks in true 3D environment, it makes up with larger architecture (to an extent, at least), which is also occasionally filled with hordes of enemies, suitable for fans of slaughtermaps alike.

There's also a source port for it, if you don't like setting up DOSBox to play the game. While more work still needs to be done to achieve content accuracy and make it entirely playable, it's still good enough for modern gamers alike.

Oh, and did I tell you that the original level editor just got rediscovered way back in September last year? Alternatively, you can also make custom maps for the RAD source port with Doom Builder.

[RichardDS90]

Outside of places like Newgrounds and Kongregate, personally, I really wish the Epic Battle Fantasy games got hell of a lot more love, it's one of those series that's got so much passion put into it. It's basically the Earthbound of Final Fantasy, and it's a damn good parody at that. And the soundtrack is absolutely terrific. Even the spin off games aren't slouches either.