Like "Ask X", "The best unknown games for X" is probably going to have a bunch of threads. So I'm making a general thread where you can share your favorite "unknown" games for any platform. By "unknown", or course, we still mean hidden gems that aren't big commercially (not like Call of Duty, God of War, Super Mario Galaxy 2...).
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Normality for PC is an awesome 3D adventure game by Gremlin that almost nobody knows about these days. It's one of the first games I ever bought (unfortunately I lost the box).
Time Slip for PSX is a neat platformer game for Net Yaroze that uses time travel as a gameplay device. Every two minutes or so your character is duplicated, and the duplicate will retrace your steps exactly (you have to be careful not to get it killed or otherwise disturbed to avoid creating a paradox).
Ok, let's start.
UnReal World — a very unconventional quasi-roguelike set in 12th century Finland, rather than a generic dungeon system, with survival as the main gameplay vessel. Be ready to die to the first lynx you meet. A lot. ;_; It costs $3 for the current version, but to be able to get every subsequent upgrade you'll have to pay $55, and it's updated pretty often, so that's somewhat of a disadvantage I guess.
Exile series — another quasi-roguelike with a very decent plot and hilarious sound effects (I mean it).
Huh, guess the easy way to name something obscure is to pick an obscure genre in the first page. Ok, let's try something more conventional then.
Least Best Room — a small arcade-like game with overwhelming fun/simplicity ratio and kickass music. From the creator of rRootage and Tumiki Fighters.
Bridge Construction Set — a physics-based puzzle game I've spent many hours on. There are many free maps and challenges to undertake if you're good enough to solve all of the maps.
Blast Miner — another great physics-based puzzle from the artist of Gish.
Even more conventional...
MDK — a third-person shooter/platformer that largely set standards for the genre and still lives up to them. Fast-paced, flashy, well-designed, spruced up with lots of Shiny's trademark sense of humor. The game that inspired Jet Force Gemini (which turned out very similar, but inferior in most respects).
Elasto Mania — physics-based moto-trial. I spent months on this game.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent — bar none, the best survival horror on my memory.
I guess I shouldn't name classics from the DOS era? Or are games like Star Control, X-com, or Railroad Tycoon deemed unknown by now?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Destrega (PSX)
Nox (PC)
Demolition Racer (PSX,PC) [Like Destruction Derby, but better]
Offroad (PC)
The Sting (PC)
Metal Fatigue (PC) [Not sure about the unknown factor, but the game sure as hell is pricey]
So what's so awesome about those games, Warepire?
I wouldn't personally consider the Exile series (or its remakes, the Avernum series) to be roguelikes; they're more classic-style CRPGs with an emphasis on combat (and, despite that, quite solid writing).
I know Einhänder showed up on the workbench recently, but it really is worth checking out. It has an amazing amount of depth -- you can systematically dismantle the bosses by blowing away their weapons and armor (one boss can be reduced down to the point where the only thing he can do is a shoulder charge!), you can shoot out enemy engines, and of course you can destroy enemies and then steal their weapons, of which there's a crapton of different varieties all useful in varying situations.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Daigasso Band Brothers on Nintendo DS. An excellent rhythm game if you value actually playing the real notes (nothing like guitar hero placebo gameplay style) and don't care much about midi quality (way worse than guitar hero). Get the first game first, the songs are better.
Actually, while we're on topic of shmups and depth, Battle Garegga is one of the most seminal games the genre has seen, and also named the best shmup, period, by many arcade enthusiasts. It features some of the best graphic design to that point, and utterly amazing soundtrack. It's also very unforgiving and requires a lot of dedication to get anywhere in terms of both scoring and survival. Neither that nor Einhänder were the games that introduced the boss dismantling, though: for instance, Darius Gaiden extensively used it back in 1994.
Derakon wrote:
I wouldn't personally consider the Exile series (or its remakes, the Avernum series) to be roguelikes; they're more classic-style CRPGs with an emphasis on combat (and, despite that, quite solid writing).
Well, the gameplay is very similar for most intents and purposes, with the only notable differences being able to save, and tile-based graphics instead of ASCII. The rest is very much the same, including depth of detail that classic-style CRPGs normally lack.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Derakon wrote:
Warepire wrote:
Destrega (PSX)
Nox (PC)
Demolition Racer (PSX,PC) [Like Destruction Derby, but better]
Offroad (PC)
The Sting (PC)
Metal Fatigue (PC) [Not sure about the unknown factor, but the game sure as hell is pricey]
So what's so awesome about those games, Warepire?
I guess I should have explained why I nominated them, I should not post when I am on the run...
Destrega is a full 3D fighting game where you have both ranged combat by magic and close combat (works like pretty much any other fighting game). You're a little limited to the number of characters to choose from but overall really fun and a good party game, not many seem to know this game, nor is it easy to find. As soon as I pulled my thumb out of my ass and properly learn TASing I am going to do some WIPs for various PSX games (this included) and see if anything is TAS-worthy.
Nox is kinda like a dungeon crawler / rpg type game with real time combat. You can choose between a few classes but I cannot remember exactly which as I have not played this in a couple of years. There is a speedrun on SDA of this game that shows the Wizard class.
Demonlition Racer is pretty much like Destruction Derby, except that you are encouraged to be much more brutal and it has more game modes, also the tracks are more fun. My favorite part is that you can one-hit kill someone by Death From Above (land on the other car from a jump etc).
Offroad is an excellent rally game, you race offroad buggies, the tracks are all dirt roads and other terrain that is not normally a road, the tracks are half-open, which gives a nice possibility of shortcuts. The game is pretty hard as it's really easy to flip the buggy.
The Sting! is a game without competition, I never seen a game come close to what this game is, this is believe it or not a burglary simulator / rpg. You are to plan burglaries and then execute them, the more you manage to loot the better, but remember that the quicker you're in and out of the builder, the smaller the chance that someone notices that the place is being robbed. When Windows TASing becomes a reality for large games like this one, I believe this game would be really hilarious to see TASed, I would even do it myself if I am still around when it happens.
Metal Fatigue is a RTS game where you fight on 3 levels, the air, the ground and underground, your main type of uinit is the Combot (Combat Robot) and is a quite customizable mech where you combine various types of arms, torsos, legs etc. You have of course your own technology and Combot parts, but when they get boring, raid the enemy and bring home parts of slain enemy Combots to increase your selection. This is pretty much a one of a kind RTS game and I have yet to this day to find a copy of the full game that I can afford, I have been playing the demo over and over again since 2001. Prices for this game ranges from 80 USD to 400 USD depending on condition and "completeness".
RuneScape Classic - In my opinion, much better than the current version.
Bounce Down - I'm linking to a post that has the link to the iphone app version since the java web-based applet doesn't work atm.
Stick Ranger - A stickman based action RPG that utilizes the mouse for movement. Attacks are automated.
sorry for the bump, I thought recreating this would be redundant.
Ace of Skies - Set in WW2, the final boss is.....of dubious historical accuracy.
PowderGames - Somewhat interactive physics simulator-ish game.
Over The Hedge - Gave me hours of fun not because of the gameplay, but because of the OoB glitches I found that are incredibly easy to pull off.
Joined: 12/22/2006
Posts: 193
Location: Flowood, MS
Midnight Wanderers, an arcade title from the Three Wonders PCB by Capcom, is a beautiful game and is a blast to play if you like side scrolling action games. Kind of like Ghouls n Ghosts but far less brutal (in fact, a bit easy in my experience; I'm able to reach the final boss on one credit after only two weeks with it).
<adelikat> tony hawk is porn for me
<Comicalflop>my mom is hot
Midnight Wanderers, an arcade title from the Three Wonders PCB by Capcom, is a beautiful game and is a blast to play if you like side scrolling action games. Kind of like Ghouls n Ghosts but far less brutal (in fact, a bit easy in my experience; I'm able to reach the final boss on one credit after only two weeks with it).
Oh yeah, I have that game on Capcom's first PSP arcade colection and it's fun. It is a little straightforward (pretty much constant Run Right for Justice) and it's a bit short (I can beat it in about 15 minutes) but it's a nice diversion.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Microsoft 3D Movie Maker was absolutely fantastic, given me so much pleasure. As you can probably guess, tt's a really user friendly way to make animated movies, which obviously look outdated nowadays; but they still maintain their original comedic value, and thus are still fun to watch. You can check out tonnes of the movies on youtube, but to help you sieve through the garbage ones I'd recommend watching Bodily Functions, Litterbug 1 and 2, Humorville movies.
I loved The Last Scenario. I was very turned off at first because of the RPG Maker look and the clichés, but before long, I was hooked and rewarded by an amazing story. It's pretty long, too! And did I mention it's free?
moozooh wrote:
This guy's not kidding. I've put some time in it, but I've held off for a while now because I am actually scared.
It gets to brainbleach levels of disgusting towards the end (although most of it is more implied than directly shown, which is possibly even more effective), so it might not be for the weak of mind.
That being said, it wasn't very effective in my case. Seems that no horror game is, as of late. Somehow I have got so completely immunized against horror games that nothing scares me (except the few cheap jump scares that some games throw here and there). For example, I bought F.E.A.R. because some people recommended it as a really scary horror game, but it had zero effect on me. It wasn't a bad game, mind you; it simply failed at being tense or scary, in my case.
This was rather different in the past, like 15 or so years ago. Would you believe that playing through the Area 51 levels of Tomb Raider 3 was a really tense experience for me (even though nothing really happens there; it was just the atmosphere.)
Falling Hero, available here http://www.kaser.com/mesh.html , is a great turn based puzzle game with surprisingly deep and subtle interactions in spite of its simplistic, grid-based, 2D appearance. The demo has only 15 levels, but they range over a huge number of concepts and difficulties from the full set of 102 with the game - which is what convinced me to buy it. Plus, if you ever finish those 102 levels (I haven't), there's a huge number of downloadable levels from the bottom of the page! Great puzzle game despite simple appearances.
