Quote Originally Posted by danzibr View Post
Hollow Knight is incredibly atmospheric.
Hollow Knight is an excellent game with a fantastic story and world, but I'm not sure it falls into the concept of an "art house" game as the OP is presenting it. Its gameplay, while great, is something of a derived combination of Castlevania (exploration and acquiring new travel abilities as you go) and Dark Souls (difficult combat, pattern-dependent boss fights, rogue-lite elements, minimalistic storytelling). Very good, but nothing in it is quite a novel concept.

Agreed with the posters who mentioned Night In The Woods. That's a great game with a very unique art style and gameplay loop. I still need to finish it, since the very slow (some might say artfully slow, but I dunno) pacing eventually led to me getting distracted by other things.

I'm a little surprised nobody's mentioned Undertale yet, though I understand this forum's overall opinion on that game is somewhat lower than some other corners of the internet that I frequent.

I'd add to the list Celeste, no-one has to die, and as a maybe edge case, Monaco.