What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm interested in great games that many people haven't heard about. Platform and age is no concern to me, but I mostly have PC games listed here. I'm really looking forward to what you guys have experienced.

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Puzzle Quest: Bejeweled meets Magic: The Gathering. 1v1 plot-based competitive Match-3 game. Eventually it was made into a free online game called Gems of War that is close to the predecessor, but grindier and worse plots. You gather mana by matching 3 gems, gaining mana of that gem color. Mana fuels spells to deal damage, heal you, or manipulate the board (turn all green into red, gaining 1 health for each gem changed). There are a lot of different strategies involved, and even has a PVP feature if you have friends on a LAN.

The Magic Circle: You are a game object, given sentience and the ability to reprogram things in a broken game. The game is omniscient, but unable to change anything, and his programmers are idiots and jerkbags, so he makes you to fix things. Remove the hostility function in a dog and convert it into a friendly. Remove the poison function from a mushroom and put it on your dog. Now you have a poisonous dog that will fight things for you. Take the mobility and friendliness of a dog, put it on a human corpse, and you now have a mobile friendly zombie. The game is full of flavor, and does well to make you think outside of the box. It

Iji: Free RPG Platformer, effectively System Shock in a platformer format. AMAZING game, especially when you consider it was made for free by one guy. The plot is great, playstyle options are plentiful, and has a few secret endings (including a way to be a pacifist).

Dungeons of Fayte: Free 1-4 player Zelda RPG. Imagine simplified DnD, played with 4 people on the same PC. Controls are very simple, allowing up to 2 players on a single keyboard and one playing on the mouse (so you can start playing with 3 people without need of a joystick). Has some cooperative events, some competitive mechanics, different classes that all focus on different things, and lots of humor.

CRAWL: 4 player game, equally competitive and cooperative. You play as one living person and 3 dead guys. The dead guys possess monsters to kill the living hero, the living hero tries to stay alive to earn money, exp, and other things. When the hero beats the boss (which the dead guys also possess), the game is over and the hero wins. HOWEVER, if a dead guys' monster ever kills the hero, the hero dies and the dead player now becomes the sole living player and starts trying to level up in the same way. Your living levels are retained per each individual player, so just because you died doesn't mean your progress is lost. The more a living player is winning, the more powerful the dead players' monsters get, so the game rewards those who lose and penalizes those who win, so it's always a challenge.

Super Robot Teisen (Also known as Super Robot War): Imagine you have a turn-based tactical RPG filled with every Gundam, every Zoid, every giant robot thing ever Made In Japan®. It has a LOT of tactical decision to make, when it comes down to individual powers of pilots, the fact that they're interchangeable with each of their mechs, which all have their own unique stats and preferences in combat. Some mechs have specialized weapons, but most can interchange them so you can provide enough options for your mechs in a number of scenarios. The games get harder the better you do, so it's naturally designed to always be a challenge. These games are intense, and while the plots can sometimes be difficult to get in to, and learning how each stat interacts can cause a steep early difficulty curve, it's a great series for people who like tactics games without much random chance. This game has the unique feeling that every decision and death was YOUR fault, with some way of preventing it, without much divine intervention to blame it on. There are a number of these on several Nintendo consoles.

Please post favorites of your own!

[Sian]

Original War, RTS with the gimmick of being strictly limited as to how many units you have, and if a unit die you’ll miss it for the rest of the game. (Plot being that America found a time machine in siberia, which is a one way ticket to 2.000.000bc ... with the only fuel being a cold fusion mineral only found in Siberia... prompting America yo send troops/ back in time to move the deposits, but stumbling over alternate timeline Russian that have gotten the same idea moving the cold fusion mineal, only found in Alaska, to Siberia ... and a 3rd faction consisting of a arabic group with European mercenaries)

Game was a miss because it came out at the tail-end of the RTS genres high times, just around 9/11 (making a sympathic arabic team a poor fit), and the advertising being complety nonexistent outside of perhaps Czechia and Poland. With the company quickly calling it a failure and selling off the rights (and support duties) off to the small East European community

[Kato]

Well, too bad, you have to take Iji off the list because I've heard of it and wanted to mention it

[BeerMug Paladin]

I always liked Twisted for the 3D0. It was a silly game show where the winner got to leave the game world and become a real person. It was a pretty simple game, with trivia and little minigames and so forth, presented with FMV like the 3D0 did often. It's been a long time since I've tried it, so I don't know if it holds up, but I did enjoy it back at the time.

I have a hard time thinking of what "nobody's ever heard of" means, because while there are a number of obscure or underappreciated titles I enjoy, a lot of them at least have enough recognition for people to have heard of. And there's certainly a lot of games that people know about, even if they never talk about them. Adventure for Atari, for example.

Adventures of Lolo (1-3, though 3 is the best of them). Is probably my favorite.

I also remember really liking Snake, Rattle n' Roll, but I'm unsure whether or not people have heard of it.

[LibraryOgre]

Modem Wars. An old, modem-based, turn-based strategy game. Call up your friends and play a wargame with grunts, boomers, and a quarterback .

Alternate Reality, which was an ambitious First-Person, Open-World RPG that didn't quite live up to its ambitions. Only The City was completed, leaving The Wilderness and The Dungeon undone. It was EXTREMELY sandboxy, and you played, more or less, a hobo, since you couldn't really have a home, save inn rooms you rented by the night, most of your food also came from inns, and there were no plots or quests... just wandering around, trying to find things, occasionally fighting things (or charming them, or tricking them, or trading with them).

[DemonicAngel]

Metal Fatigue - giant robots, corporation warfare, aliens, all packed up in a cool RTS format with 3 distinct maps and scavenging of parts. it was amazing.

[factotum]

Well, too bad, you have to take Iji off the list because I've heard of it and wanted to mention it

Ditto for Puzzle Quest, because I have that one as well!

Favourite game that nobody's heard of (unless Triaxx pokes his nose into this thread): X3: Terran Conflict. Best single player Elite-style game in existence. The studio behind it (Egosoft) went off the rails a bit with X: Rebirth, but I have hopes they learned their lesson in the upcoming X4.

[Cespenar]

"Nobody" is a stretch, but here are some underrated gems from the 97-00 era that I might have had mentioned before in similar threads:

NetStorm: A pretty unique RTS in which you had to use tetris-like bridge pieces to get across airborn islands and outrange/outgun your opposition with the correct application of different turrets. That probably didn't mean much.

Sanity: Aiken's Artifact: A very underrated action/adventure game with a cool superpowers-themed story. I vaguely remember that the protagonist was voiced by Ice-T or something.

Gruntz: A puzzle game with good voice acting and humor. And lots of references.

Silver: Another action/adventure game with a pretty fun combat system for its time. I recall that the story itself was somewhat cliche, but the way it was told was not half bad.

[Beelzebub1111]

Super Baseball 2020 - SNES/Genisis/Arcade game about baseball set in the far future. Men Robots and Women all play together and they have jetpacks. the foul and home run zones were shrunk down so home-runs were only over the center field fence and fouls were only behind first and third base. The team you faced off against int he world series were named after historical Axis people.

Cyborg Justice - Final fight style Beat-em-up where you could rip off your opponents arms and replace them with your own.

Temple of Elemental Evil - a near perfect reproduction of the original temple of elemental evil with 3.5 rules. The only D&D game set in the Greyhawk universe. A super awesome and difficult tactical combat game. I still boot it up all the time (remember to use the Circle of Eight mod)

[Yora]

Bound by Flame: I've only ever seen it mentioned anywhere once, which was a live first look lets play. It really had zero marketing. It is very clearly a b-list title and it doesn't actually do anything particularly impressively. But I like the combination of looks and feel, and the simple story.

Another one is Redout, which is the best Wipeout game I've ever played. Even shortly after release it had zero people playing online.

Primal is one of the best 3D-Adventure games I ever played. I belief it got a PS3 or PS4 port on PSN. I think it has a fantastically designed world and exploring and solving the puzzles was really fun. Only the combat felt tacked on, but most of the time it's pretty easy.
I like it more than The Longest Journey.

[Cespenar]

I like it more than The Longest Journey.

Now, let's not get hasty over here.

[Harrisonvinny]

Tiny Toons: Buster Busts Loose for the SNES (though I am finding it is not as unknown as I once thought...)

[Tvtyrant]

Tiny Toons: Buster Busts Loose for the SNES (though I am finding it is not as unknown as I once thought...)

OMG I lost to the cafeteria level so many times as a kid...

On that note the SNES Lion King platformer, with its completely awful opening level with the just can't wait to be king song.

Most obscure: SNES Pacman point and click adenture game.

[Rodin]

A quick look through my Steam list to see obscure ones...

Ok, I'm not sure how obscure this list is, but they're definitely pretty far down the "indie" hole so hopefully someone will discover a game they like:

Salt and Sanctuary - A game that largely manages to out-Dark Souls the Souls games themselves, despite being a 2D Metroidvania. All the more impressive for being made by one husband and wife team. I've always felt this game doesn't get the credit it deserves.

Defense Grid: The Awakening - Easily has the best plot of any Tower Defense game I've played, and a serious plot to boot. This is mainly down to the voice of your AI advisor, who really sells it. It helps that the game has simple but very finely tuned levels - you really need to know what you're doing, especially on harder difficulties and in challenge mode.

Desktop Dungeons - Deceptively difficult turn-based dungeon...crawler? Puzzle game? It kind of defies description, but the strategy goes deep.

Dungeons of Dredmor - Rogue-like dungeon crawler with the comedy taken up to max. Lots of goofy fun with many classes, and fantastic mod suport.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara - A remake/re-release of the arcade classics, they were well known in their time but perhaps not so much now. I consider them the best beat-em-up games of all time.

Gunpoint - Another game with a development team you can count on one hand, it's a stealth puzzler in the same vein as Mark of the Ninja - except it's cyberpunky with hilarious dialogue. Short but well worth the time of anyone who likes stealth games.

Hand of Fate - A roguelike where what you encounter comes from a deck you have built. The combat is unfortunately only passable, but the concept is compelling and the non-combat encounters are a lot of fun.

King's Bounty series - Possibly less obscure than the others, but worth putting on my list I think. Heroes of Might & Magic style combat where you roam an overworld rather than build a kingdom - a lot of fun finding the different synergies from the units.

Machinarium - Short little adventure game following a little broken down robot with a steampunk aesthetic.

Oxenfree - Adventure game about some kids stuck on an island when weird things start happening. Stellar story and playing the game a second time reveals more of the story.

Quantum Conundrum - Physics based first person puzzle-game, not dissimilar from Portal. Main highlight is the writing and the voice acting of John De Lancie as the Professor.

[Gnoman]

NetStorm: A pretty unique RTS in which you had to use tetris-like bridge pieces to get across airborn islands and outrange/outgun your opposition with the correct application of different turrets. That probably didn't mean much.

Netstorm can pretty easily be described as a multiplayer tower defense game. It was ludicrously ahead of its time - not only was it one of the first games designed for Internet multiplayer (hence Netstorm), but the advancement system (in which you start out with most of the units locked, and have to unlock them by sacrificing enemy priests) is a pretty clear predecessor to that used in modern games such as World Of Tanks.

Metal Fatigue - giant robots, corporation warfare, aliens, all packed up in a cool RTS format with 3 distinct maps and scavenging of parts. it was amazing.

This one fell into obscurity because it is extremely difficult to get it to run on any OS newer than Windows Me. Fortunately, it was recently released on GoG, and you can even get the multiplayer working.

Ditto for Puzzle Quest, because I have that one as well!

Favourite game that nobody's heard of (unless Triaxx pokes his nose into this thread): X3: Terran Conflict. Best single player Elite-style game in existence. The studio behind it (Egosoft) went off the rails a bit with X: Rebirth, but I have hopes they learned their lesson in the upcoming X4.

I sort of feel like it went off the rails a bit with the X3 games. There were too many different ones (a real problem if you subscribe to the "Never buy an Egosoft game until it's been out for two years, they need that time to fix the bugs" philosophy, and I found the interface changes from X2 really hard to get used to.

That reminds me that I need to start playing these again.

[Temotei]

There was this game where you toured an airport and it had all sorts of funny sound effects when you clicked on stuff.

It had this minigame where luggage was on conveyor belts and you had to get the luggage to the proper sorting bins by switching directions of belts, hitting switches, etc. I loved that game. I don't remember what it was called, though.

[Eldan]

I can second Iji and Crawl. Crawl is on the Switch and worht every cent.

Miasmata is one that I don't think enough people have heard of. It's a two-person effort. A sort of... walking simulator stealth exploration botanist simulator game?

Anyway. You are dying of a mysterious disease. You are stranded on an island, where a group of scientists were working on the cure. A monster is stalking you through the jungle. You have to find the notes of the scientists and the right plants before you die.

Two things that made the game for me. First was the disease. You are not your usual action hero. You are weak and feverish. That means if you try to run down a hill, you can trip and fall. If you try to swim more than a few meters, you might drown. Climbing a hill means you are out of breath for several minutes. And it's all very elegantly done and feels organic.

The other is the mapmaking. The island is huge, with varied microclimates (you'd be surprised by how many varieties of "jungle" these people can come up with). You start with a blank piece of paper, a pencil and a compass. You can fill in the map by finding landmarks that you can draw a line of sight two and triangulating your position, which fills in the map around where you are right now and a direction to that landmark. When you get two different sight lines at different angles on the same landmark, that landmark is filled in too. It's surprisingly interesting and involved. It means that you'll frequently try to climb hills or walk out on a long headland at the coast, just to find out where you are after getting lost in the jungle. Again, feels very natural.

The monster is the weakpoint, really. It has some nice behaviour when stalking you, such as being distracted by thrown objects, but it's just so damn goofy looking.

[Cespenar]

Netstorm can pretty easily be described as a multiplayer tower defense game. It was ludicrously ahead of its time - not only was it one of the first games designed for Internet multiplayer (hence Netstorm), but the advancement system (in which you start out with most of the units locked, and have to unlock them by sacrificing enemy priests) is a pretty clear predecessor to that used in modern games such as World Of Tanks.

You're right, though its single player campaigns were perfectly playable as well. Actually, to be honest, I never played it multiplayer. But yeah, it was both pretty ahead of its time and also still fairly unique now as well, 21 years later.

A quick look through my Steam list to see obscure ones...

Ok, I'm not sure how obscure this list is, but they're definitely pretty far down the "indie" hole so hopefully someone will discover a game they like:

Not to sound too dismissive, but those are all very well received indie games. And rightly so, since most of them are pretty good.

[Eldan]

Oh, also, currently I'm playing and enjoying The Unavowed, an urban fantasy point and click adventure that came out recently. You were possessed by a demon for a year and have to find out, with the help of some supernatural investigators, what you did during that time. It's pretty well done.

[Hunter Noventa]

In the same vein as Super Robot Wars, already mentioned, I'll put up Front Mission 3, part of a semi-obscure and now dead series of turn-based mecha tactics games by Square. These were a bit different in that you could mix and match arms, legs and torsos to make terrifyingly effective frankenmechs. Or Wanzers, as they're called. The plots of the games are endlessly silly, but the gameplay is pretty enjoyable.

[Rodin]

Not to sound too dismissive, but those are all very well received indie games. And rightly so, since most of them are pretty good.

Fair, but given that I've heard of most of the games in this thread I wasn't sure how obscure we're talking. And you never know what somebody has heard of.

[Silfir]

Well, if we're supposed to go full hipster, I'll point out a series of 2D action-adventure games that was created from 1988-1992 and ruled my childhood: The Game of Robot. Basically a German programming nerd answer to The Legend of Zelda. There are many puzzles to solve and monsters to defeat/run away from and a dungeon ruled by an evil wizard, but the monsters are all robots, and many of the puzzles are technology-themed; for instance, to open up the entrance to the final boss area, you have to assemble wiring and logical Boole operators to make all the light bulbs turn on. (And then you defeat the final boss with your magic wand by writing down a spell with a pen in front of him while being disguised as a robot. Robot I was just weird.)

The peak of the series is Robot III. It doesn't feature a single robot, or electronic technology, since it takes place on a tropical island filled with strange ruins from a precursor civilization, indigenous inhabitants, dangerous wildlife that acts suspiciously similar to the robots from the first two games, and an active volcano. It's just an excellent reasonably non-linear mystery-solving adventure.

It's all German-only, which is a crying shame.

[Triaxx]

I felt I was being summoned?

I thing I'll take my thoughts on the X-series to it's own thread.

Sacred feels like one of those games that should be here, even though it's reasonably popular. It's the sort of thing that was released and that I think a lot of people would have gone oh, it's just a Diablo clone and passed it over. It does have some diablo-esque elements, I agree. But at the same time it's got it's own unique style to it.

I find Total Annihilation is in almost the exact same boat. It released ahead of StarCraft, but like Sacred was just a goomba beneath the Mario of Blizzard.

[Man_Over_Game]

One I recently remembered that's worth the mention is

Battleships Forever: Free RTS game. It once had a huge cult behind it, until the devs just decided to forget it existed and refused to pass on the torch to the several thousand acolytes at their disposal. It's an RTS that focuses around small tactical missions rather than large, resource oriented wars. You only have control of a few ships, but each one has their own specific purpose, with their own special abilities with a massive focus on positioning. Your battleships are fitted together using a series of pre-determined weapons, armor, and modules, which all can be individually targeted and destroyed. Your heavy beam battleship does really well against slow enemies, but it turns slowly and is easily taken down by a couple weak fighters that can just avoid your death beams, so it's in your best interest to defend its flanks. That boss you're taking down has some major shields on the front, but the modules for those shields are actually located in the back, with some visibly weak armor protecting them, so it may be in your best interested to surround it and shoot its ass. You can usually pick and choose what ships you get each mission, so you can design your own strategies. It also comes with a mission-creation system and a system to make your own ships. There are thousands of homebrews on the internet, but they may be harder to find now that the game has become extremely obscure. Cosmoteer is a more modern version of this game, with a lot of the core ideas originating from Battleships Forever.

[Man_Over_Game]

Oh, yeah. Fun fact about Puzzle Quest: It has an expansion that triples the size of the game while doubling the number of classes.

The catch? It's only officially on Xbox 360, due to the fact that the company disbanded shortly after it was made, and they never were able to finish the PC port. However, some smart guys were able to work some magic on the 360 version of the expansion and make a working PC version of it that you can put inside of your PC version of PQ. It's a bit hard to find. It's called Revenge of the Plague Lord, and it is brutal. I've beaten the main campaign of PQ 2-3 times, but I've never beaten any of the Plague Lords' main plots. It doesn't take anything away from the main game, and you won't really be able to tell where the main plot branches end and the expansion begins; it's all perfectly seamless.

Keep in mind, this is different than just Puzzle Quest 2, which is available on mobile and is significantly worse, especially early on.

[Giggling Ghast]

I'm a total bandwagon-jumper, so I can't think of many games I've played that no one's heard of. And the obscure games that I have played were generally obscure for good reason.

The closest example I can give is The Last Court, a game put out by Sunless Sea (the developer of Fallen London) that's set in the Dragon Age universe. It was released just before DAI came out. Essentially, you play as the Marquis of this quaint burg known as Serrault and must constantly contend with courtly intrigue, bandits, rabble-rousers and the occasional monster, all in a purely text format.

I enjoyed it, though it has a reputation for being infuriating in the DA fandom, mostly because it can get very repetitive. You will be nearly assassinated roughly 5,000 times during an average TLC playthrough.

Oh, also, currently I'm playing and enjoying The Unavowed, an urban fantasy point and click adventure that came out recently. You were possessed by a demon for a year and have to find out, with the help of some supernatural investigators, what you did during that time. It's pretty well done.

Yahtzee did a review of it. I'm sorry, but you have to turn in your hipster badge.

(While a badge is a symbol of subservience to authority — in other words, "selling out" — the mainstream would think a "hipster badge" is too ridiculous for anyone to display proudly, so carrying a hipster badge ironically is an act of self-expression and a defiance of convention.)

[Cespenar]

Oh, also, currently I'm playing and enjoying The Unavowed, an urban fantasy point and click adventure that came out recently. You were possessed by a demon for a year and have to find out, with the help of some supernatural investigators, what you did during that time. It's pretty well done.

Yep, it's from the makers of the Blackwell Chronicles, as well as other similar oldschool adventure gems. I'd personally suggest Technobabylon or Primordia as their better games. But Unavowed is also pretty good.

[factotum]

The closest example I can give is The Last Court, a game put out by Sunless Sea (the developer of Fallen London)

You mean Failbetter Games--Sunless Sea is another of their games, not the name of the developer.

[CosmicHobbit]

Machiavillain. It got mixed reviews on Steam and a 65% on Metacritic, but I love it. It's...sort of hard for me to explain, so I'll just copy the steam description.

"Machiavillain is an evil mansion management and strategy game, inspired by Dungeon Keeper, Prison Architect and all the horror movie clichés! Build your own manor, raise your monsters, set up your traps, and exterminate your victims. But to gain reputation you'll have to slay by the horror movie rules!"

There's just something about being able to use the evil genius side all of us have(especially TTRPG Dungeon/Game Masters). Combine that with the fact that it's the kind of game I love, lots of creative ability and strategy, and I've fallen in love with the game. Come to think of it, I haven't played it in quite a while...I'll have to do that ASAP!

[Man_Over_Game]

Machiavillain. It got mixed reviews on Steam and a 65% on Metacritic, but I love it. It's...sort of hard for me to explain, so I'll just copy the steam description.


There's just something about being able to use the evil genius side all of us have(especially TTRPG Dungeon/Game Masters). Combine that with the fact that it's the kind of game I love, lots of creative ability and strategy, and I've fallen in love with the game. Come to think of it, I haven't played it in quite a while...I'll have to do that ASAP!

I completely forgot!

Dungeon Keeper: An...RTS? That's designed around you building a dungeon that heroes come to invade. Unlike other RTS games, this one relies on the idea of building defenses first and offenses second. You can build several types of rooms to entice specific monsters into your dungeon, all with specific uses. Wizards can study more spells for you to cast, goblins love to train and fight, and trolls will work constantly in your workshop to create new traps and walls. The game often rewards you for being a bad guy. Your units aren't working hard enough? Slap them around a bit, maybe that lost health will teach them to work harder. That hero is dying too quickly in your torture chamber? Cast a healing spell so that he survives long enough to know that THERE IS NO HOPE and YOU are their god now. Don't have enough food to support your growing demands? Make some skeletons by throwing your captives in jail; eventually they'll rot and serve you in undeath without requiring any upkeep of their own.

It was probably the first of its kind, but there were several games released over the last 10-15 years that tried to follow it's formula, but few have managed to perfect it.