What "unique" or single-game-genre games have you enjoyed?
I can think of a handful of games that, despite being games that I've enjoyed, never really became part of a "genre". Do you have any like this, and if so, which?
Are they games that you'd like to see another entrant to the genre to? Would you recommend the original game as one to keep playing?
Outer Wilds
If you're a naturally curious person, the odds are you will probably enjoy Outer Wilds. No other game I've played has ever had quite the same blend of mystery, conquering the unknown, and semi-realistic space exploration.
Could someone make another game like it? Not impossible, I suppose, but I think you would be hard pressed.
Should you keep playing the original? You really can't, one time through is all you get. Once you have discovered all the secrets and uncovered the mysteries, that is your journey through it. Still fun to visit every once in a while, though
Echoes of the Eye does at least give you a sort of second playthrough
I think Tunic is probably the closest feeling to Outer Wilds I've gotten so far. The moment-to-moment gameplay is quite different, but the broad scale feels close
Yeah, Tunic is a great game. I've also heard Return to the Obra Dinn is supposed to be similar.
You might like Fez and Animal Well too.
My best recommendation for "replaying" the game is to get the mod "Quantum Space Buddies" and play it alongside a friend. I did this and it allowed me to play it vicariously through them, letting them make all of the decisions and just offering up tiny tidbits of assistance where necessary.
The mod has some bugs, but it's way more full-featured than I was expecting, and it's frequently updated to iron out more bugs
That is exactly what I ended up doing! It was a blast, definitely would also recommend
I reaallly need to play this game
::: spoiler Outer Wilds spoiler Deathloop is the same genre :::
I've got a couple games that maybe fit this category.
Kerbal Space Program. This had a sequel coming out that apparently wasn't going very well and was cancelled, so right now, the possibility of a complete additional game isn't that great. Spaceflight simulator, where one can design and craft spacecraft and amospheric craft, as well as space bases. One can fly to other planets, set up bases, set up satellite networks, etc. There are some "build your own vehicle"-type games, but not as much of a hard sim as this. I believe that X-Plane can handle atmospheric craft modeling, though the scope of that game is much smaller and it focuses more on flying the aircraft. Has a campaign to progress through, where one performs discoveries and conducts research. I'd recommend this to someone who hasn't played it and likes sim games.
Kenshi. There's a sequel coming out, so maybe it won't be unique at some point. They player controls a squad that moves around the world in real-time -- there isn't an "overworld map". The squad can be split up into multiple squads. One can build outposts and defenses and such and have something of an automated economy. There's a tech tree. The world has various factions and dynamic control of regions, something like Mount & Blade: Warband. There are unique biomes to travel through. A fair bit of the world is placed. The world starts out in a mostly-hand-crafted, fixed state, but evolves over time. Character progression isn't based on point allocation, but on specific experience; have a character get hurt, and over time his ability to take damage will rise, and so forth. I think that this is still worth playing, though it's by no means a beautiful game and possibly (hopefully) will be surpassed by its sequel.
Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. A real-time colony sim that can mostly run itself. One has indirect control for the most part; one directly controls upgrades, certain spell and structure abilities, and can spend money to create "incentive flags" to create missions for characters to fulfill. I don't know if it's right to call it a single-game genre -- it's a colony sim, and other colony sims exist, like Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and such. Populus and some god games have direct control over spells. But I don't know of any other colony sim that plays much like it -- most of the focus is on upgrades and on countering waves of invaders, and the gold economy is ununusual. The same developer tried making a sequel, but eliminated the "sandbox" mode, and turned it into more of a puzzle game, and that game didn't do very well. One builds a colony in real time. There is no direct control over the individual characters, but for certain actions, one can spend money to incentivize them to do certain things. Characters level up and purchase equipment using gold they earn and that you expend on them to purchase items. Some of your control comes from things like building inns to cause them to spend idle time in particular locations. Building construction and maintenance is carried out automatically by peasants. As adventurers spend gold at buildings, it comes back to your control. I think that I'd have a hard time recommending today due to its age (you're going to have 2d pixel graphics that are going to be tiny on a current computer).
Pinball Construction Set. This is a video pinball game where the player can use premade elements to easily put together their own pinball board. Very elderly now, dates back to the early 1980s. I remember being absolutely fascinated by this back in the day. Since that time, there have been many video pinball games, as well as some systems that permit some level of authoring capability (e.g. Visual Pinball can run user-created pinball boards), but these require a lot more effort and expertise and "real" authoring tools to put together a pinball board; one can't just drop in in-game and start throwing elements together. I don't think that I can recommend this, as it's absolutely ancient today.
Noita. It's based on Liero, but really not at all like it. It's an action-roguelite (well, that's a genre, but nothing really similar beneath that level of specificity) that has side-scrolling over an open world. Various materials interact and have their interactions simulated at a per-pixel level, something like the "falling sand" genre. However, there are enemies running around, and the player controls a character that walks and floats through the world. One can find various containers of substances; one can try and mix things together to manipulate the world. One finds wands with spells; one can combine spells and various spell modifiers on wands to create all sorts of custom magic weapons that can range from utility to offensive. The aim, as with many many roguelites, is to try to use some luck and synergies between various items to come up with truly game-breaking combinations. I can definitely recommend this game; I found it to be very good value-for-money.
Honorable mention:
I always hurt inside when I remember Majesty. It's such a cool concept that could be expanded much more today.
Rise to Ruins is maybe the most-similar game in terms of gameplay that I can think of. You initiate construction of buildings. You have automated characters build them (kind of like Majesty and Settlers). You can upgrade them, and they can provide equipment to characters. It has the same ramping difficulty of attackers. It doesn't start with a map populated with monster generators the way Majesty does -- instead, they show up over time. It has spells. You can build "defensive buildings". It starts with the map covered with a fog of war. Your colony's NPCs level up over time. You can put beefy, non-critical structures to act as something like a tank to absorb attacks while your characters make their way over to deal with a threat, kind of like Majesty.
It's got some major gameplay differences, though:
It's one of the "unwinnable" games -- absent some ways to kinda cheese the game and win, you're just expected to survive for as long as possible. There's a -- I forget the term, but "corruption" -- that spreads around the map, making terrain more-and-more hostile, and eventually overwhelming you. Majesty is about surviving the most-unpleasant bit, but if you can overcome that, you'll win a round.
No gold economy or NPC incentives. Well, IIRC one can create a "golem attractor" that will tend to make a that particular type of NPCs show up in an area, and you can create structures that NPCs will frequent to tend to make them hang out in a given area.
A strategic map (which some may like).
Survival aspects, like needing water and food.
Path efficiency and building roads and such matters.
The NPCs do get more-durable, but not to the extreme level that they do in Majesty, and they don't quite work together in the same sorts of ways.
It's got more of a maze-building tower-defense aspect.
The Majesty Gold HD Edition is currently on sale at GOG btw.:
https://www.gog.com/de/game/majesty_gold_hd
The main section of the game is the tip of the iceberg. Everything is hidden and blocked off, you got to make game breaking combos to start picking up the threads. Finding the mystery/puzzles feels like you no clipped out and found more content that's not supposed to be seen. You feel like a crazy investigator hinging threads at a cork board once you got game play down.
That first time when you look at a world map and scroll out.
And scroll out
And scroll out.
The Stanley Parable doesn't really have a genre, and I don't think you make another entry into that genre without being derivative. There's a couple games I can think of that have themes of player agency, Bioshock and to a lesser extent Spec Ops: The Line. Just some ramblings.
The Beginner's Guide (also by Davey Wreden), One Shot, Undertale and Deltarune, Omori, and SOMA all deal with putting player agency to question.
ICEY comes to mind, worth a try
While it's a series, it's really the only franchise like it, so it kinda is its own genre: Katamari.
Dawww doodooodoodo dodooo daw daw daw daw dawww.
I feel it! I feel the cosmos!
I have that one in the alarm library on my phone.
Its not good as a daily driver - if you use it every day you will end up with the song stuck in your head. But its great as a sometimes tone, I think I have it set for Wednesdays at the moment.
I haven't heard it in years and it got stuck in my head true second I read the name above.
I've been meaning to try that game where you play a hole that gets bigger by devouring everything.
If it's the same game I'm thinking of (but can't remember the name of), I remember it feeling like a much more shallow version of Katamari. You never realize how important the rolling physics truly are to the Katamari experience until you take them away. It was a pretty neat idea, but just didn't capitalize on it very much.
EVE Online AKA Spreadsheets Online, back when I played it in 2009. No idea if it's the same now. Almost entirely player driven economy and factions (outside of hi-sec).
Elite Dangerous, sort of. No other Space Sim is on its scale (I wouldn't really call something like Space Engine a space sim). Unique, but mixed recommendations because it's a very shallow game in a lot of ways, but it's got a cool vibe. Speaking of which...
Space Engine. Not really a game, so much as a universe-simulator. It is unknown to this day how a mortal could create something of this grandeur. Maybe the source code will be released eventually.
Someone else already mentioned Noita :(
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is the most realistic game ever made. No other game had made me ask "what would I do in real life?" before. Of course, this dies out the more you learn the meta, but your first dozen or so runs are special.
Minecraft is hardly unique now, but when it came out it was one-of-a-kind.
There are some other games that I'd call somewhat-similar. There's that old Finnish game, whatsit called, is kind of similar in that it's a wilderness survival roguelike. An innawoods run in Cataclysm can play kind of like that, though Cataclysm as a whole is a lot larger.
kagis
UnReal World
It never quite grabbed my interest the way Cataclysm has, but a lot of people like it. Huh. Apparently it's not that old, though it goes for a Win95-era appearance.
Cataclysm, for those who haven't played it, is a very complex open source open-world roguelike. The modeling of a lot of things, as the game has grown over the years, has become remarkably sophisticated, from local weather systems to things like very extensive (realistic, not like Borderlands guns) gun modding, vehicle (land, sea, air) creation and modeling, farming, NPC camps, cybernetics, mutation, sound/smell/sight tracking enemies, martial arts including weapons forms, skills, proficiencies, various types of real-world (and supernatural) diseases and parasites, brewing, modeling of fires, modeling of pain, temperature...it's a bit of an organically-grown mishmash, but it's become a game with an enormous amount of mechanics, albeit a very graphically-simple one. I would definitely recommend it to someone with the time and willingness to explore the game's systems, which is not for everyone. You can just download builds yourself, or there's a commercial version on Steam, if you want to support the developers.
To be clear, that's Cataclysm:Dark Days Ahead or CDDA. It's quite removed from the original cataclysm by whalesdev, and is more focused on strict realism. There is also Cataclysm Bright Nights which is closer to the arcadey feel of the original. Both are great and are open source.
Project Zomboid is very similar thematically to Cataclysm (zombie apocalypse, loot world for supplies to stay alive), but is far simpler in every respect, is real-time rather than turn-based, plays on handcrafted rather than procedurally-generated maps, has its zombie infections be incurable, and has combat that I really don't like (though Project Zomboid also has a much gentler learning curve and a loveable raccoon mascot). I'm not sure if one could reasonably put it into the same genre. Maybe.
It's important to note that Project Zomboid uses partial procedural generation, primarily to handle building interior furniture and loot spawning.
I also love spaceships. They're the greatest symbol of freedom!
Death Stranding. One of my top games of all time. Atmosphere, gameplay, music, Kojima wackiness. It’s loosely in the “transportation” category of games, but it’s not quite a trucking sim, not quite a walking sim, it is story driven, it’s at least half survival-horror, there’s some stealth-action in there. It’s single player and also kinda multiplayer. We laughed at Kojima when he called it a “strand-type game” but it really is a wholly unique experience. The absolute closest you can come to another game like it is Snowrunner, but that isn’t story driven, you never leave your trucks, there are no enemies, etc.
Death Stranding is how I discovered Low Roar. They're one of my favorite artists now, although I'm extremely sad they won't be releasing any more music.
Yeah, I've have a few games that I've really enjoyed the bands from.
This is kind of diverging from the topic, but....one of my annoyances in video games is that that there are a number of video games that I play to the point of getting tired of the music, but don't have the option to buy more music tracks for. There are mods for Stellaris to add more music tracks -- people clearly want more music -- but even though Paradox is a game publisher that specializes in putting out games with huge amounts of DLC, they don't sell additional audio for the game, which just seems bizarre to me. I really wish that Fallout: New Vegas had commercial DLC radio packs in the same genre, but nope -- though there are people who have made enormous free "radio" mods for the Fallout series, like Old World Radio and Old World Radio 2 for Fallout 4, so there are clearly a considerable number of players who'd like more music to be available.
This doesn't work for games that you play through once and are done with, but I kind of wish that when a band creates audio for a game that one spends a lot of time playing, that the game developer would at least provide the option to buy more audio from the band for it, as long as it fits. The amount of developer time required to incorporate additional audio tracks seems very limited, and if the band is still producing audio in the same style, it seems like it'd be a sensible fit.
What's even odder is that it's become extremely common for game publishers on Steam to go the opposite direction and sell access to the game's soundtrack to play independently of the game. So they're basically acting as a music vendor already. That's also very low developer-effort. But they very rarely have DLC to add more audio from the band back into the game.
Cities: Skylines is the only game that I can think of off the top of my head where the game publisher sold additional DLC music.
I don't understand why either game publishers or music labels wouldn't love that kind of relationship. If you're a music label, have a bunch of IP, I'd think that getting royalties from your audio getting wider play is almost always worthwhile, and if it's in a game, it's not competing with non-game use; if anything, it probably promotes it. From a game publisher's standpoint, the cost to incorporate more music in many games is minimal, so the risk is very low. From a player's standpoint, it makes the game more-playable; the music doesn't wear on you.
From a roleplay/world building perspective, I really like the fact that Fallout New Vegas has an extremely limited radio and I do think the atmosphere would be seriously damaged if they had added more songs. I haven't played the other Fallout games but I reckon this is probably applicable there too. I understand that people get bored of the same songs over and over again, but that's a feature not a bug. If you were living a hard scrabble life a post-apocalyptic wasteland where no one has the means or resources to be writing, recording and distributing popular songs, yeah you'd probably get bored of listening to the same music over and over again. And then when you turn the radio off, all you can hear is the creepy horror sounds of the Mojave and suddenly listening to Jingle Jangle on repeat doesn't seem so bad after all. The repetitive, upbeat soundtrack is super effective at making you feel like you're stuck between two not so great choices, one awful and one somewhat better but severely lacking. And that really reflects what it's like to live in the Mojave--you often don't have the luxury of a completely satisfying choice because you and everyone else is fighting for survival. Specific to FoNV, it really drives home the political climate of the harsh, brutal Legion versus the comforting but stale and ineffective NCR. Honestly FoNV is the first game that really made me think in depth about the music choices in a video game and I'm really really glad they made this choice.
I am pretty sure though that the Big Mountain DLC added a new radio station.
Pyre. Guess where my username comes from.
It's a supergiant game so the usual is there: Great characters, interesting story, great dialog, fantastic art... very touching and inspirational all around. To this day it is the only game that has actually made me feel conflicted about playing well.
At a certain point in the story I just couldn't, and it felt like my hands were sabotaging my game independently. Weird ass feeling. And purely for character reasons, nothing really to gain from it mechanically.
What I love about it was that this wasn't really presented as a typical videogame dilemma. Nothing in the gameplay was different. It was just another "game" that I was expected to win, but one of my characters was desperately hoping to lose.
Well I lost that time and felt good about it. No game has made me make a decision that completely ignored the gameplay implications.
"Do you want to save this little girl or literally torture her and suck her life force? The evil option will give you immediate rewards but the good option will give you better rewards a little later and also the good ending!" Wow Bioshock, really tough choice there, thanks for putting my noodle to work.
I love Pyre, its the only game I've ever 100%'d. A lot of people consider it supergiant's worst game, but it's my #1 favorite game. If only the multiplayer had online play, I'd consider it perfect.
the custom song at the end alone makes the game worth playing
Hardspace shipbreaker. You are a wage slave in orbit, disassembling and salvaging ships and binning the components. It's very dystopian. Essentially it's a puzzle game, to maximize profit and completion rate, but with physics and lasers.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a great and very unique game in my opinion. A fun investigation game that makes me feel smart for solving it. I wish I could replay it, but once you've solved how everyone has died aboard the Obra Dinn, there's not much reason to replay.
Pacific Drive is weird but really fun. It's like DiRT meets CONTROL.
I don't think it needs another. It stands alone as a testament to an interesting game design that shouldn't be watered down.
I have yet to find another game that plays like Inscryption. It's a deck builder, but wow, it has a story. Interestingly good game that I want more of.
While Elite Dangerous is part of a genre, it is a rare game that is actually meant for lots of controller/J HOTAS methods and has shockingly deep gameplay. You can tell it was really meant for adept players, a rare style of games these days. I doubt we will see one like it for awhile, just due to the needs of consumers, the game engine, and the capital required to build a game of that size again.
I personally though ED was quite shallow. Deeper than e.g. No Man's Sky but still very "fake". The economy is just a bunch of RNG, nothing real. I recently got into X4: Foundations which is much better IMHO. It really simulates the entire economy and production chains. You can carry out supply chain attacks on your enemies. It's like a cross between ED and Stellaris.
Maybe SimEarth.
This simulates a tile-based planet map. Animals grow and evolve, and things like atmospheric concentration and other aspects like surface albedo can be altered. More a toy than a game. Had a lot of fun playing with the levers.
1990 release -- it's still playable, though it'd feel pretty ancient and will not be very beautiful.
I haven't played SimLife or Spore, and there might be some similarities there.
I'm not aware of anything else that'd be comparable.
EDIT: Liquid War. This is open-source and part of the GNU project. One has a map with some areas closed off and some open space that liquid can flow through. There are two or more "blobs" of liquid of different color; each is attempting to destroy the other. Your blob is attracted to your mouse cursor. "Moving into" a pixel of the other color eventually converts it to your own. If two liquids meet in a bottleneck, they tend to stalemate. One wins by getting liquid on multiple sides of the opponent's liquid, so that one can move one's own liquid from multiple directions into it. Maybe a bit closer to a tech demo than a full-on game. I wouldn't call it mind-blowing, but it is free and as far as I know unique, and I had fun with it.
I almost forgot about SimEarth. For some reason I was allowed to play it in grade school computer lab. I wish they would remake it so I can recreate my sentient cephalopod uprising, except with graphics that aren't complete ass.
I never played SimLife. But no, Spore is really not like SimEarth at all. As the other person said, Spore is disappointingly shallow on all levels.
I never went very far into SimEarth (I remember getting a bunch of maxis's simstuff in the 90s, and not having the patience to really get into some of them back then).
However, I did play Spore during its prime. It's very shallow, on all levels. Don't expect any kind of simulation in there, especially not physics or even basic biology and evolution really.
Its whole gameplay loop : design a beast, eat or make friends, be a tribe, fight or make friends, design a town and vehicles, fight or make friends, design a spaceship, fight or make friends and try to reach the center of the galaxy because I don't know.
You can manipulate planet atmospheres in the space phase, but there are no variations : you can basically make planets "suitable" for life, and all life in the game needs the exact same parameters. There is zero room for experimentation and everything is basically just as efficient as everything else.
Liquid War was awesome. One of my favorite things about it was that you could make your own maps using black and white bitmaps.
Is it fair to mention Undertale? It's kind of an anti-RPG.
Frog Fractions
Universal Paperclips
Freedom Force
Pilotwings 64
Oh, yeah, that's a good one. It had a sequel, though, IIRC.
kagis
I assume that you're talking about the superhero game that I'm thinking of, not the NES shooter.
Yeah, the sequel was Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich.
Can't think of any other game that I've seen quite like those, though.
There are some above-view squad-based real-time tactical games, like Starship Troopers: Terran Command, but doesn't have the focus on configurable and multi-aspect-upgradable powers that made Freedom Force interesting.
"Giants: Citizen Kabuto"
It was a hillarious mix of everything. Super funny characters/story, great telling, fps, rts, asymetrical... All being super casual. Still on gog and still a joy.
"battlezone"
Best blend of rpg/rts/Story. So far i never saw one coming close that gameplay.
Gods Will Be Watching is the one that comes to mind for me. It's a strategy game of sorts with about 7 or 8 totally different scenarios where you're managing a very bad situation. In one, you're holding hostages while executing a heist, and in another you're wandering through a desert with limited resources. Each one is a balancing act, and a through line forms the narrative across them all. It was probably hamstrung by its punishing difficulty at launch, which was later addressed by additional difficulty modes, but there's a lot of room to iterate on this concept without it ever getting old.
Diary of a Spaceport Janitor is a slice of life/poverty simulator in which you scrape by earning pennies, dreaming of escape and adventure. Full of charm!
Miasmata is a horror/cartography game where you have to triangulate PoIs in order to fill out your map as you search for a cure to your disease on an uninhibited tropical island.
Yoku's Island Express is a metroidvania/pinball game in which you traverse the world vis flippers, chutes, and as a bug rolling a ball.
Psuedoregalia
Basically Mario 64 mixed with a metroidvania with awesome vibes. Never played anything else like it.
Terra Nil. It's an anti city builder. Land in a polluted wasteland, clean the soil, plant seeds, set up ecosystems, make sure they can persist without you, and recycle all your structures before you leave. Appreciate the beauty of the natural ecosystem you restored as you fly away.
I want more games like this.
There's also a similar discussion on Reddit, some months back, that lists some interesting "unique" games:
https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/14tqdqv/completely_unique_games/
Yeah, I agree with most of those. Some of my favorite mentions from that thread:
I'll add:
And kind of the opposite, but I'll list a couple of abstract genre games:
I'm not familiar with Pony Island, but I'd say that Inscryption -- which I quite liked -- has got other games like it, as it's a (good) deckbuilder. If I understand aright from skimming the description, what's in common is really thematic -- simple game with an "upgrade game" aspect tied to a horror theme. The plot gets gradually unfolded as you upgrade and has fourth-wall-breaking aspects, like the game starts to act differently, pretend to malfunction, etc.
Yeah, Katamari Damacy is definitely a "I wouldn't have played it from the description" game that I found to be a lot of fun. One runs around pushing a growing sticky ball that keeps having objects attach themselves to it. The game has enormous scale change as the ball grows. Simple -- almost a tech demo -- but surprisingly fun, and I can't think of anything like it other than games in the series itself.
Yeah, it's technically a deck builder, and that's the gameplay loop throughout, but it's not a rogue like deckbuilder like Slay the Spire (well, it kind of is at first). But it plays more like a puzzle game than a deckbuilder, but it's not quite a puzzle game either.
But yeah, that's the weakest of the bunch, and I only added it because Pony Island by the same dev is on there (which is technically a run-and-gun?).
Both have a popular genre at the forefront, but the game really wants you to look past that at what's developing behind the game. And that's what I think makes them unique. Labeling them as "deck builder" and "run-and-gun" don't feel appropriate, despite that being the core gameplay loop.
There's also some console game which I absolutely cannot remember the name of -- I never played it, just read about people who had talking about it -- that used a similar theme of simulating the game starting to break to try to have a fourth-wall-breaking psychological aspect. IIRC it would misdetect controllers being disconnected and stuff.
kagis
Yeah, I dunno, can't find it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/biel8o/does_anyone_know_some_good_games_that_have_fake/
This lists some games with that thematic element, but I don't think that the one I heard about is among those.
DDLC has something similar as well.
I recently got hooked on Twinkle Star Sprites, a Neo Geo versus shmup. Chaining enemies on your screen sends attacks to the opponent's screen. Those attacks can be bounced back, and reversing a reversal can create special attacks or even a boss summon. There's a lot going on and it's tragic that no spiritual successor ever tried to recreate this formula.
It did get a JP-only PS2 sequel, but it looks to just be largely the same game, just with a different cast of characters and the lovely spritework replaced with a much worse low poly 3D.
Dino Crisis, was the world's only game in the "Panic Horror" genre AFAIK. It was similar to a survival horror game but enemies were much faster and could follow you into different rooms if you left them alive. There were also a few other mechanics that made it different from Resident Evil, which was made by the same people.
Absolutely would recommend the first two games. Which are the ONLY Dino Crisis games. They never made another Dino Crisis game after 2.
I'll update with links when I'm on my comp next (mobile now), but a few off the top of my head:
Portal 1 and 2. It's so popular that it doesn't seem like it even can be 'unique', but the game play really is one of a kind, and it's pretty great.
Enderal - total conversion mod for Skyrim, but in the steam store as it's own game. It's got familiar combat and game mechanics, but the antagonists aren't your typical big-bad-evil-guy, but things like emotions, mental states, and philosophies. Somehow they managed to work that kind of content into a fantasy RPG... it's a fucking masterpiece, and it's free if you have Skyrim in your library already (it uses Skyrim's assets and engine, but is not related to Elder Scrolls in any way).
Zelda Majora's Mask, for the N64. This game is fucking weird, even by the Zelda franchise's standards. Every scene is bizarre in a way that other games haven't hit before or since Zelda MJ. It's built around the Kübler-Ross 5 stages of grief; it never draws attention to that, but guides you through them beautifully.
Secret World Legends. Technically an MMO, but treat it like a single player RPG - the MMO elements are shit. This game will have you running all over the globe to basically do Men In Black shit, but instead of aliens, it's occult weirdness, and things like urban legends that turn out to be true. Heavy Lovecraftian influence. One of the more challenging parts of the game are investigative missions, which I'd encourage you to give a solid effort before turning to the web for answers. The objectives can be something like "investigate the murder of John Doe" ...and that's it. You have to tackle it the same way you would IRL, so you'd go to places that make sense like a police station or town hall. It doesn't tell you, which makes it probably the most intellectually challenging games I've ever played. If you dive in, you'll need to choose a faction when you make your character: and trust me in this, choose Illuminati. The story writing is way better than the other two for their faction-specific missions; and the rest of the game doesn't change by faction (you'll be in the same zones, grouping and working together with players in other factions; there's just a few off-shoots of solo faction story time)
Links:
Portal
Portal 2
Enderal and Steam Store
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Secret World Legends (no dedicated Wikipedia page; apparently this is a remake of the earlier The Secret World)
Antichamber is the game like Portal
I agree with many that have already been said, but I'll add braid, dust force, and prison architect
I'll give an honorable mention to Terraria--largely because I had to explain it to someone recently and it was more difficult than I anticipated.
Yeah, you can just say "2D Minecraft," but it's more than that. It's almost an RPG in terms of advancements and equipment development, and it's very combat oriented. But it's not really a sidescroller or a metroidvania type, because the digging and building plays a huge part.
Less genre defining, and more living in the liminal space between a lot of other genres.
I'd probably put Starbound in the same genre, but yeah, those are the only games in the genre that I'm aware of. It's pretty unusual.
Dig or Die made an attempt and went in a pretty interesting direction with simulated structural stress and water physics that even included pressure. Unfortunately development died pretty early on and the structure mechanics and combat were incredibly punishing.
Team Buddies for the ps1. Small team rts game, lots of unique units and the bright style is a great contrast to the fighting
Space Station 14!
There's no other game like it. It's so absurdly in depth! You can play super hardcore with loads of knowledge and be next to a total casual in the same shift both enjoying your time together!
It's in early access on Steam right now. Ask and you shall receive!
Space Station 13 ^^ It's father. I literally have no time to get back into it though...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/420840/BLARP/
BLARP! I suppose it's a physics game but I'm not aware of anything else quite like it. It's incredibly simple, addictive, and could only really exist as a VR game.
Shout out to Superhot and Noita, already mentioned in this thread.
I love Space Harrier. There are a handful of other third-person, on-rails shooters (Sin and Punishment), but nothing recent that I'm aware of.
Also, Bangai O on Nintendo DS is insanely fun. I can't think of any other games where slowdown is a necessary mechanic.
It's quite common in retro shmups, particularly bullet hells putting way too many sprites onscreen. Designers were always aware of it and intentionally balanced the difficulty around it, and some later games even include artificial slowdown just to preserve that feel.
Ahh yes, definitely. I should have said that isn't strictly a traditional shmup. Bangai O definitely has many elements of shmups, but the level design and many of the mechanics are quite unique to it.
The original Rez isn't recent, (though that's a game that got a lot of acclaim for the aesthetics, mechanics aside). According to WP there's apparently a new VR release; I think I remember seeing a video of it.
looks
Rez Infinite.
Looks like it's just a high-resolution VR remake, not a new game.
If Nintendo's done a new Star Fox release, I imagine that that'd qualify.
kagis
Apparently yes, though the most-recent was Star Fox 2, which was eight years ago...a lot newer than Space Harrier, but no spring chicken.
EDIT: Apparently there's a Star Fox-alike game, Ex-Zodiac, on Steam. I've never heard of it before now, though.
Starfox never did it for me like Space Harrier. I'm not sure why. The primitive 3D maybe. Space Harrier creature design is just plain bizarre and intriguing.
Ah, gotcha. It also looks like it was considered to be very difficult (though any game from that era is gonna generally be a lot harder than present-day games).
I also remember a one-bit, not even polygon, but wireframe Star Wars third person rail shooter. It was on the early Mac, but I think it was a port from DOS or something.
kagis
Oh, wow. Apparently, it was actually a color arcade game, Star Wars, from 1983, and I'd just only seen the black-and-white Mac port until today. I wonder if those are true vector-display graphics, like Tempest.
kagis
Apparently yes. For the younger crowd, there was a point in time with CRTs where some video games actually plotted graphics on specialized CRTs by controlling the electron beam and plotting out the graphics with the point of the beam, kind of the way an old analog oscilloscope works. I bet that there have been antialiased remakes or clones of probably most of those vector-display games by now.
EDIT: Oh, I lied. It was first-person, not third person. You did have to dodge obstacles, but you weren't looking at your ship from behind.
I actually played a bunch of that Star Wars vector arcade game at my local bowling alley. Yes, I am old...
Ex-Zodiac is pretty decent as a tribute. There's something missing in the presentation though. Opening steam and launching it while using an Xbox controller isnt quite the same vibe as dropping in a cartridge and being tethered to that soap bar brick of a SNES controller.
As a tribute though, gameplay wise, it's pretty good.
Sexy Brutale