Given the big swathe of posts about bad behavior from big companies, I figure we could counterbalance that with some positivity about stuff the smaller guys made that often costs us less too.
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Exanima Unique physics-based isometric dungeon crawler also featuring an arena career mode.
Moddable.
Really slow development cycle, though.Severed Steel Futuristic 3D shooter with maybe the best movement system I’ve tried, with wall running, full 360 air movement, sliding and more.
Weapons have only one magazine, so you’re constantly sourcing them from your enemies while blasting holes into the fully destructible levels.
Very replayable.From the top of my head
- crawl stone soup. Classic traditional rogue like. Less fiddly than net hack, but very good.
- untitled story (an older game by the main person behind Celeste. Looks like Ms paint but is utterly charming)
- everything supergiant did. Hades, bastion, pyre
- binding of Isaac is a classic.
Gotta go with Dwarf Fortress. Been playing on and off for the past 10 years at least, it’s just endless !!FUN!!
Dave the diver! /s
But seriously I’m a real sucker for platformers, and so A Hat In Time is my most favorited one. It brought back this sort of charm I haven’t felt since the n64 days and I love it!
Stray and Kena: Bridge of Spirits are pretty awesome too, would be my second and third favorites
Top of my list right now is Vintage Story! It’s like a serious version of Minecraft, with more focus on realism.
Monster sanctuary (turn based monster collector) and Roboquest (arena shooter) were a couple from recent years that stood out to me
For older games nethack and dwarf fortress are great if you can look past the graphics
Kerbal space program (the first one) And The Long Dark
Can’t really decide which I like more, and they are vastly different
Currently it’s Bellwright, among many other titles. what particularly tickles me about it is the shitty ai voices they used for the npcs. I am not pro ai by any means, but nothing makes me happier than hearing “all in a good days of work.” delivered constantly, in the most off-kilter reading imaginable.
Check out frog fractions!
One of my all time favorites right now is Brok The Investigator.
It’s a game by French company COWCAT Games that is describes as a point and click beat’em-up game. Has lots to do because there are multiple endings. It has a free visual novel made to essentially showcase a vn engine that can be used to make BTI fan games or your own creations and has an upcoming DLC (apparently only gonna be $9.99) that focuses more on the combat side of the game.
It’s currently available on PS4/5 (vita planned but scrapped), xbox (don’t know if they mean one and series x/s or just series), switch, steam, itch(dot)io, and even epic if you hate yourself.
Lethal Company. It was developed by one person, yet it outsold Call of Duty. It trended from 2023 to 2024, but I still play it at least weekly. A couple Lethal Company clones have since come out and some say one (R.E.P.O) is better, and graphically I would say yes, but nothing quite matches Lethal Company’s charm.
It’s a scrap-collecting + space horror survival + comedy game. The comedy feels very unintended and that’s why it’s so fucking funny. You encounter very horrifying creatures, then see your friends die the funniest death. Then you hope to collect enough scrap to survive another day.
Bro yes. That game is so good. Wish I could get my friends to play more often lol.
Probably Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. All the older Indy games weren’t that great but this new one is really good.
Dude, The Fate of Atlantis was awesome. Don’t you be crapping on my LucasArts point and click adventure games
Probably gotta be (https://fractalsoftworks.com/)[Starsector]
(https://youtu.be/acqpulP1hLo)[The video that hooked me]
This is on my wishlist since a long time. I really want to play it.
Hey, you might want to know that the item in brackets comes first and the link comes second. I see the raw link and the item in brackets, instead of what you probably intended: to have the item in brackets be a clickable link.
[Starsector](https://fractalsoftworks.com/)will produce what you want.
I’ve not seen many RPG maker games mentioned here, so i’ll do my part. These are a lot of my favourites through the years:
- To the moon
- Finding paradise
- Oneshot
- Celeste
- Omori
- End roll
There are also a lot of them that i’ve not played but i’ve watched full playtroughs of, like IB, Hello Charlotte, Lisa, … and most recently The coffin of Andy and Leyley
One game i would also like to add is Rain World, which is a 2d survival platformer, a bit challenging, but i would argue it’s also a “metroidbrania” if you know the genre, games that have knowledge as gates rather than keys or power-ups like metroidvanias. Some notable examples are Outer wilds or Return of obra dinn, who others have already mentioned
Celeste is really good. So sad that the “Sequel Game” from the Devs got chanceled.
Woops, i’ve left Celeste in while re-writing the list, that’s not an RPG maker game
And i didn’t know about the sequel until now, that’s a shame
Finding Paradise is absolutely an amazing game. Would absolutely recommend a blind playthrough of it, or at least a no-commentary walkthrough if nothing else.
The Cat Lady and the other games from Harvester Games 👀
