I thought of another one. This is an odd one, because I think the dev is actually quite well known: it's Yahtzee Croshaw, formerly of Zero Punctuation and now of Fully Ramblomatic. He's made a number of games over the years, but one that almost nobody ever mentions anymore is Poacher. (Note: link is to Archive.org rather than Steam; I don't think the game is available on Steam.) I didn't actually beat this one, as it ramps up quite a bit in difficulty as it goes on, but the basic controls and whatnot are very nice, and the humor is great. Here's Wot Rock, Paper, Shotgun Thought about it, since it's a bit of a faff to actually install at this point and Archive doesn't offer reviews and whatnot.

Little Rocket Lab - fun factory builder with Stardew valley vibes

Underhero

I found the game through a review recommending it to "Paper Mario" fans, but that video was so obscure I failed to ever find it again. The platforming is jank, the story compares unfavorably to another game with the same first 2 syllables, and the switch port is terrible with its load times. But I like the combat system, and while it starts fairly generic, each area becomes more and more visually intersting. Also we play as a silent protagonist, but they still gave them so much personality in the form of a hint system notebook, most devs would do hint systems as generically as possible to not confuse anyone, but I love them for not doing that.

A true flawed 7/10 game.

Project Gorgon or, as I like to call it, Project Gorgonzola. Its an indie MMO, but its possibly my favorite MMO and I play a lot of them. Its very unique feeling. Has a lot of jank, but also a lot of charm. Come play with me :3

Quadrilateral cowboy.

first person cyberpunk logic puzzle game that tells a story without any words. Absolutely a blast and I wholeheartedly recommend it

Total Distortion is a point-and-click adventure that combines music video creation, business simulation, and surreal humor. Players build music videos, battle guitar monsters, and navigate a strange dimension, all in pursuit of earning $1 million.

I learned a shitload about geography and culture from an old board game called "Globetrotters".

similar game play to goose game, but your a penguin, trying to break into the research station and act like you belong for as long as possible. as you always wanted to be an academic.

your penguin might do things like choose recordings from a tape recorder to convince your "colleuges" in a conversation (they sound like the peanuts teacher though) that you are one of them. wearing cute costumes to blend in (lab coat, twead sweater, glasses, etc). if you are caught doing penguin things (waddling, eating raw fish, etc) you are kicked out as the lab has a strict no penguins policy.

if your duration in the lab exceeds the top x % on a weekly leader board you get accepted in to a school and the game moves to a school setting. except your penguin is competing with a mix of other penguins (other players) and actual students (npcs) to stay in the program. you can collect recordings in your recorder and change costumes. you can understand other peguins, but the actual students again sound garbled. if your likeability score gets low enough it is discovered youre a penguin and you get thrown out, as the school has a strict no peguin policy. you are released in the icy wasteland and you have to start your academic career over. if you last long enough in school you graduate the game gives you an nft which can be submitted on a website to verify, which you can brag about in the real world! you have an nft!

if you log in after this your Penguin is stuck in an office with students saying garbled things, you play your recorder, they always accept what you say as you have tenure. you can look out the windows at children playing. raising the question did your penguin really want to get in to academia, to be accepted, or something else...

Suzerain is an underappreciated, text-based, role-playing political simulator. I wish there were more games out there like it.

Mega Knockdown a turn-based fighting game that successfully adapts the best part of fighting games: throwing rock four times in a row because you've gotten in their head well enough to know they're gonna throw scissors four times in a row.

(note the above is an old clip, the placeholder frames have since been filled in)

WORMHOLE (51 Steam reviews)

WORMHOLE is next-level Snake. I've written about it before! There are powerups, wormholes (obviously), and increasingly complex and cramped levels. The game's graphics and music get more intense over time and it becomes an oddly hypnotic action game.

I'm glad to see these threads again! They're fun.

Ash & Adam’s GOBSMACKED (37 Steam reviews)

This is a single-player arcade FPS. You battle robots in a series of arenas with a set of wacky weapons, with shops in between. At the start of each run, you have to buy yourself a starting loadout using the money you got from previous runs, but you can’t choose the same items as your last run. Buying an item for the first time at a shop unlocks it so you can choose it as a starter in a future run.

Reassembly, a fantastic and beautiful simple shipbuilder with a great modding scene. My go-to game when I'm high and just want to chill with some pretty particle explosions....

(should we be upvoting the games we haven't heard of? Or just downvote only?)

Elder Scrolls Skyrim, really niche indie game. Just kidding!

Nikoderiko - really fun platformer that's kind of a mix of Donkey Kong and Crash. Currently on sale on gog (linked) and steam

Eh, I don't know how well the game is known, but I'll throw out A Robot Named Fight, since looking at Metacritic it seems like it never got much mainstream attention. It's also (unsurprisingly) on sale right now, only $3.24 in the US.

Anyway, the game is a metroidvainia roguelite mashup. The gameplay is more the Metroid side of "metroidvania" being very obviously inspired by Super Metroid. You traverse a randomly generated map, getting unlocks for future runs by accomplishing various things though out that run, think Binding of Issac's item progression.

A game that holds a fantastically emotional spot in my heart is Jason Oda’s CONTINUE?9876543210. It has a mixed rating by the general public, but holds the very core of my faith.

At the start, a video game character dies, and is scheduled for deletion. Eventually, the garbage collector that filters through the computer’s RAM, deleting levels that have served their purpose, characters of memory damage and mangled speech, and reflections on what it it is to be dying, all deleted. The goal of the game is to find peace in the milliseconds of afterlife, however that happens.

we all fear deletion
those who were deleted
i took with me
their lightning, their prayer

https://store.steampowered.com/app/263340/Continue9876543210/

(yes! I got a downvote! Someone else knows this game!)

This is probably a bit cheating since it just came out, but we had A Fox Tale on our wishlist since 2021 and it apparently actually came out a couple months ago and we completely missed it!! I immediately went and grabbed it and yeah, it is good. Fox platforming, great story, really good level design and gosh the ART is just so good!

-- Frost

Wintermoor Tactics Club, part tactical rpg part VN. Very cute and lots of fun

EDIT: https://store.steampowered.com/app/917840/Wintermoor_Tactics_Club/

Crushed In Time

A point and click in the same vein as There Is No Game by the same studio, that came out recently and that I haven't seen people talk about at all, unfortunately already past its introductory offer

Ed-0: Zombie Uprising - A japanese 3rd Person Zombie Action Roguelike. It's silly, it's fun, it's pretty hard sometimes!

King of kings: the early years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Kings:_The_Early_Years

A mediocre set of platformers interspersed with bible trivia. I played the crap out of them because it was the only thing other that super Mario we had.

Later we got Joshua and the battle of Jericho. A bomberman clone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_&_the_Battle_of_Jericho

F2P (not gacha) but pretty good imo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/802930/The_Rainsdowne_Players/

Angels Fall First

A large scale, sci-fi, squad based FPS that’s been in development for about 10 years. Battles scale from individual soldiers all the way to pilotable battleships that can be boarded and sabotaged from within, and everything in between.

Total labour of love by the developers. It will soon be leaving early access.

What a great post idea, thanks OP!

My contribution is NeonXSZ, a 6DOF open-world ARPG by a solo dev. It's been a decade since it released, but IIRC, the dev cited Quake and Diablo as primary inspirations and the game has a native Linux version.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/296010/NeonXSZ/

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs

This is a delightful little indie game where you have to talk to stock photos of dogs and complete little unhinged quests. It's been on gdq in the awful block with the dev before, but only 221 reviews as of now

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3392510/Zexion/

A neat metroidvania with a built in randomizer.

No More Mages is a very short (for now) but also very inexpensive (for now) beat-em-up platformer in early access that was made by a fellow lemming. He made it known to me in a comment a few months back, I picked it up, finished it quickly, but definitely felt it had been worth tossing a couple of dollars at a fellow Fediverse user for! I’m looking forward to what happens with it in the future.

As a separate comment: Iji

Freeware game and an awesome gem. Great soundtrack, too

Ex-Zodiac - retro star fox inspired rails shooter

A short little puzzle platformer: Leap Year. To complete the game, collect all of the calendar pages scattered throughout the level. But beware, there’s fall damage. While your jump is two blocks high, you can only survive a one block fall. There’s more to it, but spoilers…

Sword of the Necromancer : Resurrection.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2782880/Sword_of_the_Necromancer_Resurrection/

Best played co-op. Wonderful story with a great ending. Truly beautiful and solid game play. Short 12hr game to 100% complete.

Only like 150 reviews.

I've been playing Idols of Ash and Echo Point Nova.

Both are pretty nifty, don't usually see much conversation about either.

ODDCORE (939 Steam reviews, Early Access)

Roguish boomer FPS where you travel to liminal spaces to shoot all the monsters. They're not scary if they're dead! Instead of having a map of encounters, you get 5 minutes to do as much as possible. Once you've cleaned out a space, you jump to the next world... unless your teleport gun glitches out and takes you someplace very weird. At any time, even during combat, you can jump to your home base to buy upgrades or extra time credit.

Overload

Spiritual successor to Decent 1, 2, and 3. Made by the same devs.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/

Void Collector

It's a fast-paced fps game where your goal is to speedrun through each level. The main mechanic is that you switch weapons by flipping fingers up and down to change hand gestures. The movement and shooting are very smooth, and the soundtrack is incredible.

Also, Hylics and Hylics 2

They're jrpgs that are very surreal and trippy. They both have amazing style and presentation, and the second game has one of my all-time favorite soundtracks

Recursed is a very difficult puzzle game about recursion.