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I had a great time with a couple card battlers last year, Cobalt Core and Nitro Kid.
Cobalt Core has a similar presentation to FTL, with a turn-based format instead. Plenty to do in it, great soundtrack, charming writing.
Nitro Kid is on a more traditional 2D grid with an isometric viewpoint. It appealed greatly to my love of 80's settings, but I'd wait for a sale as it's thin on content.
I've mentioned these before and I'll do it again:
Hmmm... how about the Rusty Lake games? They're weird. Or maybe Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk? Adventure puzzler and VN respectively.
I probably have a few more if I think about it. My friend and I randomize my steam list to decide things to play and there were quite a few interesting ones I got from who knows where-- bundles and bundles.
how about the Rusty Lake games? They’re weird.
And they're also linked. It's a really cool rabbit hole to go down. Definitely recommend them to people who are into games with some meta elements to them!
There's even a recent one that's two player, I guess inspired by the We Were Here games. Which now that I think it it, also recommend.
My friend and I still say "My blood sugar is low" and "Owls" now as again as an inside Rusty Lake joke.
I've never heard or seen anybody else mention Suzerain. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure political strategy game, which is pretty unique. You are the new leader of a fictional nation wrestling with corruption. Your decisions will affect the outcome. Game is only $6 on Steam right now and is well worth it.
Also worth mentioning Ostriv, a beautiful city-builder in which you build an 18th Century Ukrainian village, complete with individual little villagers wearing their villager clothes. It's lovely and made by ONE GUY, as best I can tell? Also, last I saw, the entire game was somehow under 1 GB, if I remember correctly. It's absurd.
Andor's Trail is a foss roguelike with a twist that it's story based, something quite rare in this genre.
Immortal Life is a farming game but with a Wuxia twist where you can use chinese magic to help you do your chores and there's a twin stick combat inside the dungeon. What surprised me was seeing the game selling well on steam, but never seeing a single article about it, strangely common with chinese indies over here.
I would imagine that most articles about Chinese Indie Games are written in Mandarin, so it's unlikely you'd see them without the ability to read Chinese.
The games are in english and they talk about japanese indies all the time though.
Weird. IDK
After Hades, I hope some folks went back and played Supergiant’s other titles. I love them all. But even amongst them, Pyre is the underdog, unknown, shunned. And I think it’s fantastic. The music and writing is top notch. You can really see the bones of Hades in all their games, but they polished their world building and story telling to perfection in this one.
the Skyrim total conversion mod, Enderal: Forgotten Stories, blew me away, and it's free if you own Skyrim. Even has its own installer and game page on Steam.
Their earlier game Nehrim: At Fate's Edge is also worth a play. It runs on the Oblivion engine so it's a little dated graphically, but story- and gameplay-wise it holds up fine.
OMG-Z It's a playstation mini for the PS3/PSP.
Warp on the PS3.
Donut County isn't really a nobody game. But I never see it mentioned.
rogue Lords: it is inspired by Slay the Spire (StS). Card game with roguelike element. Here, the cards are replaced by your minions skill. But the right set of skill is less frustating to build than in StS. Making it a more fun experience, and the graphics are way above StS(not hard). As in StS , with luck/skill you can manage to build some 'infinite deck" where you never let go of the control of the battle.
Universim.
Blasphemous.
Fantastic metroidvania meets soulslike game. The art style, the lore, the atmosphere, and by God - the music!
The combat is not super great, but it's capable enough for a metroidvania.
I haven't played the second one, I hear it's kinda hit and miss.
From The Depths -- very deep large vehicle design and combat game, prepare to happily lose months of your life
Barotrauma -- help crew a submarine under the command of the captain to perform missions in an alien open world. fun multiplayer with good in game VOIP
Sebil Engineering has a really fun mechanic I've never seen before. Its like those Hot Wheels tracks you always wanted as a kid but your parents never got you, but even better. I guess its a traffic control game? Anyone have other examples of these?
Treasure Adventure Game, maybe? I believe it's free, though there's a paid remake of it named Treasure Adventure World now.
Cutesy "kid goes on adventure" 2d platformer with sailing and some Metroidvania-y or Zelda-y factors. Cute pixel art and the music is very well done.
Dominions (Dominions 6 just came out, but it's an iterative game so try 4 or 5 first)
So it's like civilization and battle simulator had a baby, where armies are managed by the unit and there are simulated battles of thousands.
But all the civs are loosely based on different existing mythologies and there's a crazy complex magic system
Oh, and you get to create a god that you can totally battle with.
If you like civ-like games, it's a really unique and satisfying twist on the genre with an incredible amount of sheer depth.
Shadow of the Forbidden Gods - a strategy game where you play as the ancient cthonic entity waking up because the stars are right. Set in a fantasy world where the forces of good slowly become aware of the coming apocalypse and attempt to forestall your return. You have to get past the janky UI and some dreadful AI art, but the gameplay is unique and satisfying.
I'm currently totally hooked on Tiny Rogues.
Black Souls 2
Null Gravity Labyrinth for everyone who likes labyrinths
Superfighters (original web game) and Superfighters Deluxe (on steam)
Really good 2D platform brawler based around weapon drops.
I'll toss 2 mobile games on the list. Desert Golf and Golf on Mars. No ads. No stupid paid trinket nonsense. Just a couple bucks for the game and a very chill and casual 2D golf game.
LBreakout[1] is the best Arkanoid clone, period. There has been many attempts by Taito (or Square Enix by proxy) to reboot the franchise but each of their releases just flopped terribly because they keep removing features that people come back to Arkanoid for (the latest PC release, Eternal Battle, has no level editor). In similar vein is Apotris[2] (whose developer is being hunted by the Tetris Company like a fugitive the last few months) is the greatest iteration of Tetris IMO, and it is open-source and developed by a one-man team.
[1] https://lgames.sourceforge.io/LBreakoutHD/ [2] https://akouzoukos.com/apotris