Lay your best hidden gem recommendations on me. I love playing games that fly under the radar! To make it interesting, use the following completely arbitrary categorization scheme I invented that...
Lay your best hidden gem recommendations on me. I love playing games that fly under the radar!
To make it interesting, use the following completely arbitrary categorization scheme I invented that makes Steam reviews a measure of exposure:
Hidden Gem: Has less than 1000 total Steam reviews
Whetted Apatite: Has less than 500 total Steam reviews
Concealed Quartz: Has less than 250 total Steam reviews
Obfuscated Opal: Has less than 100 total Steam reviews
Diamond in the Rough: Has less than 20 total Steam reviews
You can find the total number of Steam reviews in the box on the right hand side of any game's store page. Make sure you take the number for all reviews rather than just recent reviews.
EDIT: Turns out the "all reviews" number isn't as solid a heuristic as I thought, but in the interest of simplicity and convenience I'm going to stand by it!
Obfuscated Opal: Mushroom 11. IMO the best "not-jumping" take on a platformer. Maybe the only one I know? But it's also plain really, really good. You control this blob of goo which stays rigid in...
Obfuscated Opal:Mushroom 11. IMO the best "not-jumping" take on a platformer. Maybe the only one I know? But it's also plain really, really good. You control this blob of goo which stays rigid in whatever shape it turns into. You control it by "deleting" parts of it with your mouse being a kind of eraser while the blob will re-grow on the other end to keep a fixed size. You can do stuff like turning it into a hook to attach to a moving platform, a bridge for some physics object, to squeeze through a tight passage or sometimes even to cut into multiple pieces to do two things at once. It's super original. This is not some physics tech demo thingy, it's an actual, fleshed out game with end bosses, perfectly designed levels and clever puzzles that require you to find all kinds of interesting ways to control the blob. A bit tragic this has <100 reviews, it's one of my favorite indie games.
EDIT: Can someone explain to me why it says "96 reviews" in the main box but then "Browse all 525 reviews" at the bottom of the page?
If you hover over the ? at the bottom it says the 96 reviews are by users who are verified as owning the game on Steam. The rest are reviews by unverified purchasers.
EDIT: Can someone explain to me why it says "96 reviews" in the main box but then "Browse all 525 reviews" at the bottom of the page?
If you hover over the ? at the bottom it says the 96 reviews are by users who are verified as owning the game on Steam. The rest are reviews by unverified purchasers.
Ah, got it! Steam is really burying non-Steam-purchased keys, then! I guess a lot of people got the game through bundles and whatnot, SteamSpy says >100,000 users.
Ah, got it! Steam is really burying non-Steam-purchased keys, then! I guess a lot of people got the game through bundles and whatnot, SteamSpy says >100,000 users.
This is exactly the kind of game recommendation I was looking for! Thank you! Also, I went to buy it and turns out it's already in my Steam library. This was both a pleasant surprise (I don't need...
This is exactly the kind of game recommendation I was looking for! Thank you!
Also, I went to buy it and turns out it's already in my Steam library. This was both a pleasant surprise (I don't need to spend money!) and a disheartening one (my Steam library is big enough that I've forgotten what's in it). Maybe I should calm down the new games and just play what I have...
Hidden Gem: J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is part scifi adventure game, part 2D Myst, part interactive fiction. If you have an itch for those, and don't mind that the game isn't terribly...
Exemplary
Hidden Gem:
J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is part scifi adventure game, part 2D Myst, part interactive fiction. If you have an itch for those, and don't mind that the game isn't terribly challenging, it's worth the admission price.
Gemini Rue is I think the best game published by Wadjet Eye, the modern indie adventure publisher. If you like old Lucasfilm and Sierra games, this cyberpunk adventure is well worth a play.
Minit is based on a very simple concept: You have one minute to live. Then you die. Then you respawn. I feel the developer could have done a bit more with this idea and I wasn't totally impressed by the writing, but even then it's a nice indie puzzle adventure.
Whetted Apatite:
Snakebird is one of the most brilliant puzzlers that I have played. It looks like Candy Crush Saga but it plays more like Stephen's Sausage Roll, i.e. it's devilishly hard. Even if you are a puzzle game wizard, don't be surprised if you find yourself scratching your head on the third or fourth level. But, and this is an important but, all levels are fair and the game flows really well.
Headlander is a pretty good metroidvania type game from the always funny Double Fine studios. You control a head that lands on things in a retro-futuristic space station sort of a thing controlled by a slightly insane AI.
Hack 'n' Slash is another Double Fine game. It's a Zelda type adventure game where you quite literally hack the world you are in: as your powers increase, you alter the game world and the programming code underneath it. Can't beat an enemy that does too much damage? Well, just hack that enemy and make their damage negative -- hey presto, now each time it hits you, you actually gain hit points! It seems to have received mixed reviews on Steam, but I really liked it.
Anodyne is a wonderfully put together zeldaesque adventure game that I have very fond memories of.
Safecracker may not be quite the "ultimate puzzle adventure" like it claims to be, but it's a competently put together Myst-lite that takes you 3-4 hours to play through. Worth the sale price.
Concealed Quartz
Sokobond is another game from the A Good Snowman developer. Like the title suggests, it's a mixture of sokoban and chemical bonding. A clever idea and really well executed.
Cypher is a virtual museum and puzzle game that teaches you cryptography. It gets a bit challenging towards the end when you are learning about Enigma and trying to break its codes with the help of just some pen and paper.
Recursed puts you into a 2D platformer puzzle world that deals with recursion: like Russian matryoshka dolls, one world is inside another, which may contain yet another, or a version of the first, and so on, ad infinitum, more or less.
Obfuscated Opal
Cosmic Express is a yet another puzzle game by the same people that made A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build. I love puzzle games (in case you didn't guess that by now) and I tend to find them a little too easy, but this one's a real challenge for my brain. So much so that I haven't been able to finish it yet.
Puzzlement twists your brain by forcing you to think in terms of 3D surfaces and orientation within a 2D represented world. Ok, that makes no sense but it's a good puzzle game nonetheless.
Diamond in the Rough
Warlock's Tower is a puzzle game built on a pretty simple premise: each move costs you a life. The levels are well designed, as is the game as a whole.
Here's a potential Diamond in the Rough from me: FutureGrind I can't personally vouch for it, because I haven't played it yet (I might buy it in this sale), but I had been vaguely keeping an eye...
Here's a potential Diamond in the Rough from me: FutureGrind
I can't personally vouch for it, because I haven't played it yet (I might buy it in this sale), but I had been vaguely keeping an eye on it during development, because I thought it looked great. It's got some major Uniracers vibes, and looks like a skill-based platformer-ish game with some really interesting mechanics (including some Ikaruga-like color-based ones) and great style.
I was shocked when I checked up on it a few months ago and only had a handful of reviews (and still only has 8 from Steam purchasers!). I've seen a few positive impressions of it around the internet, but it really doesn't seem to be getting much attention at all.
Message in my inbox: 17 items from your wishlist are on sale! Me: Ohfuck. I'm looking for a not-super-competitive multiplayer experience, like maybe a more polished, endgame version of Rust...
Message in my inbox: 17 items from your wishlist are on sale!
Me: Ohfuck.
I'm looking for a not-super-competitive multiplayer experience, like maybe a more polished, endgame version of Rust (wherein shit doesn't wipe all the time/you keep your things between plays, it doesn't feel like a job).
Does 7 Days to Die give me that? I also have Day Z, Hunt Showdown, and Miscreated on my wishlist/are on sale, but have heard mixed about the others versus mostly positive for 7 Days.
7 Days is a really fun game, if you can look past how incredibly janky it is and how primitive it looks. I only ever played it coop PvE with a bunch of friends (257 hours played over the years),...
7 Days is a really fun game, if you can look past how incredibly janky it is and how primitive it looks. I only ever played it coop PvE with a bunch of friends (257 hours played over the years), so can’t speak to the PvP though.
P.s. Here’s some basic advice for playing that is really handy to know before you get into it:
Make sure you start on the largest map size, as the smaller maps run out of non-replenishable resources faster, and once you get vehicles you can get across even the largest map pretty quickly anyways.
Speaking of non-replenishables, broken down cars are one of the most important types. Don't dismantle them fully with the wrench when looking for vehicle parts, always leave one hit left on the second-to-last phase so you can at least come back and loot them again later.
Don’t establish your base until you have explored the map a bit. The ideal base location is near a trader or two (for quests and trade goods) and a city (for loot). But don’t build too close to the city (or in a city) since loot doesn’t respawn in a set radius around any player placed blocks. (Chests are fine though, so you can safely place them in city buildings to temporarily store loot for you)
Once you do get a base set up in a good location, start working towards mass production of concrete ASAP so you can build your base out of that, since it has the most HP and will help you survive horde nights much easier.
Be very careful how you level up and don’t neglect the combat abilities, as zombie spawn strength is based on your level and how many days into the game you are. So if you spec too much into crafting stuff, you will get wrecked while trying to loot and on horde nights.
And the most important piece of advice for coop is to keep track of when the next horde night is, and never log out the day of the next one (or night of) or the next person to log in is going to die and lose their shit. Make sure everyone else you play with understands this as well or you’re all gonna have a bad time. :P
25 items, here. There's like three (released) games on my wishlist that aren't on sale, and one of those was released this month. Granted, about 60% of my wishlist is unreleased games.
25 items, here. There's like three (released) games on my wishlist that aren't on sale, and one of those was released this month.
Granted, about 60% of my wishlist is unreleased games.
lol this just made me think of the scene in Letterkenny when they are trying to persuade Wayne to help and he keeps refusing so they bribe him with a three legged dog and when he sees it he just...
Trine and Trine 2 both support Linux and are great coop platformers. Currently $2.24 and $2.99. They might be playable on Intel integrated graphics with the settings turned down, according to some...
Trine and Trine 2 both support Linux and are great coop platformers. Currently $2.24 and $2.99.
Battleblock Theater might be up your alley. It's a co-op puzzle platformer where you have to work together to make it through the levels. The presentation is a little juvenile, but the game itself...
Battleblock Theater might be up your alley. It's a co-op puzzle platformer where you have to work together to make it through the levels. The presentation is a little juvenile, but the game itself is a ton of fun. I searched the Steam forums and several people reported being able to run it on their integrated graphics cards, and it has a native Linux build, so it's likely to work with your setup.
In a similar vein, there's Ibb & Obb which is another co-op puzzle platformer. I played through both Battleblock and Ibb with a friend, and they were both delightful experiences.
Depending on exactly how low-end your hardware is, it might struggle with Portal 2 – from what I remember, it was barely playable on a 2nd-gen i3, even on lowest graphics settings (though the...
Depending on exactly how low-end your hardware is, it might struggle with Portal 2 – from what I remember, it was barely playable on a 2nd-gen i3, even on lowest graphics settings (though the original Portal would run fine on a potato). You could always refund it if it doesn't work well though.
Turns out a lot of the games I want aren't on sale. It's alright. I just bought Return of the Obra Dinn for a full 1€ off! Yay! I'm genuinely glad I finally just bought it, this has been on my...
Turns out a lot of the games I want aren't on sale. It's alright. I just bought Return of the Obra Dinn for a full 1€ off! Yay! I'm genuinely glad I finally just bought it, this has been on my list for ages.
From what I can tell, pretty much the entirety of /r/Steam (including me) chose Team Corgi; it was marginally ahead of the others when I picked it, and presumably everyone just thought that they...
From what I can tell, pretty much the entirety of /r/Steam (including me) chose Team Corgi; it was marginally ahead of the others when I picked it, and presumably everyone just thought that they may as well join the winning team, especially since the rules are so complicated.
I bought and played on release it because I've been a big fan of Battletech since the Mech Commander days. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not great either. The missions and maps get...
I bought and played on release it because I've been a big fan of Battletech since the Mech Commander days. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not great either. The missions and maps get pretty samey after a while. Performance is seriously lacking. It regularly stutters in battles and menu screens alike on my Core i7-8700.
If you like the Battletech universe then it's definitely worth $13.50, otherwise it's probably going to be pretty meh.
Lay your best hidden gem recommendations on me. I love playing games that fly under the radar!
To make it interesting, use the following completely arbitrary categorization scheme I invented that makes Steam reviews a measure of exposure:
You can find the total number of Steam reviews in the box on the right hand side of any game's store page. Make sure you take the number for all reviews rather than just recent reviews.
EDIT: Turns out the "all reviews" number isn't as solid a heuristic as I thought, but in the interest of simplicity and convenience I'm going to stand by it!
Obfuscated Opal: Mushroom 11. IMO the best "not-jumping" take on a platformer. Maybe the only one I know? But it's also plain really, really good. You control this blob of goo which stays rigid in whatever shape it turns into. You control it by "deleting" parts of it with your mouse being a kind of eraser while the blob will re-grow on the other end to keep a fixed size. You can do stuff like turning it into a hook to attach to a moving platform, a bridge for some physics object, to squeeze through a tight passage or sometimes even to cut into multiple pieces to do two things at once. It's super original. This is not some physics tech demo thingy, it's an actual, fleshed out game with end bosses, perfectly designed levels and clever puzzles that require you to find all kinds of interesting ways to control the blob. A bit tragic this has <100 reviews, it's one of my favorite indie games.
EDIT: Can someone explain to me why it says "96 reviews" in the main box but then "Browse all 525 reviews" at the bottom of the page?
If you hover over the ? at the bottom it says the 96 reviews are by users who are verified as owning the game on Steam. The rest are reviews by unverified purchasers.
Ah, got it! Steam is really burying non-Steam-purchased keys, then! I guess a lot of people got the game through bundles and whatnot, SteamSpy says >100,000 users.
This is exactly the kind of game recommendation I was looking for! Thank you!
Also, I went to buy it and turns out it's already in my Steam library. This was both a pleasant surprise (I don't need to spend money!) and a disheartening one (my Steam library is big enough that I've forgotten what's in it). Maybe I should calm down the new games and just play what I have...
I fell in love with that game the first time I saw the trailer for it. It's fantastic and I love the mechanic.
Hidden Gem:
J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is part scifi adventure game, part 2D Myst, part interactive fiction. If you have an itch for those, and don't mind that the game isn't terribly challenging, it's worth the admission price.
Gemini Rue is I think the best game published by Wadjet Eye, the modern indie adventure publisher. If you like old Lucasfilm and Sierra games, this cyberpunk adventure is well worth a play.
Minit is based on a very simple concept: You have one minute to live. Then you die. Then you respawn. I feel the developer could have done a bit more with this idea and I wasn't totally impressed by the writing, but even then it's a nice indie puzzle adventure.
Whetted Apatite:
Snakebird is one of the most brilliant puzzlers that I have played. It looks like Candy Crush Saga but it plays more like Stephen's Sausage Roll, i.e. it's devilishly hard. Even if you are a puzzle game wizard, don't be surprised if you find yourself scratching your head on the third or fourth level. But, and this is an important but, all levels are fair and the game flows really well.
A Good Snowman Is Hard to Build is a clever puzzle game where you build snowmen. It gets pretty hard towards the end.
Headlander is a pretty good metroidvania type game from the always funny Double Fine studios. You control a head that lands on things in a retro-futuristic space station sort of a thing controlled by a slightly insane AI.
Hack 'n' Slash is another Double Fine game. It's a Zelda type adventure game where you quite literally hack the world you are in: as your powers increase, you alter the game world and the programming code underneath it. Can't beat an enemy that does too much damage? Well, just hack that enemy and make their damage negative -- hey presto, now each time it hits you, you actually gain hit points! It seems to have received mixed reviews on Steam, but I really liked it.
Anodyne is a wonderfully put together zeldaesque adventure game that I have very fond memories of.
Safecracker may not be quite the "ultimate puzzle adventure" like it claims to be, but it's a competently put together Myst-lite that takes you 3-4 hours to play through. Worth the sale price.
Concealed Quartz
Sokobond is another game from the A Good Snowman developer. Like the title suggests, it's a mixture of sokoban and chemical bonding. A clever idea and really well executed.
Cypher is a virtual museum and puzzle game that teaches you cryptography. It gets a bit challenging towards the end when you are learning about Enigma and trying to break its codes with the help of just some pen and paper.
Recursed puts you into a 2D platformer puzzle world that deals with recursion: like Russian matryoshka dolls, one world is inside another, which may contain yet another, or a version of the first, and so on, ad infinitum, more or less.
Obfuscated Opal
Cosmic Express is a yet another puzzle game by the same people that made A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build. I love puzzle games (in case you didn't guess that by now) and I tend to find them a little too easy, but this one's a real challenge for my brain. So much so that I haven't been able to finish it yet.
Puzzlement twists your brain by forcing you to think in terms of 3D surfaces and orientation within a 2D represented world. Ok, that makes no sense but it's a good puzzle game nonetheless.
Diamond in the Rough
Warlock's Tower is a puzzle game built on a pretty simple premise: each move costs you a life. The levels are well designed, as is the game as a whole.
Here's a potential Diamond in the Rough from me: FutureGrind
I can't personally vouch for it, because I haven't played it yet (I might buy it in this sale), but I had been vaguely keeping an eye on it during development, because I thought it looked great. It's got some major Uniracers vibes, and looks like a skill-based platformer-ish game with some really interesting mechanics (including some Ikaruga-like color-based ones) and great style.
I was shocked when I checked up on it a few months ago and only had a handful of reviews (and still only has 8 from Steam purchasers!). I've seen a few positive impressions of it around the internet, but it really doesn't seem to be getting much attention at all.
Message in my inbox: 17 items from your wishlist are on sale!
Me: Ohfuck.
I'm looking for a not-super-competitive multiplayer experience, like maybe a more polished, endgame version of Rust (wherein shit doesn't wipe all the time/you keep your things between plays, it doesn't feel like a job).
Does 7 Days to Die give me that? I also have Day Z, Hunt Showdown, and Miscreated on my wishlist/are on sale, but have heard mixed about the others versus mostly positive for 7 Days.
"It definitely does that. It's like Rust with more polish and zombies" - My brother, who has the game
7 Days is a really fun game, if you can look past how incredibly janky it is and how primitive it looks. I only ever played it coop PvE with a bunch of friends (257 hours played over the years), so can’t speak to the PvP though.
P.s. Here’s some basic advice for playing that is really handy to know before you get into it:
25 items, here. There's like three (released) games on my wishlist that aren't on sale, and one of those was released this month.
Granted, about 60% of my wishlist is unreleased games.
lol this just made me think of the scene in Letterkenny when they are trying to persuade Wayne to help and he keeps refusing so they bribe him with a three legged dog and when he sees it he just says Oh fuck and immediately agrees to help out
Trine and Trine 2 both support Linux and are great coop platformers. Currently $2.24 and $2.99.
They might be playable on Intel integrated graphics with the settings turned down, according to some YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmJUKLV4OH0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iibYm8KZSC8
Battleblock Theater might be up your alley. It's a co-op puzzle platformer where you have to work together to make it through the levels. The presentation is a little juvenile, but the game itself is a ton of fun. I searched the Steam forums and several people reported being able to run it on their integrated graphics cards, and it has a native Linux build, so it's likely to work with your setup.
In a similar vein, there's Ibb & Obb which is another co-op puzzle platformer. I played through both Battleblock and Ibb with a friend, and they were both delightful experiences.
Crawl - is a fun take on a dungeon crawler where your friends control the monsters, w/ Linux support
Depending on exactly how low-end your hardware is, it might struggle with Portal 2 – from what I remember, it was barely playable on a 2nd-gen i3, even on lowest graphics settings (though the original Portal would run fine on a potato). You could always refund it if it doesn't work well though.
Turns out a lot of the games I want aren't on sale. It's alright. I just bought Return of the Obra Dinn for a full 1€ off! Yay! I'm genuinely glad I finally just bought it, this has been on my list for ages.
Maybe I'll also buy Shenzen I/O and DUSKERS.
So what's up with Team Corgi roflstomping the race every day? Are they just coordinating on some Discord server somewhere?
My logic was "corgis are cute, so I'll join that team". Maybe everybody else had the same thought process.
From what I can tell, pretty much the entirety of /r/Steam (including me) chose Team Corgi; it was marginally ahead of the others when I picked it, and presumably everyone just thought that they may as well join the winning team, especially since the rules are so complicated.
I bought and played on release it because I've been a big fan of Battletech since the Mech Commander days. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's not great either. The missions and maps get pretty samey after a while. Performance is seriously lacking. It regularly stutters in battles and menu screens alike on my Core i7-8700.
If you like the Battletech universe then it's definitely worth $13.50, otherwise it's probably going to be pretty meh.