I love obscure and overlooked games and want to share a bunch with all of you. Most “hidden gem” threads end up listing titles with thousands of reviews or that got some level of marketing. I aim to mostly avoid that. While you may see a few familiar games here, everything in the list below has under 1500 reviews on Steam and most have far less. Far fewer had any notable marketing push or appearance in gaming shows or directs. And since the Steam Sale is ongoing, it’s the perfect time to try these games for yourself.
If you’d like more recommendations, comment with at least three games you like and I’ll respond with a couple more indie games hopefully suited to your tastes. Hope you enjoy!
False Skies - 37 Reviews
- A JRPG with simple GameBoy graphics but scale matching and surpassing lots of genre classics. It’s most similar to Dragon Quest III, since both deal with custom parties and somewhat open exploration of their worlds.
Hyperspace Delivery Service - 37 Reviews
- A Star Trek inspired take on Oregon Trail. There’s a bunch of minigames based around travel and planets and events like fighting space pirates to make each trip across space feel fresh.
Treasures of the Aegean - 57 Reviews
- Imagine if Tomb Raider was a 2D metroidvania and had a timeloop mechanic. That’s this game. The parkour system feels great too.
DIG - Deep in Galaxies - 79 Reviews
- Terraria/Starbound + Noita + Spelunky = this game. Fly through space to dig through planets and create broken character builds. The first free content update was also just released.
Star Drift Evolution - 169 Reviews
- A racing game with 75 tracks, 51 vehicles, multiple camera modes, and some great handling. Probably most similar to Art of Rally, but this has more variety.
Prodigal - 182 Reviews
- A Zelda-like game with Stardew Valley-esque characters and interactions. Loads of dungeons and a charming (if simple) story all wrapped in a GameBoy Color aesthetic.
Intergalactic Fishing - 211 Reviews
- Travel to infinite lakes and fish in them. Despite the simple graphics there’s a lot being simulated and yet the complexity of it all never makes the game overwhelming.
Elsinor - 235 Reviews
- An adventure game about Hamlet, but you play as Ophelia and she’s caught in a Groundhog Day scenario. While I don’t think this is the best narrative game (that would be Scarlet Hollow), I do think this is the most intriguing one with so many clever and interesting ideas to share.
RITE - 251 Reviews
- A difficult precision platformer like Celeste, Super Meat Boy, and I Wanna Be The Guy. It’s split into dozens of bite-sized levels so it’s easy to pick up for short play sessions.
Ctrl Alt Ego - 350 Reviews
- An immersive sim that stands toe to toe with classics like Deus Ex and Prey. You play as a detached consciousness which can jump between robots to make your way through various missions and levels however you want.
The Eternal Cylinder - 383 Reviews
- This is like Spore, but even weirder and there’s a cylinder that’s going to kill your aliens.
ADACA - 449 Reviews
- Imagine S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with Halo’s weapons and a special move that’s Half Life 2’s gravity gun and you’ve got ADACA. The two current story acts are just an introduction to the more open zone mode with quests and mysteries to explore and solve.
Legend Bowl - 723 Reviews
- If you ever played Tecmo Bowl or Superbowl on the SNES, this is basically an upgraded version. I think this is the best American Football game on Steam. Mutant Football League is a close second.
Environmental Station Alpha - 1046 Reviews
- It’s really difficult, but I think this is the best encapsulation of the Metroidvania formula. Plus the postgame is more substantial than you’ll probably expect.
Heaven’s Vault - 1410 Reviews
- Did you like uncovering the secrets of an ancient alien civilization in Outer Wilds? This offers something like that, with a slower pace, more direct narrative, and focus on learning a lost language.
Northern Journey - 1453 Reviews
- Explore a mystical and mysterious Nordic region. The atmosphere this game builds for itself through environments and music is possibly the best I’ve ever experienced in any game ever. It’s really that good.
Does Cogmind count? Because even when I see people discussing games like it, which are already pretty niche, it never comes up. That’s tragic, because oh my god, just read some of these articles. This developer is obsessive and even if you don’t get too deep into Cogmind it’s an incredible toy to just screw around with and just see what happens.
Second this, great game! One of the best modern traditional roguelike games right now.
The visuals with that game are so impressive for what it is. It’s like they captured particle effects in 2D.
Thanks for the list, a few games really caught my eye.
Here is my contribution - Tametsi
A minesweeper which has hand-crafted levels so you can always solve it with logic instead of relying on luck when you are out of logical moves.
RUINER: Isometric twin-stick shooter with a 10/10 soundtrack. Basically zero advertisement, i only ever found out about it because I listen to similar music and got the soundtrack reccomended to me by the YT algorithm.
Oh I keep seeing this being recommended to me. How does it compare to The Ascent?
The Ascent is a longer game and leans harder into RPG elements than Ruiner ever does. For me, Ruiner ran better and like @[email protected] says, the music is incredible. Blows The Ascent’s soundtrack out of the water. Ruiner might have slightly tighter controls too, but I’d have to replay to confirm since I played it with a mouse/keyboard while I played The Ascent with a controller.
I still remember the Dropsy thread on SomethingAwful. Crazy that it turned into an actual game!
Never played the ascent but heard it was meh. Controls for Ruiner were pretty tight, my only complaint is that I’d sometimes get caught on an object/wall that wasn’t very easy to see, but it was never more than a minor inconvenience.
Hexceed is free, lite Hexcells, I read, if you want to try before you buy.
I bought Tametsi recently based at another recommendation thread. It’s really good - it eliminates the big issue with minesweeper which is that sometimes you have to guess. In Tametsi you always have enough information for your next move which completely changes how it feels. It almost ends up feeling more like Sudoku with the “ok so if that’s true then that can’t be true” type steps in logic.
I’m just here to +1 Northern Journey. I couldn’t put this game down once I started. It’s weird AF, and I loved it utterly.
shipped a local multiplayer naval game Overall Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (523 reviews) : I had a lot of fun playing this game with my sist er and cousin.
seems like my previous comment didn’t get postedI almost included Lingo on my list because I’m playing it right now and loving it. But I’m only 6 hours in so I didn’t want to make presumptions about anything I’ve not experienced in it yet. What I’ve played though has been fantastic. I like it quite a bit more than The Witness.
This is probably my favorite game, it’s going through a rough patch right now because development had halted for about a year and was then sold to another company last year who are still in the process of transferring everything over. I’m hoping for new development within another year because it’s an awesome game, but it’s been stagnant for a long time. It’s not on sale, but they’ve discussed a lower price for it openly after they get things rolling. We’ll see.
Really enjoyed Heaven’s Vault.
Surprised that The Enteral Cylinder only has 300-ish reviews. I remember seeing it all over the new when it launched. How is it?
Oh wow, I missed it early on! The Eternal Cylinder is good, but some occasionally clunky gameplay alongside the very unique alien designs might turn some people away. It crashed twice on me and once you figure out all the systems of play it can feel simple (although there’s a lot of complexity under the hood), so I could see some people giving up on it due to frustration or boredom - especially if the aliens or story don’t hook them.
I loved the environments and alien concept (plus the fun stress of the cylinders approaching) which kept me hooked. Plus it’s much more mechanically involved than Spore was. Spent about 13 hours with the game and left satisfied. If I had to numerically rate it, it’s maybe around 8/10?
The Age of Decadence is CRPG set in a post-apocalypse ish, in which an analogue to the Roman Empire ruled most of the world until the collapse of civilisation, now it’s mostly city states struggling to survive and reclaim the old magitek of the empire.
Underrail: Life on earth’s surface has been made inhospitable ages ago, and the remains of humanity now live in the metro system called underrail and the caverns around it.
Both are isometric, turn based games that focus on combat and exploration. And they are hard. Builds are incredibly important, almost min maxing but they have a wide range of viable builds, especially the first one where you can play the entire game without fighting a single battle, all through alternative solutions and skill checks.
Have you played Colony Ship, by the same devs as Age of Decadence? I’ve been keeping an eye on it for a while and looks to be real close to its 1.0 release, but I’ve not heard or read a lot about it.
No actually, I didn’t knew it was a thing. Added to my wishlist for when it’s released.
Treasures of the Aegean looks kind of beautiful in the first trailer. And there’s a demo to try? Looks like that’s what I’m doing next.
I played the demo and IDK. It feels a little finicky and I want to like it but it just didn’t make me feel like I need to pay to keep playing.
Getting major Exile vibes from Environmental Station Alpha; must check it out.
Thanks for the list, very intrigued by Ctrl Alt Ego being an immersive sim fan
English Country Tune (153 reviews)
Fantastic super hard puzzle game from the person who would later create the more well known (and equally amazing) Stephens Sausage Roll (1001 reviews).
Both are graphically very basic but mechanically incredible and really well designed!
I recently watched my friend beat stephen’s sausage roll, a game that I have not been able to beat in 10 years. That game is bonkers hard. My arbitrary guess is that the number of people who have beaten the game is under 5,000. If anyone is looking for a puzzle game that will make your brain hurt, that is the game for you.
PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
I can recommend NEO Scavenger (slightly under 4k reviews). It’s hardcore survival game in post apocalypse world. I haven’t finished it yet, 'cause I always die in the process. Still very enjoyable if you’re into post-apo.
Terrible interface, but if someone appreciates roguelikes (technically not one, but much of the same DNA) that shouldn’t be enough to turn people away from a great game.
Here are two 3D platformers I haven’t really heard a lot of but still had very fun with last year.
Demon Turf - 335 Reviews What pulled me in initially was the art syle, the games looks a bit like the cartoons from my childhood. This one got combat, exploration, bosses, collectables. A bit of a problem is that the game tried to do a lot of things at the same time, resulting in a bit uneven quality overall. There are also leaderboards if you into speedrunning.
Demon Turf: Neon Splash - 105 Reviews Some kind of standalone DLC/spinoff to the first game. In this game everything is more streamlined and the design feels more focused. Combat have been cut in order to give the platforming more time to shine and a reason to simplify the controls. The focus is on repeating the same levels for better a time on the leaderboard. Speedrunning is not really my thing but I still found enjoyment in the game. Much cheaper and short than Demon Turf.
