For me it’s first person puzzle games. I can think of maybe a dozen off the top of my head that came out in the last decade. I especially enjoy when they’re open world. The ability to just quit a puzzle that’s stumped you and go try something else for a little bit is incredibly refreshing.
Games that are made for the sake of making the game insread of being made to squeeze as much retention and money out of you as possible
Now thats a style that is becoming increasingly rare
I contend that there are more games out there now that are made for the sake of making them than ever before. It’s just that fewer and fewer of these games are AAA titles. The indy scene is really what are making these games nowadays.
That or modding. Modded Minecraft is done purely because someone wanted to have the functionality of magic wands or engineering or resource processing in their lego game. It’s completely unmonetized and gets extremely involved very fast. I fondly remember my nuclear reactor exploding and having to work around the irradiated zone. Good times.
the indie scene may be greater for that but is also filled with the same money making trite and on top of that constantly copying each other and barely doing anything new.
Half-assed unoptimized horror game #367992: Find the 8 pages before the tooth fairy jumpscares you!
Just follow a YouTuber with similar tastes and play the indie games they play. AAA is creatively dead
Thank you but I trust youtubers opinions as much as a gaming “journalist” which is to say, not at all
- Willing to paint an entire swath of people with a broad, negative brush
- Unwilling to spend any effort finding media you might actually enjoy.
The problem might not be with the industry.
Youtubers are inheritor by the virtue of their existence just are a little to biased like the gaming magazines, I also find text much easier digestable than 2,5 minutes of invideo ads, sponsors selfplugs, like button smashing.or whatever else they want to subject me to
I spend far more effort trying to find gold than one really should have, there shouldnt be a need to spend so much time
Take a genuine hard look at this industry, an industry full with exploitation, lootboxes, micro and macrotransactions, the same 5 ideas ad naseum, where for every cuphead you have 10 slendermans, (thats just the tip of the iceberg)
you mean to tell me in THAT industry its ne with the problem? Cause thats a fair assassment and ill support whatever conclusion you may or may not draw
I think it’s more that, in absence of a gaming social circle, games discovery in the indie scene is hard. So, the easiest way for a lot of us is to find a gaming content creator who played games we like and play whatever they’re playing.
There’s a YouTube streamer I’ve been following for over a decade and every single game he plays is a 5/5 for me. At least ½ of my gaming is just games from his channel. It’s super easy; I don’t even watch him on Twitch much, but I can scan his recent broadcasts for gaming suggestions, and watch him play for like 30 minutes to figure out if it’s for me.
I have hundreds of games in my steam library with no in game purchases or lootboxes which I have enjoyed for between 50 and 2000 hours each. If you really have that much trouble finding games you can enjoy playing, then you need to change your habits.
Sim games. Not THE sims but like SimTower, SimAnt, etc. There’s been some attempts over the years but everyones missed the mark.
God games: the whole genre basically peaked with Populous and B&W and then just went quiet.
Space adventure games like Freelancer or X are also very rare nowadays.
I’ve been thinking about the disappearance of God games. I think they didn’t disappear, but they evolved so much that we don’t recognize them anymore.
I feel some moved into the direction that we now call “simulators”, like RimWorld, the Sims, Two Point Hospital, and more. In my mind, the big difference between the God games of old and those new games is that in the older games your role as the player was explicitly defined, where in the new games it’s not. In the old games, you were “playing the role of a god in that realm”. The new games don’t bother to tell you “who” you are in this setting. You’re just the player, get on with it, play the game.
I feel like other God games moved in the direction of top down colony builders, like Against the Storm or Frostpunk. And again, I think the big difference between those games and something like Populous is that your role as the player doesn’t have an explicit name in the game world. You’re not a “God”. But most of the rest of the trappings are there, I think.
What do you think?
Erhh…I guess?
But when I think of a God game I really mean a game where you literally play as a god and can do god stuff.
In all of your examples the player either controls what each character does or just whoever is is command of the colony. You can’t do miracles and supernatural stuff at the click of a button, you don’t control nature itself, your character is a human like anyone else.
Rise to Ruins has some god powers on top of the colony sim just as a possible suggestion for people looking for that.
Still fairly old, but newer than B&W: From Dust . Replace trainable animals with fluid physics and light hearted songs with didgeridoos, and it’s kind of similar.
Rhythm Games like Guitar Hero, Band Hero and DJ Hero. Those were fun.
There are still plenty of them: DJMAX, Muse Dash, Spin Rhythm, Hatsune Miku Project Diva, Beatmania. Also there are tons of them on mobile.
You might be surprised to hear that Konami, famed for focusing casino machines, was actually mistranslated on also focusing on arcade machines. There’s still a whole rhythmgame scene, but unfortunately it’s mostly centered around Japan. That’s where DDR, beatmania, Gitadora (the series Guitar Hero/Rockband ripped off) are, including newer series like DanceRush and Maimai and whatnot. If you ever visit the higherscale independent arcades, you might find some unsanctioned imports with some even emulating the online functionality (with gacha, ofc…). Otherwise, your only hope in the states is Round1, which host official imports, and D&B which only has DDR.
To add on to the other commenter, check out Osu!, ADOFAI, Rhythm Doctor, Hifi Rush, and a whole bunch of apps if you don’t want arcades.
Check out Clone Hero! I’m away from my computer, but there are archives that let you import all of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero songs. You can use/mod old controllers or even 3D print your own.
Simulation games, like the ones Maxis used to make (other than SimCity). SimEarth, SimAnt, SimTower, etc. Those were educational and fun.
I also once played a simulation game that realistically simulated running a shipping business where you shipped things by boat, sailing your fleet from port to port, dropping off your cargo and loading new cargo, giving the occasional bribe, etc. while avoiding bankruptcy. I think it was called “Port of Call.” It was made a long time ago, and I haven’t played anything quite like it since then.
Not exactly educational, but Sid Meier Pirates was also a lot of fun.
Yes, I totally agree with this. I would play these games so much growing up. Especially SimLife.
I like sim games where you feel like you’re experimenting with a scenario, not just trying to get the highest score or some win condition.
SimAnt was awesome
I still get that bass line from the bgm stuck in my head, all these years later.
Oooh, reminds me of SimFarm 😃
SimFarm was surprisingly fun.
Good RTSes. Last great one I played was Company of Heroes.
My favorite is still command and conquer generals lol. Not the best in the series but I loved it. Still play it every once in awhile.
Generals with Zero Hour is fantastic, and I actually think it’s the best in the series. While I think Company of Heroes is better, it’s still a very good game.
I’ve been playing Beyond All Reason, a free RTS that’s like Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation. The game handles 8v8 team games quite well, I’ve never played on such large teams in a RTS game, it’s fun.
I’ll go check that out, but I recall I wasn’t fond of the economy generation in Supreme Commander.
The economy is similar, but it’s a little easier than sup com. Energy to metal converters are cheap and if you balance them right you wont waste metal or energy.
Thanks, if it’s a little easier it might just be enough.
Used to play a lot of RTS, both single and multiplayer. The last one I bought was the new AoE game. It did scratch a bit of the itch, but on the whole was a letdown. Before that it was Iron Harvest, which was visually pleasing but clunky. I am still looking for an RTS I can really get lost in.
Any recommendations?
@Pantoffel supreme commander is my all time favorite and “beyond all reason” is a free game, developed by the community that shares some elements.
Thanks I’ll give it a try!
MUDs. Text based (generally RPG) games with incredibly immersive story telling, near infinite levels of character customization, and many even feature ways for players to build on the world itself.
I’m surprised it’s not more popular amongst D&D enthusiasts.
In its hey day, people spent thousands of dollars just to boost their characters on massive for-profit MUDs like those created by Iron Realms. But smaller MUDs like Ancient Anguish were just as quality.
Sadly they’re going extinct. Only a few MUDs are still actively maintained.
I started reading Mort (Terry Pratchett) and it reminded me of the Discworld MUD I played with my friends in the 90s, on dial-up, all crowded around a single 13" CRT. I looked it up, and it’s still running!
That’s awesome! I’ve noticed it on lists of top voted MUDs for a long time, but never quite got into that particularly flavor.
Huh, that must be where the original name for Runescape (DeviousMUD) came from. Didn’t know it was a whole genre of games
Granted it’s not text based, so I could definitely be wrong.
Whoa that’s a nice piece of trivia. Did some googling and it definitely has roots in MUDs, but Andrew obviously had higher ambitions visually. That’s cool.
Third person puzzle games with an engaging story like the Space Quest series, or The Dig. Also It Came From The Desert.
Do you have thoughts on the WadjetEye games? I’ve found a few of them quite engaging, particularly the later Blackwell games though I’ve heard good things of Unavowed.
The Cat Lady is also a gem but terribly dark.
I am still very much in love with It Came From The Desert.
3D Platformers. We get maybe one or two every few years, and most of them are usually pretty short. last big one was probably A Hat in Time. if y’all know more beyond that let me know. just grabbed Koa and the 5 Pirates of Mara.
so desperate for one i’m considering learning how to make 3D games so i can make my own lol
Hat in Time is probably the last big indie 3d platformer, but I’d say Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a decent 3d platformer, unless you meant collectathon style 3d platformer a la what Rare made on the N64 etc. since you mentioned Hat.
I assume you’ve played or heard of Yooka-Laylee. There’s also Clive n Wrench. Neither of those are great though.
I haven’t heard of Koa before, but it looks interesting. I’ll have to check it out.
But I really want a new Banjo game, however I doubt that ever happens at this point. I recently started working on my own Banjo clone in the Godot game engine because I don’t see anyone making the kind of game I’m looking for.
There definitely is a lack of actually good ones in the modern era. Poi and Grow Home are some good ones you may not have heard of.
Arena shooters!
I encourage anyone from southeast asia to join my xonotic server ;)
Similarly FPS-Z games like Tribes (Ascend, Vengeance, 2) and Legions Overdrive.
Fortunately MidAir 2 is almost here. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1231210/Midair_2/
Didn’t know this was a thing! What are they doing different from the original Midair? There was some hype for the first one but that seemed to fall off pretty quickly.
First-person shooters, the way they were made in the 6th and 7th gens. A campaign, probably co-op, probably with split-screen or LAN, with some versus multiplayer that repurposed some slightly-remixed locations from the campaign that you can play with approximately 4-8 players. That’s all you need. Sometimes we still get some great FPS campaigns, like Half-Life: Alyx, but I haven’t really gotten the kind of co-op or versus multiplayer I’ve been looking for for over a decade. Not everything needs to be a live service. It can be a flash in the pan multiplayer that’s so good that you break it out when you have a few friends over or in a Discord call. Not every multiplayer FPS needs to be an e-sport with an online population of tens of thousands of players to matchmake with in ranked.
I also don’t really get racing games for me anymore. Star Wars: Episode One Racer, Burnout Revenge, and F-Zero GX truly spoke to me, and there were a few others that were close, but for the most part, if your racing game isn’t basically Mario Kart or full of real licensed cars in real places, it doesn’t get made. And the ones that aren’t Mario Kart don’t usually get split-screen multiplayer either, which is a must-have for me. I did get Trail Out in the recent past, which is very good, and there’s that game Aero GPX on the horizon to potentially give me my F-Zero fix, but the actual racing games I’m looking for are so few and far between.
Fortunately, this list used to be much longer, and all the other holdouts, like Advance Wars-esque tactics games, Resident Evil 1-esque survival horror games, Commandos-esque stealth tactics games, and a few others have all gotten their itches scratched.
What’s a 6th and 7th gen? I think I’m too PCMR to understand that
6th is GameCube/Xbox/PS2. 7th is 360/PS3.
But that was when shooters were getting worse the fastest. It’s when we started getting chest-high walls everywhere, regenerating health, auto aim, and a general slow down of the action.
I mean, a lot of my favorites were slower than Quake for sure. Faster isn’t automatically better. Regenerating health was preferable to health packs, but we also had the likes of Doom 2016 to show that it didn’t have to just be one or the other. Games like Halo 2 and 3, Call of Duty 2, 4, and Modern Warfare 2 (the first time), the Timesplitters games, the 007 games of that era (Agent Under Fire with moon gravity and Q Claw is some of the most fun you’ll have with three friends on the same couch), Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Crysis, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2; and getting into third person shooters that were of a similar design philosophy, Metal Arms, Gears of War 1-3, and the much better Star Wars Battlefronts than the ones EA put out with basically the same titles.
As for the antigrav racers you mentioned, have you checked out BallisticNG? It leans more towards Wipeout than F-Zero, but even as a huge GX fan (and looking forward to Aero GPX myself) I’ve really enjoyed it. I believe it does have splitscreen as well, though I haven’t tried it personally.
It couldn’t hurt to try it out, but I always liked F-Zero more than Wipeout. At least it looks to be as fast as F-Zero.
It’s got a variety of speed settings that increase in difficulty, and it absolutely gets fast enough for anyone lol. I like it a lot more than the actual wipeout games I’ve tried even though its mechanics are more styled after that.
The First Person Stealth Sim genre (Thief, Dishonored, etc) has been getting very little love in the last few years. Sadly the Arkane games don’t embrace it anymore; while great Prey was borderline as you really couldn’t control the stealth in many sections, and Deathloop and Red Rain are primarily short action games.
Have you played the two most recent deus ex games? HR is my personal favorite but I liked MD more for its atmosphere and level design. Both are primarily 1st person but switch to 3rd person when using cover.
I have, though even MD is getting on for 7 years old now. I don’t think that the series lived up to it’s roots in either title. I found myself feeling very constrained by them; I don’t necessarily mind if I have to play a character (Corvo is great as a Tabula Rasa) but Adam Jensen and his backstory are so fundamentally unlikeable.
Although they’re somewhat different the modern Hitman trilogy scratches this same itch for me (especially turning some of the guidance in the UI off and exploring the levels yourself, they’re actually designed well for that). Gloomwood is in early access but is shaping up really well and is inspired by classic Thief.
Turn based strategy. As others have said, RTS’es, as well, but TBS. Yes, Civ series isn’t dead, but everything else seems to be. Master of Magic (1994) is literally one of my favorite games of all time (none of the sequels or successors measure up). Colonization, also 1994, (warning, MANY ethical issues) had a great logistic and economic model… (Just ignore eeeeeeverything about the white-washing of history/slavery/indentured servitude/genocide.) Alpha Centauri. Maybe I’m just old.
I spent my teen years around X-Com and the sequels. When Firaxis released the new games, I spent hundreds of hours on them, but haven’t seen any games quite like them in the last decade or so.
@sparkl_motion @GrayBackgroundMusic Xenonauts for a modern xcom. The sequel is in early access and is fantastic. Terra Invicta is a slightly different take.
For MoM Age of Wonders IV is really good.
There’s still nothing like XCOM:Long War, but fortunately the aliens are always waiting to take another swipe. Maybe this time I won’t rush mec.
Also I really like Wildermyth. It scratches the XCOM itch but your soldiers retire and have kids and can leave you for more reasons that just because you fucked up. And they can turn into were bears
Do you know about Songs of Conquest?
I’ve been playing a lot of Terraformers and Slipways – they scratch a similar itch for me but only take an hour total
Stealth games. The last one for me was MGS5, I loved it even with its shaky story line. Hitman is really nice but it feels more like a puzzle game if that makes sense.
I concur. Hitman can be a somewhat true stealth game but the design steers you away from “free form” stealth with its mission stories. I like the idea but the puzzles are too small, few short steps to the goal.
I hope for Metal Gear Delta to succeed, not only because I have a soft spot for MGS3 but also to revive the genre.
Have you played Mike Bithell’s Volume?
No I did not, thanks I’ll look into it!
Party-based RPGs like Baldur’s Gate or Pillars of Eternity. I absolutely love this style of game, but it feels like there are precious few titles to choose from. Anyone know of any hidden gems?
Well, you’re in luck; they’re releasing Baldur’s Gate 3 in a few days ;P
There a youtube channel and a steam curator called Mortismal Gaming who loves CRPGs. Their shtick is also completing games at 100% before popping a review, and they are churning out new material at an amazing pace. Check it out for some decent coverage on the genre.
As for a maybe hidden gem, Age of Decadence looks pretty good. I have not played it yet, but the genre seems to match, and the premise is solid.
Expedition Rome is well appreciated too, even if it leans more toward tactical battles.
It’s not hidden, but I thoroughly enjoyed divinity original sin II. If you don’t want turn based combat it might be worth checking out the Pathfinder games.
Have you checked out Pathfinder Kingmaker and Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous? Those are relatively new.
Have you checked out Caves of Lore? It’s a great party based rpg with deep lore and created by a single developer. It reminds me of Jeff Vogel’s work a bit.
No, I’ve never heard of it. Thanks for the suggestion!
Tyranny, Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, Tower of Time. Also anything by Spiderweb Software – my favorite is Geneforge
Solasta is a pretty faithful recreation of dungeons and dragons 5e, although the story/writing is not the best (may have improved in the later dlc, I’ve not gotten around to playing it yet). The combat is fun, though.
I have just one gripe with Solasta – it’s incredibly slow movement. You have to mod it.
