Gaming Semi-obscure vidya you've genuinely enjoyed playing

[bandolerofuzz]

Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP, 2007)

The concept is simple: you have to build a dungeon to attract monsters, and from them get moneys. You build corridors and rooms with different structures to attract different monsters, and as you get more money slowly you descend floor after floor, killing bosses getting more moneys and, etc.... It's a pre-cookie clicker vidya that makes my zoomie receptors tingle a bit. I wish they would remake it or something with a better control and look, a similar game these days is Recettear.




There is a second one which I tried way too briefly to give an honest opinion.

 

[Tedposter]

OZ: Sword of Etheria
Sword of Etheria is a slash hack with RPG elements for PS2. You play as Fiel while the other two characters Leon and Almira are controlled by AI, however you can still give them commands. You can play with other characters besides the Fiel but you have to unlock them first


The ost of this game is pretty great

 

[Khastle]

Holy shit, this just came back to me: anyone remember Zubo? It was like EA's flagship kid friendly game for when the DS came out and it actually rocked, it was kinda like a rhythm RPG game with how the battle system worked and the animations and character inspirations within it were just awesome. Shame these days it's a pain in the arse to emulate due to its overall reliance on the bottom touchscreen but if you can find a copy for cheap and have an old DS laying around it's worth the time playing through it

Just found out this game almost got a TV series in this almost lost piece of rare media

This is the only clip from it and the rest seems lost to the time as it was deleted from its original site but crazy to think EA actually wanted to push this game series further at one point.

 

[XieXie]

By chance I stumbled upon a game called "Kung Fu Jesus" a couple of years ago and I decided to try it out. I absolutely loved it, despite some flaws in the game's design and polish that make me hesitant to recommend it for someone purely interested in amazing gameplay alone. However, it's probably one of my favourite art projects, especially one done by just a single person primarily.



Kung Fu Jesus is a passion project by a musician named Craig Snape. It's essentially a beat-em-up style story game with combos and powerups and such in a very psychedelic style.

Going by the Steam achievement percentages, it seems like I may be one of only a couple people to have progressed through the game to the point I have, but I still haven't quite finished the game, so I can't give a perfect summary of the story. But from what I've played, the story follows themes of a man's search for truth while schizophrenia and perhaps drugs progressively distort reality, and how he begins deteriorating/awakening into an epic scale story of fantasy, martial arts, conspiracy, and all sorts of other ideas that somehow Craig weaves together in an intriguing and fluid way. Also, despite the title of the game, it's not a Christian game or something like that, although there are themes from various religions at points.

The game is accompanied by a soundtrack ranging from psychedelic and shoegaze style tracks to more post-punk, indie rock tracks done by Craig himself with the music from a few of his different bands and personal projects over the years. I'm grateful to have discovered this game because I love Craig's music very much personally; I'd say he's one of my favourite musicians.




<3

 

[Khastle]

By chance I stumbled upon a game called "Kung Fu Jesus" a couple of years ago and I decided to try it out. I absolutely loved it, despite some flaws in the game's design and polish that make me hesitant to recommend it for someone purely interested in amazing gameplay alone. However, it's probably one of my favourite art projects, especially one done by just a single person primarily.



Kung Fu Jesus is a passion project by a musician named Craig Snape. It's essentially a beat-em-up style story game with combos and powerups and such in a very psychedelic style.

Going by the Steam achievement percentages, it seems like I may be one of only a couple people to have progressed through the game to the point I have, but I still haven't quite finished the game, so I can't give a perfect summary of the story. But from what I've played, the story follows themes of a man's search for truth while schizophrenia and perhaps drugs progressively distort reality, and how he begins deteriorating/awakening into an epic scale story of fantasy, martial arts, conspiracy, and all sorts of other ideas that somehow Craig weaves together in an intriguing and fluid way. Also, despite the title of the game, it's not a Christian game or something like that, although there are themes from various religions at points.

The game is accompanied by a soundtrack ranging from psychedelic and shoegaze style tracks to more post-punk, indie rock tracks done by Craig himself with the music from a few of his different bands and personal projects over the years. I'm grateful to have discovered this game because I love Craig's music very much personally; I'd say he's one of my favourite musicians.

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<3

Xiexie just casually dropping two massive high-quality posts in one day haha.

This looks sick, will have to give this one a look.

 

[playFACE]

SVEN COOP

ahhh yess... the good ol days of shitty pcs not being able to play modern days. of joining international servers that housed americans, mexicans, brazilians, japanese, and even some middle eastern people trying to beat horribly designed maps with 1 hp while someone is playing music through their radio script in voice chat

i got into this game by trying to play half life coop back then through a mod called synergy. it unfortunately got shut down and because i was a wee little lad and poor, i searched around for more free games to play from valve, and then in came in SVEN COOP. half life 1, with coop, for free. after that ive been playing it on and off alone, with friends, and over the years growing up. truly this is a timeless and classic mod that should be experience once by every pc gamer

give it a try lads. its free, basically any pc can run it, and it still has active servers to this very moment

 

[chmod]

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of The Moon

The story follows a newly orphaned kid as he searches for survivors in a post-apocalyptic Japan. The protagonist, Seto, traverses desolate environments, defends himself from unusual threats and convenes with the few living and many dead to learn what condemned his world. Throughout the entire game is an inalienable sense of loneliness which never resolves. I'd say the primary theme of the game is loss of innocence, which I think it handles pretty well. I imagine it's only among a few other Wii titles which address this theme.

What originally drew me to this game was a post show-casing its environments a year or so back. I went in blind and got pretty invested due to its environmental story-telling and complimenting OST. The game offers an innumerable amount of optional collectibles which provides 'memories' on current locations, enemies or experiences of those long dead. They each consist of a three minute narrated story-board from the perspective of the memories owner.

I believe the game took me thirteen hours, all of which I enjoyed. The overall feeling of the game is similar to that of NieR Automata, pervasive dread and all else. If you have a penchant for games that are more story-driven then this just might be it.

 

[playFACE]

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of The Moon

The story follows a newly orphaned kid as he searches for survivors in a post-apocalyptic Japan. The protagonist, Seto, traverses desolate environments, defends himself from unusual threats and convenes with the few living and many dead to learn what condemned his world. Throughout the entire game is an inalienable sense of loneliness which never resolves. I'd say the primary theme of the game is loss of innocence, which I think it handles pretty well. I imagine it's only among a few other Wii titles which address this theme.

What originally drew me to this game was a post show-casing its environments a year or so back. I went in blind and got pretty invested due to its environmental story-telling and complimenting OST. The game offers an innumerable amount of optional collectibles which provides 'memories' on current locations, enemies or experiences of those long dead. They each consist of a three minute narrated story-board from the perspective of the memories owner.

I believe the game took me thirteen hours, all of which I enjoyed. The overall feeling of the game is similar to that of NieR Automata, pervasive dread and all else. If you have a penchant for games that are more story-driven then this just might be it.

that second picture looks atmospheric. have a solid gif/video of the background, play some DnB and upload it to youtube and bam, easy $$$

 

[chmod]

SVEN COOP

ahhh yess... the good ol days of shitty pcs not being able to play modern days. of joining international servers that housed americans, mexicans, brazilians, japanese, and even some middle eastern people trying to beat horribly designed maps with 1 hp while someone is playing music through their radio script in voice chat

i got into this game by trying to play half life coop back then through a mod called synergy. it unfortunately got shut down and because i was a wee little lad and poor, i searched around for more free games to play from valve, and then in came in SVEN COOP. half life 1, with coop, for free. after that ive been playing it on and off alone, with friends, and over the years growing up. truly this is a timeless and classic mod that should be experience once by every pc gamer

give it a try lads. its free, basically any pc can run it, and it still has active servers to this very moment

I gotta get my friends together to play sven-coop sometime. So many great custom maps for half-life 1 that its actually unbelievable

 

[Khastle]

SNK's League Bowling is surprisingly fresh

Not much to it but I found it to be a fun early bowling sim

 

[Sneedster]

Last year I wanted to try out Football Manager 2024 to see what it's all about.
I played it a lot and it's good, but I wasn't too in love with it. That said, it got me into the "sports management sim" genre and man it's such a good genre. Out of The Park Baseball, Football Coach: College Dynasty, Axis Football, all really great games if you can break through the initial entry barrier.
Much MUUUCH better than grand strategy slop, btw, for the simple fact that in most of these games you can *delegate* tasks: in FM24 you can have your staff do everything except, say, tactics. That way you can take your time to learn things as you go, and the more things you learn the more things you turn into manual control mode.
In start contrast with games like Hearts of Iron where (even though it doesn't have too many things to learn) you need to learn EVERYTHING and know it well just to have a semi-normal playthrough.

So yeah. Sport sims are fucking ludo my dudes

 

[Khastle]

Anyone here played Cho Anki games? There's four of them and they are each is extremely silly and bizzare; challenging too but not mega unfair at the same time. Would recommend on an emulator if you can find the roms for them, quite fun for a quick playthrough.

 

[fartcannon420]

i really like Kenshi. it's not as obscure as it was in the past but it definitely is niche. this isn't a game i play that often and on top of that pretty out there in terms of my usual genres.

 

[V]

i really like Kenshi. it's not as obscure as it was in the past but it definitely is niche. this isn't a game i play that often and on top of that pretty out there in terms of my usual genres.

I tried this game but I just couldn't get myself to play it seriously it feels so unfinished

 

[Sneedster]

I tried this game but I just couldn't get myself to play it seriously it feels so unfinished

it's a streamer/e-celeb game, not an actual game

 

[V]

it's a streamer/e-celeb game, not an actual game

Makes sense now
The thing that annoys me a lot is the fact that you can't get wood and shit it's so dumb I still can't believe it to this day that it's missing this feature

 

[fartcannon420]

it's a streamer/e-celeb game, not an actual game

what? no?

Makes sense now
The thing that annoys me a lot is the fact that you can't get wood and shit it's so dumb I still can't believe it to this day that it's missing this feature

there's a lot of ways to do this, the game has quite a lot of in depth mechanics. not going to say it's not arduous or meticulous and annoying but it's not really "unfinished". they're working on a second game already. i've never seen this much animosity towards this game, everyone else i've shown has always at least thought conceptually that it was cool.

 

[XieXie]

i really like Kenshi. it's not as obscure as it was in the past but it definitely is niche. this isn't a game i play that often and on top of that pretty out there in terms of my usual genres.

I like it too. I really like making up my own stories for my characters and their journey in that game. ^^

 

[Khastle]

Never played this but had to share, this track comes from an obscure Winnie the fucking Pooh game

The gameplay doesn't help with the strange contrast of Piglet and location he visits in it

 

[Bibr]

Never played this but had to share, this track comes from an obscure Winnie the fucking Pooh game

The gameplay doesn't help with the strange contrast of Piglet and location he visits in it

Reminds me of the phenomenon where people wouldn't finish their games because they were afraid of them.

I remember one of my friends had similar issue with his Jurassic park on PS1. We were just scared xd
Kids in general easier sink into the world that's presented to them on screen. You need to make it only remotely unsettling and kiddo won't touch your game