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  1. - Top - End - #151
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    back in the day I played a fun game called Empire over telnet.
    It was a multiplayer strategy game where each player ran a nation that would acquire and build up provinces, setup your economy. you'd build a variety of units, give them orders to cover various areas for combat. this was way back when so there was far less automation of things. managing the logistics of your empire was a major factor, as lack of local resources could severely hamper your war effort in any theater, and the combat system was fairly detailed.
    it was one of those games you could really pour hours a day into (at least during warfare and it was one of those games that lasted months).


    Trying to think of some other old games that I quite liked, but that aren't so obvious that most people (who lived through the era and played games) would probably have heard of.
    Maybe Onslaught? an old side-scroller I played on the Amiga with a variety of findable weapons that you'd use to try to conquer territories.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

  2. - Top - End - #152
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    I just miss Sierra games in general. I grew up playing most of their games with my dad (including an...awkward day with one of the Leisure Suit Larrys when I don't think he quite realized what he'd be getting into trying to play with a little kid "helping" - I was SO MAD when I later discovered that he decided to "keep playing the game without me" and I didn't get to know what happened next...), starting with the first King's Quest on the Compaq portable and continuing through pretty much the life of the company and several of the game series. We got their advertising magazine, so I pretty much just thought of Sierra games when I thought of PC games for most of my childhood. (For the adventure games, we'd have one person controlling the character on screen and the other taking notes/making a bubble map and such, and collaborate on trying to figure out the puzzles.)

    I'm sure there are indies out there making that kind of game now, but I don't think the internet era has been kind to those sorts of puzzles. It's more fun to take a while trying to figure it out yourself, discuss it with your friends who are also playing the game, and generally have the whole local whatever-playing community be stuck for a while (or have that one guy who gives annoying vague-yet-smug hints), and that's just not how it works now.

  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Algeh View Post
    I'm sure there are indies out there making that kind of game now, but I don't think the internet era has been kind to those sorts of puzzles. It's more fun to take a while trying to figure it out yourself, discuss it with your friends who are also playing the game, and generally have the whole local whatever-playing community be stuck for a while (or have that one guy who gives annoying vague-yet-smug hints), and that's just not how it works now.
    Yeah, the adventure market has shrunk but while you don't get AAA games from the genre, there's more than enough if you look for it. (for example the Deponia series imo is a decent successor to the Monkey Island games' weirdness)
    Of course nowadays there's the internet so nobody gets stuck longer than they want to...
    Also I think there are even quite a few free flash adventure games around.
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  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Algeh View Post
    I just miss Sierra games in general. I grew up playing most of their games with my dad (including an...awkward day with one of the Leisure Suit Larrys when I don't think he quite realized what he'd be getting into trying to play with a little kid "helping" - I was SO MAD when I later discovered that he decided to "keep playing the game without me" and I didn't get to know what happened next...), starting with the first King's Quest on the Compaq portable and continuing through pretty much the life of the company and several of the game series. We got their advertising magazine, so I pretty much just thought of Sierra games when I thought of PC games for most of my childhood. (For the adventure games, we'd have one person controlling the character on screen and the other taking notes/making a bubble map and such, and collaborate on trying to figure out the puzzles.)

    I'm sure there are indies out there making that kind of game now, but I don't think the internet era has been kind to those sorts of puzzles. It's more fun to take a while trying to figure it out yourself, discuss it with your friends who are also playing the game, and generally have the whole local whatever-playing community be stuck for a while (or have that one guy who gives annoying vague-yet-smug hints), and that's just not how it works now.
    I know one German company that still does some of htem, and there's a few indies. You might try The Unavowed, where you play a team of urban fantasy investigators/monster hunters solving a series of connected cases. It's quite good, but unlike the Sierra games I remember, the solutions to the cases seem mostly logical, there's basically no pixel-hunting and my brother and I never got stuck anywhere and we never had to resort to "use everything with everything".

    If you want some interesting puzzle solving, I can't recommend Return of the Obra Dinn enough. It's entirely unique. You solve the mystery of a shipwreck and what happened to all the individual crew members by walking through still images of death scenes. It's entirely unlike a point and click adventure gameplay wise, but for me, it scratched the same itch.
    Last edited by Eldan; 2019-01-11 at 03:18 AM.
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  5. - Top - End - #155
    Librarian in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Algeh View Post
    I just miss Sierra games in general. I grew up playing most of their games with my dad (including an...awkward day with one of the Leisure Suit Larrys when I don't think he quite realized what he'd be getting into trying to play with a little kid "helping" - I was SO MAD when I later discovered that he decided to "keep playing the game without me" and I didn't get to know what happened next...), starting with the first King's Quest on the Compaq portable and continuing through pretty much the life of the company and several of the game series. We got their advertising magazine, so I pretty much just thought of Sierra games when I thought of PC games for most of my childhood. (For the adventure games, we'd have one person controlling the character on screen and the other taking notes/making a bubble map and such, and collaborate on trying to figure out the puzzles.)

    I'm sure there are indies out there making that kind of game now, but I don't think the internet era has been kind to those sorts of puzzles. It's more fun to take a while trying to figure it out yourself, discuss it with your friends who are also playing the game, and generally have the whole local whatever-playing community be stuck for a while (or have that one guy who gives annoying vague-yet-smug hints), and that's just not how it works now.
    There's also agdinteractive, which remade a few of the older Sierra games into VGA versions.
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  6. - Top - End - #156
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Oh yeah!

    There was an old online game called Penumbra. First person dungeon crawler. Could party up with other people. Play as a Thri-Kreen or Tabaxi. Final boss was the Lag Monster or something. Super op person was Erzivia Ktal or something. No idea what happened to it.
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  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by zlefin View Post
    back in the day I played a fun game called Empire over telnet.
    It was a multiplayer strategy game where each player ran a nation that would acquire and build up provinces, setup your economy. you'd build a variety of units, give them orders to cover various areas for combat. this was way back when so there was far less automation of things. managing the logistics of your empire was a major factor, as lack of local resources could severely hamper your war effort in any theater, and the combat system was fairly detailed.
    it was one of those games you could really pour hours a day into (at least during warfare and it was one of those games that lasted months).
    Huh. I saw a remake of that on Steam, probably not by the original folk, though. Here's the store link.

  8. - Top - End - #158
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    A bit odd, haven't checked to see if it still exists, but about 10 years ago, I was a part of an online gaming site called World of Dungeons.

    It was a text-based combat game where you filled a unique slot in a team, you programmed what you'd do when the group ran their next dungeon, and at a particular time of the day/week/month, your group would run that dungeon based on the scripts for each character and monster in it. It was a way for people with real jobs to participate in group efforts and raids and such without actually having to be there. The battle would be resolved instantly, so you can review how you did, what killed you, and try to assess with your group what needs to be prioritized on.

    It has a lot more Pay-to-play elements now than it ever did, but I think it's still up and running. Used to run a pretty major guild on it in my highschool days.
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  9. - Top - End - #159
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    For the adventure/puzzle game lovers: I highly recommend checking out Hadean Lands. It's an old-style parser-based puzzle game, but with a lot of modern conveniences and some really interesting puzzles.
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  10. - Top - End - #160
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    I loved Captain Comic as a kid. Side scroller EGA game. It really was an open world side scroller, to this day I have no idea what it was actually about.

  11. - Top - End - #161
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Algeh View Post
    I just miss Sierra games in general. I grew up playing most of their games with my dad (including an...awkward day with one of the Leisure Suit Larrys when I don't think he quite realized what he'd be getting into trying to play with a little kid "helping" - I was SO MAD when I later discovered that he decided to "keep playing the game without me" and I didn't get to know what happened next...)
    My dad had me beat the river jetski(?) section of one of those games for him since he couldn't. LOL
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  12. - Top - End - #162
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Bit of a bump, because I was going to post a thread like this originally but saw that this was here.

    2 games that I really enjoyed, the first one being my favorite, are:

    Legend of Legaia
    There are a lot of other great games out there that I love, but Legend of Legaia for the PlayStation 1 would have to be my favorite, since it was one of the first turn based JRPGs that got me into the genre, aside from watching my sister play Final Fantasy games (which I also love).
    Legend of Legaia (I'm gonna shorten it to LoL) I feel not too many people have heard of, or played. There was Legend of Legaia 2 for the PS2, but it was not as good, more characters, yes, but didn't have the same feeling.

    LoL has 3 characters. The main character, Vahn, who is a martial artist from a small village. Noa, a mountain girl who was raised by a talking wolf, and Gala, monk from a monastery.
    The story is simple; people lived peacefully until the "mist" or "miasma" appeared and started to anger Seru, creatures/objects with powers, and monsters, turning people into monsters as well. The 3 main characters have "Ra-Seru" which grant them protection from the Mist and allows them to capture certain monsters (summons) and enhance their physical abilities. It it your duty to destroy "Mist Generators" and revive the Genesis Trees around the world which repel the Mist.

    What makes LoL so appealing to me was it's combat, it's also simple, but was unique for me. You are able to input commands (up, down, left, right) on a command line (which increases with level) to fight. Entering certain commands (such as UDU) will give you a special move (in this case, summersault) and you can chain them into each other. Example is UDU is high atk, low atk, summersault, DUUL is low atk, high atk, high atk, PK Combo, so you can chain UDUUL for high atk, low atk, SS, high atk, PKC, rather than doing them all separately like UDU, DUUL, since that uses too much space on your command bar.

    LoL 2 uses the same combat system, but you're unable to "capture" summons, rather, each person has their own set of summons/skills, but overall I prefer LoL 1.

    Eternal Eyes
    Yet another PlayStation 1 game, this time it's a tactics game. It's another that there's a lot of better tactics games, but this was one of my first tactics games, aside from Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1).
    A lot of people will say it's a dull game that rips off Battle Ogre (or is it Tactics Ogre?) or FF Tactics, but whatever.

    It's a game that involves managing "pappets" which are creatures or dolls that can have special abilities, while playing like a normal Tactics game. If your pappet dies in battle, you can revive them, though they will have their abilities erased so you'd have to start from scratch. I believe you can also fuse pappets to make better ones. There isn't really much to say about this game other that I enjoyed it.

    Edit:
    Witch and the Hundred Knight
    PS 3 game, with a remastered version for PS4, this is also one of my favorite games, since I love witches, especially crazy ones, such as Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koroni.

    Gameplay and I guess story on this one aren't really anything spectacular. It's a top down ish view (similar to Diablo or Path of Exile) where you play as the "Hundred Knight," a magical creature brought to life by the Swamp Witch Metallica (or Metallia for the English name), who is my favorite part of the game. The goal of the game is to release Mana from these pillars, which the mana is similar to a toxic swamp to people, so that Metallica can become the most powerful witch, since she cannot go outside of the swamp's presence.

    It's by NIS America and Nippon Ichi, so art is similar to Disgaea.

    More so than the gameplay or story (granted I like the story too), the most enjoyable part of the game is the characters. Metallica is a crude, cynical witch, who will do whatever it takes to get things done her way, this involves turning her mother into a rat and having horny male rats chase after her in the wild, nearly destroying an entire castle just so she can be invited to it the following year, and breaking the world altogether.

    Edit 2:
    Currently in the process of playing The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2, starring Chelka (my avatar) instead of Metallica, but doesn't have the same feel to it. Gameplay is basically the same, but story and characters aren't pulling me in.
    Last edited by Buji; 2019-02-22 at 06:41 PM.

  13. - Top - End - #163
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    So, there's a new turn based game similar to X-COM that I picked up recently that may be worth a mention - Troublshooter. It's still in early release, but so far isn't terrible. The gist is that you are heading up your own licensed vigilante company (the licensed vigilantes are called "Troubleshooters") who works with the police to handle dangerous criminals in the fictional city of Valhalla. The characters that are part of your company progress through various job trees (and despite taking place in a near future setting, you've got folks wielding swords, fists, guns and magic), you have a base of operations (although you don't really do any of the base development of X-COM), and you get progressively better gear from either crafting, drops from enemies, or treasure boxes you can retrieve on the various battle maps. There appears to be a city district mechanic that is in development (jurisdiction), but isn't formally in place yet. There is an overarching story, but it's pretty meh.

    Still, if you like the X-COM type combat, this one may be worth a look.

    Along those same lines, has anyone checked out Phantom Doctrine? Because the premise of turn-based 80's Berlin spy action sounds awesome.
    Last edited by Deadline; 2019-02-25 at 06:41 PM.
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  14. - Top - End - #164
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by TaRix View Post
    Huh. I saw a remake of that on Steam, probably not by the original folk, though. Here's the store link.
    that's a different game entirely that goes by the name Empire. that game was actually pretty well known back in the day; unlike the internet-based game called Empire that I was referring to. The one I was referring to was also way more complex (much like the fancier tabletop wargames of old) and not related.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
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  15. - Top - End - #165
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Flying Heroes was a big one during my childhood. It's a First Person Shooter that is like Unreal Tournament in the sky. You have some means of flying transportation, and you try to shoot down your opposition. Since your method of transportation cares about momentum, you can surround your target in toxic gas or chase them down with a rocket launcher. Your form of transportation matters, with a Dragon having more mobility and less weaponry than, say, a zeppelin.

    Use your excess mobility as a dragon rider to flip around your assailant and now the hunter becomes the hunted. Or use your shotgun barrage as the Zeppelin to mulch that dragon if he's dumb enough to get close to you as you chase him down.

    It's incredibly fun and hard.
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2019-03-14 at 04:54 PM.
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  16. - Top - End - #166
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Buji View Post
    Edit:
    Witch and the Hundred Knight
    PS 3 game, with a remastered version for PS4, this is also one of my favorite games, since I love witches, especially crazy ones, such as Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koroni.

    Gameplay and I guess story on this one aren't really anything spectacular. It's a top down ish view (similar to Diablo or Path of Exile) where you play as the "Hundred Knight," a magical creature brought to life by the Swamp Witch Metallica (or Metallia for the English name), who is my favorite part of the game. The goal of the game is to release Mana from these pillars, which the mana is similar to a toxic swamp to people, so that Metallica can become the most powerful witch, since she cannot go outside of the swamp's presence.
    I checked out the PS4 version from my library once. Then things got busy and I didn't have time to make it much past the intro, but it looked interesting. I had completely forgotten about it until I saw your post.
    Last edited by Velaryon; 2019-03-14 at 04:31 PM.
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  17. - Top - End - #167
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Psychic Force, for PS1

    In the distant future, the far off year of 2010, brightly coloured fighters use their psychic power whilst flying high above the ruins of futuristic metropolises. Did a child Malphegor understand any of what was going on? No. Did he even fully understand the controls? No.


    So basically it was a PS1 side view fighter with 3d controls where you had a combo meter and a limited space to fight in. From memory you could throw enemies into the walls of the space you fight in, and they'd get hurt, but you could move yourself or they could move themselves to the walls and not get hurt. I remember it being really hard when I was about 6 or 7 years old, it's probably just a button masher really but it's worth a look.

    Has some decent J-Pop and the localisation on the english version is pretty much just the text, making the game even more confusing.

    The main characters I remember are:

    Burn Griffiths- a man who is such a pyrokinetic he took the most boring name ever!

    Wendy Ryan- yes, they made the aussie girl who can control wind be named 'wendy'

    Sonia- is actually Wendy's brother transformed into a female bioroid which is apparently a biological robot but ok isn't that just a human shut up dont poke holes in this, this might be the first blatantly genderflipped character in gaming maybe. Shame it's unwilling.

    Rokudo Genma- Japanese warrior monk who thinks he's using magic and thinks all these psychiceers (because ESPer wasn't unique enough a name) are heretics.

    It's a bizarre little game and the fact that it's all in flight and with weird 3d controls makes it a strange one to try out.
    Last edited by Malphegor; 2019-03-18 at 11:10 AM.
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  18. - Top - End - #168
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    "Nobody has heard or" is a bit of an overstatement, but if you haven't heard of one of these I recommend at least looking into it.

    Balloon Fight is one of those NES games that keep getting referenced in Smash Bros, Wario Ware. If you've seen an 8-bit dude wearing a helmet with helium balloons attached, that's the guy. Your only controls are flapping your arms to raise your altitude and slowly changing your left/right velocity. You fight birds with balloons attached to their heads, and beat them by contacting their balloons with your body, popping them. It supports two players, so yoi can pop your partner's balloons, because even in the 80's developers understood the need for PVP. Imagine Joust but your floaty physics change as you take damage, because you've got fewer balloons. A little extra nerd praise: this game introduced me to the concept of ball lightning.

    Snow Bros is another NES game, in which you and a partner play two brothers who have been turned into snowmen. On each square stage you defeat enemies by flinging globs of snow at them until they're big round snowballs, then push them so they roll to the bottom of the stage, taking along anything in their path like a katamari. "Anything in their path" includes your partner so you can snag the sweet loot at the top of the screen uncontested, because even in the 80's developers understood the need for PVP. It was arcade quarter-gobblet hard so naturally my actual brother and I cheated with infinite lives to beat it.

    Sanitarium is a point-and-click PC adventure game you can pick up on GOG. It's a horror game, one that relies on disorienting and unnerving you rather than jump scares. You aren't afraid of what's in the dark, you're afraid of what's responsible for what's happening around you in plain daylight. I don't recall the puzzles being very obtuse. There's some weird moon logic, but it makes sense in context and it's part of the player disorientation strategy. There's a complete screenshot playthrough at the LP Archive for those interested in checking it out.
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  19. - Top - End - #169
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Toric View Post
    Snow Bros is another NES game, in which you and a partner play two brothers who have been turned into snowmen. On each square stage you defeat enemies by flinging globs of snow at them until they're big round snowballs, then push them so they roll to the bottom of the stage, taking along anything in their path like a katamari. "Anything in their path" includes your partner so you can snag the sweet loot at the top of the screen uncontested, because even in the 80's developers understood the need for PVP. It was arcade quarter-gobblet hard so naturally my actual brother and I cheated with infinite lives to beat it.
    I remember when I was younger I'd go to a day care/activity center place some nights, and they had a Snow Bros arcade cabinet. that was a blast.
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  20. - Top - End - #170
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hunter Noventa View Post
    I remember when I was younger I'd go to a day care/activity center place some nights, and they had a Snow Bros arcade cabinet. that was a blast.
    I've never seen a Snow Bros cabinet in person, that's so awesome!
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  21. - Top - End - #171
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    First order of business: DROD.

    DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death) is an excellent series of puzzle games. You play Beethro Budkin, professional dungeon exterminator in a tile based game where you occupy one tile, your sword occupies an adjacent tile and every turn you either stay still, move 1 tile in any direction, or rotate your sword 45 degrees. The rest of the puzzle elements fit around this, for a truly staggering variety. The series:
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    DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon
    This is the first game, a bit rough around the edges, lacking the finesse that shows up in later puzzles. I wouldn't recommend starting here, unless JtRH proves a little too difficult for you.

    DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold
    This is where it really starts. 25 levels, done basically one after the other (there's some optional content around secret rooms where you traipse through segments again in weird orders), each of which has about a dozen rooms, each of which is a puzzle. These vary hugely, from a maze made entirely out of 1 use trapdoor tiles where you move around the 3 wide outer edge in an elaborate pattern to draw out the enemies hiding in narrow passageways where you can kill them to several lynchpin puzzles where you have to make a core realization, to horde management in rooms full of roach queens spawning giant dungeon roaches en mass every 30 turns, to moving you and several potion-copies of yourself through room segments simultaneously, each in a different bomb-maze. It's fantastic.

    It also has one of the best recurring enemies in all video games. 39th Slayer, in a series of rooms where killing him is nonviable (there's no way to do so without specific threats), chasing you down as you do a bunch of puzzles. He crops up about every 4 floors or so on average, enough to be interesting without overwhelming the rest of the game.

    DROD: The City Beneath
    TCB amps up the plot, and amps up the difficulty.The numbered levels are gone, replaced by areas you move between with names, purposes, etc. The weirdness of the setting also starts coming into full bloom. More than anything though are the continued solid core of good puzzles, enabled by the new elements (a few enemies, a few tile types).

    DROD: The Second Sky
    TSS continues the plot from TCB, and spikes the difficulty to truly ludicrous proportions. If you really take to the series and really get a hang for how it works I'd recommend it. I'm still struggling to get through it at all though, and I'm pretty good at it. Not to the point where instead of solving puzzles I'm doing competitive turn minimization on them (and some do), but still.



    There's also the spinoffs, one of which is basically a totally different game that's barely in the same genre.

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    DROD: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder
    GEB follows a different character, and is essentially a prequel of sorts. It's self contained, and it's about as easy as KDD while being significantly better designed (it helps that it's the fourth in the series).

    DROD: Smitemaster's Selections
    These are a collection of smaller games, originally much cheaper but now comparable given that DROD has gotten cheap. They vary highly in difficulty and are generally pretty tightly themed. There's one that's basically all complex lock puzzles. I particularly like Complex Complex, a truly complicated facility with some brutal levels. It was the high point for series difficulty until TSS came out, and when you're looking for a real challenge I'd still recommend it.

    DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale
    This is the weird one. It's essentially one huge level, where all the rooms are part of the same puzzle. Enemies don't move, you have stats, and it's fundamentally about efficient pathing and resource use, improving yourself with stat gems and health potions to spend the least health winning fights with static monsters that are basically resource doors, while using keys effectively. It's almost a different subgenre of puzzle games, but it's also enjoyable.

    Plus it has Tendry. Tendry is hilarious.

    Flash DROD
    A spinoff of KDD, rendered as a flash game. The rooms are a bit smaller but the core concept behind them is maintained, and it's a good way to try out the series without commiting to a download.

    User Made Content
    One of the cool things about the DROD series is that while the games are commercial all of them have demos, all the demos have complete engines, and these complete engines can, for free, play all user made content. It's a pretty ridiculously good deal.


    Second order of business. Galapagos: Mendel's Escape is pretty neat. I haven't played it for ages, so who knows how it holds up. The concept is that there's a little autonomous spider robot that you're trying to help escape a testing facility by manipulating the environment around it.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

    I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that.
    -- ChubbyRain

    Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.

  22. - Top - End - #172
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    First order of business: DROD.
    Oh man, I remember that one. I once fell for one of those "200 games in one!" shareware CDs when I was a kid. The DROD demos were the high point (along with the demo for Blades of Avernum).

    Also, I was recently reminded of Battlezone II: Combat Commander, which... yeah, that's an awful title, but the game itself was pretty cool. It's an FPS/RTS hybrid, which plays better than you'd think but worse than they probably hoped for. Notably, the plot starts with fighting the alien "Scion" on the "Dark Planet", but then the good ending is somehow about terraforming and transhumanism and the military-industrial complex.

  23. - Top - End - #173
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Brigandine: A turn-based strategy game for the PS1 where you had to conquer a continent using hero-led groups of monsters. I played that one to death, playing through it at least twice with every available faction.

    Ascendancy: A Sci-Fi 4X game for the PC, released in 1995. You chose one of 21 unique alien races and set out to conquer the galaxy. Unfortunately, the AI was crap, so it was pretty much impossible to lose the game, but it was still loads of fun to play.

    Warzone 2100: An old RTS, similar in style to the old Command & Conquer titles. You were playing a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world that was rebuilding civilization and had to fend off other groups that had decided differently on what the new civilization should look like. What made it unique was that you would uncover pre-apocalyptic artifacts that would unlock new options for your units (locomotion types, bodies and weapon systems), and you had complete freedom in how to combine those to form your very own units. That's not all that special today, but it was in 1999.

    There are probably more that I just can't think of right now. I'll have to check my game collection when I get home.

    I also second Legend of Mana, Legend of Dragoon and Legend of Legaia (huh, quite a legendary list :P); all of these are awesome games that I loved to play.
    What did the monk say to his dinner?
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    Out of the frying pan and into the friar!


    How would you describe a knife?
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    Cutting-edge technology

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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    A lot of people don't know this, but there are actually 3 Secret of Mana games. The Secret of Mana everyone recognizes is actually the second game in the series.

    The first one was released out of Japan as Final Fantasy Adventure. It was remade into a Gameboy Advance game called Sword of Mana, which I actually had a copy of. It's not very good, though.



    The third Secret of Mana game was never released outside of Japan, called Seiken Densetsu 3. It's basically Secret of Mana, but better. You pick one main protagonist and two sidekicks out of 6 when you start the game, each with their own goals, plots and combat specialities. So if you play a character you don't like, you can just make a new save with a new party and a new plot!

    There's an unofficial English translation patch you can get for it, so that you can enjoy the game in English.

    There was also a really good PS1 game of the series, called Legend of Mana, which has a TON of sidekicks, playstyles, magic, and miniature worlds and plots to explore. I will warn you, though, nothing will make sense as you play it, as the game is weirdly designed so that you build the world/plot as you play, changing with how you play/build it. As a result, nothing really makes that much sense, and you might need a guide to figure out what the hell you're doing.
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2019-04-12 at 11:54 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by KOLE View Post
    MOG, design a darn RPG system. Seriously, the amount of ideas I’ve gleaned from your posts has been valuable. You’re a gem of the community here.

    5th Edition Homebrewery
    Prestige Options, changing primary attributes to open a world of new multiclassing.
    Adrenaline Surge, fitting Short Rests into combat to fix bosses/Short Rest Classes.
    Pain, using Exhaustion to make tactical martial combatants.
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    Colossus in the Playground
     
    BlackDragon

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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Morgaln View Post
    Warzone 2100: An old RTS, similar in style to the old Command & Conquer titles.
    Worth noting here that Warzone 2100 went open source (both program and assets) a while ago, so you can download and run it for free if you want.

  26. - Top - End - #176
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by Man_Over_Game View Post
    The third Secret of Mana game was never released outside of Japan, called Seiken Densetsu 3. It's basically Secret of Mana, but better. You pick one main protagonist and two sidekicks out of 6 when you start the game, each with their own goals, plots and combat specialities. So if you play a character you don't like, you can just make a new save with a new party and a new plot!

    There's an unofficial English translation patch you can get for it, so that you can enjoy the game in English.
    Man that is such a good game. What I really like about it is there's three subplots with their own final bosses, each tied to one pair of the six possible party members. So you can pick one sidekick who shares your main's final boss for a tighter endgame, or pick one character from each subplot for more of a "ragtag group united by a greater threat" feel.
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    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Worth noting here that Warzone 2100 went open source (both program and assets) a while ago, so you can download and run it for free if you want.
    I think I actually did go back to that game at one point. It...hasn't aged well. Then again, I don't think most RTS games have done. After all the Red Alert talk in the other thread I went and picked up the original Red Alert again. The controls are super clunky by modern standards and things like soldiers charging forward until they're hit by the splash damage of their fellows was just infuriating. I think I lost more units to friendly fire than I did to the enemies.

    Still, I have fond memories of Warzone 2100 as the game that made me buy my own PC for the first time. It was the first game I wanted that required a 3D accelerator on the graphics card, rather than having that as an optional graphics boost.

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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Crosscode.
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    TIME FOR THESAURUS.COM!
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    Have Barbarian Bear Totem Centaur, who's being ridden by a Cavalier Centaur, who's being ridden by a Life Cleric Centaur, who's being ridden by a Goliath Monk, who's being ridden by a Gnomish Warlock.

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  29. - Top - End - #179
    Pixie in the Playground
     
    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    Revenant (1999) - great game.

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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: What are your favorite games that nobody's heard of?

    While I doubt that noone heard of it, I somehow doubt that many remember Runescape ... It’s still alive and kicking and it have stolen most of my gaming time since early January

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