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.
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?
Not sure if I would consider it a gem but this game gave me a good chuckle: Genital Jousting is currently on sale for 69 cents.
69¢, Nice. That had to be intentional.
ΔV: Rings of Saturn
https://store.steampowered.com/app/846030/V_Rings_of_SaturnA hard sci-fi 2D space mining sim.
“A physics-based mining sim, set in the thickest debris field in Sol. Every action has a reaction, lasers are invisible without a medium, and your thrust is a potent weapon. Find trade, adapt your equipment to your playstyle, hire a crew to help. Unravel the mysteries of the rings, or just get rich.”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.
Adding some from my library
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Dropsy - 1329 Reviews
- A weird point and click with nice atmosphere. The soundtracks are neat too.
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The Blackwell Legacy - 1122 Reviews
- The Blackwell series are point and click games about ghosts. It’s cool to see familiar characters through out the series and how they change (or unchanged) .
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Railroad Ink Challenge - 65 Reviews
- It’s the digital version of a puzzle board game I highly recommend. High re-play value and fun to play solo or with friends. (The digital version should be solo only but you can compete with online leader boards)
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Railroad Ink Challenge looks really interesting. Thanks for sharing!
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These are some deep cuts right here! Thank you for linking and sharing about them!
Of course! Honestly it was tricky to not make the list even longer. There’s a lot of cool games out there people might miss.
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.
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.
The visuals with that game are so impressive for what it is. It’s like they captured particle effects in 2D.
Second this, great game! One of the best modern traditional roguelike games right now.
One of my personal favorites is still Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages, a 2D spaceflight shooter with text adventure RPG elements. At first it starts of pretty standard but there’s such an incredibly wide array of customization options that it’s almost daunting. Plus the developers really embrace the comedy over the course of the game to pretty extravagant levels. I mean, you literally fight a boss who manufactures DVORAK keyboards.
Oh that sounds awesome. Thanks for sharing!
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.
I really love sunless sea and sunless skies. They are so beautiful and story rich. Extremely simple game mechanics. You basically explore an unknown map, uncover the story, make choices and allegiances and do your best to survive.
I personally found Sunless Sea to get boring after a while to the point of giving up on it. I think DREDGE might be more appealing, though I haven’t played it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1562430/DREDGE/
Have you played A House of Many Doors? It’s very similar to the Sunless games, although not as polished.
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.
Hexceed is free, lite Hexcells, I read, if you want to try before you buy.
Creeper World. It’s technically a tower defense, but the enemy is fluid, constantly pouring out of spawn area. And the game has a pretty good story line.
I can lose hours in those games. I didn’t enjoy 2 very much but 1 and 3 are great!
Used to play the original back in the days of flash.
4 is out
Love the post, keep it up
Star Valor looks cool as hell. I can’t actually run it, since it’s Windows-only, but one of y’all might like it. If you liked the classic Escape Velocity games or endless-sky, this looks similar.
Star Valor does look great. If you’re on Mac or Linux you can play Endless Sky or Naev, which are both free. Or outside Steam try Starsector, which might be the best 2D space game on the market, or The Ur-Quan Masters; a continuation of Star Control 2 and also free.
I have played all of those except for Ur-Quan. I didn’t like the combat or trade mechanics in Naev, but the storyline and the planet art is cool. I played endless-sky a lot, but at this point I just want to see the main storyline for it finished, but that will have to wait until MZ has the time to dedicate to it again. I have starsector, but it looks more complex than I would like.
Do you know of anything like this for the switch? I’m a late comer to handhelds since I developed some shoulder problems and can’t really PC game anymore.
I used to love a game called transcendence back when it was a free alpha. Top down, open world, semi-roguelike, big focus on combat with satisfying 2d physics and lots of ship customization. Less focus on trading and world interaction stuff.
I’ve looked at a couple you guys mentioned, but I’m really trying to find something that’ll scratch that 2d space combat itch on a handheld.
That’s a tough question. There’s a handful of 3D space combat games like Everspace, Starlink, or Manticore: Galaxy on Fire. There’s also bullet hell games like Galacide and AstroWings: Space War. But none of those are quite like the more open top down games above. Your best bet to find something might be to ask on a larger Nintendo forum. I hope you find something!
If you have an android, there are two games that did a great job with 2d space combat and trading - spacerpg3 and spacerpg4. 3 is definitely inspired by EV Override, while 4 is very much its own thing.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried spacerpg4 but it hasn’t held my attention as much as I hoped.
I did find an android port of star control 2, and that is some good stuff. Really scratched the 90 gaming itch too.
Star Trader Frontiers is also available on Android and iOS and is pretty good.
