What games can you recommend that didn't get the appreciation that they deserved?

I feel like Outer Wilds was drowned out by Outer Worlds, and the two often get mixed up, usually to Outer Worlds’ favor.

One of my top 10 games.

Jazzpunk, everyone should play Jazzpunk.

Far: Lone Sails is a beautiful art piece with unusual gameplay, and the sequel is great too.

Bedlam is kind of a love-letter to 90s and 00s FPS games. The gameplay isn't amazing, but if you spent a lot of time in games like Quake, Unreal Tournament or Halo CE back in the early days of online multiplayer, this game is for you.

Kairo is weird.

Sable is an interesting adventure with a really nice art style.

Interplanetary is an excellent strategy game about firing weapons at other planets.

Neon Drive is a fun rhythm game with 80s aesthetics.

Bastion is well worth your time.

The Talos Principle It's not just a puzzle game.

Hardspace Shipbreaker. You're a wage slave (literally) in a space dock, taking apart ships and throwing the bits into the right bins. Doesn't sound super fun, but it is. 1) You're chopping up ships but you get to use LASERS!!! and the energy grappling hook. So satisfying. 2) The physics is 90% spot on. You're in 3d, but it's not purely inertial. There's a dampening field that slows things down, so it doesn't get too outta hand. There are a couple of other quirks, but they're not hugely impacting. 3) The soundtrack is perfect. It's a very bluesy, banjo style for a very bluecollar type job. 4) The voice acting is amazing. Every line from Weaver is just perfect. You hate Hal with a passion (you're supposed to). The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it's really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it's very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don't play it.)

Hardspace: Shipbreaker - Launch Trailer | PS5 Games It's also on PC and game pass.

I've played it thru twice. The first time as-is, but the 2nd time I shut off the "15 minute shifts" option. I think that breaks things up too much. I think open-shift is better. I bought the vinyl soundtrack. I'm not a huge fan of vinyl, but this is the right style of music that would benefit from it.

Hardspace Shipbreaker - OST Full

Hardspace: Shipbreaker - Americana Beats to Chill to

Can I go with a game from the 90s? Because the adaptation of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is one of the best games I ever played. Ellison himself voices the "evil" computer, AM and instead of trying to win, you have to make the correct moral choices so your character can finally be allowed to die. You play multiple characters (not concurrently), so you have to do this multiple times. It's brutal but so good. I know very few people who even know it existed.

No Mans Sky. It used to suck, but now I find it quite fun

Bomberman 64

Eternal Darkness

The Conduit

Halo Reach

• Heat Signature
• House of the Dying Sun
• Thumper
• Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space
• Gunpoint

Titanfall 2

Uplink - A hacking sim game that's actually quite addictive in a playthrough. Will make you feel like you're in the movie Hackers.

Spycraft: The Great Game - An adventure game that had as consultants CIA director William Colby and KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin.

I don't know a lot of people that have played these, but they definitely rank up there for me as some of the more interesting and unique games I've played over the decades.

Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and tactical combat. My only significant gripe is that I want more of it: More tales, more character customization... just more. (Although I now see that a cosmetic pack is available; I'll have to check it out.)

Gigantic caught my attention when I was looking for an Overwatch alternative, because of the art and the praise from fans. I wish development hadn't shut down before I had a chance to play it. (I hear there's an unofficial client and server out there somewhere, though, so maybe I'll get to at least try the work-in-progress that was never finished.)

Tyranny

Hylics 1 & 2. There's actually a sorta sleeper cult around the games where it seems like a lot of people know of them or have played them, but no one ever talks about them. Pretty standard action-rpg but everything's claymation. Oh, and the second game changes genre multiple times.

Cruelty Squad. Amazing immersive sim. Looks like trash, best gameplay I've encountered in a while. That game goes hard.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. I thought this was more popular, however considering how many people give me a "what's that" when I mention it, it makes me think it wasn't as popular as I thought. It's a very well made spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio Future. Even has JSRF's composer on a few tracks.

QT deserves more eyes on it for being an incredibly cute and wholesome parody of PT. There's a free "demo" version on Itch.io, and if you like that then I'd highly recommend buying the full version on Steam.

E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. This game is... hm. Basically it started off life as a Warhammer 40k game, but got released as something else due to the studio failing to secure the licenses they needed for WH40K. It's a much older indie game from back when Valve had standards regarding what made it onto steam. It's also kinda special because it's one of the few times the Source engine was used commercially outside Valve. It's also pretty jank, but overall pretty fun. It's got some pretty decent RPG mechanics on top of a first person shooter, complete with classes. You can hack basically anything but also anything can hack back. A door can hack you.

For me right now, Shadows of Doubt. It is an early access game and it's got a fair bit of jank, but it's crazy how unique it is. It had a week or so of popularity and then it fell off. The devs just released an update for it too!

If you like the immersive sim genre, might I also recommend Cruelty Squad and Gloomwood. Those two have very unique aesthetics and really cool mechanics.

Mad Max. Not the best game ever, but much better than I expected.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Everybody loved the first game, but nobody played the second game, including me for a good few years. But once I decided to try it I realized how much I had been missing out. It's really good. Making it open world really works. There is fast travel but I never once used it because just running around is so fun. If you liked the first game, please try Catalyst!

Earthbound for the SNES.

It had a rough launch, rough reviews at the time, but the best RPG I've ever played, period.

As the first of these is a platformer, the second is a topdown shooter, and the third one is a match 3, so commercial success was not that expected anyways, but I really think they excel at what they were set out to do.

• Dustforce
• Assault Android Cactus
• Tidalis

I feel this way about so many indie games.

• Praey for the Gods - Obviously inspired by the classic, Shadow of the Colossus
• The Upturned - A horror-comedy game with a great sense of humor
• Your Spider - A great indie horror game with puzzles like Silent Hill. Plus it has an adorable spider. This is one of my favorite indie horror games.
• Exanima - Looks at first like a normal dungeon crawler, but its physics-based combat controls and enemy AI make this a very unique and interesting game, even if it's been in early access for ages.
• Withering Rooms - Great, creepy atmosphere and an interesting story.

If you can handle dying a lot while learning the ins and outs of the world, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Anomaly is a wonderful package completely for free. Especially if you add the G.A.M.M.A. modpack to it, makes the game play significantly deeper, much harder (in some bullshit and also fair ways), but also just crazy immersive; makes you feel like the actions you take do matter, but if you were to die, you'd just be another loot bag for some other Stalker to come across

My big one, because I am playing the successor right now would be the Commandos-reinvention line of games by Mimimi Software:

• Shadow Tactics (feudal Japan)
• Desperados III (Wild West)
• Shadow Gambit (undead pirates)

They're very faithful reproductions of the old Commandos-formula, real time tactics about sneaking and stabbing through a dense map full of guards covering each other, finding spots where to get in with specific abilities of your varying characters. In the newest one in particular, your pirates are recruited in any order you like, and being supernatural in nature they have some wild abilities. Your starting character can briefly freeze time for a target. Your Quartermaster can possess people. A skeleton has a golden head he can toss to make guards come over to try pick it up and then make their corpse disappear by using his fishing pole to drag it into the endless chest he has on his back.

Brute Force for the original Xbox. 4 player squad based gameplay, with different squads full of characters with unique abilities. It was a ‘platinum hit’ but I’m pretty sure anything that sold more than 500 copies was

Obligatory: Roguelike (well, Roguelite but that starts getting into the berlin bullshit). Rogue is a class in tabletop RPGs and a historic game. Rouge is a bunny rabbit in sonic and a kind of makeup.

That aside, here are a few off the top of my head:

• Distance: Mostly a "beat the clock" style racing game in the vein of trackmania, although the synchronous MP with collision is a great time at a party. But it also has a weirdly good singleplayer campaign with both a narrative and some solid mechanics and set pieces. Also a ridiculous steam workshop presence
• Tales of Maj'Eyal probably doesn't belong here as I think it has been ridiculously successful for a game made by a small team and consistently comes up in discussions by anyone who is aware of what "the berlin interpretation" is. But it feels like it is almost completely ignored in the overall cultural zeitgeist when roguelikes/lites comes up. Which is a shame since TOME is very much a roguelike (technically lite, but... meh) with some solid design concepts. The vast majority of runs feel like they were "worth it" and even the early leveling has enough variety and wrenches that it feels less like you lost an hour of your life when you wipe and more like you get to do the Sand Worm again. Some of the unlocks are complete bullshit (although, I want to say the special magic trees were just made "free" because everyone hated it?), but it is generally the kind of game where you can work toward something with every run.
• UFO: Aftermath/Aftershock (fuck Afterlight). Back in the dark ages between Silent Storm (WOOO) and the 2012 nu-XCOM, there were a lot of eurojank games in the genre. And while I don't think UFO Aftermath was "good", I do think it was competent. But mostly? It is probably the best Stargate SG1 game ever made. Because the devs were trying to cash in on that Jagged Alliance craze and made the human weapons stage a lot longer. So you might find yourself in an endgame with a few G36s backing up your plasma rifles as you fend off the obligatory base invasion. Aftershock, and especially Afterlight, lost a lot of this charm (because they are years later timeline wise) but were still fun
• Silent Storm. Sorry, Silent Mother Fucking Storm, if we want to be specific. Alternate history WW2 where you play as a special organization for the Allies or Axis that are investigating a third party who have the potential to turn the war itself and blah blah blah. Mostly it is probably one of the best balanced JA2 style AP-based strategy games out there (just... get a save editor because the leveling/training is broken) with an emphasis on line of sight, trajectories, and full destruction of terrain. The kind of game where you might spend six "turns" getting your scout into position so that you can have your sniper plug a person from behind a wall, your machine gunner unload on people sleeping in a barracks, and your grenadier to... make the guard tower not exist anymore. All without ever directly targeting an enemy because you are fully operating based on magic radio commands or whatever. Again, this probably doesn't belong here since anyone who liked JA2 back in the day was talking about this but it more or less fell off the face of the earth in favor of nu-XCOM. And I feel like the genre would be pretty revolutionized if people remembered this existed.

• The old Thief games (succeeded by Dishonored)
• Condemned: Criminal Origins

Those are the two I got for now.

NOVA DRIFT is easily the best SHMUP if have played in my life and it´s on a 60% discount right now. From the tight controls to the artstyle and the gameplay, everything about this game is perfect and the dev is listening to the community.

Everyone talking about Starfield reminded me to go back and play Outer Worlds again. I had forgotten how good that game was.

The Way is a fantastic adventure with a surprisingly rich story. Totally flew under the radar and exceeded every expectation I had for it.

Binary domain

Fuga: Melodies of Steel. A pretty interesting JRPG+resource management game about animal kids in a giant tank from a lost civilization, fighting in a war to save their families.

CyberConnect2 has been making games for this setting since the PS1, though the previous games were more of 3D puzzle actiion games. But these games never sell as much as they deserve, Their commitment is amazing to keep trying anyway.

Fly'n, it's a brilliant platformer from like ten years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UECUVRWpFM

Figment. I'm not sure how much attention this one got, but I hadn't heard about it until I was searching the Nintendo store for deals. It's a short puzzle/action game with a good story that felt compelling.

Vintage story

Avent rising. They should have had a sequel but I know it would have likely just gotten botched and I would have hated playing it.

Project x Zone 1 and 2

Probably my favorite crossovers in video games besides smash ultimate

Marvel's Midnight Suns. It wasn't a huge flop, but not successful enough to get a sequel, which makes me very sad. I think it failed because it had a useless ingame shop, which made the game look like another cashgrab, when in reality those who bought the Legendary Edition have every skin included. Legendary edition has often been on sale for 50€ and that's definitely worth it. I enjoyed the game a lot and both the base game and DLC offer great characters that are both fun to talk and to play with.

The Dream Machine.

Offworld trading company was an amazing PvP game but "economics" never was gonna sell.

A Robot Named Fight! https://www.arobotnamedfight.com/

"A Robot Named Fight is a Metroidvania roguelike focused on exploration and item collection. Explore a different, procedurally-generated labyrinth each time you play and discover randomized power-ups to traverse obstacles, find secrets and explode meat beasts."

It's such a good game, almost everything is perfect IMO, I have over 200 hours in it and still go back to it every now and then. The lone developer also made the source code public a while ago, so there are mods, forks, spinoffs etc. being worked on.

I've been interested in Soulslike games and got Code Vein on sale recently. I think I'm about halfway through and it's pretty good. Playing at the 2nd hardest difficulty, dying here and there but also one or two shotting most bosses, which suggests it's found a good sweet spot for difficulty where it's not overly punishing but also not trivial, though I kinda wish I had started it on the hardest difficulty. I'm not sure how popular the game was but I suggest it.

Are visual novels allowed? If they are I strongly recommend you:

Hotel Dusk and its sequel, Last Window. Time Hollow.

All these three games are for the Nintendo DS.

I was mildly a Borderlands fan, but then I played Tales from the Borderlands and fell in love. It's such a great game with amazing writing and music that I'm always surprised to hear that most people, including fans of the main Borderlands games, have never heard of it.

Deathkarz 1999.
Had more Hours in that game than in iRacing now

Environmental Station Alpha is a good metroidvania IMO, and it has just over 1000 reviews on Steam. It has good platforming, combat, sound design, and chunky pixels. Not the most expansive or complex metroidvania, but it’s surprisingly polished and costs less than $10.

Everhood is really unique and id recommend it to anyone who enjoys Undertale.

I also want to shout out just shapes and beats which is a good time and I pray it'll see a sequel

N64 Timesplitters, had tons of fun with friends in that

If you like Soulslikes The Surge is a really good sci-fi take on the genre. It succeeds in the vagueness, the atmosphere, and the combat. It has a bit of a gimmick with how you obtain parts by targeting and dismembering limbs which is really fun. However the story kinda goes off the rails near the end and the last few areas of the game are arguably the worst designed levels of the game. Plus the boss fights can be a PITA despite being super cool design wise.

I don't see it brought up as often as things like Nier or Mortal Shell though, and IMO it's better than both of those.