I'm looking for small indie games on PC that are still mostly unknown and have sold very little but are actually good

user, OP said he wanted good games.

Noted, thanks man

...

Rabi Ribi
Sayonara Umihara Kawase
BUTCHER

Then why didn't you post that?

Is that any different from the SNES version?

Because its not unknown

Night Slashers, Axiom Verge, Chroma Squad, Kero Blaster, and Pharaoh Rebirth+

David.
0rbitalis
BIT.TRIP runner
Great permutator
Particulars
Out there somewhere
Deadcore(not an indie but still great)

Sayonara doesn't have a SNES version, it came out for 3DS first

but the SNES and PSX games are also on steam now

Pic related is probably my favorite indie game. You have to micro 2-4 agents out of 6 at once that you pick to form your squad, each with their own unique skills. That being said the game is HARD and requires you to actually be sneaky. If your squad gets caught out on its own and you get into a firefight you'll lose if you don't have a way to get out. Levels have a different way of spawning more guards. Infact each level is pretty unique except the first 2, and even then they're pretty different gameplay wise.

It's not a remake, its the 3rd game in the series. Bunch of new stuff added like 4 playable characters instead of one, backpacks unlock stuff, leaderboards, there is level select now (you can also play the game in the original way if you want with no level select) and few more nice small things.

Why are you such a faggot user
Doesn't your mother scold you?

looks neat, I'll try it

Assault Android Cactus

Touhou Project
nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=788435

Also one thing to note is the difficulty setting. Play on medium.

Basically. What it changes is the bolt agent (who is required for most missions), because he has the radio that lets your squad signal get to the ground station. He has something like 10 seconds before he has to plug it into a power supply, and power supplys boost the signal distance. If you lose the signal you get white noise but you can still control your agents you just cant see. There is a keybind to make him run to the last power signal should this happen.

On easy, the signal comes from every power supply and bolt is basically pointless
On medium, every power supply you use gets the signal, which is more difficult than it sounds
On hard, it's all just the radio bolts carrying.

I'd save hard for if you want to replay, because you should have micro-ing your agents down by then.

Ring Runner Flight of the Sages
Aces Wild
Mecharitz Steel Rondo
Ninjustice
Steam Marines
Yatagarasu
Block Legend DX
Cho Ren Sha
Inaocho Dynamite Bomb - need a second person to play
Samurai Gunn - need a second person to play
Tower of guns
Tales of Altynex

choose one

Outside of Japan.

Bleed
Butcher
Downwell
Momodora Reverie Under The Moonlight
Rabi Ribi(don't be fooled by the artstyle. It's a really good game)
Invisible Inc(it's a gig, if that counts as small for you)

Stories is meh, if you haven't played it yet. The arkham combat is done in a really mediocre way and the truths system, while okay in concept, is very flawed and half baked.
Seraph's breddy fun though.

Was going to post this

I get the feeling there's like four people in total on this board, and probably in the world who care about ring runner
And one is a retarded furfag

Nigga multiple Touhou doujin games got official localization because the series is so popular outside of japan now.

It aint me, I know who you are talking about though. What is it with furries and spacegames

I wonder if you're the same guy that keeps replying to me everytime I post Ring Runner as a recommendation?

not me either

First time I saw someone recommend ring runner outside of a ring runner thread actually

Din's Curse
Lords of Xulima
Grimrock (not unknown but they deserve it)

I haven't finished Ring Runner, but so far the game is pretty good user
I'm still amazed how this game didn't get more attention when it launched, it's just… madness

Monaco: What's Yours is Mine

It's basically Metal Gear Solid meets Pacman.

A heist co-op game that has elements of stealth, 8 unique thief classes. The missions get brutally hard later on.

A true gem.

you could say that about every great game

Would've been better if it didn't have co-op
It's just not fun to play with people

You don't have to. You can play alone.

That's the opposite problem
it's not fun either if you play by yourself

Maybe that's just me though

Are Zachtronics games selling well? I think Spacechem is the only known one and Infifactory the only easily approachable one. The coding ones I doubt are very known or big sellers, but some of the more discussed and celebrated games on full/v/.

I think Shenzhen's been well received.

Enter the Gungeon is a game I haven't stopped playing yet.
At least I think it's not popular.

It's insanely popular user
Also just found this

Fun game, but it's kind of taxing on lower end computers because unity and lazy devs.
I hope the second is really good.

It's unity?
Probably the first unity game that has run well on my machine kek

Its peak was in 2012.

That doesn't change the fact that its a well known series outside of japan now. Not AAA levels, but extremely far from small and unknown like what OP is asking for.

Kero Blaster by the guy that made Cave Story.

Depends on what you consider small. The secondary content be popular, but the games are not. Only a few fans play the games, and even fewer at a competent level.
Only among weebs.

Keep moving them goalposts. Touhou objectively isn't small or unknown.

OP is talking about games. There's a distinction between a game and the content that surrounds it. The secondary content may be fairly popular, but the primary content borders obscurity. Consider how many players there are. Maybe you consider this to be moving the goalposts, but Touhou as a game is objectively small.

But even the main games aren't small, smaller than a lot of the fan games in the west but much more popular than 98 percent of the western indie shmup scene. Double Dealing Character got a release on western distribution sites because western fans pestering ZUN for it.

Even if not as much fans play the main shmups, people know of their existence. Something can't be unknown if the masses know it exists

Touhou is the biggest shmup, but that's not saying much. DDC didn't even get localized. There was one site(Playism) where it was available for digital release, not even a physical copy. It's still the only game to get a western release. The fans may know the shmups exist, but they avoid them like fire.

Expeditions Conquistador; really good tactical rpg with tons of replayability

Element4l; cute comfy atmospheric fast paced platformer that's surprisingly challenging

Apotheon; Metroidvania with the art style of grecian pottery art

Distance; Horror racing game, the genre mix alone sort of justifies it, but it's also very good and is FAST

Freedom Planet; Sort of well known, but not as much as it should be. It's basically what Shovel knight was to mega man and NES/SNES games but to Sonic, Gunstar Heros, rocket knight, and other Sega games. Cringy story but insanely well designed in almost every other regard.

*Sega genesis games

i wouldnt call having about 20 or more games a "small" franchise

get out of here tohofags

la mulana, you tremendous nancy boy. just pirate the newer remake for PC.

Brigador

fez 2

Strike Suit Infinity.
Single-player space battles. No story or anything, they just line up waves of enemy fighters, corvettes, frigates, carriers, mine-layers, etc.
Very intense and has nice presentation.

These are dead multiplayer games, but I am mentioning them anyway.
Strike Vector
Orbital Gear

RIP in peace. That game was the epitome of burning half as long but twice as bright. What a great fucking game.

The best games have always been made by the studios caught between the AAAs and the San-Frandies.

Just play japanese ones.

So I've got a shitbunch to share here, let's see if I can't narrow it down.
Babby's first RTS; all the units are caterpillars made of segments, and you mix and match different segments to create your troops with more speed or more attack or whatever.
Genuinely one of my favorite horror games, with a so-bad-it's-good style that makes me think of a Troma movie turned into vidya.
It's Earthbound, but in the wild west.
A game built around a card game where you place units on a grid, making matches of 3 or more to attack your opponent or defend yourself. Gets super strategic as the game progresses. No multiplayer.
I got this one from a random key, but it's actually pretty great. It's like Smash TV, but with multiple playable characters each with his own weapon, and multiplayer for like up to 8 people.
Dungeon crawler-type party game with le retro indie pixel art, where one player is the adventurer and everyone else is a ghost who summons monsters in a race to kill the adventurer and take his place. Only fun with friends.
Take your pick, really.
It's an indie Crystalis. If you liked that game back in the 90's, this should be fun.
Side scrolling character action game where you play as a cute loli forest fairy. Very challenging.
Fantastic sci-fi adventure game about the nature of AI and the lengths they will go to achieve their goals while staying in their coded parameters.
An indie roguelite character action game, but while that description sounds terribly cancerous, it has some fantastic art style and music that make up for its shortcomings.
It's a Power Stone type fighting game based on a French comic book that I still can't find online anywhere god fucking dammit Holla Forums
It's God of War with a blaxploitation protagonist, and on a good sale you can get it for one dollar.
Think Subspace Emissary with robots that you can customize with new parts and special attacks that you salvage from your enemies.
Comedy point and click about fighting zombies with heavy metal.
Devil May Cry with anime schoolgirls.
Ikarugavania.
Castle Crashers with anime schoolgirls. Maids too.
A Castlevania clone of the classic sense, with a strong metal influence. It used to suck all kinds of dick, but the devs overhauled everything and now it's good.
Contra with time travel; when you die, you go back in time and fight alongside a recording of your last life, and any other lives you lost as well.
It's like The Fall but more puzzle-oriented than adventure game, and instead of being about the philosophy of AI it's about the philosophy of clones. Like The Prestige in space.

Aren't both those games made by confirmed sjws?

off yourself hipster-hipster

Only San-Fran faggots use hipster as an insult. You might be better off posting Reddit or Tumblr than here. Even 4chan is a better place to post about your favourite "niche 8-bit adventure-rpg" made for modern computers because the developer is a hack.

Oniken
Odallus
They Bleed Pixels
1001 Spikes
Castle in the Darkness
Slain
Noitu Love 2 Devolution

Having said that, every one of these titles is a platformer with indie pixel art, so if you're dead fucking sick of the genre ignore this list.

Chroma Squad features gratuitous virtue signalling, shows blatant hostility and disrespect to the Super Sentai genre (doesn't even understand it for that matter), all of the best character are black coincidentally.. Oh, and it's just a really shit game with boring gameplay, unsatisfying management elements, and no real challenge.

Sunless Sea

Exanima
Dominions
Conquest of Elysium

It's only famous because of Humble Bundle. I can guarantee a good chunk of the people who bought it only did so because it came with other games they wanted it and haven't even touched it.

If that's not enough then consider that less than 100 people have ever 100% the game. Even then just play it. You're doing yourself a disservice if you even remotely like 2D platformers.

Consider that there's only one achievement in the game, and it's to get the highest possible rank in every level.

Mad crazy bullet hell + platformer
Tacticool RTT that is very easy to get into but slowly adds on quite a few mechanics
you will cry, also very good music
Very creative puzzle game laid out like a "metroidvania" except instead of being arbitrarily unable to go to an area you see in the beginning, you are theoretically completely able to go to it but you probably won't know how to solve the puzzle since you learn how to use the elements of that puzzle somewhere else.

Depending on your definition of "mostly unknown and sold very little"
If you enjoy speedrunning you will almost certainly enjoy this. It is extremely tightly designed with deep movement mechanics, has comfy music to alleviate any frustration, and a very clean visual style. I don't like speedrunning but the game is so well designed that it was pretty fun anyways.
An incredibly simple horde survival shooter that works more like a first person 3D bullet hell and tests your ability to manage large groups of enemies while keeping track of where everything is. Also has some of the best audio of any game I've ever played (I like it even more than Thief's). I don't really like this kind of genre (bullet hell) but I enjoy the game anyways.

Astebreed
That one ftg like garou and 3rd kike

Dink Smallwood

Spheres of Chaos

why won't lethal league get big ;_;

I actually bought Devil Daggers yesterday on a whim. Gotta agree with you on the audio. The sounds are as simple the game itself but they're so damn satisfying.

I'm not sure if it counts as indie but I enjoyed NecroVision a lot.

It's crazy that one guy did all that on his own in a couple months as a side project. Sure it's sort of reasonable to understand on a technical level since everything's so simple, but he is clearly a very talented artist, audio designer, and gameplay designer since all of those aspects are top notch. He didn't even use an engine for it too, he made all that shit from scratch.

I want to say Furi is worth your attention, but there's already e-celebs like Matthewmatosis trying to shill support. The devs already considering DLC for the eventual Xbone port, so who knows how well they're doing.

Important thing to note is that it's a Boss Rush game that mixes twin stick shooting, bullet hell, and modern hack-n-slash on a top-down perspective, since the devs knew their limits. However, it's no Shadow of the Colossus in atmosphere, the swordplay isn't as good as the older Platinum titles, and Touhou still has the edge over the bullet hell aspect. It also uses walking plot dumps to transition between areas for the first time, and the animations are a bit stiff along with the attack tells.

That said, it's cyberpunk-fueled science fantasy with a synthwave OST and plays like how you'd expect an Afro Samurai game would with the help of Suda51. It has enough substance as is, and a sequel just might iron these kinks out.

Salvation Prophecy: TPS/Action RPG with space combat as well. Navigating wormholes is satisfying as fuck.

I half care, game just makes me sad because it makes me want more escape velocity instead.

that game is actually decent!? I played if for 10 minutes trying to shoot down a station and it felt like the most boring repetitive shit ever. Does It get better in the late game?

Mathew did more against the games credit than it did for it honestly. He essentially said out front that it's a set of a bunch of elements (IE: BulletHell/Top Down Shooter/BossRush) that individually are pretty shit and only together is the game worth anything because they add variety. I can't help but feel like if he was to give the game a score it wouldn't be any more than a 6/10.

Aces Wild had the deb responsible fellate Sarkeesian, as well Any one else have any background info on indie devs and their socjus ties?

THIS
The gameplay was so fucking tight
Also, it works like a charm on Loonix via WINE

You shitting? I haven't found any thing from him after Aces Wild, it's like he disappeared or something.

...

Astropop and Jets N' Guns

I'll recommend Valdis Story but people tend to either love it or hate it. The movement and combat might take some getting used to but it's really satisfying once you're good at it. There's a lot of variety in the builds you can make too.

I can vouch for Outland and Marlow Briggs being good

Outland's gameplay is sort of simplistic but it's got amazing visual and audio design

I'm going to bump this thread so I can come back to it and add some of the recommendations to my backlist of vidya I need to try.

You mean this?:

twitter.com/CAS_Kicks

Tweets in question:

archive.is/7Jmyg
archive.is/isHJy
archive.is/7D3AB
archive.is/GjrbS

Want to know anything else about him, look through his twitter, or better yet, his avatar tells you all you need to know.

That's a stupid metric to base popularity off. That's like saying Super Meat Boy isn't famous because few people have 100% that as well.

Not really. I'm sure thousands have beaten Super Meat boy 100% but even then the game was popular way before it needed Humble Bundle. When a game is popular enough it gets attention from the autists who spend insane amount of time on it. With Dustforce there's only a handful of them. I'de say popularity is based off of people who actually put more than an hour in to the game and actually got invested. Which is something most people don't really do with Humble Bundle.

hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures

If you want a more realistic view of why I'm saying this just look at the sales figures. The majority reason they sold their game as well as they did was almost purely from bundle and holiday sales. Overall they made less than 600k and which over half of which was spent on necessary expanses. At it's peak the game sold around 50 a day. I dunno maybe you could say this game was popular at one point but whenever I bring it up in discussion nobody's usually ever heard of it.

World of Goo

And I'm heard good things about Legend of Fae, Lili: Child of Geos, Ittle Dew and Card City Nights.

Unepic.

Mark eat my images

The guy's second game, Ghost 1.0, is also pretty fun.

More bumps for posterity.

Geez, I liked UNepic a lot, but not a fan of sci-fi.

Welp just found what I'm gonna play next.

Fuck outta here.

It's both of those but in their respective genre's Furi neither a good Bullet Hell game nor a good Boss Rush game compared to games within their respective franchises. You know I'm right on this faggot.

Look buddy if you don't learn this kind of stuff you're never going to make it to 9th grade.

Running with rifles is a must, it's cheap and bloody good fun, tacticool action, it's like toy soldiers, good multiplayer.
Big range of weapons, you can put down and pick up weapons from the ground, as well as cover, enter any vehicles, cars, jeeps, tanks, apcs. It's a great game highly underrated.

So, indie games?

I think he's referring to like the AA studios, which if I had to guess would include shit like Croteam and CDPR. So, high budget indie games.

...

the exile series is one of the best strategy rpgs ive ever played. as long as the chance to hit rng doesnt drive you up the fucking wall

I love those games. too bad only BoE is the only one that works on newer OSes nowadays.

i havent had trouble getting avernum to run on binbows 7, but i can understand if old fans dont like the remakes.

it will fucking ream your ass and not explain what you are supposed to be doing, though, unless it has been patched extensively since I played it

German Post Apoc RPG, like a better Wasteland 2. Obscure, German, more than a decade old. An engrish patch exists, good luck piecing that shit all together though. Maybe not Indie? Fuck it.

How is that? I just bought it because it looked like the tightest shit and it was on sale, but haven't had the time to try it.

I was planning on getting Void Destroyer. Is it a good RTS? How would It compare to Sins of a Solar Empire?

You don't get to both rec The Swapper and complain about SJW devs.

We really need a list for these things. I only know about Chroma Squad because it tried to sneak the koolaid into the game itself.

fug.
just finished playing this thanks to this thread
tight is the right word

Hell yeah.

Hammer fight is pretty awesome.
Steampunk themed game where you use flying machines to swing giant hammers at other people in flying machines that swing giant hammers.
Singleplayer campaign has multiple paths I think so anyways and is entertaining.

Tiny & Big: Grandpa's Leftovers

Short-ish adventure platformer with some interesting tools and mild exploration elements. I really enjoyed the art-style, the music was alright too.
Some people didn't like the game for some reason but I loved it, cheap as shit too.

Forgot image

Evoland 2 & Assault Android Cactus seem like a blast, provided i didn't play either of them.
Same goes for Owlboy.
Off of the ones i played, Nuclear Throne really shines.

It is, but you really need at least a tiny bit of 1CC/score autism to really get the full experience, if you don't it's a easyish 2hr long game if you do it's a 50+h journey towards gitting gud.

Not sure how many of these are unknown in general.

Have you ever played a TRPG before?
It had some nice ideas that were ruined by the BR-tier script and piss easy, handholdy gameplay. More TRPGs could use a teamwork action.

Fortune Summoners, Odallus: The dark call, Din's Curse

Check out Copy Kitty. It's a 2D arena platformer where you can collect elemental attacks from enemies and combine them into apocalyptic super moves.

Bumping so I can look for some more good games when I get home.

You should all be ashamed of not telling this man about 2D Thief.

Also, check out Gunpoint, it's stealth + puzzle done right.

You could look into Abandonware. It's basically old games that the devs don't care about anymore, and have released for free.
Off the top of my head Abuse is relatively unknown. There's also Beneath a Steel Sky but I don't know how successful it was.
As for games on Steam there's Eversion. It's a short, little known indie platformer that gets weird. There's a free version, but the Steam version has an extra ending, better graphics and some tweaks.

Ronin is really sweet if you're looking for a combat oriented Gunpoint.

so you're a hipster?

got it.

There's a difference between "I want games nobody knows about so I can separate myself from the casuals" and "I want games that need more attention so I can give them that attention and have fun".

hey

I really, really loved Furi. Awesome story, awesome visuals and atmosphere, great music, fun gameplay. It was just a great little game to spend a weekend getting sucked into. It has some flaws but they're overshadowed in my opinion by the striking style and intriguing premise.

Anyone?

Exhumed? It got a remake recently: youtube.com/watch?v=dxvRhIw-Bac

The game isn't new but it certainly isn't THAT old

Chasm: the rift?

Not that either, more recent than that. The reason why I stated it feel similar to Serious Sam is due to the areas where you fight enemies being fairly large and open and the combat involving a decent amount of strafing and running around.

Not sure if it counts as obscure, but steamworld dig was a pretty enjoyable metroidvania. You are a steamworld robot in a Western setting and you dig up gems and fighting monsters as you descend deeper into the earth, gaining new powers and upgrades as you go.

Will Rock?

Looks like it, thanks user

ITT: old FOTM games get reposted/dug back up from the grave

as proven by

(>not posting RIVE)

(kill yourself btw)

I just wish that they implemented GGPO like they kept saying they would.

This is pretty good, but it's much better with all 4 people playing.

Wat. It's still a really good driving game, not really a racing game as far as I know.

I wanted to try that but I never got around to it. Is it actually enjoyable? I don't mean award winning, but just fun?

My fucking nigger. I love those kinds of single player card games. This is a really solid game.

Fun with friends, but the fonts make my eyes bleed.

Also a really good recommendation. Totally worth $10, worth it even more when on sale.

Good Power Stone clone, now they also have FFA which was a sore point against it. Combat Core is a similar style of Arena fighter too, if anyone is looking for more games that remind them of Power Stone.

Actually reminded me more of Scott Pilgrim/Guardian Heroes than Castle Crashers. Still, solid beat em up.

Neat game. Worth a check if you've never heard of it.

SJW devs, otherwise a fine game.

Fun mouse masher, but I got bored with it too quickly. Just not for me.

I'll admit I never played it, but from watching a friend play it, it never hooked me like others. I'd say skip.

Because it's too pure for this world.

Clever Zelda-like. I enjoyed it a lot, still too retarded to beat the game with only 2/3 of the weapons. Some of the puzzles just don't sense good to me.

Never played Sins, but isn't that a 4x? VD is a crazy ass space sim RTS that has way too much going on. I can't even get past the second level because I don't know how to defend my Capital ship well enough to make it to the warp gate. It's hard.

I don't think it's obscure since it's released on basically every modern platform thanks to blowing up on the 3DS.

As for my recommendations:

Sky Rogue for your arcade flight. It's fully moddable with custom missions now, and it's only $10 on itch.io which gives you a DRM free download.

Joylancer, which unfortunately suffers from a case of SJW dev. There's no pandering in game, it's a solid 2D action platformer that wanted to be like Nero in DMC4. I like it, your mileage may vary.

Pocket Rumble: Early Access fighting game with a style similar to NGPC fighting games. 7/8 characters have some kind of progress to show and it regularly gets updates. Netcode seesm to work fine as well. Plug and play with almost every controller I own, including my G920.

Want a cheap, kinda shitty Visual Novel? ACE Academy. It's comfy, the voices are grating and the actual "combat" isn't great. But I enjoyed it. If you like 90s Sega humor (as in references and puns), you'll probably enjoy it a little bit. I have no idea how cool or shitty the devs are though. They could be San Fran hipsters for all I know.

You know, mentioning Lastfight, and looking at Pocket Rumble there, it reminds me of another game that's not quite "mostly unknown", but is still worth checking out: Rivals of Aether. You know, that Melee clone full of furries made by Melee fanboys. It's pretty solid for what it is.

Also, there are two games I've picked up that I can only describe as "babby's first *insert genre here*" for each: Sneaky Sneaky, babby's first stealth game, and Sproggiwood, babby's first roguelike. They both have very similar mechanics, in that they have grid-based movement and place a good focus on player positioning. Also, both of them were made with phone and tablets in mind, so, grain of salt. Pick one of them up if you want an afternoon of simple fun, or if you have a nephew or something you need to distract.

...

OP said "mostly unknown" games. And "actually good".

...

"When will I ever stop sucking big floppy dicks" - 811445

On the subject of this Steamworld Heist is an excellent game that should be played if you're even the least bit interested in Turn Based games.

Check out Blue Revolver OP

It's a SHMUP which focuses on the 'flourish' system
unlike the Dodonpachi games where you need to chain an entire stage. Instead you build up small combos of 8 destroyed enemies and then 'cash in' by destroying enemies with your special weapon which then grants you an additional bonus multiplier up to 64x. Doing this is incredibly satisfying, and the stages are well designed around this concept too. On top of that there are secret BREAK bonuses you receive by doing special actions like destroying parts of a huge enemy in quick succession, which are harder to pull off, but net you a higher score. There's also a rank system which causes the difficulty of the game to increase, and goes down a level when you die, or when you use bombs (this doesn't apply to normal mode), and using all these systems to your advantage just feels great. The stages are more about macrododging fast projectiles instead of that slow Touhou stuff, so there's less finnicking with 1px large hitboxes.

Also just listen to this soundtrack and tell me this isn't the tightest shit

Is this a JoJo reference?

indie is cancer
kys

OP asked for mostly unknown games with very little sales

Stop trying to push this, it will never be a meme

Im sorry you only go to Polygon and Kotaku for vidya, but we're not all like that.

IS 7.62 really as good as I hear it is? What does it even play like, Silent Storm?

Similar, but different.
It has its nuances.

Nuances as in gameplay nuances or buggy Russian quality vidya nuances

A little of both

...

The one other user who played this game posts it

It's been shilled on Holla Forums for the past few weeks non-stop and probably rising on the Steam Store by now.

It's been out for longer than the past few weeks
It's being 'shilled' because only now people are hearing about Rabi Ribi

No thanks, I don't need to deal with double autism.

That's Dredmore. Sproggiwood has a bit more complex interactions between monsters.

There's also KeeperRL which is basically Dungeon Keeper but more rogue-lite and with programmer art.

Holy shit, how could I forget about Retro City Rampage? It's a great little GTA clone-cum-classic video game throwback, and the dev is a cool poppa who actually knows how to code. Like, "this is how to port an open world GTA game to the NES" knows how to code.

Honestly I don't know how GGPO is going to make online that much better but I'm a noob and have do metric to determine feedback or response time. Honestly they just need to fix the online setup so that people don't have to forward ports. If people aren't going to play it because of lame gui or the stage backgrounds then I doubt they were ever going to dedicate time to it at all.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a 4x. It gets hard near the end of the game when AI charges at your territory with max bases but they way you word VD it sounds like VD is a tougher game.

You can always download it from IGG and try it out. Otherwise it's usually cheap when on sale, and like $12 otherwise. There's probably a trick I haven't learned, like how to better assign my fighters to give me backup/take control of them to cover the Capital ship better, but fuck. There's a lot that happens in just one fight. The controls are a little messy too.

Don't suppose this game gives you an option to watch the level in real-time once you beat it

Pony Island might be the one decent game to come out of the trenches of "retro" garbage which has been clogging the industry since Cave Story inspired a million hack developers. It's a short little runner/puzzle game about being trapped in an arcade machine the devil built. It's part of the same category of "meta" games as Undertale and The Stanley Parable, but it doesn't try to be anything more than a couple hours of good music and decent puzzles. Not for everyone, but it won't cost you much time or money.

Recommended just for the music, honestly. Adds a LOT to the experience.

Seconding Ronin. Pretty short, but new game+ and the different abilities offer decent replay value. Great package for your money.

I wouldn't say it's a bad game, it is what it is, but it does proudly display its "Zoe Quinn's top games of 2014" award on its store page, so you can't even pretend you don't know where their politics lie.

Oh, fuck. I pirated the game when I first heard about it; I never knew that was there. I guess it's obvious to say this now, but don't spend any money on it.

Fuck, does everything have to lead back to that whore? I'm honestly fucking angry about this.

only until you die tbh fam

either a non-arguement or poor reading comprehension

anyways, embed related (Blackfaun) recently came out of Early Access on Halloween, and it's pretty nice
basically if Diablo was a twin-stick shooter

There's this little cutesy indie RTS called Mold on Pizza; I don't know how it plays, but it certainly looks interesting. The steam weekly sales do help in finding these unknowns.

bullshit, i love it

Surprised nobody has mentioned Rule the Waves yet. It's a 10/10 strategy game that almost nobody has heard of.
mega.nz/#F!TRUnjDrT!iXNdwBCPtReh1MGC8_JM2g

Well, almost nobody's heard of it, including myself, so that may be a large part of why nobody's mentioned it. Not to mention, it's a 2D game that costs over $30, and the only way to buy it is through a single website that looks like a front for shipping illegal fireworks online.

There are two different games out there that function on the concept of "get a big ol' mob of people that grows as you collect more people and destroy the city with your rioting": one is a pixel art tumblr nose title with a Greek setting called Okhlos, and one is a low-poly comedy physics title called Anarcute.
Personally, between the two, I'd say Anarcute is worth buying, but Okhlos should be pirated if not outright ignored. In the tutorial alone, we've got instances of racial diversity in ancient Greece and "women couldn't vote, which was bad".

Okay, on the subject of the weekly sale, here's some stuff worth taking a look-see that's on sale right now.
A metroidvania-type game with the kind of careful combat that assholes these days like to call Soulslike. Not really mostly unknown, but still fun.
Adventure game from the guy who made Deadly Premonition. We will never get a sequel.
You know that game Super Buster Bros? It's that.
This one allows you to create your own spells by combining spell parts that each have a different quality. So you combine a fire spell with a poison modifier and a homing modifier and you can basically guess what you get. Or there are ways to create black hole spells that explode, or summon robots that explode into ice, or other stuff you get the idea.
An actually pretty cool lightgun rail shooter based on an indie comic book.

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