Game Suggestions

[warmskies]

Bastion

What's It About?

Bastion is an action-adventure game with an isometric view. You play as a young man simply called "The Kid", who has just woken up in his bed with the rest of the world floating and shattered around him. A terrible world-shattering event known as The Calamity has occurred, and pieces of the world float back beneath his feet as he moves to get back to the one bastion of safety he knows exists. In order to help make things better, he has to travel to various places that have been scattered all around and retrieve special crystals known as 'Cores'. This will help rebuild his home.

Bastion has a very striking sense of self from tip to toe - its vibrant art style, brilliant voice acting including from the Old West-style narrator who comments on your every move, and a really fun soundtrack that I love to listen to. In fact, it's one of the pieces of music that I often play for myself while driving around.

Quick Rundown

✩ Action Adventure Game
✩ Isometric Viewpoint
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Acoustic Frontier Trip-hop Soundtrack
✩ Story Focused
✩ Short Playthrough

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Transistor

What's It About?

Transistor is the story of a talented singer by the name of Red who is suddenly attacked one night by a mysterious group of individuals. Through some mysterious phenomenon she can't yet explain, she manages to escape... waking up in the streets of Cloudbank City, with the body of a man she knew nearby. In his chest? A strange, large, and glowing sword.

Which talks to her. With the voice of the dead man.

And the night only gets stranger.

Transistor is a truly stunningly beautiful game whose art direction takes very clear inspiration from styles such as Art Deco or artists like Klimt. What makes it fun and different to its predecessor Bastion is that while there is real-time action you can take during battles, you also have a chance to catch your breath with a mechanism in the game which is more akin to tactical RPG playing. This allows you to choose where you want to move, when you want to stop somewhere, and what you want to do.

Quick Rundown

✩ Mixed Action and Tactical RPG
✩ Isometric Viewpoint
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Old-World Electronic Post-Rock Soundtrack
✩ Story Focused
✩ Short Playthrough

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Pyre

What's It About?

Pyre is a story where just the very act of reading has been made criminal. Thus those who read, and any other labeled 'criminal', are cast away to a world far below the one they lived in. Yet there is hope: participate in "The Rites", emerge victorious as you travel across this hostile land, and you may be granted clemency, allowed back into the civilized world above.

You do this by playing sports ball.

As much as it is a very visual and beautifully rendered story with a cast of vibrant characters, Pyre is by all accounts a sports game. The story beats progress with your character essentially commanding a team of three against another team of three. In theory, the goal is simple: only one member of your team can move at a time (holding the ball or not), holding the ball means you cannot tag out the opposing team, and you must get the ball to the other team's goal.

That the ball is a glowing orb of light and the goals in question are actively on-fire pyres is just how sports work here.

Quick Rundown

✩ Mixed Action and Tactical RPG
✩ Isometric Viewpoint
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Rustic Fantasy (with occasional surprises) Soundtrack
✩ Story Focused Sports
✩ Medium Playthrough

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Hades

What's It About?

Hades is an action RPG roguelike - a roguelike being a game type where you are expected to die many many times, with progress coming from each death even if through increments. There is a satisfaction that many people find in that progress, able to see how they get better at playing the game and recognizing different threats.

For this game in particular, there are additional benefits. Certain resources have to be brought back to the hub you start out at, which can only happen by way of your character's death. Those resources can not only change your character's strengths, but also the hub itself. Additionally, story beats do occur when you return, and many characters have things to say.

The roguelike aspect is very fitting for Hades's storyline, where your character is attempting to escape the underworld. While he is the son of the God of Death himself, your character cannot stand being here any longer.... for reasons of his own that get discovered in time.

Quick Rundown

✩ Action RPG Roguelike
✩ Isometric Viewpoint
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Evolving Rock Soundtrack
✩ Grinding Progress
✩ Very Long Playthrough

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Gorogoa

What's It About?

Gorogoa is a puzzle game.

One day, in his apartment in the city, a young boy looks out the window and spots something strange. Something he can't find in his books. So he begins to look more into it.

It's in theory a very simple story. In action, as you the player go through various puzzles, it's something much more disconnected and strange and very beautiful. The puzzles are also delightful brain teasers that require you to think inside the box as you see how different pictures in this small 2x2 square intersect. Even more appreciation can be found for this game with the knowledge that everything was hand drawn, which adds a kind of beauty to this.

It's my favorite puzzle game to go back to, just for the beauty of it, and its storyline that spans years intersecting with one another.

Quick Rundown

✩ Puzzle Game
✩ Hand Drawn
✩ Player Difficulty: Easy
✩ Soothing Soundtrack
✩ Symbolic Storyline
✩ Short Playthrough

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Untitled Goose Game

What's It About?

It's a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible goose.

Untitled Goose Game is a puzzle game where, in the third person, you control an average goose going through a small English town to do goose-like activities. In this context, "goose-like activities" basically means being a problem for everyone around you. This ranges from chasing a small child, to ruining someone's garden, to tossing someone's slippers into a pond. While simple in theory, execution can be a little trickier.

Still, it's a really fun game to play as you escape from everyone else chasing you off, and outwitting them before you progress to the next area. There's an ultimate goal here, but only the goose knows it.

Quick Rundown

✩ Puzzle Game
✩ Charming Graphics
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Short Playthrough

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Seven Nights Ghost

What's It About?

Seven Nights Ghost is a first person horror game where you are a company man who has been provided an apartment to stay in while out on business. Unfortunately, it does have a rumor around it being haunted... something that is proven to be true on your very first night there, and which only continues to happen for your entire week's stay. For one entire week, you have to survive living with this stereotypical Japanese ghost.

On the bright side, it's easier to deal with her than you'd think.

Most of the gameplay involves navigating around the apartment searching for certain items while you carefully avoid being caught out for the ghost for whatever reason, although there a couple of puzzles here or there. Despite the look of the antagonist and its classification as a horror game, there are almost more humorous moments than anything else. It makes for a fun time, although it can be difficult to avoid the ghost.

Quick Rundown

✩ Horror Game with Light Puzzles
✩ Japanese Horror Inspiration
✩ Player Difficulty: Hard
✩ Short Playthrough

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Morrowind

What's It About?

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind is an immense open-world RPG that originally came out on the Xbox as a part of the massive "Elder Scrolls" series. In this game, you custom create your own character and make a vast amount of decisions in both gameplay and storywise. You can become an immensely powerful melee fighter, fling around spells as a master magician, or take the sneaky route as a rogue. Following the main story is also just a guideline.

But a main story does exist: a convict of the Empire, you've been granted 'freedom' by the Empire.... on the condition that you are sent to the strange and backwater country of Morrowind, which is a land that has only recently really opened up to outsiders. You're encouraged to see certain people upon your release... but there's nothing stopping you from exploring the whole wide country instead and seeing what there is out there for you.

This can range from simply wandering to taking on various sidequests from all sorts of individuals and groups. This includes joining guilds for the many factions and jobs existing in Morrowind.

This freedom really endeared itself to me since a long time ago, and Morrowind's unique take on fantasy has always engraved its status in my mind.

Quick Rundown

✩ Open-World Fantasy RPG
✩ Unique Fantasy Spin
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Custom Character Creator
✩ Theoretically Neverending Playthrough

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Thief

What's It About?

Thief is a trio of stealth games - Thief Gold, Thief: The Metal Ages, and Thief: Deadly Shadows. All three follow a professional thief named Garrett, and all three tend to start in a similar manner: him simply trying to make a living... albeit in a rather illegal fashion. Yet as things continue, he keeps getting roped into stranger and stranger scenarios that lead to him being an unlikely and unsung hero.

Considering his occupation, he's probably fine with the 'unsung' part.

Thief was one of the original stealth games that has influenced the entire genre a great deal, including the importance on light/shadows and making noise. It even popularized characters who are bad at fighting, which is why they're taking the sneaky approach. Not only that, but harder difficulties actively discourage any killing whatsoever.

The series also lends itself to an unforgettable setting, which holds a foot in both medieval steampunk and magical fantasy. Worldbuilding like it is really fun to track down, almost as much as the riches and rare artifacts that Garrett needs to collect.

Quick Rundown

✩ Stealth Game (Quasi Open World depending on the game)
✩ Unique Fantasy Spin
✩ Player Difficulty: Hard
✩ Snarky Anti-Hero
✩ Long Playthrough

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Subnautica

What's It About?

Thalassaphobia the Game or, as it's better known official title, Subnautica is a science fiction survival game that takes place in an open-world setting. Granted, most of that openness is because the vast majority of the game takes place in an alien ocean.

You're the sole survivor of a spaceship crash, the Aurora. Fortunately, you've managed to crash with a helpful tool that will help keep you alive... and which will make items that better your chances of survival. Yet not only must you survive, but you must explore the ocean and find out why exactly your ship crashed.

Subnautica is a beautifully made game, with many views worth admiring. It's also extremely tense and terrifying as, much like with the normal Earth ocean, many things in there are perfectly okay with killing you. Not everything! But more than you'd ever like.

Quick Rundown

✩ Nautical SciFi Sandbox Survival
✩ Full Range of Movement Through Open Water
✩ Player Difficulty: Hard
✩ Ocean Typical Horror
✩ Theoretically Neverending

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Dead Cells

What's It About?

Dead Cells is a 2D roguelike with action and platforming. This means that it's really expected that the player character will die regularly, but with those deaths come knowledge and experience... and maybe a chance to upgrade your abilities as well.

Your character's life starts out as a strange one: forming a rather strange and wobbly creature which takes over a decapitated body left in a strange castle's dungeon. There's a lot of questionss to be asked here, for certain... but there's no one around to ask the answers to. All you can do is set out and forward, into a hostile world with lots of entities that want you dead.

Quick Rundown

✩ Action Adventure Roguelike with Platforming
✩ Fun Pixel Art Style
✩ Player Difficulty: Hard
✩ Combat Focused
✩ Theoretically Neverending

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Legend of Mana

What's It About?

Legend of Mana is by all means a 2D pixelated fantasy RPG. It ticks off a lot of basic boxes rather easily: fantasy elements such as a school for magic (you can't enroll), making up the your own little team to fight monsters, crafting weapons and spells, and your own little home of a hub.

However, Legend of Mana is something pretty unique in its own right. Something about its art style and accompanying music would be striking all on its own, but it adds to the feeling with its strange and wonderful world and characters. You can run into a group of pirates composed entirely of penguins and guided by a walrus. There are a bunch of what are essentially cabbage faeries who spout very strange things at you. Multiple times do you get to see a centaur bard fail in his love life. Growing the map, and thus expanding the story (or availability of other quest), require artifacts you place down on the map.

Of course, all this comes with a bit of a price. While the gameplay is not exactly hard, Legend of Mana is notorious for being rather tricky to play because it is rather vague in a lot of ways: telling you where to go, or the best spot to place a certain location, etc.

However, the beauty and world of this game has always delighted me, and I'm glad to have it available again.

Quick Rundown

✩ RPG
✩ Beautiful and Intricate Pixel Art Style
✩ Player Difficulty: Medium
✩ Complex Connected Story
✩ Long Playthrough

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Slime Rancher

What's It About?

Slime Rancher is an open world farming sim game... with a bit of a twist in that, obviously, the creatures you are raising are little balls of sentient slime. Rather than a gross Halloween gag gift, however, these little creatures take the form of very adorable and fairly friendly multi-colored squish orbs. And they have more appearances than you'd think!

After all, you've taken up farming on the Far Far Range - a planet that is just SUPER inhabited by nothing but slimes. Each slime has its own purpose and way of acting, from general pink slimes to playful cat slimes... and the orbs they create from eating come with a pretty good price tag if you sell them.

Slime Rancher is a very relaxing game to play as you simple take care of your slimes, make sure they don't intermingle a little too much, and run about the place. You can change up your farm in a variety of little ways, but there's no real hard and fast rule on how to play.

It's all for fun and relaxation.

Quick Rundown

✩ Open World Farming Sim
✩ Cute 3D Style
✩ Player Difficulty: Easy
✩ Relaxing and Cozy
✩ Neverending Playthrough

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Abzu

What's It About?

Abzu is above all an exploration game. You, a diver in a bright yellow helmet, floating adrift in the middle of the ocean. You're given no real direction, so all you can do is dive down.... and discover the vibrant underwater life nearly right beneath you.

There is no clearly spoken out story in Abzu, and the story that exists is one that has to be picked up on by paying attention to details in the environment or murals on ancient underwater ruins.

However, ultimately, playing the game is ultimately just admiring the beautiful art style and incredible ecosystems that spread throughout all sorts of different waters. You can even help to make them more vibrant, by searching out certain locations which help spawn more sealife - such as orcas or sea turtles. There's rarely a threat of death in this game... and the threats are often not from what you would expect.

Quick Rundown

✩ Open World Underwater Exploration
✩ Vivid and Detailed Style
✩ Player Difficulty: Easy
✩ Serene and often Relaxing
✩ Short Playthrough

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Goat Simulator

What's It About?

Goat Simulator is an open world game where you are a goat. You can lick things. You can headbutt things.

Doing either of those actions often leads to massive mayhem and collateral damage.

And you can do even more.

Goat Simulator taps into that time in childhood where you first started to play games, and just did whatever you wanted, regardless of anything else. There's goals you can accomplish, but no real story to follow indepth. Just do whatever you like, regardless of what any human might think.

Quick Rundown

✩ Open World
✩ Loose and Free Playstyle
✩ Player Difficulty: Easy
✩ Brainless
✩ Neverending Playthrough

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DoronkoWanko

What's It About?

Doronkowanko is a very simple game.

You are a pomeranian.

The family who owns you has just moved into a big, fancy, brand new house.

It is up to you to completely filth it up.

The gameplay is honestly very easy and generous, especially since the controls will helpfully pop up for you if you stay in place for a moment, so you're never lost on what you can do.

Quick Rundown

✩ Open House
✩ Loose and Free Playstyle
✩ Player Difficulty: Easy
✩ Relaxing, since it's not happening to your house
✩ Short Playthrough

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