https://store.steampowered.com/app/2203210/BURGGEIST/
Maybe my standards are different on "don't suck" but this was genuinely a super fascinating, fun game and it only came out a few months ago.
The premise is simple: You play a wizard in medieval not-Europe (it both is and isn't Europe, lots of shared terminology referring to parts of Southeastern Europe and such but the bits of the world shown don't match geographically) who helped develop a lot of horrible weapons of mass destruction courtesy of human experimentation as part of a think tank. Your wife, whom you met because you were experimenting on her, suddenly turns to stone - but she isn't dead. The daughter you had with her begins writing out of control as part of correspondence with an invisible creature she calls a demon, who promises there's a cure for your wife:
Build a tower that reaches the heavens.
The only place you can do this is in a no-man's land (caused by the aforementioned weapons of mass destruction you helped develop) that is so intrinsically hostile to people living in it that anything new built is attacked by strange homunculi whose sole drive is to destroy whatever is being made. Accompanying your journey to it is one of these homunculi, a giant carrying a massive stone slab on his back, with a cannon mounted no it.
You travel around this alien wasteland, building giant towers while dealing with waves of enemies whenever you try to build them. You have two defenses:
The giant, who you can attach a small armory's worth of heavy artillery to to blast away hordes of enemies
And SICK MAGIC KUNG FU. Your default "offense" spell is a fireball that does more damage if you attack from a higher position, and it's not just thrown - you can slam dunk it like a basketball onto enemies if you jump.
The entire game is the product of one guy for everything except the (surprisingly solid) voice work and the soundtrack. The most interesting thing about the VA is it's in two languages: Japanese, and a fake language called Cargrish, which seems to be a proper conlang complete with unique grammar that
should not have such impressive emotional delivery but it does! If you do get it and play, play it in Cargrish. I promise you, it helps set the tone.
It's about eight hours long, maybe 10 if you go for completionism (making every tower reach the heavens, doing every quest, and collecting all spells and equipment), and it was genuinely so fun to play. Surfing on a flying broom before doing a kickflip and slam-dunking a car-sized fireball into a horde of monsters is the kind of satisfying I expect from far higher budget games, but this one manages it despite being made by one guy. I will note, though, it is intentionally very opaque unless you read all the background lore stuff it supplies in-game and it's pretty jank, but the developer has been actively updating and improving it from the release version.
If you like weird old PS2 JRPGs and one-off IPs like Drakengard, you'll love it. I promise.
