Obscure game you have played - What have you played that you think, maybe, nobody else here has played?

[BrunoMattei]

Anyone mention Body Harvest?

It's the direct predecessor to the 3D open world gameplay of GTA 3. Loved it as a kid even though the controls didn't age too well. Snowball's chance in hell of it happening but I would kill to see a remake.

 

[Fugax]

My avi comes from a PC Steam game called E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, an incredibly odd and overlooked cyberpunk RPG shooter with a story so unnecessarily complicated that it may take multiple playthroughs to even barely understand. I like to think of it as a mixture of Macbeth and Groundhog Day set in the far future. The combat is great, and you can do a lot with its RPG mechanics, though it explains them very poorly. Try to find a beginner's guide on its Steam Community Hub, maybe even find a friend to co-op the campaign with while you're at it.

Here's a (very dumb) gameplay video, courtesy of Bro Team:

Fate of EYE

Even with both eyes, we had difficulty determining this fate. GIVE ME YOUR MONEY ON PATREON http://www.patreon.com/broteam Facebook https://www.facebook.com/...

youtu.be

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

In Memoriam, or Missing Since January. It was a sort of ARG back in the early 2000s, long before YouTubers or Alice&Smith started doing it properly. The idea was some serial killer had abducted a couple of journalists and the only clue the police had was a CD-ROM with a lot of weird puzzles on it. Since the police couldn't work it out, they released the disc to the public to see if they could help solve the case, you see where this is going. It was a decent attempt, and I remember being really into the format of it at the time, it was pretty new to register your e-mail address and get messages from the characters and hunt for clues on websites they'd made. These days it doesn't really work any more, because while the websites are still up, search engines will give you walkthroughs and reviews for the game before they give you the actual page.

For a more recent one, I've been enjoying Visitor and Visitor 2: FMV murder mystery games with daft overacting and everyone chewing the scenery. It's like a Chinese knockoff of Contradiction or Her Story. The creator Fan Shi appears in both of them, wearing several days' stubble and a scruffy wig, playing a creepy pathetic beta goon of a character each time, instead of casting himself as the hero, and he steals the show. It's hilarious, and the puzzles are pretty decent too!

 

[JacksonHeights]

jurassic park operation genesis was my fucking childhood

 

[W9D9N9 Jaguar Warrior]

I think one of the more obscure games that i regularly play that isn't obscure due to language barriers is Dominions 5

Dominions 5 - Warriors of the Faith on Steam

In Dominions 5 you take control of a powerful being that rules a nation and aspires to godhood. The type of Pretender Gods can vary from magically powerful arch mages to huge titans or large monuments. Dominions is a deep 4x turn based strategy game with a very large variety of spells and units.

store.steampowered.com

It's a 4x turn based strategy that's actually pretty solid, but does require a fair amount of prior reading or watching tutorials to understand what the fuck you are doing.

the most obscure that I know of and have played is funny enough, not Russian, but Japanese, the ERAtouhou games. That's a fucking Rabbit hole and a half to go down.

Was going to throw my hat in for Dominions, but I see it's already been mentioned, so I'll give a little shoutout to Illwinter's other series: Conquest of Elysium. It's pretty similar, although many of the more complex systems have been trimmed down. The magic system is much less feature-complete and the combat is simplified, but I find it nice to boot up when I want to play a shorter game or don't feel like scripting all my millions of troops. Also the lowest difficulty setting for the AI is titled "piss-boy" which I find really amusing.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat on PS2 and Xbox by Westwood Studios.

I first played it via a demo on a Official US Playstation Magazine demo disc and the game always stuck with me, so 15 years later in 2017 I bought the Xbox version and finally gave it a full playthrough.

The gameplay is very simple, you run around islands and attack with one button melee combat, though you also have magical spells to mix things up, you also hop aboard your ship and fire your cannons at enemy ships.

It's simple and dated and yet even today what this game excels at is charm, it's so incredibly cheesy, literally every single thing in it is a huge cliche, it actually feels like a video game version of a dollar store pirate toy and if you ask me there's a special charm to that, it's also hilarious to think this game was published by EA.

There's also these "charms" and cheat codes you can enter to put her in various sexier outfits like bikinis, again, it's hilarious to think of EA publishing it.

The gameplay is very simple but it's not a chore to play and the game has loads of cheesy early 2000s charm, if you dig that sort of thing I would say it's still worth playing.

 

[GenociderSyo]

In Memoriam, or Missing Since January. It was a sort of ARG back in the early 2000s, long before YouTubers or Alice&Smith started doing it properly. The idea was some serial killer had abducted a couple of journalists and the only clue the police had was a CD-ROM with a lot of weird puzzles on it. Since the police couldn't work it out, they released the disc to the public to see if they could help solve the case, you see where this is going. It was a decent attempt, and I remember being really into the format of it at the time, it was pretty new to register your e-mail address and get messages from the characters and hunt for clues on websites they'd made. These days it doesn't really work any more, because while the websites are still up, search engines will give you walkthroughs and reviews for the game before they give you the actual page.

Does the email portion still work? That was one of my favorite aspects of the game.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

Does the email portion still work? That was one of my favorite aspects of the game.

Last I checked, it did, but that was a few years ago.
Alice&Smith do some games that use a similar system for some of their puzzles: if you liked that, I'd recommend The Black Watchmen, Ahnayro and NITE Team. It doesn't feature that heavily in it, but there's also bits like finding characters' social media accounts that make it a bit more immersive.

 

[Slav Power]

Deluxe Ski Jump 2, an old ski jumping game for MS-DOS, it was really big in Poland back in the 2000's, and it's still fun to play today.

Stronghold Deluxe, a medieval kingdom simulator, complete with wars, plagues, and ballistic cow corpses. I always preferred to do free building than to actually go through the campaign.

Heroes of Might and Magic III, I'd say it's somewhat obscure in many parts of the world, but in Poland and other Post-Soviet countries pretty much everyone knows this. Turn-based strategy, with many complex mechanics, and very good multiplayer experience. Best played as the original version from GOG with HD mod and with Horn of the Abyss.

EDIT: There's also Heroes of Might and Magic II, which is a lesser known prequel to the superior III, which I happened to play the most as a kid, and it's the one I have the best memories of. It was way jankier, and these days it won't even run properly on Windows 10 (while it ran perfectly on 7, funny that), but it's still a lot of fun.

And also this little thing called Hobo Soccer. Made in Game Maker by some German, but despite that it's a very fun little game, with two player mode included.

Spoiler

Also @The 3rd Hooligan thanks for reminding me the name of that taxi game.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Speaking of slavs and old games, anyone remember Action Super Cross? It came out in 1997 and was hugely popular around here, the Trials game coming from Finland doesn't surprise me. Very fun game.

It had a sequel that more people might remember, Elasto Mania.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Last I checked, it did, but that was a few years ago.
Alice&Smith do some games that use a similar system for some of their puzzles: if you liked that, I'd recommend The Black Watchmen, Ahnayro and NITE Team. It doesn't feature that heavily in it, but there's also bits like finding characters' social media accounts that make it a bit more immersive.

Cool I'll have to check them out. I enjoyed the Orville games since they had that social media aspect.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

jurassic park operation genesis was my fucking childhood

Meanwhile I ordered Lightning Warrior Raidy out of the back of a magazine leading to a life of degeneracy.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

Way back in my younger days I ran across a game called Westfront that became my first online multiplayer game because the multiplayer was via email. Its a turn based strategy game set in WWII and the multiplayer stole tons of my childhood. You do all your moves kind of like a game of civilization, then you basically email your save game to who ever you are playing and they load it up and do all their moves and repeat. The game is abandonware and can be freely downloaded if you have an itch for a good TBS. Sadly these days I dont do too much TBS, my drug of choice these days is action rpg's and crpg's.

West Front Download (1998 Strategy Game)

 

[big ups liquid richard]

A weird but competent videogame where you play the role of science dude who has to transport his consciousness into a cyborg spider he was working on, when the baddies show up to shoot up his lab. Basically the same premise of William Birkin and the G Virus.

It was just a random gift game given to me by my Mom. Simply based on the cover art and my known arachnophobia. The game is sentimental to me, more so because of the thoughtfulness of my mom, than the actual gameplay. It isn't terrible, but its pretty typical PS1 platforming with the twist that you can crawl up walls and upside down.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

Mild PL, but whatever : Crickety Manor.

Mostly notable because of obscurity (and it being a genuinely impressive game by 1980s apple 2 standards) and it being the sole other game accessible to my middleschool class aside from a BASIC interpreter, number munchers and Oregon Trail. If it was lunch period the computer was on and someone would be playing this. It's the first game I can remember seeing the 'second quest' mechanic in except there's more than a dozen loops which get exponentially longer as you proceed. They might even be procgen, I don't think the class ever managed to beat the last? mansion due to it taking way more than 50 minutes to complete.

To give an idea of how rare this thing is, I'm still in touch with a couple friends from that class and it took two decades for the group to actually identify this game due to it being buried on the backside of a school-only educational magazine coverdisc.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

Cool I'll have to check them out. I enjoyed the Orville games since they had that social media aspect.

I don't know about those, what are they?

 

[GenociderSyo]

I don't know about those, what are they?

I had its name wrong its Orwell:

Steam Franchise: Orwell-Game

store.steampowered.com

Pretty much you play as a person whos working for big brother and you go thru peoples phones, social media, computers and choose to report things to your higher ups or not. Its a choice matters game and how you choose to do things in each episode effects the other ones, as well as having an effect on the sequel if you want it to.

 

[big ups liquid richard]

I was thinking about some of the first games I ever played, and on PC they were mostly educational games. Pretty fun, too.

The Learning Company was a big provider at that time of the kind of games I was allowed to play. Probably the easiest and most memorable was Treasure Mountain.

This one, "Midnight Rescue" was my favorite.

I also liked this one, where you put together a go-kart from parts and raced them. Very science and math heavy.

I hated this one though, because it was very math heavy and I was too young and dumb to understand the pre algebra stuff. Also exploring the ocean was boring.

Didn't play this one, but we had it. I watched someone else play.

I also loved the hell out of the first Freddy Fish game but that one is pretty popular.

 

[Army Burger]

I was thinking about some of the first games I ever played, and on PC they were mostly educational games. Pretty fun, too.
View attachment 1097005
The Learning Company was a big provider at that time of the kind of games I was allowed to play. Probably the easiest and most memorable was Treasure Mountain.
View attachment 1097009
This one, "Midnight Rescue" was my favorite.
View attachment 1097011
I also liked this one, where you put together a go-kart from parts and raced them. Very science and math heavy.
View attachment 1097014
I hated this one though, because it was very math heavy and that was my weakness. Also exploring the ocean was boring.
View attachment 1097016

I also loved the hell out of the first Freddy Fish game but that one is pretty popular.
I also remember this one but I was a bit too young to understand it. I watched someone else play.
View attachment 1097019

Treasure Cove, Treasure Mountain, Treasure Mathstorm, Midnight Rescue and Gizmos and Gadgets were the shit. Never had Operation Neptune. I also had Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

Did you ever play any of the MECC games like Amazon Trail and MayaQuest?

 

[big ups liquid richard]

Operation Neptune was considered advanced learning so unless you already were good at math, it sucked.

I never played any of those. Only the original Oregon Trail on those giant floppy discs.