Ask Lemmy

Enderal.

~~I'll edit this later when I can post from my comp (mobile now) with the full pitch~~ as promised:

Enderal

Basically an indie dev crew broke skyrim down to its most basic assets, then rebuilt a completely new game using them. AND IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD. Completely new lore / game universe (has nothing at all to do with elder scrolls, tamriel, etc), new voice acting, terrain, music, you name it.

Steers away from common story tropes to the point that there isn't really an antagonist in the traditional sense - but it uses concepts, emotions, philosophies, etc as the driving force for the main story line and some of the larger quest chains.

This game is an absolute passion project by the devs, which is something we don't see often now-a-days.

Note: link above is to the version that uses Skyrim SE's assets (the 2016 re-release). If you have the original version of skyrim, use this link instead. If you own a different version of Skyrim, there might be a compatible version of Enderal here: https://sureai.net/games/enderal/

Fair warning: the children NPC voice acting is even worse than the kids in Skyrim. The TAI (toggle AI) command can shut them up without breaking them.

Fair warning 2: they redid combat. The OP shit in Skyrim, like the sneaky archer build, will get your ass beat to a pulp in Enderal. Make a save when you get to the point where you can spend some talent points, experiment with a few styles, and go from there.

Fair warning 3: It's built on Skyrim's assets, which means it has all of Skyrim's problems. Step on a basket full of cabbage just right; get launched into low orbit. Quest items clipping through the floor. Bounty that refuses to go away. Shit like that. Save frequently, and don't be afraid to use the command console to do things like magic in a lost item or force a broken quest to progress to the next stage.

Dark messiah of might and magic

Board games or video games?

Freedom Fighters. Some mechanics were clunky but most were great and I really can't think of any other games with such a good mix of strategy and quick-thinking/reaction gameplay. I've played it through at least 3 times!

• Brave Fencer Musashi
• Limbo
• ReCore
• The Way
• Inside
• Unravel
• Cat Quest
• Death Squared

Kinetica - a racing game where the 'vehicles' are people in mechanical suits that make them look like sexy mecha, racing to old techno

Bloody Roar - a series of fighting games where you fight as people who can suddenly shift into other forms, some recognizable animals and some abstract, and with the ability in some arenas to kick people through walls or over ledges into new arenas

Forsaken - 3D hover vehicle battles

Tiny Tank - a game where you play as a sweary AI tank

Megaman Legends 1 and 2 - Megaman as a 3d adventure game with a storyline and characters

Gitaroo Man - a rhythm game I enjoyed, later imitated by some others

Shadow of the Colossus - more known but not cared for these days. A game in which there are only boss battles. A subtly told story. Part of the ICO universe.

Titan Souls - One boy, one bow, one arrow that can be magically recalled to the bow, and giant stone destroyers that he must conquer with nothing more. Kind of a 2D Shadow of the Colossus

BPM: Bullets Per Minute - everyone has the idea for a rhythm FPS. This is the only one that does a good job of it.

Receiver - a game in which you don't just hit R to reload, but have to go through the full manual of arms, dropping the clip, holstering the weapon, loading each round into the clip, drawing the weapon, seating the clip, racking the round, checking the chamber to make sure it fed correctly, aiming, firing, clearing the jam, all while worrying about killer robots.

Valley - a movement game that has such an amazing feeling of freedom in its movement

Tunnet - lovecraftian network technician game

Earthworm Jim

Atomic Robokid (Genesis)

Tempest (Atari 2600 version)

Ghosts and Goblins (NES)

The game where it's a rich guy that sends a trained assassin out onto a island with nothing and hunts him for 24 hours, and if the assassin kills the rich guy he gets his freedom and like $20K.

Rock n Roll Racing (SNES)

Beyond All Reason/Planetary Annihilation

The original mass effect trilogy. I know they're very mainstream but no one talks about them anymore and I must have like 5k hours between the 3 games.

Perfect winter break games for just diving in and doing 20 hour long play sessions

Sauerbraten FOSS FPS, available in your repo. Single player racemaps are fun. Get to the podium in the quickest time.

Try these servers:

-Racing#1 2021 [rev]-

or

Racing Reloaded

--//--

0AD FLOSS RTS, also available in your repo.

Excellent theming and challenges.

Wiz n'Liz

Mars: War Logs, and Technomancer

Syndicate Wars.

Epistory and Nanotales

Both fantastic games with beautiful graphics and good for typing practice.

“Whiplash!” Was an old racing sim that had crazy tracks. It had collision damage and in single player mode you could give your teammate commands.

It supported 8 players on a lan in multiplayer. All of this while running from DOS. Looking back it seemed a little ahead of its time. I’ve never encountered anyone in person that knew of this game.

Ziggurat.

it's a first person shooter dungeon crawler, the levels and enemies are procedurally generated, sometimes you can get a room with enemies that are one hit kills, then walk into a connecting room with 3 different over powers enemy types coming at you from all directions.

its face paced and fun as fuck to run around killing shit with magic wands and magical guns.

no playthrough is the same.

Some more recent ones:

• Hammerfight (2009)
• Brigador (2016)
• CrossCode (2018)

During lockdown I played ECHO, which had been in my backlog for a few years after a stray recommendation I saw on MetaFilter. It was a surprisingly tight integration of beautiful and intriguing environmental/UI/sound design, gorgeous music, compelling yet minimalist storytelling (and voice acting), and a really strong gameplay loop of stealth, puzzle-solving, and the occasional panicky run-and-gun. Imagine my surprise when I read up on it after and learned it only sold a few thousand copies!

I strongly recommend playing it blind, but this trailer gives a good overview of the style and mechanics.

Druidstone! It's a really great indie tactical RPG. Very fun and I never hear anyone talk about it.

Hi-Fi Rush deserves way more recognition! Both story and gameplay are perfect. DMC meets DDR!

Just a great time all around once you get into the flow of things.

The Longest Journey. It’s one of the best adventure games ever made, and has one of the best stories in interactive storytelling.

Sacrifice. An old Interplay title where you are a sorcerer in service to a god. You summon armies of creatures and cast world-altering spells using the souls of creatures you’ve sacrificed to your god.