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(I'd love to talk extensively about all of these, but there were way more than I expected and I'm a bit busy at the moment).
I'm marking the ones that don't have achievements for your convenience. (Also, marking ones that are Profile Features Limited. All of which are also free).
-
Games I've played
Elsinore (No Achievements)
Gods will be Watching
Last Command
Lobotomy Corporation (No Achievements)
The Long Gate
Not for Broadcast
Rusted Moss
Sanabi
Sephonie
Shipwrecked
South Scrimshaw, Part One [Profile Features Limited]
Umihara Kawase, Umihara Kawase Shun, and Sayonara Umihara Kawase
Vividlope
Void Stranger
Waveland
YoiYami Dancers: Twilight Danmaku Dancers
Zachtronics Games (Examples: Exapunks, Infinifactory, and Opus Magnum)
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Games I own, but haven't played yet
24 Killers
Anthology of the Killer (No Achievements)
Before the Green Moon (No Achievements)
Before Your Eyes
The Cat Lady
Critters for Sale
Ctrl Alt Ego
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
The Enigma Machine (No Achievements)
Escape from Lavender Island
Fatum Betula
Felvidek (No Achievements)
Four Last Things
Highfleet (No Achievements)
In Other Waters (No Achievements)
Little Goody Two Shoes
The Magic Circle
Mask Quest (No Achievements)
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure
Nauticrawl
Perfect Vermin [Profile Features Limited]
Picayune Dreams
Psychopomp [Profile Features Limited] (Another release called Psychopomp Gold exists)
Six Ages: Ride like the Wind
Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator
Sunless Sea
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Other Games
Night of the Consumers (It's not officially released yet, but I've played a version of it)
An Outcry (Looks interesting, but I don't own it)
-
(I left out some obvious/popular ones like Rain World, Jazzpunk, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Outer Wilds because I wanted to focus on games that were more likely to slip under the radar. Then again, I have no idea what people have and haven't played, so I could be wrong).
If anybody knows if any of the ones I own, but haven't played yet are good, please let me know. I have a few completions to finish up before I can dive in.
One game I'd recommend is The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, especially since it just got a sequel announced after all these years. It's a FMV game like Not For Broadcast. It also works like the game Facade if you know this one, you basically type out sentences to speak to the characters. I haven't played it myself yet, but the achievements look annoying though.
All of those I played the o.g. version on consoles. Yet to get them on PC. Can't say about any others of his as I've not played them. So many games not a lot of time for everything I would want to get to...
Glad to hear Before Your Eyes is good. I'll keep my eye on it once I'm done with the games I'm working on. As for The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, it turns out that I actually own it. I think I absentmindedly grabbed it without thinking and then forgot about it because I thought it would be jumpscare-heavy. I didn't even know typing was a mechanic, (Oddly enough, reminds me of Her Story), but that sounds pretty interesting.
Another FMV game I've found that's pretty interesting is At Dead of Night which is a fully functioning horror game with a FMV killer. It's got some pretty evil achievements in there, but the game is pretty neat for a first playthrough. (It's from the same people who made Contradiction: Spot the Liar, if you've heard of that).
I can't believe I didn't mention anything from Suda 51 or Grasshopper Manufacture, but those fit nicely in there. I've seen footage of Killer 7 and it looks insane and the No More Heroes series is really cool too. They've also made a game called The Silver Case which is a visual novel with some gameplay elements where you need to "Kill the Past." It is beyond weird from the little I've seen and I have no idea what is actually happening in it. Oddly enough, he also worked on one of the Fatal Frame games, specifically Mask of the Lunar Eclipse which got remastered and released on Steam last year.
Played
Arctic Eggs
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Immortality
La-Mulana
Leap Year
Lingo
Lisa: The Painful RPG
Lorelai and the Laser Eyes
Mysteries Under Lake Ophelia
Orbo's Odyssey
Umurangi Generation
The Upturned
Who's Lila?
Not Played
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
The Dread X Collection Series
Echostasis
Homicipher (No Achievements)
How Fish Is Made (No Achievements)
Hypnagogia: Boundless Dreams
Juice Galaxy [Profile Features Limited]
Locally Sourced Anthology 1: A Space Atlas (No Achievements)
Mothered
Mummy Sandbox (No Achievements)
Puppet Combo Games (Murder House, Stay Out of the House)
The Void (No Achievements)
Additionally, here are some other games I find interesting that I think may be too popular or not weird/unique enough:
(I've played a little bit of all of the following except: Caves of Qud, Citizen Sleeper, Cruelty Squad, Hylics, and the Sorcery! Series)
Ape Out
Astlibra Revision
Baba is You
Can of Wormholes
Catherine Classic
Caves of Qud
Citizen Sleeper
Climbing Games (Specifically, Peaks or Yore and Valley Peaks.)
Copy Kitty
Corn Kidz 64
Cruelty Squad
Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils
Darkwood
Disco Elysium
Dustforce
Everhood
Factorio
Faith: The Unholy Trilogy
The Forgotten City
Greedventory
Hylics 1 and 2 (No Achievements)
Hypnospace Outlaw
In Stars and Time
Inkle Games (A Highland Song, 80 Days, Heaven's Vault, and Overboard!)
Inmost
Jet Lancer
Katamari Damacy
Killer Frequency
Laika: Aged Through Blood
Lethal League Blaze
Lunacid
Maiden & Spell (and its successor, Rabbit & Steel)
Manifold Garden
MO: Astray
Mouthwashing
Noita
Paradise Killer
Pathologic 2
Recursed
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Scarlet Hollow
Signalis
Slay the Princess
Snakebird
Sorcery! Parts 1-4 (No Achievements)
Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion: HD Renovation
Stephen's Sausage Roll
Super 56
Tiny Thor
Tunic
Turmoil
Wattam
(Throw Myst in there too even though it's not really weird, unique, or unknown. That game is pretty good).
Finally, if you're willing to venture off Steam, the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc games are absolutely worth checking out. Some of the games featured in them (like Lorn's Lure, Mummy Sandbox, An Outcry, Mothered, and The Heilwald Loophole) have been developed into full games.
I'd still love to go in depth with these, (Both the ones I have played and the ones I haven't), but that's going to take several hours even if I limited myself to 1-2 sentence descriptions for each of them. I'll think about it in case anybody is really interested in any of these.
(I spent way too much time sorting this alphabetically, so I hope that helps make it easier to read).
I'd say surreal is closer to describing Killer 7 anywhere close to accurate, having struggled through to see it to the end. Gameplay in that was far from easy at times. Was worth doing once at least. Saying anymore is to spoil it though.
No More Heroes I never did see to the end. Why I haven't played 2 or 3. Sadly the PC port's apparent quality leaves me with mixed thoughts. May one day get it if it's cheap enough I suppose.
(Sorry if the criteria is getting confusing at this point. I have no idea either).
The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia is a mix between a typing game and a bullet hell game. You have to stay still to type, but you need to keep moving to dodge the bullets. This game is very interesing, but it can get incredibly difficult. Apparently they made a working version for controller which I haven't checked out yet. I have zero idea how that would even work for a typing game.
(I was going to mention Poly Bridge here, but it is way more popular than I thought it was. It's still pretty unique considering it is a game entirely about building bridges and then seeing if they hold up when cars cross them in a variety of increasingly ridiculous ways. It gets very hard).
Flywrench is a very difficult game about flying your ship around obstacles. It uniqueness/weirdness of this game comes with how the ship actually controls which is really interesting, but hard to describe. It has a level editor... and multiplayer achievements.
Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story is a seemingly basic rhythm game with a very cool twist. On the normal difficulty, only some of the prompts in the level are shown and the rest are hidden. To get 100%, you need to hit all of them. This may sound annoying, but there are a surprising number of useful on-screen indicators that help you figure it out as you make attempts.
The game also has a mode that shows every single prompt which you can use for practice and another mode with hides all of the prompts (and doesn't add indicators for the basic ones so I haven't been able to beat that one). The only negative is that some of the prompts have much tighter timing than others (with no indication), so you can hit every single prompt and still not get 100% because the physics-based explosive you threw was timed wrong.
Everhood is a RPG where the bosses attack to the beat of the music and then you need to dodge them a moment after the beat. The attack patterns go from doable to practically bullet hell depending on how far you are in the game. The story is hit or miss, but if it's a hit for you, you'll love it. It's a really fun game, but the difficulty of the achievements is downright sadistic.
Melatonin is basically Rhythm Heaven with relaxing music. Throw in a level editor and an achievement for perfecting every level in the game and you've got an amazing rhythm game.
Hmmm, this is really hard to answer without spoiling anything.
I played it on PC, so idk how the Steam Deck version differs from that... If it's anything like the PC version, you might need some help in the end anyway.
But I would definitely recommend just going in blind first and trying to figure out things by yourself till the end!
- Space exploration game that utilises gathered knowledge as a form of progression. You can literally complete the game from the very beginning in under 10 minutes if you know everything. The trick is you don't have that knowledge when you first play the game, so your first playthrough will take like 20 hours or so. This game heavily utilises physics for both storyline and gameplay purposes. Heck, one of the achievement requires you to manually land on a Sun station. If you overshoot the orbit, you can get sucked in by the Sun's gravitational field which will kill you. To this day it remains one of the hardest and most satisfying achievement I've ever gotten.
The Witness
- Open-world puzzle game where you are dropped alone on an island filled with different types of puzzles. This is the only game that I can think of that have no "filler" areas, meaning every single feature you see on the island is designed for a particular reason. You will find out why when you discover a certain game mechanic that will blow your mind (one of my favourite gaming moments ever). It also has a deep philosophical side to its non-surface story.
Both of these games are 10/10 masterpieces for me.
Oh, yeah. Outer Wilds is great. I loved 100% completing that one. Interestingly, I think the DLC was the best part for me because it took something I generally don't like and made me enjoy it. (No context will be given to avoid spoilers).
As for The Witness, it is really good and I know the exact mechanic you're talking about and it's wonderful to see how far they can push that thing. Unfortunately, the game makes me physically ill when I play it, so I had to quit playing it multiple times. I think it has something to do with the field of view because tweaking it gave different results, but I just lost interest before I figured it out. I should totally get back into it at some point, though. (I have no idea how far I got before I quit).
I do have an alternative recommendation if you liked The Witness. There's this game called Taiji which seems to be inspired by The Witness. Instead of line puzzles, it focuses more on tile puzzles where you need to turn them on and off until you have the correct solution with similar abstract puzzle rules and interesting themes to The Witness.
It is really good and I enjoyed beating it... but I ended up using a guide for the puzzles for the final achievement which is something I have regretted for a long time. (Do not, under any circumstances, spoil that for yourself. I did manage to understand the gimmick before I gave up and it was brilliant). That one decision is why I've been generally avoiding puzzle games even though I love them. I'm afraid that I'm going to get impatient and cheat again.
...or at least, I thought I was avoiding them. (I just double-checked my last played games). I did drop games like The Talos Principle 2, Bonfire Peaks, Can of Wormholes, and Baba is You out of fear that I'd ruin them for myself. However, I apparently forgot about that rule at some point because I've played a bunch of puzzle games.
Here's the list (in case you find something that interests you):
(My apologies in advance for how bloated this is going to look from your perspective).
Manifold Garden which is a pretty enjoyable puzzle game about cubes and infinitely repeating areas that turns into a ridiculous, confusing maze if you dare to take the challenge for the final achievement. It was rough, but getting through it without a guide was super satisfying. Wonderful. 4/5.
About Love, Hate, and the Other Ones 2 is a solid puzzle game about moving around two separate characters in a mostly 2D space. It's technically 3D, but it doesn't take as much advantage of it as it could've. Definitely a bit of untapped potential. Still, it's not bad. 3/5.
Animal Well is a puzzle metroidvania where you have to find the puzzles and also find the items to solve certain puzzles that are hidden behind other puzzles. Getting the true ending without a guide was a little annoying since some of the puzzles and secrets are pretty devious and hidden in plain sight, but it was immensely satisfying to finish. 4/5.
Lorelai and the Laser Eyes is a fantastic puzzle game that forced me to bust out the pencil and paper. It is one of a rare number of puzzle games that randomizes the solutions every time you play. You'll still know how to solve them on repeat playthroughs so it'll go a lot quicker, but at least they can't be completely circumvented which is cool. Absolutely loved this one, the penultimate puzzle that gates you from the game's final section is so good. 5/5.
Isles of Sea and Sky is a sokoban metroidvania. A lot of the puzzles in this game are really good and the secrets are also neat. 100% completing it does not require you to finish every single puzzle (although you still need most of them done) which was so relieving because there's one area in this game that either has really brilliant puzzles or I am beyond dense when it comes to that mechanic. 4/5.
Paper Trail is a puzzle game that takes place on multiple pieces of paper that can be folded to reveal platforms and items on the other side that you need to use to solve the puzzles. I was highly anticipating this game and it did not disappoint, but it was pretty short. It has a speedrun achievement that I got on my first playthrough while grabbing the vast majority of the optional collectibles on the way. 4/5.
Leap Year is a puzzle platformer that I will not be spoiling. It takes the knowledge based gameplay of games like Outer Wilds and Tunic and shrinks it into a fairly short package that is lovely to play. Don't put your expectations too high and you'll probably enjoy it. 4/5.
Cato is another puzzle game where you control both a cat and a buttered piece of toast. When they combine, you can infinitely jump. I wasn't expecting anything from this game but it was solid. There were a couple of devious puzzles in there that I had to take a break and come back to. 3.5/5
(I'm realizing partway through that I didn't think about how long this was going to be, but now I'm committed to it).
Lingo can be easily described as "Antichamber but with word puzzles". You have a confusing space where walking to the end of the hallway and then walking back will take you to an entirely different area at times mixed with a bunch of word puzzles where the rules are abstract and should be learned on your own. (You may want to write a list of what you think the rules are as you play). It's a great puzzle game that is only hindered by the fact that I am two puzzles away from 100% completing the first area and I have no idea where they are and I'm lost in an infinite maze. Help. I don't even get an achievement for completing these last two puzzles. I'm just addicted now. 4.5/5
Vividlope is not technically a puzzle game, but it is basically Q*bert but ten times better. You need to stratagize how you move and jump around the levels to not only color all of the tiles but to ensure you have a manageable path at the end of the level where the enemies disappear and you are judged harshly if you hit a tile that is already colored. 4/5
Wilmot Works It Out is a chill puzzle game where you solve a bunch of tile-based puzzles by sorting the pieces, some of which are delivered incomplete at first. It's fun, but the new game plus is infinitely better by giving you every single puzzle piece at the same time, forcing you to sort through all of them to solve the puzzles. 3.9/5
Those are all of the ones that I've played since swearing to drop puzzle games for a while. I'm on a bit of a roll right now, so here's some more.
Paquerette: Down the Bunburrows is an amazing puzzle game about adventuring into bunny burrows and solving puzzles to capture bunnies and keep them. The game is already great just getting to the credits, but as you dive deeper and deeper you slowly start to find more and more mechanics until you've gone so deep that you begin to lose your mind at how in the world you're ever going to 100% complete it. This was one of the ones I dropped when I got stuck, but I had to get really stuck before I was willing to drag myself away from it. 4.8/5.
Void Stranger is a game that I have to be very careful when describing. Knowledge is everything in this game. There are hundreds of tile-based puzzles, unknown mechanics, well-kept secrets, forbidden knowledge, and a surprising story. This game only has one achievement and you can gain and lose it depending on whether or not you meet an in-game requirement! This is one of two games I've seen that can take away your steam achievement under certain circumstances. (The other is Zeroranger, a bullet hell game from the same developer). It may seem tedious at first, but it goes incredibly deep. There is no description that can prepare you for this one if you manage to delve to the meat of it. Void/5. (I haven't finished it yet, but I'll be back!)
The Forgotten City is a time-loop game where you need to communicate with the citizens of an ancient roman city and help them with their problems to figure out how to stop the loops and potentially stop the destined destruction of the city. This is another game that I refuse to spoil (although I was tempted to explain the basic premise of the golden rule). 4.5/5
That's finally the end of my never-ending ramble. If you actually read all of this, I'm impressed. Hopefully at least one of these games grabbed your interest. That's part of the reason I made the discussion thread in the first place. To find more weird and interesting games.
Games I am familiar with
Duskers
Factorio
Rain World (If you play any of these, please play this one).
Vision Soft Reset
Games that are new to me
Abathor
Dap
Frebbventure [Profile Features Limited]
Hyperspace Delivery Service
Mouthole [Profile Features Limited]
Mu Cartographer (No Achievements)
Psychroma
Rifter
Shelter 2
Super Grappling Gecko [Profile Features Limited]
Teabat [Profile Features Limited]
Anything by resnijars (Mibibli's Quest, Manglepaw, Stardust Demon) (No Achievements)
Anything by Arkhouse/Arkhouse Telegraph (Mirage of Dragon, D1896, Cube Gothic, Saturn Quest) (No Achievements)
Out of all of these, the ones from Arkhouse are some of the weirder ones. They may not even be good games, but they are fascinating to look at and probably just as interesting to discuss.
Edit: I was also planning on mentioning TowerClimb, but I forgot. It looks like an amazing roguelike and the only reason I haven't touched it is because I have a hit or miss track record with the genre. (I'm decent at Rabbit and Steel, but not great at Spelunky, if that helps judge my inconsistent skill). TowerClimb unfortunately does not have any achievements.