The Silent Age

I hope I get downvoted because it means this game got more attention than I thought, which it greatly deserves. I used to play it on iOS many years ago now. I haven’t played it in several years and probably still have all the puzzles memorized. It’s not filled with super obscure puzzles, but it’s the right amount of challenge with a fantastic atmosphere and vibe. Seriously, if you don’t completely hate point and clicks, give it a shot. It’s truly an excellent game.

Hyperrogue

Curse Crackers: For Who the Bell Toils is a GBC-styled platformer based around a throwable partner, fun movement tech, and a lite story around an acrobat in a mask.

Yellow Taxi goes Vroom is a 3D Mario collectathon platformer...where you can't jump. It manages an energetic atmosphere where many objects are bouncing in place, so even at its small filesize it has a lot of visual appeal to it.

I realize I didn't set a rule for if you've only heard of one game in someone's list; I guess use your judgment. If you'd like, forgive one if another presented an interesting suggestion.

KeeperFX: an opensource Dungeon Keeper remake and fan expansion. It's a '97 retro game with a 3D map and 2D sprites where you manage a dungeon and kill the good guys.

https://keeperfx.net/

I also mod a community about all Dungeon Keeper like games here Lemmy: !dungeonkeeper@lemmy.world

Until Then - a beautiful adventure game/visual novel that’s a great coming of age story with inter dimensional time travel later on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHd657azVEI

eternam

Lost Skies

It’s a co-op exploration, base-building, and survival game set among floating islands in the clouds. Unlike most base building games, you take your base with you, in the form on your airship, which you have a lot of freedom to design how you like.

The main gameplay loop involves exploring new islands, solving puzzles and fighting enemies to gather loot, and using that loot to upgrade your ship. When you feel strong enough, you challenge the region’s boss, which drops loot that will help you progress to a region of a higher difficulty tier. There are 4 tiers of region difficulty and many regions of each difficulty.

The game has had some drama regarding leaving early access well before it was ready, but the devs are continuing to put significant work into the game, and it’s in a good state now, but with a fairly small community.

Currently on sale 50% off (~~$25~~ $12.50)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931180/Lost_Skies/

Suzerain is an underappreciated, text-based, role-playing political simulator. I wish there were more games out there like it.

Levelhead is a Mario Maker-esque platformer with a huge emphasis on user-made levels and a very powerful level editor. It's not too active right now but there's thousands of awesome levels already made that you can play. The game is dirt cheap, too.

It isn't unknown and almost 10 years old but it's mostly overlooked. A great card game >> Faeria

Couldn't find another game like this.

Free Stars: the Ur-Quan Masters. 391 reviews on Steam although anyone olders than 45 might have heard of it as Star Control 2.

Totally free and a great (retro) game that holds up well. Sci-fi, exploration (make sure you have something to take notes on) and great lore.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2645580/Free_Stars_The_UrQuan_Masters/

Monster Loves You! - monster-raiser CYOA RPG with meaningful decisions

Rakuen was a great game I bought on a whim last year and it was a great random purchase. Kind of similar to old school Zelda but without the fighting, just trying to collect items to progress the story.

Reminds me a lot of To the Moon which is another fantastic game but I think that one is a lot more well known.

Home - an atmospheric horror walking simulator with pixel graphics. I remember the story blew my mind when I played it a decade ago.