Obscure Vidya Thread

[Mеченый Яков]

Out of nowhere i just remembered farenheit too

 

[turntableToothache]

I've always loved Western attempts at imitating anime in the early 2000s/late 90s. We didn't quite understand the artstyle or themes nearly as well as we do now, and there's something very specific about the way it looks that can't be replicated; At this point, we've dissected the anime/manga style well enough to be able to replicate it, but back then any attempt would fall just short enough for us to say "Oh yeah, that's Western."

I actually prefer them to modern shows that try to imitate anime. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'd go so far as to claim 2000s Western attempts at anime were much better done than modern attempts, if shows like High Guardian Spice are anything to go by anyways:


View: https://youtu.be/1FpbxiAUSW8?si=2tP0FDLiwYCEN7an

 

[Mеченый Яков]

I actually prefer them to modern shows that try to imitate anime. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'd go so far as to claim 2000s Western attempts at anime were much better done than modern attempts, if shows like High Guardian Spice are anything to go by anyways:


View: https://youtu.be/1FpbxiAUSW8?si=2tP0FDLiwYCEN7an

Sounds like nostalgia biased tbh, i still preffer high guardian spice to whatever the hell this is

I never cared that much about other peoples artstyle, but there is something about this game that makes me say "I really hate custom robo artstyle so fucking much" it actually ruined the game for me.

Still this is my favorite thing about the videogame (fatherless behaviour)

 

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

Hipnagogia - LSD Dream Emulator inspired adventure game, literally about exploring dreams, but not randoom. First levels are cool and relaxing, last one are nightmares. It's cool that all levels are good designed and have unusual style. There is also kind of sequel, but I didn't like it as much as original one

Agony - very edgy and buggy horror game. We play as tormented soul in hell, where everyone is searching for the Red Godess. When we die we are becoming a soul and we have to posses new vessel to play as it. At the beginning we can posses only other martyrs, but later we can get into demons that was after us. It has great audio, magnificent level design. Graphic is ok, sometimes it sucks. Plot is fire, but it is recommended to know Christian lore to understand it fully. Game was buggy as fuck after relase, and got fatal reviews. Also it is not mainstream styled horror, so it is not for everyone. PC version is ok already, idk how about consoles but Nintendo port is still extra buggy

Succubbus - sequel to Agony. It has better reviews, and got better start than Agony. Edgy and filled with sexual content. We play as Succubus and fight with whole hell to get the revenge on Baphometh. Basically has gameplay like Doom from 2016 but we focus on meele here. That's nice one too. Oh, and we can customize our character ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) yes, You can change all curves. This game is really filled with sexual stuff, and it feels tryhard sometimes, but basically its cool

Infini - Enough of this edgy stuff! Infini is dreamcore/weirdcore masterpiece. It is game filled with weird riddles, in gameplay and plot. Basically every chapter has different gameplay, in one we will fly, in other we will free fall... this game is so weird that it is hard to describe it for me. At least look at gameplay, I very recommend that one

Osmos - indie game of same type liki agar.io But with beautiful visuals and soundtrack. We play as a cell, and we are eating other cells, all with great ambient ost witch such classics like Loscil, Gas or Biosphere. This game is dope

Slide in The Woods - typiacall PS1 styled horror from Itch.io. Nice idea, nice design, nice everything. Game for one evening, highly recommended

Tormentum Dark Sorrow - Point and click adventure game based on Giger and Beksinski. Nice one, cool plot, cool music, cool everything

Imscared - old indie horror game wich takes gameplay to Your deskopt, leaving You files on computer. Nice one, really, one of thie first indie games that took me into that vibe. Has creepypasta atmosphere, and it's game from times when Jeff The Killer was "cool". It makes me feel nostalgic, but it's very good game, really

Neko Yume - basically LSD Dream Emulator, but with new levels and with cats. Nice one

Yume Nikki 3d - Fangame, but really nice one. Controls works fine, and there are new levels and effects.

Lone Survivor - 2d horror game inspired by Silent Hill, but has clearly more of that dreamy vibe. Great soundtrack and story, lot of survival mechanics

 

[brentw]

Hipnagogia - LSD Dream Emulator inspired adventure game, literally about exploring dreams, but not randoom. First levels are cool and relaxing, last one are nightmares. It's cool that all levels are good designed and have unusual style. There is also kind of sequel, but I didn't like it as much as original one

View attachment 81419

Agony - very edgy and buggy horror game. We play as tormented soul in hell, where everyone is searching for the Red Godess. When we die we are becoming a soul and we have to posses new vessel to play as it. At the beginning we can posses only other martyrs, but later we can get into demons that was after us. It has great audio, magnificent level design. Graphic is ok, sometimes it sucks. Plot is fire, but it is recommended to know Christian lore to understand it fully. Game was buggy as fuck after relase, and got fatal reviews. Also it is not mainstream styled horror, so it is not for everyone. PC version is ok already, idk how about consoles but Nintendo port is still extra buggy

View attachment 81420

Succubbus - sequel to Agony. It has better reviews, and got better start than Agony. Edgy and filled with sexual content. We play as Succubus and fight with whole hell to get the revenge on Baphometh. Basically has gameplay like Doom from 2016 but we focus on meele here. That's nice one too. Oh, and we can customize our character ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) yes, You can change all curves. This game is really filled with sexual stuff, and it feels tryhard sometimes, but basically its cool

View attachment 81421

Infini - Enough of this edgy stuff! Infini is dreamcore/weirdcore masterpiece. It is game filled with weird riddles, in gameplay and plot. Basically every chapter has different gameplay, in one we will fly, in other we will free fall... this game is so weird that it is hard to describe it for me. At least look at gameplay, I very recommend that one

View attachment 81423

Osmos - indie game of same type liki agar.io But with beautiful visuals and soundtrack. We play as a cell, and we are eating other cells, all with great ambient ost witch such classics like Loscil, Gas or Biosphere. This game is dope

View attachment 81424

Slide in The Woods - typiacall PS1 styled horror from Itch.io. Nice idea, nice design, nice everything. Game for one evening, highly recommended

View attachment 81425

Tormentum Dark Sorrow - Point and click adventure game based on Giger and Beksinski. Nice one, cool plot, cool music, cool everything

View attachment 81426

Imscared - old indie horror game wich takes gameplay to Your deskopt, leaving You files on computer. Nice one, really, one of thie first indie games that took me into that vibe. Has creepypasta atmosphere, and it's game from times when Jeff The Killer was "cool". It makes me feel nostalgic, but it's very good game, really

View attachment 81427


Neko Yume - basically LSD Dream Emulator, but with new levels and with cats. Nice one

View attachment 81428

Yume Nikki 3d - Fangame, but really nice one. Controls works fine, and there are new levels and effects.

View attachment 81429

Lone Survivor - 2d horror game inspired by Silent Hill, but has clearly more of that dreamy vibe. Great soundtrack and story, lot of survival mechanics

View attachment 81430

Neat list. Only one I've actually played was infini. I got stuck on a level that was just too tough for me and rather than toughing it out I just moved onto something else. Interesting weird game though.

 

[Funk2]

Made an account just to post this,
I love this game!

Slay by Sean O'Connor, it's the only game i have on my phone. It was originally released in the 90s and got ported for mobile at some point. The local multiplayer is quite fun, the sounds are wonky at best but they become an interesting, almost hypnotic sorta rythim once your campaign get's really going.

You basically start out with a map of ranomized tiles that you can conquer to gain territory, which in turn gives you currency. The troops of each territory consume a certain number of currency so in order to win you must conquer with stronger and stronger troops while producing an excess of currency, otherwise the entire territory dies and must pass one turn, which is basically suicide on the hardest difficulty.

There is a multitude of strategies of conquering an enemy to starve them out. There are even foliage mechanics you can use to your advantage. This game is super simple on the surface with a very clear ruleset that makes it's exploitation super fun for me.

Originally found it through this video which gives you a nice overview if you're interested in trying it out.

Link

Heres an image of your average campaign. There are loads of levels, you can generate your own, and theres a wide variety of textures you can use.

Also if you know how to beat Paunn let me know, I can't do it lmao

 

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

Neat list. Only one I've actually played was infini. I got stuck on a level that was just too tough for me and rather than toughing it out I just moved onto something else. Interesting weird game though.

Yeah, Infini can sometimes burn Your brain. Do You remember wich level was it?

Made an account just to post this,
I love this game!

Slay by Sean O'Connor, it's the only game i have on my phone. It was originally released in the 90s and got ported for mobile at some point. The local multiplayer is quite fun, the sounds are wonky at best but they become an interesting, almost hypnotic sorta rythim once your campaign get's really going.

You basically start out with a map of ranomized tiles that you can conquer to gain territory, which in turn gives you currency. The troops of each territory consume a certain number of currency so in order to win you must conquer with stronger and stronger troops while producing an excess of currency, otherwise the entire territory dies and must pass one turn, which is basically suicide on the hardest difficulty.

There is a multitude of strategies of conquering an enemy to starve them out. There are even foliage mechanics you can use to your advantage. This game is super simple on the surface with a very clear ruleset that makes it's exploitation super fun for me.

Originally found it through this video which gives you a nice overview if you're interested in trying it out.

Link

Heres an image of your average campaign. There are loads of levels, you can generate your own, and theres a wide variety of textures you can use.

View attachment 81459

Also if you know how to beat Paunn let me know, I can't do it lmao

View attachment 81460

That looks nice, it reminds me Battle For Wesnoth somehow

 

[Boxerdog]

Lone Survivor - 2d horror game inspired by Silent Hill, but has clearly more of that dreamy vibe. Great soundtrack and story, lot of survival mechanics

Lone survivor its a survivor horror masterpiece, few games manage to scratch the golden era svh nowadays.

 

[DyingIon]

Is Drowned God still considered obscure? I like to put on a playthrough and take in all the info. Arguably the making-of + the story of the creator being off'd is more interesting.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNEPEshK9LM


Syberia on the og xbox is a phenomenal journey with such a cool aesthetic


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFFFZqcbTxc

 

[Funk2]

Yeah, Infini can sometimes burn Your brain. Do You remember wich level was it?



That looks nice, it reminds me Battle For Wesnoth somehow

Never heard of it but looks exactly like the type of stuff I loved playing in my childhood, have to check that out!

 

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

Ok, I will show some more known stuff but it's still something worth know
Warhammer 40000 Mechanicus - It's 41 milenium. Humanity is united under the rule of a totalitarian Imperium dominated by the cult of an Emperor deprived of consciousness and kept alive by special apparatus. In the Imperium, apart from the one true faith in the God-Emperor, only one religion is tolerated; Mechanicus cult. Its members pray to the dark Machine God Omnissiah and amputate subsequent parts of their bodies and brains, replacing them with mechanical implants intended to bring them closer to the holy machine.

In the game, we lead an expedition of tech priests that visits a planet that is the tomb of the ancient race of Necrons, who, like the worshipers of the Omnissiah, rejected their bodies and transferred into metal skeletons. Unfortunately, there is no attempt to reach an agreement, because the Necrons are pure abomination and desecration of sacred machines, and what's more, they don't pray to toasters, and in general, they are aliens and the Imperium is racist.

We fight those f00ckers in niceturn based combat system, wich is one of three segments of gameplay. The second one is the visiting to the tomb itself, which is straight from old RPG games - we move the team from room to room, sometimes we will encounter a fight, other times there will be a random event in which we have to make a plot decision. The third segment of the gameplay is staying on our holy ship, where we accept the mission and improve our Tech Priests.

Oh, and this game has DLC in wich we fight Hereteks (literally xd). Priests wich rejected the sacred dogmas of the Machine God and began to look at the Necrons as the perfect embodiment of the machine

Hellpoint - that game is dope. It is literally soulslike, or more Bloodbornelike but set in deep space, on a dark abandoned space station.

The vibe here is hard. It is something between Hellraiser and Dead Space with religious accent. The deeper we will crawl into space station, the more spiritual opponents we will have to fight to. Quite literally, also it has great ambient ost and some... random events. Once a cycle, a black hole hour appears during which random enemies, stronger than ordinary ones, will appear on the map. Kind of mini bosses

What really impressed me in that game is the fact it takes into account that we can't walk in a space without a suit; we will run out of oxygen or freeze. Since we're not fully human, it'll take a while, but still...

Yeah. Bosses are dope.

 

[brentw]

Ok, I will show some more known stuff but it's still something worth know
Warhammer 40000 Mechanicus - It's 41 milenium. Humanity is united under the rule of a totalitarian Imperium dominated by the cult of an Emperor deprived of consciousness and kept alive by special apparatus. In the Imperium, apart from the one true faith in the God-Emperor, only one religion is tolerated; Mechanicus cult. Its members pray to the dark Machine God Omnissiah and amputate subsequent parts of their bodies and brains, replacing them with mechanical implants intended to bring them closer to the holy machine.

View attachment 81485
In the game, we lead an expedition of tech priests that visits a planet that is the tomb of the ancient race of Necrons, who, like the worshipers of the Omnissiah, rejected their bodies and transferred into metal skeletons. Unfortunately, there is no attempt to reach an agreement, because the Necrons are pure abomination and desecration of sacred machines, and what's more, they don't pray to toasters, and in general, they are aliens and the Imperium is racist.

View attachment 81486
We fight those f00ckers in niceturn based combat system, wich is one of three segments of gameplay. The second one is the visiting to the tomb itself, which is straight from old RPG games - we move the team from room to room, sometimes we will encounter a fight, other times there will be a random event in which we have to make a plot decision. The third segment of the gameplay is staying on our holy ship, where we accept the mission and improve our Tech Priests.

Oh, and this game has DLC in wich we fight Hereteks (literally xd). Priests wich rejected the sacred dogmas of the Machine God and began to look at the Necrons as the perfect embodiment of the machine
View attachment 81487





Hellpoint - that game is dope. It is literally soulslike, or more Bloodbornelike but set in deep space, on a dark abandoned space station.

View attachment 81488

The vibe here is hard. It is something between Hellraiser and Dead Space with religious accent. The deeper we will crawl into space station, the more spiritual opponents we will have to fight to. Quite literally, also it has great ambient ost and some... random events. Once a cycle, a black hole hour appears during which random enemies, stronger than ordinary ones, will appear on the map. Kind of mini bosses
View attachment 81489
What really impressed me in that game is the fact it takes into account that we can't walk in a space without a suit; we will run out of oxygen or freeze. Since we're not fully human, it'll take a while, but still...
View attachment 81490Yeah. Bosses are dope.

I wouldn't exactly call Mechanicus "obscure", but it is good shit.

View: https://youtu.be/9gIMZ0WyY88


And shame on you for not mentioning the best part, the fucking GLORIUS soundtrack.

View: https://youtu.be/0tDpoLXD3Js

 

[mydadiscar]

View attachment 81512View attachment 81514

I wouldn't exactly call Mechanicus "obscure", but it is good shit.

View: https://youtu.be/9gIMZ0WyY88


And shame on you for not mentioning the best part, the fucking GLORIUS soundtrack.

View: https://youtu.be/0tDpoLXD3Js

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKnAWcWnJJc

 

[y4k$ha]

I can't be the only one bros..

Nicholas' Weird Adventure

Help Nicholas get the DVD he wants and get out of the mall in his first-ever RPG!

www.newgrounds.com

 

[Pangolin]

I can't be the only one bros..

Nicholas' Weird Adventure

Help Nicholas get the DVD he wants and get out of the mall in his first-ever RPG!

www.newgrounds.com

That was indeed a weird adventure

 

[jaedaen]

Bitburner (F2P programming "game" on Steam with a hacking thematic)

Loom (Not exactly obscure, its just forgotten. A point and Click Adventure game)

Bitburner, LOOM?!, and a Hunter S Thompson quote. Awesome post! I loved Loom as a kid. I remember going to a ballet when I took a foreign exchange trip to russia, going to see swan lake, and having the craziest amount of deja vu in regards to the music before I remember where I heard it like 7 years before.

DonCherry7 put together a great playlist of all of the Swan Lake music featured in Loom, I sometimes listen to it for nostalgic purposes:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufu7cGMZSpc&list=PL5Ju9qKlMCcc5aFaabM5X4QLXd2dfgF58

I even use a picture bit of the loom itself for my youtube channel.

 

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

View attachment 81512View attachment 81514

I wouldn't exactly call Mechanicus "obscure", but it is good shit.

View: https://youtu.be/9gIMZ0WyY88


And shame on you for not mentioning the best part, the fucking GLORIUS soundtrack.

View: https://youtu.be/0tDpoLXD3Js

Fact, totally forgot about dope OST to play if You work with machines. I'm CNC Programmer/Machinist, and I play it to my machines. Life is good, but machine is immortal. Also that game is obscure af when You get into lore. Inhuman techpriests with religion that tells im to cut off more and more of their body and replace it wich machine. Bruh. Basically all Warhammer 40k is Obscure as fock, but most of video games are focusing on SPACE MARINES, CHARGE, while mechanicus focus on something cooler

 

[Doctor Dirck]

So here's a handful of random games I've came across that are pretty obscure. I don't know a lot about most of them, but I can give you enough info to springboard off of.


Daedalus
This might not have been the best one to start out with, because it's not 100% a game. Daedalus I know of because in like 2013 I was looking for a Hunger Games game to play and of course they were all shit. Well Daedalus created a game within its library of programs and used its updates over time to piggy-back off of the Hunger Games hype around that time to promote itself. As such it of course has a Hunger Games game which I kind of like, but it also has this maze generator and solver. It's kind of hard to explain if you don't see it (Images below), but basically it can make standard mazes of varying sizes (up to a billion passages by a billion passages), but it can also purportedly make 4D and 5D mazes. It can also show different visualizations of a Mandelbrot set. It of course has games in it too, like the Hunger Games game I'd mentioned. It also has Pac-Man in its engine. It has a couple homemade games too the two most interesting are a game called "Grippy Socks", where you play as a psych ward patient trying to get well and leave in a sort of life-sim style gameplay, and another game called "Dragonslayer" that plays like a first person NetHack. I'll try not to 'wall of text' you right off the bat. Just check it out if you like the pics below.

Rogue Survivor

Rogue survivor is the game most of you probably have the best chance of knowing. It's a game similar in style to Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead in that it's a roguelike turn-based combat game about surviving against monsters. Rogue Survivor I found more accessible and fun than CDDA but that's just me. You start off as a civilian trying to survive a zombie pandemic as long as possible and every 24 hours you get a perk. There's dozens of perks to pick from depending on the character type you are, like civilians who might require less food, or soldiers who become more accurate with firearms. As time goes on though survivors are more likely to be weeded out and killed and zombies acquire staying power just by having the numbers and each zombie gets a perk every 24 hours as well and if a zombie kills enough civilians it gets to prestige to its next class becoming more durable or faster. As time goes on different events happen like Military supply drops/relief campaigns, gangs roaming the streets, and eventually highly equipped kill-squads that kill everything on-site. Unfortunately this game is abandoned but it's still fun.

Yu-Gi-Oh Cheater Lord

So this is kind of an odd one. It's a Yu-Gi-Oh fangame made in some RPGMaker engine where your goal is to topple a dystopian regime in a society built around Yu-Gi-Oh. I didn't watch or play much past GX so I don't know, but it's stated somewhere that this follows whatever the most recent production of Yu-Gi-Oh was as of July of 2022. Gameplay is sorted into three fairly basic segments. A supplementary segment where you build a deck to max one of several stats like Offense, Defense, Reliability, and Balance and then the next segment is part of the competition where you compete in tournaments and must decide the best strategy or method with which to cheat. This part kind of sucks because the game seems to offer you choices at some points that are like "Would you like to cheat, or play it fair?" and then I'd select "Play it fair" and you'd get a response like "You consider playing it fair but hesitate and decide to cheat, you're penalized for this indecision." Maybe it's my fault for trying to play fair in a game called "Cheater Lord". The final segment is a puzzle segment that comes about randomly from decisions you make in the game like say putting a card from your sleeve into your hand where you have to outmaneuver these robot things that chase you in a mini-game to decide if you succeed. This game is honestly pretty bad but maybe someone who is more invested in Yu-Gi-Oh or has more patience than me would enjoy it. Oh yeah, also it currently has 3 100$ bounties in the game right now where if you take a screenshot showing a secret reward you've earned as well as the ending screen and your ending save and send it to the creator he'll paypal you 100$ supposedly, and there's 3 of those secrets in the game sooooo

HOME GAME

Alright so on the level, I don't know a ton about this game. It's kind of what it looks like on the tin, which is a dream-like Yume-Nikki sort of game. You run around and interact with different things which fill your inventory (which is enormous) with interactables sort of like Yume-Nikki's effects but the items in this game are a bit more specific-use and nuanced. There's 4 games in this collection of games, Classic, 1, 2, and 3. All but Home 3 are on sale right now for 100% off so if you're trying to get it now is the time, but it has gone on sale for 100% off before and probably will again if you don't feel like pulling the trigger on these games for 4-15$. I wish I could tell you more about this game, but I didn't really play it much but it's surely funner than the short time I played it so I feel it's worth mentioning here. I'm surprised honestly that it doesn't have a bigger following than it does right now because it seems really complex and deep (in length and complexity, not subject matter) which I suppose might be intimidating too.

IFSCL : Code Lyoko Game

So I'm sure a lot of you probably know about Code Lyoko, but what you may not know is that someone has been working on a fanmade game/simulation of one of the main character's (Jeremy) roles in the game. You perform basically the functions of the show in the game, you virtualize your friends and equipment for them to use to combat viruses (in so many words) to save the world from a supercomputer's ruinous escapades. So having now looked at the game after a year or two since I last played it, it looks like some of it may now be in 3D? Regardless, I can tell you that the main gameplay is solid and works as you might imagine/expect. You scan these virtual planes for problem areas and then beam in your friends to fight their way to the towers to fix them. If they encounter any obstacles be it terrain or enemies you can digitize different equipment to send your people. I don't know the end-game or how it loops because it was a bit beyond my scope of understanding but if it looks cool to you check it out. It's been in the works for 13 years now.

Anyways I have a few more I could post but I already feel like this post was wayyyyy too big so I'll leave that there for now. Hope you guys saw one that you thought looked cool at least.

 

[MySpace Tom]

Dusk - A bit known but still worth mention - it's boomer shooter with a Blood vibe

If you want a boomer shooter with a Blood vibe, check out Cultic. It's basically a "modernized" Blood and way less talked about than Dusk (though Dusk is fun)

 

[Mеченый Яков]

The screamer, a fairly hardcore rpg for the pc98, the aesthetics are superb

(smh some of the art reminds me to Katsuhiro Otomo, idk if someone traced his work or the artstyle is just very similar)

Funnily enough from this game came the "Dehumanize yourself and face to the bloodshed" meme

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHo7npmGcHU