I can think of a handful of games that, despite being games that I’ve enjoyed, never really became part of a “genre”. Do you have any like this, and if so, which?
Are they games that you’d like to see another entrant to the genre to? Would you recommend the original game as one to keep playing?
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Terra Nil. It’s an anti city builder. Land in a polluted wasteland, clean the soil, plant seeds, set up ecosystems, make sure they can persist without you, and recycle all your structures before you leave. Appreciate the beauty of the natural ecosystem you restored as you fly away.
I want more games like this.
I just started playing Terra Nil today, on your recommendation; I had a craving for a crafting type game, and remembered I had saved this comment two weeks ago. I’m really enjoying it, so thank you — I wouldn’t have known of it if not for you.
Pyre. Guess where my username comes from.
It’s a supergiant game so the usual is there: Great characters, interesting story, great dialog, fantastic art… very touching and inspirational all around. To this day it is the only game that has actually made me feel conflicted about playing well.
At a certain point in the story I just couldn’t, and it felt like my hands were sabotaging my game independently. Weird ass feeling. And purely for character reasons, nothing really to gain from it mechanically.
What I love about it was that this wasn’t really presented as a typical videogame dilemma. Nothing in the gameplay was different. It was just another “game” that I was expected to win, but one of my characters was desperately hoping to lose.
Well I lost that time and felt good about it. No game has made me make a decision that completely ignored the gameplay implications.
“Do you want to save this little girl or literally torture her and suck her life force? The evil option will give you immediate rewards but the good option will give you better rewards a little later and also the good ending!” Wow Bioshock, really tough choice there, thanks for putting my noodle to work.
I love Pyre, its the only game I’ve ever 100%'d. A lot of people consider it supergiant’s worst game, but it’s my #1 favorite game. If only the multiplayer had online play, I’d consider it perfect.
The game is worth playing if only to hear the custom song at the end.
Space Station 14!
There’s no other game like it. It’s so absurdly in depth! You can play super hardcore with loads of knowledge and be next to a total casual in the same shift both enjoying your time together!
It’s in early access on Steam right now. Ask and you shall receive!
Frog Fractions
Universal Paperclips
Freedom Force
Pilotwings 64Freedom Force
Oh, yeah, that’s a good one. It had a sequel, though, IIRC.
kagis
I assume that you’re talking about the superhero game that I’m thinking of, not the NES shooter.
Yeah, the sequel was Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich.
Can’t think of any other game that I’ve seen quite like those, though.
There are some above-view squad-based real-time tactical games, like Starship Troopers: Terran Command, but doesn’t have the focus on configurable and multi-aspect-upgradable powers that made Freedom Force interesting.
There’s also a similar discussion on Reddit, some months back, that lists some interesting “unique” games:
https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/14tqdqv/completely_unique_games/
Yeah, I agree with most of those. Some of my favorite mentions from that thread:
- SUPERHOT
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Baba is You
- Pony Island - and by extension Inscryption (haven’t played The Hex)
- Katamari Damacy
I’ll add:
- Perspective
- Manifold Garden
- The Bridge
And kind of the opposite, but I’ll list a couple of abstract genre games:
- 140 - platformer
- THOTH - twin stick shooter
I’m not familiar with Pony Island, but I’d say that Inscryption – which I quite liked – has got other games like it, as it’s a (good) deckbuilder. If I understand aright from skimming the description, what’s in common is really thematic – simple game with an “upgrade game” aspect tied to a horror theme. The plot gets gradually unfolded as you upgrade and has fourth-wall-breaking aspects, like the game starts to act differently, pretend to malfunction, etc.
Yeah, Katamari Damacy is definitely a “I wouldn’t have played it from the description” game that I found to be a lot of fun. One runs around pushing a growing sticky ball that keeps having objects attach themselves to it. The game has enormous scale change as the ball grows. Simple – almost a tech demo – but and surprisingly fun, and I can’t think of anything like it other than games in the series itself.
Inscryption
Yeah, it’s technically a deck builder, and that’s the gameplay loop throughout, but it’s not a rogue like deckbuilder like Slay the Spire (well, it kind of is at first). But it plays more like a puzzle game than a deckbuilder, but it’s not quite a puzzle game either.
But yeah, that’s the weakest of the bunch, and I only added it because Pony Island by the same dev is on there (which is technically a run-and-gun?).
Both have a popular genre at the forefront, but the game really wants you to look past that at what’s developing behind the game. And that’s what I think makes them unique. Labeling them as “deck builder” and “run-and-gun” don’t feel appropriate, despite that being the core gameplay loop.
There’s also some console game which I absolutely cannot remember the name of – I never played it, just read about people who had talking about it – that used a similar theme of simulating the game starting to break to try to have a fourth-wall-breaking psychological aspect. IIRC it would misdetect controllers being disconnected and stuff.
kagis
Yeah, I dunno, can’t find it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/biel8o/does_anyone_know_some_good_games_that_have_fake/
This lists some games with that thematic element, but I don’t think that the one I heard about is among those.
DDLC has something similar as well.
EVE Online AKA Spreadsheets Online, back when I played it in 2009. No idea if it’s the same now. Almost entirely player driven economy and factions (outside of hi-sec).
Elite Dangerous, sort of. No other Space Sim is on its scale (I wouldn’t really call something like Space Engine a space sim). Unique, but mixed recommendations because it’s a very shallow game in a lot of ways, but it’s got a cool vibe. Speaking of which…
Space Engine. Not really a game, so much as a universe-simulator. It is unknown to this day how a mortal could create something of this grandeur. Maybe the source code will be released eventually.
Someone else already mentioned Noita :(
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is the most realistic game ever made. No other game had made me ask “what would I do in real life?” before. Of course, this dies out the more you learn the meta, but your first dozen or so runs are special.
Minecraft is hardly unique now, but when it came out it was one-of-a-kind.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is the most realistic game ever made. No other game had made me ask “what would I do in real life?” before. Of course, this dies out the more you learn the meta, but your first dozen or so runs are special.
There are some other games that I’d call somewhat-similar. There’s that old Finnish game, whatsit called, is kind of similar in that it’s a wilderness survival roguelike. An innawoods run in Cataclysm can play kind of like that, though Cataclysm as a whole is a lot larger.
kagis
It never quite grabbed my interest the way Cataclysm has, but a lot of people like it.
Cataclysm, for those who haven’t played it, is a very complex open source open-world roguelike. The modeling of a lot of things, as the game has grown over the years, has become remarkably sophisticated, from local weather systems to things like very extensive (realistic) gun modding, vehicle (land, sea, air) creation and modeling, farming, NPC camps, cybernetics, mutation, sound/smell/sight tracking enemies, martial arts including weapons forms, skills, proficiencies, various types of real-world (and supernatural) diseases and parasites, brewing, modeling of fires, modeling of pain, temperature…it’s a bit of an organically-grown mishmash, but it’s become a game with an enormous amount of mechanics, albeit a very graphically-simple one. I would definitely recommend it to someone with the time and willingness to explore the game’s systems, which is not for everyone. You can just download builds yourself, or there’s a commercial version on Steam, if you want to support the developers.
Project Zomboid is very similar thematically to Cataclysm (zombie apocalypse, loot world for supplies to stay alive), but is far simpler in every respect, is real-time rather than turn-based, plays on handcrafted rather than procedurally-generated maps, has its zombie infections be incurable, and has combat that I really don’t like (though Project Zomboid also has a much gentler learning curve and a loveable raccoon mascot). I’m not sure if one could reasonably put it into the same genre. Maybe.
It’s important to note that Project Zomboid uses partial procedural generation, primarily to handle building interior furniture and loot spawning.
Gods Will Be Watching is the one that comes to mind for me. It’s a strategy game of sorts with about 7 or 8 totally different scenarios where you’re managing a very bad situation. In one, you’re holding hostages while executing a heist, and in another you’re wandering through a desert with limited resources. Each one is a balancing act, and a through line forms the narrative across them all. It was probably hamstrung by its punishing difficulty at launch, which was later addressed by additional difficulty modes, but there’s a lot of room to iterate on this concept without it ever getting old.
I’ll give an honorable mention to Terraria–largely because I had to explain it to someone recently and it was more difficult than I anticipated.
Yeah, you can just say “2D Minecraft,” but it’s more than that. It’s almost an RPG in terms of advancements and equipment development, and it’s very combat oriented. But it’s not really a sidescroller or a metroidvania type, because the digging and building plays a huge part.
Less genre defining, and more living in the liminal space between a lot of other genres.
Terraria
I’d probably put Starbound in the same genre, but yeah, those are the only games in the genre that I’m aware of. It’s pretty unusual.
I agree with many that have already been said, but I’ll add braid, dust force, and prison architect
“Giants: Citizen Kabuto”
It was a hillarious mix of everything. Super funny characters/story, great telling, fps, rts, asymetrical… All being super casual. Still on gog and still a joy.
“battlezone”
Best blend of rpg/rts/Story. So far i never saw one coming close that gameplay.
Maybe SimEarth.
This simulates a tile-based planet map. Animals grow and evolve, and things like atmospheric concentration and other aspects like surface albedo can be altered. More a toy than a game. Had a lot of fun playing with the levers.
1990 release – it’s still playable, though it’d feel pretty ancient and will not be very beautiful.
I haven’t played SimLife or Spore, and there might be some similarities there.
I’m not aware of anything else that’d be comparable.
EDIT: Liquid War. This is open-source and part of the GNU project. One has a map with some areas closed off and some open space that liquid can flow through. There are two or more “blobs” of liquid of different color; each is attempting to destroy the other. Your blob is attracted to your mouse cursor. “Moving into” a pixel of the other color eventually converts it to your own. If two liquids meet in a bottleneck, they tend to stalemate. One wins by getting liquid on multiple sides of the opponent’s liquid, so that one can move one’s own liquid from multiple directions into it. Maybe a bit closer to a tech demo than a full-on game. I wouldn’t call it mind-blowing, but it is free and as far as I know unique, and I had fun with it.
I never went very far into SimEarth (I remember getting a bunch of maxis’s simstuff in the 90s, and not having the patience to really get into some of them back then).
However, I did play Spore during its prime. It’s very shallow, on all levels. Don’t expect any kind of simulation in there, especially not physics or even basic biology and evolution really.
Its whole gameplay loop : design a beast, eat or make friends, be a tribe, fight or make friends, design a town and vehicles, fight or make friends, design a spaceship, fight or make friends and try to reach the center of the galaxy because I don’t know.
You can manipulate planet atmospheres in the space phase, but there are no variations : you can basically make planets “suitable” for life, and all life in the game needs the exact same parameters. There is zero room for experimentation and everything is basically just as efficient as everything else.
I almost forgot about SimEarth. For some reason I was allowed to play it in grade school computer lab. I wish they would remake it so I can recreate my sentient cephalopod uprising, except with graphics that aren’t complete ass.
I never played SimLife. But no, Spore is really not like SimEarth at all. As the other person said, Spore is disappointingly shallow on all levels.
I’ve got a couple games that maybe fit this category.
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Kerbal Space Program. This had a sequel coming out that apparently wasn’t going very well and was cancelled, so right now, the possibility of . Spaceflight simulator, where one can design and craft spacecraft and amospheric craft, as well as space bases. One can fly to other planets, set up bases, set up satellite networks, etc. There are some “build your own vehicle”-type games, but not as much of a hard sim as this. Has a campaign to progress through, where one performs discoveries and conducts research. I’d recommend this to someone who hasn’t played it and likes sim games.
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Kenshi. There’s a sequel coming out, so maybe it won’t be unique at some point. They player controls a squad that moves around the world in real-time – there isn’t an “overworld map”. The squad can be split up into multiple squads. One can build outposts and defenses and such and have something of an automated economy. There’s a tech tree. The world has various factions and dynamic control of regions, something like Mount & Blade: Warband. There are unique biomes to travel through. A fair bit of the world is placed. The world starts out in a mostly-hand-crafted, fixed state, but evolves over time. Character progression isn’t based on point allocation, but on specific experience; have a character get hurt, and over time his ability to take damage will rise, and so forth. I think that this is still worth playing, though it’s by no means a beautiful game and possibly (hopefully) will be surpassed by its sequel.
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Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. A real-time colony sim that can mostly run itself. One has indirect control for the most part; one directly controls upgrades, certain spell and structure abilities, and can spend money to create “incentive flags” to create missions for characters to fulfill. I don’t know if it’s right to call it a single-game genre – it’s a colony sim, and other colony sims exist, like Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and such. Populus and some god games have direct control over spells. But I don’t know of any other colony sim that plays much like it – most of the focus is on upgrades and on countering waves of invaders, and the gold economy is ununusual. The same developer tried making a sequel, but eliminated the “sandbox” mode, and turned it into more of a puzzle game, and that game didn’t do very well. One builds a colony in real time. There is no direct control over the individual characters, but for certain actions, one can spend money to incentivize them to do certain things. Characters level up and purchase equipment using gold they earn and that you expend on them to purchase items. Some of your control comes from things like building inns to cause them to spend idle time in particular locations. Building construction and maintenance is carried out automatically by peasants. As adventurers spend gold at buildings, it comes back to your control. I think that I’d have a hard time recommending today due to its age (you’re going to have 2d pixel graphics that are going to be tiny on a current computer).
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Pinball Construction Set. This is a video pinball game where the player can use premade elements to easily put together their own pinball board. Very elderly now, dates back to the early 1980s. I remember being absolutely fascinated by this back in the day. Since that time, there have been many video pinball games, as well as some systems that permit some level of authoring capability (e.g. Visual Pinball can run user-created pinball boards), but these require a lot more effort and expertise and “real” authoring tools to put together a pinball board; one can’t just drop in in-game and start throwing elements together. I don’t think that I can recommend this, as it’s absolutely ancient today.
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Noita. It’s based on Liero, but really not at all like it. It’s an action-roguelite (well, that’s a genre, but nothing really similar beneath that level of specificity) that has side-scrolling over an open world. Various materials interact and have their interactions simulated at a per-pixel level, something like the “falling sand” genre. However, there are enemies running around, and the player controls a character that walks and floats through the world. One can find various containers of substances; one can try and mix things together to manipulate the world. One finds wands with spells; one can combine spells and various spell modifiers on wands to create all sorts of custom magic weapons that can range from utility to offensive. The aim, as with many many roguelites, is to try to use some luck and synergies between various items to come up with truly game-breaking combinations. I can definitely recommend this game; I found it to be very good value-for-money.
Honorable mention:
- Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising. This is not a single-game genre, but there have only been two successful games in the genre, and one, Carrier Command, is from the 1980s (and which I’ve never played). You control a carrier that moves along an island chain; it can create surface, amphibious, land, and aircraft and weapons for these. One has a limited number of AIs that can control some vehicles automatically; one can give general orders to these, control the vehicles directly. One can capture more resources from the islands to expand one’s abilities. There was a remake of Carrier Command, which flopped, and a sequel, Carrier Command 2, a relatively-recent game, but unlike Hostile Waters, is really intended to be played multiplayer; playing single-player places a very heavy load on the player…so I have a hard time placing it in the same genre, even if it has many similarities and was inspired by the same game. While I enjoyed it and I think that it could still be enjoyed, it’s getting a bit long-in-the-tooth graphically, and I recall it being a bit unstable even back in the day.
The Majesty Gold HD Edition is currently on sale at GOG btw.:
I always hurt inside when I remember Majesty. It’s such a cool concept that could be expanded much more today.
Rise to Ruins is maybe the most-similar game in terms of gameplay that I can think of. You initiate construction of buildings. You have automated characters build them (kind of like Majesty and Settlers). You can upgrade them, and they can provide equipment to characters. It has the same ramping difficulty of attackers. It doesn’t start with a map populated with monster generators the way Majesty does – instead, they show up over time. It has spells. You can build “defensive buildings”. It starts with the map covered with a fog of war. Your colony’s NPCs level up over time. You can put beefy, non-critical structures to act as something like a tank to absorb attacks while your characters make their way over to deal with a threat, kind of like Majesty.
It’s got some major gameplay differences, though:
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It’s one of the “unwinnable” games – absent some ways to kinda cheese the game and win, you’re just expected to survive for as long as possible. There’s a – I forget the term, but “corruption” – that spreads around the map, making terrain more-and-more hostile, and eventually overwhelming you. Majesty is about surviving the most-unpleasant bit, but if you can overcome that, you’ll win a round.
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No gold economy or NPC incentives. Well, IIRC one can create a “golem attractor” that will tend to make a that particular type of NPCs show up in an area, and you can create structures that NPCs will frequent to tend to make them hang out in a given area.
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A strategic map (which some may like).
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Survival aspects, like needing water and food.
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Path efficiency and building roads and such matters.
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The NPCs do get more-durable, but not to the extreme level that they do in Majesty, and they don’t quite work together in the same sorts of ways.
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It’s got more of a maze-building tower-defense aspect.
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Noita.
The main section of the game is the tip of the iceberg. Everything is hidden and blocked off, you got to make game breaking combos to start picking up the threads. Finding the mystery/puzzles feels like you no clipped out and found more content that’s not supposed to be seen. You feel like a crazy investigator hinging threads at a cork board once you got game play down.
That first time when you look at a world map and scroll out.
And scroll out
And scroll out.
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I love Space Harrier. There are a handful of other third-person, on-rails shooters (Sin and Punishment), but nothing recent that I’m aware of.
Also, Bangai O on Nintendo DS is insanely fun. I can’t think of any other games where slowdown is a necessary mechanic.
I can’t think of any other games where slowdown is a necessary mechanic.
It’s quite common in retro shmups, particularly bullet hells putting way too many sprites onscreen. Designers were always aware of it and intentionally balanced the difficulty around it, and some later games even include artificial slowdown just to preserve that feel.
There are a handful of other third-person, on-rails shooters (Sin and Punishment), but nothing recent that I’m aware of.
The original Rez isn’t recent, (though that’s a game that got a lot of acclaim for the aesthetics, mechanics aside). According to WP there’s apparently a new VR release; I think I remember seeing a video of it.
looks
Looks like it’s just a high-resolution VR remake, not a new game.
If Nintendo’s done a new Star Fox release, I imagine that that’d qualify.
kagis
Apparently yes, though the most-recent was Star Fox 2, which was eight years ago…a lot newer than Space Harrier, but no spring chicken.
Starfox never did it for me like Space Harrier. I’m not sure why. The primitive 3D maybe. Space Harrier creature design is just plain bizarre and intriguing.
Ah, gotcha. It also looks like it was considered to be very difficult (though any game from that era is gonna generally be a lot harder than present-day games).
I also remember a one-bit, not even polygon, but wireframe Star Wars third person rail shooter. It was on the early Mac, but I think it was a port from DOS or something.
kagis
Oh, wow. Apparently, it was actually a color arcade game, Star Wars, from 1983, and I’d just only seen the black-and-white Mac port until today. I wonder if those are true vector-display graphics, like Tempest.
kagis
Apparently yes. For the younger crowd, there was a point in time with CRTs where some video games actually plotted graphics on specialized CRTs by controlling the electron beam and plotting out the graphics with the point of the beam, kind of the way an old analog oscilloscope works. I bet that there have been antialiased remakes or clones of probably most of those vector-display games by now.
EDIT: Oh, I lied. It was first-person, not third person. You did have to dodge obstacles, but you weren’t looking at your ship from behind.
I actually played a bunch of that Star Wars vector arcade game at my local bowling alley. Yes, I am old…
https://store.steampowered.com/app/420840/BLARP/
BLARP! I suppose it’s a physics game but I’m not aware of anything else quite like it. It’s incredibly simple, addictive, and could only really exist as a VR game.
Shout out to Superhot and Noita, already mentioned in this thread.
Team Buddies for the ps1. Small team rts game, lots of unique units and the bright style is a great contrast to the fighting
