Hidden Gem you're playing or have played—with explanation

[Brian Boru]

One of the nice things in gaming is tripping over a neat little game that you like more than you expected. Or maybe it's a larger title that got overlooked by most people, but has qualities which appeal.

Tell us about it, and make an effort to explain the appeal so that the rest of can gauge if it's of interest.

Which means, all one-liner and similar low-quality posts will be sent on the long road over a short bridge 🏞

 

[Brian Boru]

Mini Words: Polyglot

Save 30% on Mini Words: Polyglot on Steam

The most used nouns in English. Can you recognize them in another language? Unscramble frequently used words in a unique mix of logic puzzle, word search, and hangman.

store.steampowered.com

Just picked this up for $1 in the Steam Summer Sale. I'm a big fan of word games, and interested in languages, so it was an easy choice at 50% off.

Now that I've played 20 of ~300 levels I can recommend it at full price. Tiny install of <100MB—yes Mabel, that's tiny these days—and the simple mechanics work smoothly.

It's all about words in various languages, but aimed at English speakers. In Options you select which of the non-English languages you want in the game—if you pick all, you'll get Spanish, French, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, German, and Italian. I left them all on, but will probably disable Russian from now on due to the Cyrillic alphabet.

Gameplay is simple. You get a Hangman-like line for the English word, with the first letter filled in. So if the word is 'dog', you'll see:
D _ _
Nearby is a panel where you can scroll thru the same word in the languages you're playing. So if Spanish was showing, you'd see 'perro', whereas if German was showing you'd see 'Hund'.

In the main part of the screen is a layout like a 'word search' game—a box of letters which contain D, O, G and some extra fillers. You have to click on D, and while holding the mouse button down, drag thru O and G.

A lot easier to do than describe! The non-English words are spoken as you scroll thru them, so the game serves as a vocabulary aid too if you're learning a language. It claims to have 1000+ words.

Neat game, well done—I score it 85% for Quality, Enjoyability, Value … and 80% at full price of $2.

 

[Zloth]

I'm still technically "playing" Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children, even though I haven't started it in a few months. The Devs keep trickling out little bits of new content and I'll catch up every now and again.

The game is a X-COM style game, but with a more character development and weaker death penalties. There's more detail in the combat and the number of skills you can have a given character learn is insane. You'll eventually be able to capture and train some of the smaller monsters, too - and they also have a big pool of skills. Then you'll get to build robots - and they also have a big pool of skills! You can't customize what anybody looks like, but the way characters play is very different for different players. Lots more detail in my topic.

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children on Steam

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is the first season of a turn-based strategy SRPG that takes place in the world of Troubleshooter.

store.steampowered.com

Which means, all one-liner and similar low-quality posts will be sent on the long road over a short bridge 🏞

I didn't know the forum could handle non-Euclidean responses!

 

[ZedClampet]

My life is an endless stream of weird, little-known games. The two most recent that I enjoy(ed) were Drinks with Abbey (free) and Golftopia ($19.99).

Drinks with Abbey is a very short, choices matter visual novel where you are on a first date with someone you met via a dating app. It was much more realistic than something like Emily is Away. There are at least 7 different endings, but I got ending 7 first, which was apparently the most positive ending (getting an enthusiastic 2nd date offer), so I didn't really feel like going back to try to get worse endings. Since it's a free game, I just took my win and moved on.

Golftopia is kind of like a Roller Coaster Tycoon sort of game where you are building golf courses. It has cute, top-down graphics. The user interface is really solid and building courses is very intuitive. You start off with building a pro-shop and your first hole, and then little golfers start showing up to play. You earn money when they finish a hole. Like RCT, you can see what they are thinking, what they like, what they think about the difficulty, etc. As you earn more money, you add more holes and more amenities to your course, improve your club house, etc. You can either play it straight and build a normal golf course, or you can add all of these crazy contraptions to kind of make it like a weird mini-golf course. You can definitely get caught in time trap with it.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Not playing right now, but it was so good that I have to mention it: Yes, your Grace.

You play as King Eryk of Davern and have to rule your kingdom (obviously), whilst also taking care of family affairs. Every week some people of Davern, your family and other Lords and Ladies come to your throne hall to ask you for help and favours. You'll realise quickly that you can't satisfy the needs of everyone. You have to manage your finances and supplies on a week to week basis and on top of that, you'll have to prepare for a war (no spoiler).

I didn't expect much when I started the game, but I was in it's bane very soon. I played it through three times so far. You can't influence every single bit in the story, but you can have different endings depending on your decisions/actions, and just complete the game in another way than your previous run for example. I had lots of fun with it and it's worth every penny they ask for. (In my opinion!)

The story can not only be funny, but also really, really sad. (It broke my heart a little, I don't know about yours) The soundtrack is awesome as well.

Yes, your Grace is definitely a hidden gem. It's still on Xbox Game Pass (PC), so if you have that sub, check it out.

 

[Sarafan]

Currently not playing any hidden gems, but the last noteworthy game from this category was Loria. It's an RTS which is basically a Warcraft 2 clone with some elements incorporated from Warcraft 3. Even graphics remind me heavily of its older brother. Gameplay is also very similar. Basically the game has everything which made Warcraft 2 and 3 successful. Although I think that Warcraft provides a little more fun, I also consider that it's hard to find in Loria something that's done bad. Maybe the story could be better, but hey, Warcraft 2 didn't have a great plot as well.

The RTS genre is quite niche these days, but Loria makes a really good work in reminding us why this type of games was very popular in the past. And what's important, it's available for free on GOG and Steam!

Loria

Loria Demo Loria is a homage to classics from golden era of strategy games, with modern

www.gog.com

Loria on Steam

Loria is a homage to classics from golden era of strategy games, with modern spin on controls and user experience.

store.steampowered.com

If you like this genre, give it a try. These are really bad times for RTS fans.

 

[Brian Boru]

Yes, your Grace

Thank you, wishlisted

I mean damn you, another added to the TBP pile—if it ever makes it out of the WL pile, of course

Loria … available for free

Oh great, now they've found a way past the WL filter

 

[i0880]

Road redemption

Is a rouge like game where you play as a biker and fight with other bikers with melees or guns until you reach a boss and you compelete the game,i peesonally don't like rouge like games but this one got me hooked, what makes the game a fun game is mainly two points, first the challange in the game is too good, it's not very easy to the boring level nor it is too hard that it's too frustriting, the difficulty gradully increases as you progress and become better at the game, secondly is the action feeling in the fighting that makes you go "hell yeah" when you knock down an enemy or push him down from a bridge... it's just the best.

 

[Brian Boru]

A 10-min Logitech video with these 8 Hidden Gems:
1 Signs of the Sojourner
2 Raji: An Ancient Epic
3 The Pathless
4 Later Alligator
5 Afterparty
6 Stonefly
7 Overboard!
8 Brigador

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU5qpN4HYFU

I haven't played any of them, have you?

PS as currently playing gems has run its course—thanks all!—I've edited the thread title to include Gems you've played in the past. As before, please make an effort to explain the appeal so that the rest of can gauge if it's of interest.

 

[DXCHASE]

Im not sure if this is much of a "hidden" gem, but it was off my radar until the day before it was released:

The Ascent

A twin-stick shooter set in an awesomely designed cyberpunk world, i think its actually better than CP2077s! Very fun, free on gamepass to try (windows version is kinda janky though), great soundtrack, really worth checking out.

 

[Brian Boru]

i think its actually better than CP2077

The Ascent looks fantastic indeed! Steam reviews suggest it's launched in a similarly broken state tho.

 

[Enfield]

Gates of Hell: Ostfront - fantastic WW2 RTS in the Men of War style of gameplay. The level of detail and historical accuracy is really fantastic. Raptor and Shermanator have covered it extensively on youtube.

 

[Brian Boru]

The Ascent

Here's a Gameranx review:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBuM10IdosI

 

[Zloth]

But major(ish) websites are reviewing it. It's not hidden anymore! I guess it has... Ascended?

 

[Yggdrasill]

I'll give it a go once I renew my game pass sub.

 

[Brian Boru]

Here's one I've mentioned here before:

Steam Store

Steam is the ultimate destination for playing, discussing, and creating games.

store.steampowered.com

You have a very strong command tank and build supporting infantry robots in a mix & match way—this weapon, that armor, the other upgrade. It's short but I found it very fun, replayed it twice and will again. A mix of strategy, RPG and Tower Defense—amazingly it still only has less than 10 reviews on Steam, and is available for $3.50 until August 18th.