what obscure video games do you like?

[sylviesland]

hello!! im a big fan of weird and niche video games (especially if they're released outside of my continent; north america to be exact) and i wanted to see other people's favorite weird games! preferably not something extremely popular, although if you say something like yume nikki that's fine. but if you have any examples of some very underground games, please tell me! btw, the game doesn't have to be old, nor does it have to be on recent gen consoles. also it's totally okay to list a game that might be popular where im from, but isn't popular where you are!

i'll go first; some of my favorite niche games are vib ribbon, gregory's horror show, cubivore, this one old online cat game i forgot the name of (if i can, i'll post an image of it from pinterest), and doko demo issyo!

[ZinesByLennon]

Ok I wouldn't say I LIKE this game but it's definitely fun to play and interesting at the very least especially as a rhythm game. It was released for PS2 and only in Japan. It is called "Dog of Bay"

I think an English patch exists but I've yet to try it out.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

but if you have any examples of some very underground games

I've a blog about underground games!

Also, some of my favorites are:
-Hyperrogue - Imho, one of the best fantasy games ever made. A roguelike in an non-euclidian, evershifting world.
-Agentia - A digital poem. A great one
-The sea will claim everything - Great poin't and click adventure
-Judero - Weird celtic adventure game.
-Wallachia: Reign of Dracula - Highly difficult Castlevania worship

I also heavily recommend "King of the Dragon Pass" as great, unconventional CRPG.

[killerscreen]

One of my favourite obscure games is Opoona for the Wii!

I think the team for this game had a huge appreciation for art and design, I've never before played an RPG where your character has an "art" stat that increases when you look at paintings and sculptures. There is also an entire catalogue of said artworks to find and complete. If I recall correctly, one of if not the main artist for the game is an architect, which must explain the game's pride in its aesthetics and scenery.

I absolutely love the game's vibe, and I think some people on this forum would, too.




I've already found someone calling it "the most frutiger aero game ever made" just looking for these images and I wholly agree. I kind of hope it catches on in that community. The way it looks and sounds (the OST is great too) is just too good to be left forgotten.

[MediocreMetastasis]

Haven't played it but I'm indoctrinated by the eeriness that is Bad Day on the Midway. It was a interactive point and click for the Album of the same name by The Residents where you have to get to the end of the night before everyone succumbs to the plague or gets murdered by the serial killer on the loose(yes I'm not joking). The main feature of the game is being able to see the point of view of most of the character, you can see their thoughts, control them, each character has a distinct personality, motive, and ending.

The craziest fact is David Lynch was going to direct a tv series based on the game. The script was never agreed on before getting cancelled but it's crazy that it could've happened.

[candycanearter07]

Two games that I love for opposite reasons that are both pretty obscure (at least from what I've seen online) is tERRORbane and ProgressBar95.

PB95 is very obviously a mobile game ported to desktop (except if you're like me and never looked into it for years and assumed it was original). Thankfully it's pretty cheap on steam and has 0 ads, unlike some mobile ports. I love it because of how simple the gameplay is and how it nails the asthetic of EVERY Windows (and mac) version. I do mean every version, from DOS to 11, and macOS 1 to whatever the latest is called nowadays. It does a really good job with theming. I will say it takes a while to unlock stuff, considering nearly every achievement for the higher skins are marked as golden/rare, but it's a really fun game to start up and make a bit of progress on.

On the complete other hand, tERRORbane is a game entirely about its story, with very little "real" gameplay, beyond scripted choices. It's like the Stanley Parable but with a less British narrator, and its taking more explicit jabs at "unfinished" and "completely out there" RPGmaker games that are so buggy that the main objective of the game is finding all of them. Beyond the jokes and stuff, it has a really nice message about game dev and creativity and stuff. It's still not something you'd necccesarily go back to play after completing, but it's a pretty fun 30 hours.

[xolta]

As A dinosaur loving kid Evo search for eden for the super Nintendo hit me like an atom bomb. Man that games wacky mix of action jrpg anime insanity plus prehistory has a mood and tone that no game has never been captured again.  Like its the game Id wish Square Enix would remake as its sadly aged like milk game play wise. One Day I will play the pc-98 original.

Also dat music.

[starbreaker]

Before it got remastered for modern consoles, I would have said Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. But if a game is popular enough for a remaster to be profitable, then it isn't exactly obscure any longer.

Nor am I going to say that the remaster shouldn't have happened. To the contrary, I'm glad that it did and that people who didn't know about this game in the PlayStation 2 era are getting a chance to play it. Likewise the recent remaster of Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs the Soulless Army.

I still hope to see ATLUS do a remaster of Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner. And I would love to see Square Enix do remasters of Xenogears, Bushido Blade, and Vagrant Story -- or get From Software to do the latter. Actually, a Vagrant Story remake by From Software would probably be fucking metal since Vagrant Story was kinda Soulslike about a decade before Demon's Souls first came out in 2009.

I'm tempted to mention Koudelka, Shadow Hearts, and Shadow Hearts: Covenant, too. Not likely to see those get remastered or remade, though; their developer Sacnoth got absorbed into Aruze, and Aruze got out of the video game business. I also think Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey would benefit from a remake and wider release on multiple platforms in the wake of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's breakout popularity. Xbox 360 was the wrong platform for that game, as it was for The Last Remnant, a SaGa title in everything but name that did get remastered.

And I would love to see Sega re-release the original Phantasy Star games.

[xolta]

I'm tempted to mention Koudelka, Shadow Hearts, and Shadow Hearts: Covenant, too. Not likely to see those get remastered or remade, though; their developer Sacnoth got absorbed into Aruze, and Aruze got out of the video game business. I also think Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey would benefit from a remake and wider release on multiple platforms in the wake of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's breakout popularity. Xbox 360 was the wrong platform for that game, as it was for The Last Remnant, a SaGa title in everything but name that did get remastered.

And I would love to see Sega re-release the original Phantasy Star games.

I love the shadow hearts games. Relay wish more jprgs used a system to the judgement ring. Its such a fun little gimmick.

[faultychips]

Obscure might be relative, but I know a few games that many people may not have played that I really enjoyed!

Okaeri! Chibi-Robo! Happy Richie Oosouji - a DS game about Chibi-Robo! You may have heard of the original gamecube game but I don't think many people have played the DS sequel, which is just as fun and runs surprisingly well on hardware (I played it on my homebrewed 3DS!). Many American/European chibi-robo fans haven't heard of it at all because it never got a release in English, but you can get an English translation patch here and use this site to patch the game rom if you have it (and if you don't, the roms subreddit has what you need). But yeah--super cute game about being a tiny robot who cleans up messes, with a charming if strange storyline, lol. If you liked the original game you should absolutely check this one out.


24 Killers - obscure indie games are made every single day but this recent one, 24 Killers, especially deserves to be less obscure; it's full of strange little monster guys running all over the place that you befriend by doing stuff like playing video games and racing a little car around. It's an extremely chill gaming experience; lots of really fun and funny dialogue in this one and I love the combo of clay artwork and 2D sprites. It's inspired by MOONrpg too, which is technically also obscure but is steadily making its own comeback now that it has an official re-release on switch and steam.


The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories - I'm honestly not sureeee how obscure this game is? It's on steam and I think it was fairly successful... When I bring it up nobody ever seems to have heard of it, though, so I think that counts as obscure to some degree. But anyway- The Missing is about a girl JJ who loses her friend Emily on a mysterious island, and has to literally tear herself apart in order to make it through to find her. It's pretty brutal but I found the LGBT themes to be very touching and JJ's story of struggle and perseverance was very #real to me and I wish more people played or watched a playthrough of this game to see what I mean. (I know "good LGBT rep" may sound rich if you've played the Deadly Premonition games from the same director as The Missing aka Swery...but for some reason The Missing is way better about it than those games. You'll just have to trust me on it )

[KittyTheKat]

24 Killers - obscure indie games are made every single day but this recent one, 24 Killers, especially deserves to be less obscure; it's full of strange little monster guys running all over the place that you befriend by doing stuff like playing video games and racing a little car around. It's an extremely chill gaming experience; lots of really fun and funny dialogue in this one and I love the combo of clay artwork and 2D sprites. It's inspired by MOONrpg too, which is technically also obscure but is steadily making its own comeback now that it has an official re-release on switch and steam.

Aaaaa 24 Killers mentioned!!! I love this game so much, I played it shortly after it came out and immediately became enamored with it. The "endgame" is so cool if you like the game, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone. Definitely check this one out guys!!!

For myself, I recently played Siren, a horror game for the PS2. I think the third game in the series, Siren: Blood Curse for the PS3 got more publicity than the first couple, so if it sounds familiar that might be why. It's about a Japanese village where everyone has turned into zombies. The plot is kind of hard to unravel because the game isn't played linearly and how it progresses is difficult to figure out.

I'll be honest, I used a guide to get through most of it, but its atmosphere can't be beat! The main mechanic is that you can "sightjack", or see through the eyes of any enemy on the mission. That way you don't get caught off guard and sometimes they can give subtle hints of what to do by what they're looking at. It does get somewhat repetitive because you end up replaying missions a lot just by how the game works, but I didn't mind that much. It's worth watching a video about it at the very least!

[niko]

One of my favorite video games is a 3DS game released by Game Freak in 2013 called Pocket Card Jockey. You race horses by playing hands of solitaire and each horse can develop helpful traits as you gain experience. Once they reach maturity you can breed them to create stronger horses and eventually become a champion. The characters are entertaining, there's actually a bit of a plot, and the gameplay is super fun (for me anyway!)

I actually wrote a blog post about why I love it recently. There was a remake released in 2024 for Nintendo Switch but I haven't had a chance to play that yet.