The niche and obscure games thread

[Rubbereon]

I remember watching a streamer who played a game where you climbed a tower (No, it's not Jump King), the dude decided to exclude the game's name from the stream so I had now ay to learn what it was and I still ponder about it all this time later. Also I remember seeing a video post on bluesky making fun of a dork by using his post as a copypasta for a boss fight in their own game. I have not heard from them since.

I'm hoping by making this thread I'm learning of games I have never heard of ever.

Rules:
1. No recent games, recent games still get somewhat promoted by platforms and oftentimes their own developers/creators too, so there's a very good chance you and I'll still encounter them by mere luck.
2. No game jam games. These are glorified prototypes and not full experiences like released games. Exception is made if the game jam game has a release version, example: Sacrifices must be made > Inscryption
3. Obviously, no games that range from somewhat popular to very popular, if you can easily get videos about it recommended to you it's disqualified. I'm not going off raw steam numbers (although that can be useful), but I'm going off by how likely I am gonna hear about the game anywhere, be it steam itself, youtube, twitch or anywhere else.

Note: It doesnt matter if it's AAA or indie, all that matters is that it's so rare I barely if ever heard anything about it online. If it's an edge case because it has an active fanbase, that's fine just bring it on anyway, just don't name any games that are renowned even if they lost their initial popularity.

I'LL START!

Ninjin: Clash of Carrots (On sale 90% off until October 19th btw)
Peppered
Crosscode
Cat Alley (This is a very old game for PC), and they remade it.
Knytt Stories

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Judero is a great game about a person who searches for a way to the glass mountain. It is a parable on life, and realized with claymation and a smashing OST.

The Sea will claim everything is a whimsical point and click adventure. Every mushroom has an individual text. It was written by the guy responsible for the lore of the Serious Sam games - this was rather surprising for me, as I hadn't booked them as story intense; and the story of The Sea will claim everything is damn great. I also recently played "The Strange and Somewhat
Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge", and it is also great - you get it bundled when you get the Sea will claim Everything, among with many other games of the series. They are among my favorite games of all time.

Hyper Rogue is one of the games I had the most fun with since reaching adulthood. It is a somewhat strange rogue like, where euclidean logic is disbanded. You start in a icy world, but your way might carry you through swamps, Lagoons where pirates rob each others treasures, alchemist towers, and so on. A good run is a strange, little story.

I wrote blog posts about Messages from the Universal Graveyard and Agentia. Both games are ingenious.

And, no niche and obscure game post from me without mentioning Siege!:

I still have a copy on my drive, in case anybody needs one :D

[♡QUAGSIRE ENJOYER♡]

hear is some of my favorite Neche games


boomers adventure in asmik world is a puzzle maze game maid by a company that dose not exist anymore
and it came out in 1989 on gameboy
hears a video about it

i think its quite underrated and good
also boomer is SO CUTE





fishermen's bass club is a ps2 fishing game by d3 publishers
its way more fun and good than a fishing game has any right to be
also i 100% completed it
go to 1:35 in the video to hear the amazing ost this game has
also the guy playing dose not know how to play lol

nobody ever talks about tetrisphear on n64
it Tetris in 3d but actually very very good
ALSO THE OST IS SOOOOOOOO GOOD
one of the most unique puzzle games

also hear is the best song on the ost

[shaggy]

I remember watching a streamer who played a game where you climbed a tower (No, it's not Jump King), the dude decided to exclude the game's name from the stream so I had now ay to learn what it was and I still ponder about it all this time later.

Maybe it was Icy Tower?


And niche game from me is Soldat. It was fairly popular 20 years ago. It's a 2d multiplayer shooter from side view. Damn, I spent a lot of time in this game, playing in leagues and all :P

https://store.steampowered.com/app/638490/Soldat/

--------

Anyone remembers liero? XD It's like a worms but in real time.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I remember both Tetris Sphere and Liero; both are great. There was a spin off of Liero, called Liero X (still somewhat available in some OSS repos, if I'm not mistaken). It had a big community back then, that created mods and new weapon sets.
Off the same devs who were probably behind Liero X - a group called the gaming universerse - was a also a beat em up, similar to MUPEN in your idea; characters were created with .ini files, but this was, as far as I know, not done by a community - instead, the game came with several somewhat balanced bootlegged characters and levels:

Also, I made a clone of Icy Towers a few years ago. It certainly is obscure :p.

[arcus]

I remember watching a streamer who played a game where you climbed a tower (No, it's not Jump King)

Tower of Heaven?

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Tower climbing is a whole genre, especially with the games created in the wake of KreedZ, so finding a single one with the information given in the OP would be like searching for a needle in the haystack ;).

[Rubbereon]

Maybe it was Icy Tower?

That's a name I haven't heard in a very long time, also I noticed after looking it up that they're making a port to publish it to steam in November.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3014860/Icy_Tower/

Tower climbing is a whole genre, especially with the games created in the wake of KreedZ, so finding a single one with the information given in the OP would be like searching for a needle in the haystack ;).

Would that help giving more detail? For example, the game is pixel artsy I remember it having a cold color palette (blues and grays and pinks). The Wikipedia page for Tower of heaven links to another game that does look like the game I'm looking for visually at least and its' called Katana Zero.

Just to be clear, the tower climbing might have been just one level instead of a full game, I didn't watch the stream long enough to know for sure because the streamer kept dying.

[Rubbereon]

I have two more examples I thought of during Monday.

1. Age of decadence https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/aod-interview.166500/ https://forum.quartertothree.com/t/possible-super-badass-indie-crpg/26760

2. Interactive Buddy, this is what Kick the buddy is based on, and I believe nobody knows about this ancient flash game because it was thoroughly overshadowed by the mobile copycat.

[Dynaknights]

Planet Laika is a Japanese 1999 PS1 game (with English and Spanish fan translations!) about... Uhm. A lot of things? It's a surreal sci-fi RPG starring a bunch of mentally ill and traumatized dogs on Mars during Christmas... probably. It's the weirdest game I've ever played, in my experience. Is it a pain in the ass to play? Yes, but I want more people to experience the weirdness this game holds.
Fair warning though: Planet Laika is filled with themes and depictions of child abuse, the psychological affects of such, and other topics of that caliber...

[milo]

All these tower climbing games being talked about reminds me of a tower climbing game I used to play back in the day called TowerClimb. Maybe this is it?? It's pretty niche, I used to play it a bunch back when it came out and haven't thought about it until right now. I think I'll give it a go again, I remember it being super fun and challenging.

As far as personal niche recommendations... I never see anyone talk about Gungrave. It's an action shoot-em-up game for the PS2 designed by Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of the manga/anime Trigun. I was obsessed with Trigun when I was younger and I just loved that this isn't based on another anime or anything, but was designed as a video game. It did later get adapted to an anime, which is pretty decent!

The game is pretty simplistic and is very much one of those "PS2 games" that came out, was kinda fun or quirky, and just slipped under the radar. I love it so much, the action is simple enough to kinda just turn your brain off and hit buttons, but the style is so cool I just love watching it all happen to me.

There was another sequel for PS2 called Gungrave: Overdose that took more inspiration from the anime and introduced new characters and moves. A lot of fun to play, but kind of lacking in the brooding atmosphere that gave the original a lot of charm.

Then, there was another sequel in 2022 called Gungrave: G.O.R.E. which I just saw sitting on a shelf at the store one day, having had no idea another Gungrave game was even being worked on. Naturally, I snatched it up and went home to play it. It's an alright game! It definitely captures the simple, frantic gameplay from the originals, but looks and sounds modern. A PS2 game for the current generation, for sure.

[killykiljoe]

Gungrave was one of those games that left me dazed the same way after a light gun arcade game. (Looking at you House of the Dead 4 with the dual submachineguns.) Kid me just held the same button all the way to the tower.

I played a game called Hit Others a long while back. You're trapped in a club moshing to a band. You have to find all the DJ equipment before the song ends and the whole club riots, or you could pick up stat boosting drinks to duke it out in the end. The game was a promotion for a real band Bullerslug. They only ever had one album though, the album in this game. Kind of a shame, because I really liked most of their songs. My favourite is bickering.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Wallachia: Reign of Dracula is also a fit here - it is rather obscure, and created by and for hardcore fans of Castlevania. Played it a few years ago with my flatmate, and it gave us a pretty good and hard time. The production value is great for a underground project.

[elkie]

I think my fave game to randomly bring up that's always new for people is a DOS game called Sleuth, which you can play on DOSbox and find here: https://dosgames.com/game/sleuth/

It's a quick and fun murder mystery game where you can input all the names, murder your friends or sonic, that sorta thing. I love it so much.