F2P (not gacha) but pretty good imo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/802930/The_Rainsdowne_Players/

Mega Knockdown a turn-based fighting game that successfully adapts the best part of fighting games: throwing rock four times in a row because you've gotten in their head well enough to know they're gonna throw scissors four times in a row.

(note the above is an old clip, the placeholder frames have since been filled in)

I'm glad to see these threads again! They're fun.

Ash & Adam’s GOBSMACKED (37 Steam reviews)

This is a single-player arcade FPS. You battle robots in a series of arenas with a set of wacky weapons, with shops in between. At the start of each run, you have to buy yourself a starting loadout using the money you got from previous runs, but you can’t choose the same items as your last run. Buying an item for the first time at a shop unlocks it so you can choose it as a starter in a future run.

WORMHOLE (51 Steam reviews)

WORMHOLE is next-level Snake. I've written about it before! There are powerups, wormholes (obviously), and increasingly complex and cramped levels. The game's graphics and music get more intense over time and it becomes an oddly hypnotic action game.

Maybe Ten Bells

Solo dev who was pretty sad that it had slow traction on release because he put so much work into the game. I can see it now has over 500 reviews, so perhaps he got the reaction he wanted!

This is probably a bit cheating since it just came out, but we had A Fox Tale on our wishlist since 2021 and it apparently actually came out a couple months ago and we completely missed it!! I immediately went and grabbed it and yeah, it is good. Fox platforming, great story, really good level design and gosh the ART is just so good!

-- Frost

Supercow originally released in 2005 or something.

Re released: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1883570/Supercow/

King of kings: the early years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Kings:_The_Early_Years

A mediocre set of platformers interspersed with bible trivia. I played the crap out of them because it was the only thing other that super Mario we had.

Later we got Joshua and the battle of Jericho. A bomberman clone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_&_the_Battle_of_Jericho

Street Uni X is a really good action sports game of the Tony Hawk variety, but this time on a unicycle.

Can I suggest a game that isnt even on steam?

Handkerchief

What a great post idea, thanks OP!

My contribution is NeonXSZ, a 6DOF open-world ARPG by a solo dev. It's been a decade since it released, but IIRC, the dev cited Quake and Diablo as primary inspirations and the game has a native Linux version.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/296010/NeonXSZ/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3392510/Zexion/

A neat metroidvania with a built in randomizer.

Ed-0: Zombie Uprising - A japanese 3rd Person Zombie Action Roguelike. It's silly, it's fun, it's pretty hard sometimes!

A Family of Gravediggers

I thought of another one. This is an odd one, because I think the dev is actually quite well known: it's Yahtzee Croshaw, formerly of Zero Punctuation and now of Fully Ramblomatic. He's made a number of games over the years, but one that almost nobody ever mentions anymore is Poacher. (Note: link is to Archive.org rather than Steam; I don't think the game is available on Steam.) I didn't actually beat this one, as it ramps up quite a bit in difficulty as it goes on, but the basic controls and whatnot are very nice, and the humor is great. Here's Wot Rock, Paper, Shotgun Thought about it, since it's a bit of a faff to actually install at this point and Archive doesn't offer reviews and whatnot.

And my last post since I could recommend games for days xD.

Demonstar: Original Missions (1999 re-released in 2024 with some fine upgrades) not on sale but only 3 euros.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2577180/DemonStar/

ODDCORE (939 Steam reviews, Early Access)

Roguish boomer FPS where you travel to liminal spaces to shoot all the monsters. They're not scary if they're dead! Instead of having a map of encounters, you get 5 minutes to do as much as possible. Once you've cleaned out a space, you jump to the next world... unless your teleport gun glitches out and takes you someplace very weird. At any time, even during combat, you can jump to your home base to buy upgrades or extra time credit.

A game that holds a fantastically emotional spot in my heart is Jason Oda’s CONTINUE?9876543210. It has a mixed rating by the general public, but holds the very core of my faith.

At the start, a video game character dies, and is scheduled for deletion. Eventually, the garbage collector that filters through the computer’s RAM, deleting levels that have served their purpose, characters of memory damage and mangled speech, and reflections on what it it is to be dying, all deleted. The goal of the game is to find peace in the milliseconds of afterlife, however that happens.

we all fear deletion
those who were deleted
i took with me
their lightning, their prayer

https://store.steampowered.com/app/263340/Continue9876543210/

(yes! I got a downvote! Someone else knows this game!)

Weirdlands

Wintermoor Tactics Club, part tactical rpg part VN. Very cute and lots of fun

EDIT: https://store.steampowered.com/app/917840/Wintermoor_Tactics_Club/

No More Mages is a very short (for now) but also very inexpensive (for now) beat-em-up platformer in early access that was made by a fellow lemming. He made it known to me in a comment a few months back, I picked it up, finished it quickly, but definitely felt it had been worth tossing a couple of dollars at a fellow Fediverse user for! I’m looking forward to what happens with it in the future.

Message Quest - a silly little medieval PnC adventure with a stained-glass art style and a lazy squire as protagonist

The Dweller - you are the eldritch monster hidden in the ruins, hunting down archaeologists, mechanically a puzzle-platformer (may have served as the inspiration for Carrion)

Wow in this thread I don't know a single game

Let me try with this game that I bought a decade ago for 1€: Pizza Express - very nice chiptune music that matches the gameplay that is a mix between a visual novel and a simulation

Elder Scrolls Skyrim, really niche indie game. Just kidding!

Nikoderiko - really fun platformer that's kind of a mix of Donkey Kong and Crash. Currently on sale on gog (linked) and steam

Eh, I don't know how well the game is known, but I'll throw out A Robot Named Fight, since looking at Metacritic it seems like it never got much mainstream attention. It's also (unsurprisingly) on sale right now, only $3.24 in the US.

Anyway, the game is a metroidvainia roguelite mashup. The gameplay is more the Metroid side of "metroidvania" being very obviously inspired by Super Metroid. You traverse a randomly generated map, getting unlocks for future runs by accomplishing various things though out that run, think Binding of Issac's item progression.

Reassembly, a fantastic and beautiful simple shipbuilder with a great modding scene. My go-to game when I'm high and just want to chill with some pretty particle explosions....

(should we be upvoting the games we haven't heard of? Or just downvote only?)

Bionic dues

Esports Godfather is one hell of a genre soup: deckbuilder/autobattler/management game/single player MOBA? But trust me, it play way better than it sounds - at least if you're into deckbuilders and management games. My only criticism was that it is a little too easy, but even given that it was easy to sink a lot of hours into it. It's just fun making combos between heroes in battle, setting up the perfect deck through your players or engaging with all the million subsystems in the management mode side.

They did use AI art (supposedly trained on their own work) for the player portraits, so do with that what you will.

Sword of the Necromancer : Resurrection.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2782880/Sword_of_the_Necromancer_Resurrection/

Best played co-op. Wonderful story with a great ending. Truly beautiful and solid game play. Short 12hr game to 100% complete.

Only like 150 reviews.

Ex-Zodiac - retro star fox inspired rails shooter

Crushed In Time

A point and click in the same vein as There Is No Game by the same studio, that came out recently and that I haven't seen people talk about at all, unfortunately already past its introductory offer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHd657azVEI

eternam

Recursed is a very difficult puzzle game about recursion.

The Sea Will Claim Everything / The Lands of Dream - a very crusty "window" into another world, made by one of the writers for The Talos Principle. Quite personal, too, as you'll find out if you stick with it.

Not sure if this qualifies for the thread but on my phone, I've been playing Afterplace. It's a Zelda-like designed for portrait playing. Great little time sink.

Plain Sight - These flying ninja robots fight each other in small maps you can kind of orbit around. Fast paced and fun.

As a separate comment: Iji

Freeware game and an awesome gem. Great soundtrack, too

I learned a shitload about geography and culture from an old board game called "Globetrotters".

An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs

This is a delightful little indie game where you have to talk to stock photos of dogs and complete little unhinged quests. It's been on gdq in the awful block with the dev before, but only 221 reviews as of now

If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers - left my favourite for last, a free pixel art PnC horror adventure with beautiful graphics and great writing. I was so blown away that a game of such high quality was free, that I ended up buying the supporter pack :)

I've been playing Idols of Ash and Echo Point Nova.

Both are pretty nifty, don't usually see much conversation about either.

Little Rocket Lab - fun factory builder with Stardew valley vibes

Bound by Flame is an old, rather difficult, action RPG with an interesting premise: you’re transforming into a demon and the player’s actions determine how much you change.

Edit: messed up the name, it’s flame not blood.

I discovered totally by accident Proverbs.

Proverbs is a picross/minesweeper hybrid featuring a single ENORMOUS puzzle, inspired by Bruegel the Elder's 1559 painting "Netherlandish Proverbs".

In short, it's minesweeper with a twist. It's pretty relaxing, you can do it while listening to podcasts or YouTube. Also, what I like is that you never have to make hypotheses. Everything is solvable just by looking.

zero-k is very nice, opensource too. I think it started as mod for total annihilation or supreme commander and developed into its own thing.