Hello!
One of the things I really enjoy is unique, interesting or out-of-the box game design. It doesn’t have to be AAA game, it doesn’t have to be a perfect game, it can be pretty rough - but if it has a mechanic or design element that is somehow unique or original, I’m instantly in love with the game.
The problem is that such games do not usually get a lot of exposure, since it is after all a niche. And that is really a shame - in the past few years the most fun had with video-games was playing such smaller and shorter indie games with something unique or pretty clever, where I can obsess over the design and more importantly - get inspired. That leads me to my question - are there any communites or blogs or content curators that are about this kind of smaller, maybe unpolished, but original games? Or what games would you recommend that would fit into this description? I don’t mind if it’s a 5 minute experience. It’s ok if it’s more interactive art than a game.
To better illustrate what I’m looking for, I’d compare it to modern art - the kind where you get a single colored square on a canvas. I never got it, and it always felt just weird - until I had to start doing flyer design and started researching and reading about composition, space and all that stuff. And now I see there’s so much going on even on a picture with a single line, that it’s really interesting to think about why the square is where it is, and what kind of composition rules was he working with.
And I think it’s the same for game design - sometimes you see a clever mechanic or design on otherwise really ugly and unpolished game, and it still gets you inspired and thinking.
I understand that my question is a little bit vague, so I’ll give you a list of some games I consider unique, some of them are well known, some of them not-so-much:
- Immortality - you probably know about this one, but a game where the plot twist is discovering a hidden game mechanic, you could’ve done all the time? And the fact that you watch three movies at once in random scene order is also a really good experience.
- Against the Storm - I really like how they solved the issue with management sims - that they tend to get boring once you set everything up, by making it a roguelike.
- Different Strokes - an online persistent collaborative museum of art, where you can either leave a new painting, or edit someone’s else. Each painting can be edited only once, so there are always two authors of a single piece.
- Sayonara Wild Hearts - I really like the idea of making what’s basically an interactive music album. While the game design isn’t anyting that interresting, the focus on music is cool - there should be more music albums with video-games instead of video-clips.
- Project Forlorn - Again, not really a game - this time I think there’s no actuall gameplay, but it’s the best interactive music album presentation I’ve ever seen. And again - I like the idea of exploring music and games together.
- Playdate - Not exactly a single game, but rather a console - but the idea behind giving you a game per day (which is I think how it started, they may all be available now looking at it) sounds amazing - which I’d also consider a game design (or rather, experience design?).
- Baba is You - Another probably well known game, but the puzzle mechanic is just mindblowing.
- Before Your eyes - In this game, the main mechanic is that you go through the memories of someone who has just passed away, but the time advances every time you blink - physically blink, because the game can use your camera. That is such a clever idea, that it definitely fits onto this list.
- Nerve Damage - This is my favourite recent discovery. The game is trying so hard to be uncomfortable to play, with it’s main design build around just being unplayable. But it somehow works and once you get into the flow, it’s such an unique experience.
So, does anyone has some recommendations about where to look for more experimental games? A curated list, blog would be awesome - since clicking through pages of games on itch.io is pretty hit and miss. Also, feel free to share some of your favourite unique design or experimental experiences and games!
Since nobody mentioned it before, Stanley parable.
If I had to describe it with one sentence: you’re not playing the game, it plays you. I played a lot of games but this one stuck in my head. It awards for thinking outside the box.
Any other title like antichamber were already mentioned ^^
and if you want to play a completely different game from the stanley parable in every way by the same developer, the beginner’s guide is a short story game I would consider a work of art. It definitely is unusual as far as games go and it makes you feel things. It is best played completely blind on information.
SUPERHOT - a shooter in which time only moves when you move. It kind of plays like a puzzle game and is quite fun
SUPERHOT is so much fun in VR! Definitely one of the best VR games I’ve played.
Came here for this comment.
Superhot is an absolute incredible videogame and I’m kind of stunned we’ve not seen more in that style.
Outer Wilds.
but a game where the plot twist is discovering a hidden game mechanic, you could’ve done all the time
Turn this up to 11.
Outer Wilds is definitely in my top 3 games of all time. I’m currently waiting for a few years to forget as much of the game as I can, so I can replay it with the DLC and in VR.
Absolutely fuck playing that in VR, that would be terrifying haha!
I played it before the DLC and only recently got around to it. You don’t need to forget the game to play the DLC. It’s pretty much totally seperate and they managed to create the same feeling of discovery again. I’m not saying more than that though.
Have tried it twice and both times got motion sick pretty quickly. Perhaps third time lucky.
Oof, sorry to hear that.
Increasing the fov or playing further from the screen may help. Unfortunately a zero g physics game tends to have a lot of issues with motion sickness.
I keep meaning to go back to Outer Wilds. Last time I tried it I just couldn’t figure out the piloting mechanics. Or, you know, what to do or where to go, but that’s the whole point of the game I guess. But the not knowing where to go combined with the fact that every time I got into the ship I wasn’t having any fun, combined with the fact that it’s a time loop game so I have to do that again and again and again just resulted in an unrewarding slog.
You’ve come to the right place, I also fancy artsy games and unique experiences.
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Return of the Obra Dinn is a great mystery game about figuring out who died and why. You use your watch to go back in time and explore the moment of death of everyone, trying to piece together what happened.
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Viewfinder is a new puzzle game where you take pictures of your surrounding and place them in front of you, turning them back into 3D-space
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Antichamber might be my favorite abstract puzzle game ever. It’s hard to explain and can be a little obtuse (you get lost easily), but basically you explore a lot of world-shifting environments and try to figure out what is needed. Eventually you get a gun that manipulates cubes and stuff. Really, just play it.
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Manifold Garden is a close second after Antichamber. You explore infinitely repeating worlds and shift gravity to solve puzzles. It’s not a hard game and you can finish it in a few hours, but it’s a great experience.
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Journey is probably a game you’ve come across before. I loved this game to death when I first played it on PS3, I’d recommend giving it a shot. It’s also quite short, only about 3 hours long.
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Hypnospace Outlaw is a game where you play on a fake late 90’s operating system acting as a web moderator. I can’t understate how cool this game is, and the seemingly innocent story gets more interesting as you play along.
There’s probably more out there, but these are on the top of my head.
Thank you, there are some games I haven’t heard about. Hypnospace Outlaw and Antichamber sounds cool, the rest I’ve already heard about or have on my backlog, but thanks for reminding me that I should finally play them.
I’ve played Return of the Obra Dinn, it’s exactly along the lines of what I’m looking for. Have you heard about The Case of the Golden Idol? It’s similar to Return of the Obra Dinn, in it being a detective game that nails the design and solves issues of that genre in a clever way. I’ve found it in a game awards I’ve recently stumbled upon - the Independent Games Festival, which looks like one of the few game awards that are worth following (the only other one I know about are the BAFTA awards).
Because in general, I’d say that most game awards are a joke. I mean, look at the “Most innovative gameplay” from the last few years of Steam Awards, and compare them to BAFTA or IGF. I may have a different outlook skewed by my interest in game design, but I just can’t get over Stray winning so many game design awards, especially in a year where games such as Immortality came out. I mean, there’s literally not a single unique mechanic in Stray. It’s a platformer where you don’t even have to jump manually -.-
Have you heard about The Case of the Golden Idol?
I’ve seen it before but I haven’t played it. I might give it a shot.
most game awards are a joke
Steam game awards are a popularity contest, so don’t worry about it. It’s community-voted, not by critics, which means everyone just voted the game they knew.
I do realize that it’s a popularity contest, but I still find it kind of saddening. But it’s not an issue of only Steam Awards - IIRC, even awards that do have a panel of judges usually have the same problem - such as Game Awards. But you are right that it’s just made for a different audience, and you get the same issue with movies or books - experimental game design simply isn’t mainstream, and it’s not a target audience of such award shows. Which is OK.
I second Antichamber, cool mechanics and ambient and on the shortish side. I had it gifted by a friend that knows I like the kind of games you’re looking for.
Great list, I can second Obra Dinn and Antichamber, so I’ll have to try out the rest
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Inscryption, there’s a reason it’s such a highly rated game on steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/
Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie. Darker still are the secrets inscrybed upon the cards…
Also THE HEX, the previous game from the same Dev. SOOOO GOOD. Don’t let the graphics turn you off, they make sense just a half hour into the game. It’s brilliant.
- Heaven’s Vault: Language translation point and click adventure game.
- Project Hospital: A great hospital sim. You can even diagnose the patients yourself!
- Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin: A japanese RPG/brawler with a (very detailed) rice farming simulator as the way to gain XP to level up.
- Warsim: The Realm of Aslona: A text based kingdom manager / adventure game. Full of quirky details and humor.
- THE LONGING: A very very slow paced point and click adventure game about waiting… for 400 days… in real time. Why not read some books while you wait, or come out of your little hole and explore the caverns outside?
- Cultist Simulator: Run your very own lovecraftian cult, the card game!
- Windward: A pirate sandbox akin to Sid Meier’s Pirates! Tried it on a whim when I got it in a bundle and got stuck playing it for 15 hours. Worth a try.
- Shadows of Doubt: A procedurally generated detective simulator (in early access at the moment).
- Ruinarch: A big bad simulator sandbox. You are the big bad. See that village over there? Make their lives miserable!
- Ghost of a Tale: You are a mouse bard in a fantasy world of anthropomorphic animal people. You are imprisoned in the castle dungeons and need to escape.
- Heat Signature: A space bounty hunter sandbox. Hijack a ship, kill your target, collect the package, throw yourself out the airlock, and pick yourself up by remote controlling your ship.
- Intergalactic Fishing: You like fishing? Do you want to fish an unlimited amount of different fish in an unlimited amount of different lakes all over the galaxy? Look no further.
- The Last Federation: You are the last surviving individual of a powerful species in a star system full of different species at different levels of technology. Your mission: unite the star system to save its people from annihilation. Will you be able to unite all of them, or will some species be eradicated for the greater good?
- Songs of Syx: A fantasy city builder of grand proportions. Build your kingdom’s capital and fill it with hundreds or even thousands of individual people.
- 5D Chess with Multiverse Time travel: Are you good at chess? Well, everyone is on a level playing field when you introduce time travel and the multiverse.
Thank you! That is an amazing list, most of the games you are recommending I haven’t heard about, and it sounds awesome. I will add it to my backlog for sure!
Glad you liked it! Here is a bonus item I did not remember for my list:
Wilmot’s Warehouse
You are Wilmot, the (only) warehouse employee. You are tasked with storing items delivered to you, and retrieving items that people request from you. What are all these items and how do you organize them?
Who knows! Figure it out!
So many good ones in this list, cultist simulator will make you see the world through its game system afterwards, ghost of a tale is Soo damn cute and well done. Expanding on 5d chess I’d recommend 4D toys, a sandbox that will open your mind to the 4th dimension
+1 Heaven’s Vault. Gets you thinking in totally different ways.
Have you played Return of Obra Dinn? Also Inscryption, the creator is half mad
Baba is you: a simple block pushing puzzle game where you make the rules by lining up words. It’s not like anything else.
Iron lung: a short horror game about navigating a submarine blind
Dollhouse: a flim noir styled avoid the pursuer type horror game, with eack level adding new mechanics. One of the most interesting games I’ve played, but it got lost to a ten year hype train and never recovered from the initial review bombing.
Jazzpunk: hard to describe. An first person puzzle game where the whole game is a joke and every aspect is unexpected.
Papers please: run a Soviet bloc security check point, and try to keep your family alive with the small amount of supplies you receive for filtering citizen correctly. Same guy who made obra dinn.
Receiver 2: at the surface it’s an fps with insane gun mechanics. Deeper though, it’s forced meditation and mindfulness. Nothing you do can be reactionary or automatic, every movement must be on purpose. Lots of mental health themes.
Many others already mentioned here are great. Obra dinn, doki doki, antichamber, outer worlds. There’s a ton of great things out there.
I’m here to vouch for Baba Is You. Definitely play it until you can affect entire levels. It’s such a mind twist.
Seconded on Jazz Punk and Papers Please, 2 awesome games!
I have 35 and 41 hours in Receiver 1 & 2, I’ve managed to finish 1 2-3 times and never finished 2. But it’s a game you keep coming back to for its satisfying gameplay loop and challenge.
Honestly I heard of Obra Dinn because it was from the guy that made Papers, Please
TUNIC https://youtu.be/Q5XpgTO7YN0
On the surface it’s a Link To The Past inspired Zelda clone, with hints of Dark Souls, cutesy graphics, and a KILLER soundtrack. And while that might sound appealing, it’s really just the surface. This game does something so unique that I can’t imagine how it could be done again in any other game.
Surprised nobody mentioned One Hour One Life before.
Basically, it’s a game where you only have 60 minutes to live in an open multiplayer world, starting out as a baby being cared for by your “mother” going to adult, and then dying of old age, possibly leaving everything to your offspring, also actual players.
I found this mechanic to be very unique among other games.
This is such a cool idea, I definitely have to try it sometime. I hope the game is not dead, it sounds like something you’d need an active playerbase for. The reviews on Steam sound amazing.
It’s not at all the same, but Crusader Kings has a related mechanic where you have kids and pass your dynasty to them, and they pass to their kids, etc. It’s not at all what the OP talking about, but maybe it’s interesting.
These definitely aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but these are some really unique games I like.
Dwarf Fortress: A colony sim who’s depth gives it it’s uniqueness factor. It’s been in development for forever and if you dig into it a little bit stories will begin to construct themselves in the game in a way that no other colony sim does. Heads up that you won’t know how anything works and your forts will fall apart, it’s part of the Fun.Check out Kruggsmash on YouTube for some great videos on it.
Caves of Qud: I just learned about this game today actually, it’s a rogue lite(like?) In a similar vein as Dwarf Fortress. Super long in development with incredible depth and replayability. Really interesting stories that come out of it.
Kerbal Space Program: Learn to send adorable little green men to the moon! Build rockets, crash them, learn and try again! A few games have tried to do something similar, but nothing matches the vibe of ksp. Best to stick with the original + mods for now, the sequel needs more time in the oven.
Frontier Pilot Simulator: Be a delivery person on a alien world, fly vtol aircraft around, deliver goods, make money, upgrade craft. Ok that sounds basic as hell, but something about this game scratches a doing things itch for me. It’s great once you kinda get the flight controlls and can be played in 20 or so min intervals which I actually have trouble finding these days.
Delta V: Rings of Saturn: Take the old school asteroids game to it’s absolute furthest possible development and then a bit further, no, further than that, keep going.
Trackmania: Racing game that has crazy tracks but manages to stay grounded somehow. Fun if you just want to try and beat the latest tracks, also fun if you lose hours or weeks or months or years or decades of your life trying to get the best time.
VTOL VR and Jetborn Racing: Ok it’s a VR game, and you need a headset. But if you have one it’s literally the best flight sim ever. It’s just realistic enough to make you learn a bunch, but not so realistic that you get bogged down. No sticks or equipment needed, it’s all VR motion controls.
Carrier Command 2: Control a whole ass aircraft carrier! It’s very microprose, so super simulated and fiddly, but really really neat. If you have friends and can somehow convince them to play this with you, it’s super fun* *I take no responsibility for friendships lost due to ‘fun’
Anyways, I might like odd sim games a little bit more than is strictly healthy. Splattercatgaming on YouTube is a good source for finding odd games if you haven’t seen them yet.
Planescape: Torment
The story of an amnesiac immortal piecing things back together.
The immortality isn’t invincibility, you still die, but wake up after a while.
Die enough times and you lose all memories, maybe with a different personality altogether, that’s where the game starts: a cold slab in the morgue and the start of this new incarnation you now control.
It’s not only a respawn mechanic though, the mechanic is used in a few puzzles and social encounters, it’s also integral to the storyline.One of the greatest experiences for sure. It’s more like a book or a visual novel, though, rather than a game, I would say.
Endure. In enduring, grow strong.
I absolutely recommend TUNIC. It’s sort of a combination of a legend of zelda/dark souls gameplay and a really interesting puzzle element. Basically, you are playing this game without the guide or any tutorial, and as you play you pick up pages of the game guide which teach you how to play, but it’s written in a language you can’t read, so you have to piece together the mechanics based on the pictures. The game is absolutely full to bursting with secrets, including a final puzzle that blew my mind when I figured it out. I played it with invincibility on so that I could focus on the puzzle element and not worry about combat so much.
It’s one of those games that you can only play once because you learn so many secrets through playing it, but it’s a truly magical experience.
My personal favourite that fits the description but was not mentioned yet is Cultist Simulator.
A thing, a place, an attribute, a person or feeling: all of these are cards.
Talk, work, travel: those are special containers called verbs.
And this simple setting gives you a lot of freedom. Upgrade your abilities, hoard esoteric lore, recruit people into your cult, raid vaults for goodies, summon an alien demon to get rid of your annoying boss and try to become immortal.
Takes a bit long to master due to how opaque some parts of it are though.
Somehow, the first time I played that game I had the longest run I’ve ever had for it. The more I learn the worse I seem to do. I did better when I was doing random shit than when I actually have a better understanding of what was going on.
I never managed to beat this but it has by far the highest play time of any mobile game for me.
I play it on PC. I don’t think I could beat it on mobile either, it is hard enough to keep track of counters on all these cards as it is.
Not sure about experimental but different game mechanic:
Radio Commander - a RTS that you totally control via the radio, you don’t see anything, you must interact with your deployed units.
Hell Let Loose - Not niche, but very unique in its 50 person radio system, where you must communicate and coordinate with other players. Think of it less as a FPS, and more as a management training simulator.
Majesty - A old game, but you don’t actually control units, you set goals and bounties and the units have their own agency and will accomplish things in their own good time.
The forgotten city - A very cerebral approach to time loops by a indie studio.
Osmos. Become the biggest. Ambient background music, trippy game play, mobile only, AFAIK.
I most certainly played it on PC.
Edit: yes, it’s on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/29180/Osmos/
Thank you, those sound interresting. I have already played The Forgotten City, and it was an amazing experience. Hell Let Loose I never got into, I did try to play it for a while but eventually have up - unfortunately, that’s the kind of game I don’t have friends or dedication for. I imagine it’s similiar to Eve Online, which I did play for a few years and had an amazing time and community in, but it’s one of those games where you really have to invest a lot of time and make the game for other players, because being just a linemember isn’t that interesting. But once you get into higher positions, be it squad leader/fleet commander, that’s where the game really shines. But I’m not assertive or brave enough for that.
But I really fondly remember the experience of being a covops/stealth bomber fleet member in larger Eve Online alliance, and training for a fleet commander. Nothing will ever come close to it, but I’m just not made for leading people. And without it, the experience is not as unique or interresting, since it basically boils down to “simon says”.
Radio Commander and Majesty sounds like fun, I will have to try it.
Your experience is exactly why hell let loose is great. Force yourself into management and you will develop new skills!
