The Most Obscure Games I've Ever Covered - The List
The list – Other interesting results
After writing so many Top 12 lists, I decided I wanted to get creative with them. My two lists of worst marketing campaigns required a ton of research, and I loved that aspect; so I felt like digging into a different type of research, this time data collection. The results could be… interesting, after all. So hey, why not make a list of the least known games I’ve tried?
Just the first 8 questions... of 473.
For this article, I created a Google Form cataloguing every single game I reviewed on this blog (all 473 of them), and for each one, gave four options:
-I’ve played it (does not necessarily mean its player owns the game);
-I own / have owned it (considering how many gamers I know with massive backlogs of games they’ve never touched, I felt something would be missing if this wasn’t included);
-I heard of it (saw someone else play it on a livestream, or know of it through word-of-mouth, advertising, or reputation);
-Or I've never heard of it (the element that matters today).
I knew most games covered on this blog were likely to be in that last category, especially since I pivoted to playing and covering a lot of indie games after joining Steam in 2016. Yet, there are still plenty of surprises to be found.
At the time of writing, I had received 42 answers to this survey, but it was enough to cut down the list to… 34 titles. That’s a long way from 12; so expect me to lump together titles for which I have the same comments to make. Had I received 50 or 100 responses, maybe this would be different; maybe I would have ended up with much fewer unknown games, maybe even fewer than 12! Thus, you can take today’s article with a grain of salt, I know my sample isn’t as representative as it could have been. That said, I think the results are interesting! In fact, tune in this coming Monday for more data I’ve picked up from studying the survey results. By the way, you’ll notice that there isn’t a single console game on this list – it’s all PC, indie games. Oh, and if games are no longer available for purchase but their Steam page is still up, I’ll include a link to the page anyway.
When I joined Steam, my first order of business was to find as many games as possible to add to my new collection, in a short time and on a small budget. The solution? Go down the list of Free games, and pick among those. Now, I’ll differentiate between Free-to-play (which can make its budget back through players’ in-game purchases), and full-on Free. Generally small stuff that a developer could easily give away without feeling a blow to their finances. I’d imagine that such games are often released without much fanfare, with their studios either banking on their pre-existing reputation (like Studio Pixel, which released the Pink duology but is better known for Cave Story+), or a freebie that ties well with the remainder of their output (like the Elisa prequel, which ties into games with a price tag). You have to seek these out, basically. With that said, offering free games is a winning strategy; it seems to have worked well for Epic Games’ own platform...
When I know it's someone's first game, I try to be nice as to what can be improved. When it's a major studio that should know better, I'll outright point out what sucks.
Oof, lots of examples here. Anyway, also when I joined Steam, one of my first reflexes was to find cheap bundles of games. All the games listed for this point were all part of such bundles. I doubt I would have heard of most of these otherwise, it’s unlikely that I would have seen promotion for these. They aren't “shovelware”; the term implies that these games originate from developers trying to flood Steam with garbage, and that’s plain false. Looking back at my early purchases, though, I can point to a lot of titles in low-price bundles that just weren’t great. So many "Mixed" review grades. Such is the gamble, buying stuff you’ve never heard of. I can’t take away the possibility that some of these were some developer’s first game, either; so I’m willing to cut them some slack.
Sometimes, a minimalist, cubist design is all a game needs.
The best game of these six is Jones on Fire, by the way; that one’s fun. Diamonds in the rough and all that. The exception to the "cheap" list is Hat Man, which does cost more, but was part of the same low-price bundles mentioned here. Also of note is Nuked Knight, which no longer exists whatsoever on Steam.
Considering how much work was put into its animation, I think we can classify TSIOQUE as a passion project as well (see later entry on this list...)
Another step in my plan to build a big collection fast was to join Humble Bundle. A service like this, where you pay a certain amount and get a ton of games every month, is fantastic – if you don’t keep it going for too long and end up with hundreds of games just waiting on the side. Ask me how I know. On one hand, the service was great at introducing me to games I would have never heard of otherwise. Humble Bundle, and similar websites, are excellent promotional tools, giving some spotlight to games that don’t get their turn to shine as much as big releases. Still, while studying my survey results, I realize that there’s a staggering number of games I covered that I obtained through HB that very few other people seemed to know, with most responses going “Never heard of them” and only one to five total in the other categories. So… Good on a platform offering such promotion, but maybe the results still leave a bit to be desired.
This game won't even give personalities to the squares! This is no Thomas Was Alone, is what I'm saying.
I’m not entirely sure how that happens, but apparently some games are added to Steam without any developer or publisher listed; and Google isn’t helping at all on how that can happen. The best I’ve found is that this often signals solo-dev, self-published stuff that just barely made it on. Either way, I’ve only ever seen one game like this, and I imagine that promoting such a product ought to be really difficult. Self-publishing devs bear the brunt of promoting their own game, and unless one has the connections for it, I'd imagine promotion and advertising are always a difficult part. I think I got gravilon through a low-price bundle, too? So that’s probably the most promotion this game has gotten… No wonder it’s obscure.
RPG Maker games don't need to include battles. I know Trick & Treat doesn't have any, yet it's great!
Gamers who don’t take a moment to look it up will never know just how many games created using RPG Maker are published on Steam. It’s staggering. And for every incredible game made with it (Last Word, To The Moon), there’s several more that are uninspired, terrible, or exist solely for cheap fanservice. And just as many that range from okay to good but are otherwise unlikely to hit it big. It’s not that competition is fierce, it’s that the larger gaming community seems unaware that there’s an RPG Maker scene in the first place. Shame, too, since the program, and what it creates, can serve as a great foot into the door to game development. Of the examples that nobody recognized, Greyfox has decent ideas but is otherwise just okay, while Trick & Treat has tons of great ideas and focuses on exploration rather than combat, which shows just how versatile RPG Maker can get.
It’s not that puzzle games are unmarketable; but it can be tricky to make a new puzzle game known, especially a pure one (in comparison, I’d imagine puzzle platformers usually have a plot and characters, which marketing can then focus on). Alternately, I can think of puzzle games that had plenty of visibility because they were backed by a famous franchise from the start. So I’m not surprised that through the 400+ games I reviewed, some puzzle games weren’t recognized by anybody. Chime Sharp is a surprise, since it was meant to be a remake of an Xbox Live Arcade game, and I would have expected its prior reputation to help it, but apparently not! Tenrow is about as classic a puzzle game as can be, which may have made for a tricky sell (putting aside the low price, that is). The sad one I’ve lumped into here is Painters Guild, even if it’s more of a strategy/management game; it feels like it’s a concept that should have found an audience, far more than it seems to have gotten.
Moving around disappearing hexagons? Sure, why not.
I’m getting into an area where I’m growing increasingly puzzled at how these games haven’t found any popularity whatsoever. (Yes, I know, 42 responses is not the most representative sample, and that skewers the results a bit, but still!) I would think arcade throwbacks, or games with simple concepts that instantly attract through their feel and difficulty (think Super Hexagon). The three games that landed in this category have that feel to them, where you could imagine them in an arcade cabinet. And yet, none of that helped with their numbers, if nobody recognized them! Perhaps the more surprising of the three here, to me, is Bezier; I keep seeing that name pop up elsewhere (I also own it on Itch.io), so I would have assumed it was better known, but apparently not!
Oof. This looks like it's gonna be... a damn challenge.
I imagined platformers had an easier time advertising themselves, but apparently that's not always true. Across this blog’s lifetime, I covered many platform games (I’ll throw puzzle platformers in this as well) that no one responding to my survey has recognized. Dimension Jump (obtained in a Humble Bundle) was already pulled from stores when I got around to it, so I guess its dev, Redpoint Games, gave up on it. Some have clever concepts but still fail to find an audience, like The Howler, which involves microphones. Airscape feels like a Super Meat Boy-like, and is therefore super-tough; and I would have never heard about Scoot Kaboom, that one was gifted to me. Just another proof that some games will never cross your radar unless you’re introduced to them by someone else!
Gravity puzzle platformers are plenty. The trick (or, should I say, the tough part) is to give it a personality that's really its own.
And just because a puzzle/platform game looks like it should have had a higher chance of being recognized doesn’t mean it necessarily has. On Rusty Trails exists both on Steam and on Itchio (I keep track of games I’ve got twice, across both platforms – it happened for about 25 games). Difficult puzzle platformer with a very interesting look and an intriguing story, I would have thought the name would have rung a bell. Benefiting from a similar inter-platform connection, I acquired Youropa through Humble Bundle (them again), which once again highlights that website’s ability to give visibility to little-known games. Youropa is the only game of developer frecle, whose page on the Steam Store only has 32 followers; so I can understand why so few people know about it. And that’s why I’m happy to add a little extra visibility to games like it.
Still pretty cool is you ask me. Sure, the concept is a little weird, but on the other hand, Guitar Hero-likes are always a lot of fun.
Then, there’s the instances where a small indie franchise gets a similarly small following over time, never breaking through into fame, but decent enough to be talked about at least a little. And then, almost as if it was an afterthought, the studio releases a sequel to those games that doesn’t even land on the radar of its preexisting fans. The Frederic franchise, which mimics Guitar Hero with guitar frets swapped for seven piano keys, has a very small following; the first two games barely escaped this list, with three people having heard of the first installment, and two for the second. Zero for entry #3. Myself, even though I think these games are neat, it took me a few years to even find out that Fred3ric had come out. I can’t even tell if there was any promotion for it. I think what’s even sadder is that it came out in September 2020, where people were massively gaming due to the then-severe pandemic. A bigger push could have done wonders.
2. Multiplayer games that lost their wind… if they had any
Looks fun! It started in September 2016... never left Early Access... ...then was shut down in May 2018. Not even two goddamned years.
Multiplayer games are the ones that lose the most from not being known. One such game that fails to amass a player base will get deserted fast, and more often than not its developers will pull the plug on the servers instead of keeping a dying game limping along. Through this blog’s existence, I covered a few of those. Mad Combat Marines (which still exists out there) and Auto Age (which was pulled from stores) were already on their last legs when I got to them, and though they have short single-player campaigns, it wasn’t enough to salvage them. Wasted Pizza, I couldn’t even play; its servers were already down (yet it's still on sale... ugh, just pull it already). Same for Streamline, which looked hella fun but failed to find a satisfying audience – especially in the age of big-name multiplayer games like Overwatch. In short, if you’re making a multiplayer-focused game: Advertise, advertise, advertise!
I’m not going to claim that none of the games discussed in the previous points were passion projects – surely, quite a few were. And, again – small response sample on my end, so maybe some of these games would have been recognized had I gotten more replies on this survey. However, the saddest instance is when a game is very clearly a passion project, either from a tiny studio or a solo dev, and though it may have been popular when it began, its fame appears to have eroded with time, with few (if any) seemingly remembering it. Such is the case of David Wehle’s The First Tree, a gorgeous game that I will always recommend. Wehle worked himself to tears making this game, and discussed the difficult development process across several YouTube videos.
And yet, that didn’t deter him, as a quick research shows that Wehle is working on a new game as well, which will combine farming and horror. So the spark is still there, and I am looking forward to that upcoming game. In the meantime, do give The First Tree a look. You won’t regret it. (Hell, I linked to each game’s Steam page through this list – so go ahead, discover games you’ve never heard of.)
Tune in on Monday for other assorted results I could read from the survey!
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