Underrated niche games you wish other anons would know of.
Patrician 3 is easily a hidden lost gem from a past time, it is the best the genre has ever gotten to. It has great multiplayer and still functions on modern systems.
Its a little game about being a trader in the Hanse, its great for competing and just hanging out. Its hard to describe but it scratches a itch you won't really see elsewhere.
You build and buy ships, take over by force, go pirate, build workshops in towns, farms, churchs, hire and send armies and shit over the whole hanse, which is quite the extensive map even if the variety is low to only a few dozen goods and building types.
Naval fights feel great, specially vs other people.
It is old and looks ancient but in a charming way of good old games.
City sieges feel great to fight with a fleet, specially when the same city is already under attack by a fleet. Doing so while facing off another player is amazing, and easily my favorite part of the game, sinking eachother ships and competing over effective control of towns and ports to produce and profit off production.
The best game i've had yet was 6 players and lasted 12 sessions, 4 hours at a time on weekends. I have short of 6 thousand hours on this game.
>>715331278 (OP)Amazingly deep game, nice to look at, I wish there were more like it other than Port Royal 2. Good ones, that is
Ymir is a 4x game about pigs that runs on multiple 80-120 player servers for 2-3 months at a time. Through the duration of a server you go from the stone age to somewhere in "late medieval".
The whole game is very cartoonish, but the mechanics are very, very deep. Some of the guides i've read through feel like fully fledged essays on alternative world economic systems and warfare, but if it had been simplified so americans can grasp with enough hours and effort.
As a 4x game it has from farming village to national levels, and as far as i've seen some 50+ resources, probably more. By the endgame people supposedely control 40+ individually simulated regions, which must be built and planned accordingly, including fortifications and terraforming, altough i haven't seen that yet, and most of said regions are just 'countrysides', farming villages which surround and produce goods which feed into your 'regional centers', aka cities.
Nations can be made of multiple people, each controling this much land by themselves.
Frequent themes are war, diplomacy, citybuilding and sometimes genocide, which is surprisingly recurrent on this game, mostly because the fastest way to defeat a enemy is to truly burn and kill everything and every citzen they have, thus 'genocide' is a frequent response to diplomacy.
I'm only some 600 hours into this game, but it is a bit rough, a lot of diplomacy is conducted by just talking to people directly over long term, and, the economy is a bit goofy, so actually planning stuff together can get rough.
It is also getting a massive update ""soon"".
Writing the third, but aurora 4x isn't exactly a unknown game. Mostly because its infamous for being the "dwarf fortress of sci fi 4x".
>>715331278 (OP)Classic everquest
Eldritch (the Roguelike)
Kingdoms Reborn isn't exactly a tiny game, but while it did sell some 300 thousand copies, it was still "only" 300k. It is a true citybuilder to every level, very deep and engaging.
Its eras are well developped and allow you all the way to hiting rocks on stones to post industrial electrical nations moved by sweat, oil, air and sun.
While that on itself isn't exactly impressive, the fact that it does so while simulating well over 20 thousand walkers on a maxed out game while being multiplayer without issues that cracks my eggs.
I played multi-session 40+ total hours games with 12 players without more than three or four desynchs, due to playerside issues.
Warfare isn't the point of the game but the solution to warfare is fine, being it mostly a clash of resources, as there are no actual units to be controlled, just points to be designated and assigned.
It is a great experience by itself for a citybuilder, specially with how decently deep it can get. But once played multiplayer with a dozen people it becomes a life changing one, at least as far as games go, and i wish every citybuilder could do it.
Vintage Story is a minecraft looking game, it felt a stretch and odd when i picked it, and in many ways feels like minecraft but extra faggot. Except its actually great.
Its hard to describe its experience without comparing it to minecraft because i'm a 27yo, and minecraft was the first thing to have that kind of full experience for me. I had played Wurm Online before minecraft ever came to be in my eyes, however there was this sense of horror, loss and confusion, the slow progress and the meaningful progress that it brought.
This game brought to me those same feelings i had over a decade ago, it is like you wish minecraft could be for you again. I don't really have the words which take to describe it.
It is deeper, it is freeing, and it feels like a acomplishment, every little step you take through the very, very long path there.
If you want to pick up this game i suggest you go in blindly, nab a torrent somewhere, bring in your friends and resist the urge to actually look for help, guides nor a wiki. There is a ingame handbook which will tell and show you everything you need. On the top left there's a tooltip about how to open it.
It sold some 100-150k copies as of right now, at least as far as i could find, so its definitely a small game and still in development. If you do enjoy it after torrenting, buy it, you'll get what i mean.
I've had some 2 thousand hours on this one yet, and i'm still playing. I run a 24/7 server with my small group of friends, and 5 people feel like a knit small community thats large enough to not feel empty and small enough to still get absolutely shat on by the game.
For your first game i suggest either wilderness survival with the map turned on and a very small respawn radius of some 500 blocks, AND MICROCHISELING ON, i swear to you, that shit is fire, it looks stupid but you'll end upg etting drawn into it for hours upon hours.
>>715332615btw hosting is easy and you can just press a button to "open to lan", which turns whatever world you're in into a direct connection server. Hamachi, Zerotier and similars work as a easy substitute for fowarding ports.
>>715331423Port royal kinda sucked anon, it lacks the grace of patrician because the devlead was too much of a bitch to let the design doc shine through and put in all the insanely deep shit everyone always craved for.
>>715331469You wouldn't believe how many hours you can put into this and still be ready to put more in.
The game has insane replay and time value for the price. You can spend countless hours in it. Each run has its own surprises and variation. It hits a spot like no other game does. If you do want to get into it make sure you aren't shy about asking others in the game for advice or help.
It can do small scale war and huge scales of war and war industry well too. Whole nations specialising in producing particular goods for the encomoy and war machines for max efficiency.
nuclear option is a modern flight combat game
it's kinda like war thunder but without the grind
>>715332615Vintage Story is a cool indie project and benefits from having that vibe. Feels like a passion project by someone actually competent. It has its own fresh take and atmosphere. A sense of wonder I've not felt in MC or the block game genre for a long time.
Dev seems cool and the mod scene for it is good. Easy to get hosting for it or do it yourself. Has single player and creative mode. Lots and lots of world gen options. Very varied biomes. Lots of interesting crafting and resource collection.
The hunting and general survival mechanics are very satisfying. I really encourage anyone trying it to not be tempted to just cheat stuff in right away. Discovering and surviving and making your own story in the world really feels special.
The microchiselling thing sounds like it's nothing but the customisation level it gives you for the world in VS is insane.You can craft really nice and original designs.
The game has lore and stuff that you want to find as you play and not just read up on. You'll enjoy the surprises and depths you find digging about (literally and metaphorically).
>>715331278 (OP)Deathwar 3030. A combination of space game with combat and trading and an adventure game. Has a sort of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy humor to it. Cool pace and story, some choices to make, side quests and you can choose to grind and 100% stuff or play casual for the story and bounce. Really cool, weird combination game. Has a good soundtrack too.
I went into it for the adventure game aspect but the combat kept me hooked too and I played through all the side stuff for that. It's not as huge or grindy as some other space trading games so you can try it out without feeling like you are comitting to too much and have the satisfaction of a nice end to it when you choose.
>>715334713Thats the only game i ever went out of steam for and would do so a hundred times more. Get a torrent and play it.
urquan
md5: e63604f06cc97666e0083d9c2bfc1c11
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*THE UR-QUAN MASTERS*
This is free vintage gaming gem that has been kept alive by the fanbase for over 30 years. Very open RPG/space game hybrid. Your choices in the game can massively impact the galaxy, wars, genoicides, peace and how difficult things may or may not be for you. Choose sides, what price (in wealth or morality) you are willing to pay. Try to survive and make sure humanity survives with you.
Earth was part of an Alliance to hold back the Heirarchy which wanted to dominate the rest. The Alliance failed. The galaxy has been conquered and held by two factions - the Ur-Quan, who want to enslave all life in the galaxy to ensure their own safety and position at the top forever (giving each life form the choice of being battle thralls or simply trapped on their own world behind an impenetrable shield forever) and the Kohr-Ah, who simply want to eradicate all life capable of threatening them ever in the future (anything above simple animals) in a galactic purging crusade.
You are the captain of a Precursor vessel, the result of a forgotten expedition who managed to awaken old facilities for it after some decades to find that the war was long over. With you being the only free agent left and with a tool of great potential, it's up to you to decide how to tip the balance of the galactic powers and pull on the levers available to you.
Get all the mods and upgrades you can from the site, they really make it shine. Great soundtrack. Don't get the Steam version.
https://sc2.sourceforge.net/
>>715335543(cont.)
Space combat is classic arcade stuff and highly enjoyable, with each vessel having its own unique powers and strengths. You can upgrade your flagship over time and recruit others to join your fleet.
The RPG adventure elements alone are worth it for any fan of that genre, especially considering the sheer scope of influence and impact on the galaxy you could have. You can start wars, prevent them, cause insane genocides. Trick whole peoples into insanity or madness with elaborate lies.
It's game worth going into without too many spoilers. You can find the map that came with the game as scans online. You can have that in a tab to look at or print it off. You don't have to have it but it's a guide to start. It's actally the map the expidition had before they landed so it's deliberately out of date.
The Steam version used to be the same as the sourceforge one but they were forced more recently to remove some excellent soundtracks so get the sourceforge one instead, it's all free anyway. I guess you can probably get it on Steam and readd the sountracks from the downloads too.
>>715334713Honestly it's worth it. I felt similar but ended up getting the torrent and then enjoyed it enough to buy it. The developer is waiting for it to be "just so" before he feels confident enough to release it on Steam as he's worried about missing out on the big push for release on that platform if it's not ready for prime time. I think it could have gone up there long ago as it's already a great game, but I guess some creative types are their own harshest critics.
The torrents cost you nothing and by the sound of things the dev fully intends to release on Steam eventually. Give it a shot.
>>715333664>>715331469Sounds interesting, but there are like 20 people playing at the moment. Doesn't this mean the game is only played by the ultranerds with 9k hours of experience? How fucked will a new player be?
Shadows of Forbidden Gods. A Lovecraftian god sim combined with a political manipulation simulator. Be the burning dark eye turned on the world of men, the godzilla like destroyer, the ever hungry worm, the god of temptation, the god of plagues and health, the perfect angel who offers you all hope against the dark tide with the left hand while crushing the world under its dark right hand, a world spanning tentacled horror of an age and scale no one could have ever imagined.
You can drive rulers insane, set bloodlines against each other, cause people to fall into the dark and start wars. Cause crusades against the orks, elves or dwarves to distract the forces of light while you grow in strength and make your plans. Cause a city to be infested with fish people.
It's turn based, has a lot of options to customise the gameplay and difficulty and a lot of different scenarios to keep things fresh. Start off with the first one as it's the most simple, offering you the suggested route of building a dark empire that will hold back and start the conquest of the light until you Awaken in your physical form as a godzilla like destroyer to tip the balance and win the day. Lots of depth and inteacting stats and entities. You can have throw away minions or precious ones you want to level up and equip well. Agents that are like James Bond level with how they can sneak in and do stuff or simple brutes and assassins.
Indie weirdness and depth that's hard to find elsewhere.
>>715335841It's a game that's played with "ticks" and action points that charge up. So you only need to log into the game to do some stuff and then log out, especially during the early game and outside of war. The game servers run all the time and players dip in and out. So there can be a hundred players but only a percentage on at any given moment, suiting their timezones and stuff
There's always new players and new players can be very welcome into the game. Just don't be shy at asking for help, advice and so on. The tutorial and single player is a good way to learn the interface and basics and then get advice how to do anything that's confusing you. You'll find people happy to help.
Playing at different levels is fine too. Some stay in their own corner trading and others join up with other nations and so on.
>>715335841Its a all-time-round continuous simulation, you don't really do a lot at any individual times and development takes time.
It feels a whole lot more like travian or tribal wars taken to its logical final development point, thus being actually good and without microtransactions.
The community is small, so at any one time there might only be a couple to a few dozen players online, and most people will only check in once or twice a day, because thats all it takes.
>>715336541 anon sums it quite good.
But the life of a new player kinda sucks, it is a violent world out there and people have a reason to kill you, so ask for help and accept all the help ingame and in instruction possible.
Anyone who may seek to kill for access to land and resources you will have enemies, mostly other veterans, and those enemies of your enemy will do their very best to support you and not let your enemy win.
>>715336757I wouldn't call 100 players per server MMO, but you do you. Either way it tones down to 40-30 by the end of the game, mostly due to land dispute kills and other quitting reasons.
The coming update also looks great.
>>715336335I only heard of this one before
>>715334525Noone here is trying to sell games anon. OP game itself is so fucking old its abandonware, some posted are shareware and opensource, everything else should also be torrented unless you feel like opening your pockets out of love or multiplayer requirements.
Puzzle Pirates is one of the most unique MMO's out there and I wish more people played it
>Actual player-run economy
>In-game gambling that you can lose everything on if you're a retard
>Lots of different "minigames" as jobs and how you handle fights and what not
>A good deal of the content has (You) on a ship with others where everyone does different jobs and how well you guys do matters, with jobs like repairing the ship as it gets damaged, getting speed, getting water out which increase with damage, loading cannons and actually controlling the ship in combat
>Colorful art style
>No true level system to grind out, although every minigame has its own level that showcases how well you can do in them which is based on player averages
>No gear grind, a fuckton of the gear is just pure cosmetics and the two slots that can make a difference are more side grades
>You can own a fucking ship and have a crew and attack other ships and search islands for loot for gods sake what else do you need
>>715337564Huh, that game is still around?
>>715337564how can this still be alive, this is only 5 years younger than me, this shit is from the ancient early internet fast enough to even support free graphical games
>>715337564Lol, I remember reading about this like 20 years ago.
>>715336541>It's a game that's played with "ticks" and action points that charge up. So you only need to log into the game to do some stuff and then log out, especially during the early game and outside of war.so its basically a browser game. I thought only facebook grandmas still played those
>>715337875Too big and deep fora browser game. Tick based stuff has been around for a long time and still is a thing outside of the games you're thinking of. It's a good way of managing an always online stategy game without giving too much advantage to those who can be online 24 hours a day
>>715337875Military formations have AP, actions points, which are what anon is referring to charge up. Those limit how far said armies can move at once and what actions it can initiate before doing a invasion and what not.
That is about the large scale movement, armies moving through the world map to hit shit over and invade places.
Its hard to explain, its easier if you just take a look at a video, but all the promo material is ungodly old, even tho it has been in active development for a decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In3LhBkoUb0
I'm surprised to even find someone else who plays it outside the discord.
Rising Lords is a 20 bucks game i would never pay 20 for, but torrenting or picking on a sale is just fine.
It goes on sale for 12 sometimes, and i think its fine for the 20-40 hour game it is.
Its a very simple expand and fight game, with half a dozen regular units and a few more mercenaries. The story is fine and fun, but not great nor special, but the multiplayer is simple enough to pick up and play that works as a quick friendslop with 1-3 other friends.
Would never pay 20 on it tho.
Field of Glory is a old, like old old styled series. It started off as a battles-only wargame which is basically a simulacrum to classic historical wargames you'd otherwise play on a table, except it was and still is built to allow even play by email.
It has a very simple graphical layer on top and a entry or two have a campaign mode slapped together for it, the campaign is decent but nothing special.
I'm not sure if i'd buy it if i had to today, but i got a bunch of disks for it years ago for like 5$ on a resale. The multiplayer is great and the wargame rules are decent, not spetacular but decent, and it benefits from the magic of not relying on dice allowing for slightly more complex calculations.
Its a nice pick up and fight a buddy for a few battles, or a battle a week. The themes are varied across the series.
>>715337249Retard only play fifa and thinks niches games=shilling your game. Tldr hes a retarded shitposter
>>715332615combat sucks and the mod is trash for this game
Super Daryl Deluxe. A vanillaware esque arpg in an absolutely batshit insane setting which is basically napoleon dynamite fused with evangelion where a nerd finds a guide for self-improvement and becomes an Ubermensch.
>>715338984Field of Glory Medieval is free right now on steam
you can also pirate all the DLC with creamapi
This is just a /vst/ thread
>>715340782didn't know minecraft ofshoots, space invaders and puzzle pirates were vst
>>715334525every gacha does that so they could spam advertising threads non-stop
>>715336335I played a bunch of games(even won some) but the UI doesn't help me understand who is who.
Game has too many npcs wandering around. Tho the game feels like taking small actions until the scale is tipped in your favor and then you can steamroll everyone.
>>715338984>Field of Glory is a old, like old old styled series.Not it's not, are you retarded
"Survivalist: Invisible Strain". A third person zombie survial game. Has a story mode and a sandbox mode. Lots of mods already out for it as modders were working on it in beta stages. Has some pretty good complexity to social dynamics with you and others that give interesting emergent gameplay. Stuff like people developing love, grudges, gossiping and spiralling to raids and war or reputations developing for certain things.
You can be a lone wolf, small pack or try to blob up with others under you. Sort of vibes mix with Kenshi and Project Zomboid. Visually meh but superb gameplay. Kinda go in expecting to mess up and replay, it's part of the fun to see things explode and fall apart too. There's diferent grades of "infected" type zombies, each being more dangerous than the last but the final most dangerous kind is the invisible strain - an infected type that's smart and can infiltrate your group or others to cause mayhem like infighting, spreading infection and so on until it can rise up and destroy your group.
You can deliberately infect tools and weapons to get to others. Fire infected arrows at raiders. Gift infected stew to people you don't like. Watch as their own families have to murder them as they try to gnaw their faces off. Give them a low level infection and watch them worry and panic for days as they go around begging for a cure. Give them a high level one and watch them dramatically choke and turn in hardly any time and start mauling people in madness (like 28 days later).
Trading, social dynamics, base building, melee and ranged combat and stats you can train up.
>>715335543>>715335616I played this with my dad for countless hours since I was like six. We'd only do the 1v1 battles on the same keyboard. I don't remember if I ever beat him, but I had great fun each fight. The ship with the tongue made me laugh each time I used it.
>>715338762Are there any faction in this game? I can't find a cohered answer to this.
>>715343374The graphics ain't much but they are functional. Seems to be a one man team. Dev called Bob makes it. It is cool seeing your guys all tooled up and looking dangerous compared to the low level guys though.
>>715342993Its a 16 year old game series based on a 17yo wargame, which is in turn built on the mods of 35yo wargames.
You're just old anon.
Death's Hangover an arkanoid/ breakout game with boss battles and branching options for maps. Really fun and original feeling. Has a lot of replay value for the price as you can aim to get high scores, hit certain goals and play different modes.
>>715331278 (OP)I played a game. It was a first person shooter. It was also a real time strategy. You could turn invisible and shank people. You could warcrime people to death with poison gas grenades and flamerthrowers.
It was fun, and now it's dead and since either needs a full server to play I can't even recommend it.
>>715344476Yeah that was my reaction too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IksYXujBEHw
>>715331423PR1 is closer to patrician, just a little unbalanced as shit.
Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream
>>715344239Basically not. You get nation types to pick which modify your armies, two of them have special units which replace basic units, the buffs, changes and stuff change the game quite a bit.
You and everyone also gets to pick like special items and shit which further modify your lord, in turn differentiating it.
Its an ok game, but not a great one.
ad
md5: 872cf5889168fc262494771346d6564c
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>>715331278 (OP)Expand on the versus part. We always played economy competitive, I never thought game combat would really be that viable. And you really undersold the "number go up"-autism the game has. For me it was all about finding those trade routes that made my graph go up faster than the others, boosting your city pop higher to get those workers. And redpill me on the getting sued part. Is that just random or did the other faggots slander me.
>>715347009Well anon, and how do you stop the person with the best going economy without using the warfare aspect?
Thats the reason for piracy, for funding invasion armies, for using the conspiracy buttons, for burning down ports.
Line go up, market go brr, and so when someone else corners a market you fight them in dirty ways.
>>715347332By out economying them. The warfare stuff always seemed pretty unbalanced. But maybe that's just because we never really tried it.
And if you want to really fight dirty can't you just buy all the grain in their city and watch them crash?
>>715331874Kingdoms reborn is still in early sccess, bro. And the game still gets updates, why the fuck are you acting like the game was released a long time ago and was a total failure? It even has a very positive rating on steam.
>>715347482>The warfare stuff always seemed pretty unbalancedOne little pirate fleet taking out 350k worth of cargo and ships in one fell swoop feels horrible, sure, thats why you have to actually arm your ships or add scorts to them.
It only feels unbalanced if all your ships are undercrewed, unarmed trademaxing no guns, no swords, no anything. If you arm your convoys you can defend just fine, and specially pirates won't usually bed you.
As for playing a pirate; Penalties are severe, you can never acomplish any of the campaign victory goals due to penalties, that is, unless you can spent multiple times as much as you stole into "donations" to the church and public buildings on your main city.
>>715347680Its a 5 year long early access, it is virtually a complete game and 300k isn't a lot of sales. Isn't over, as are some other games here, but it is quite the small game. Kingdoms reborn got less sales money than vintage story, which isn't even on steam.
Even for standards of other city builders its a decent value but not on the high end. Its a small game.
>>715347482>can't you just buy all the grain in their city and watch them crash?No, not really, you can force traders out, ambush ships, produce grain, and so on. The AI ships themselves move so much produce its unrealistic to try and literally zero the goods, basic goods in severe scarcity also seem to just "materialize" from "inland" and into the market.
Losing some couple hundred population short term never matters enough.
>>715331278 (OP)We need anime to save the strategy genre
>>715347332finding out where they are selling, then going to those cities and sell the goods, and more of them, before they do.
You get a lower margin and might even lose money but youve stolen a trade route from them
>>715334525fucking gachanigger
>>715347861You have no idea how much it has sold. Stop waving that 300 thousand number around like that. It's entirely possible that it has sold more.
>>715345304I don't understand a single thing I just witnessed.
>>715348084There's GrimGrimoire. It's pretty basic.
>>715332615Kill the shill
>>715331278 (OP)Have these devs made trading games based around a real world location that wasn't the North Sea, (Patrician) The Caribbean (Port Royale) or the Mediterranean (Rise of Venice)?
>>715331278 (OP)Thanks for the recs OP. i see most of them have the early access tag on them, so i'll tucking them away on the wishlist until i see some 1.0s
>>715349563Ripe for a China or Jpan themed one
>>715331278 (OP)is this playable on steam deck? protondb says there are a bunch of issues
file
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this game is like Bully, but you can customize your motorbike and have to pay for gas
>>715348803steam library ownership is a demi public stat, there's 537k accounts with playtime on it, a not too large chunk of those will be stolen resold review keys, as every game has a good few thousand chunked, gifted and combo sold for a fraction. So you can subtract half a dozen k or so.
>>715337083>I wouldn't call 100 players per server MMO, but you do youI think he's more talking about the persistent world and long term gameplay aspect of it. MMO isn't exactly the right term but whatever. I agree with him. Sounds like tribal wars the browser game i played like 20 years ago. It was a fun concept but it ultimately became a chore to play and was just too slow. If I want a strategy game I'd much rather just play an rts match that's self contained. If I want something bigger in scale I'll play 4x. this long term online stuff has the feel of a live service game where you do daily logins to get optimal progression
