Played Any Good Games Lately that Aren't Pokémon?

[nomists]

Everyone loves video games. Except for the people that don't. But this is a forum of game makers, so I assume you like them. Unless you don't.

Anyway, what games have you played lately that interest you? Post 'em here! Discuss 'em here!

I'll go first:

Anthology of the Killer by GarmentDistrict (https://gamejolt.com/@garmentdistrict/games)

This is an episodic witty Paper-Mario style horror-comedy. You play as BB, a young prolix zine writer who has a penchant for running headlong into getting murdered. There are seven episodes and you can play them in any order BUT you should play Face of the Killer last because it has a lot of internal references. I'd highly suggest Heart of the Killer, where you wake up in a creepy mansion looking for love, or Blood of the Killer, where you journey to a small creepy town centered around drinky birds. Btw, the anthology is six bucks but the individual games themselves are free.

By the way, you might have noticed my avatar is an edit of BB as Misty. I have no affiliation with the project, I'm just a fan and love how silly the edit is.



Another game that I also had a lot of fun with is Slay the Princess

View: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989270/Slay_the_Princess/


This one is good to go in blind. It's basically a visual novel, but it's really well done and animated. I will say I was off put by the graphics in the previews which looked a little... bad? But honestly, once I loaded it up everything was beautiful. There's a lot of details and a surprising amount of depth to it. I thought I had finished it in a couple hours, but then went back and played it for four more. Pretty fun overall.

 

[Meatcarpetprincess]

I've been playing Apico. It's a beekeeping sim about breeding bees (and butterflies, and flowers) and discovering new species. Very chill and enjoyable in a way that I rarely find farming sims to be. There are no monsters to fight, no debts to pay back, no rude NPCs (okay, there is one, but he's a crotchety old man and you prove him wrong a lot).
If you've played an old minecraft mod by the name of forestry, its the beekeeping portion of that mod. There are crafting elements to the game, but they're fairly light and its not really a tech tree style of game.

 

[Pi25]

Palia has been pretty fun and relaxing so far. When you work several hours a week, it's nice to do something simple and mindless for a small period of time.

 

[TheMentalOrder]

Not recently, but the Ace Attorney original trilogy is quite good if you like mysteries and solve them.

 

[Faislittlewhiteraven]

Been more than a little obsessed with In Stars and Time, an RPG about Siffrin, the he/they rogue of a 'typical' DnD/RPG party, who gets trapped in a timeloop that starts the day before the group finally goes to fight the big bad evil King freezing the country of Vaugarde in time.

Notable features:

• Amazing characters, dialogue and worldbuilding - The story is like Ghost Trick's in that it's great but absolutely no one in the fanbase will willingly tell you any of it because everything is spoilers and spoiling it would be an act of EVIL.
• Beautiful black and white comic book esc visuals - literally hundreds of character portraits for expressions, beautiful 'cutscene' popup pictures, in battle character art changes with their health, status effects etc.
• Lovely '8 bit esc' and classical filled OST that LOVES to do storytelling with its use of motifs <3
• A LITERAL rock/paper/scissors element triangle.
• Immersive flavor text - Siffrin's narration regarding every other thing he can interact with can and WILL change over the course of the game to reflect whatever they're thinking about based on both major plot events and other regular interactions so like, there's a lot of hidden lore and potential replay value scattered everywhere~
• A hint/progress tracker in the form of a character who also helps with side quests - Probably THE most interesting character in a game full of them so would highly recommend talking with them whenever possible <3
• Psychological themes - be warned, they can get heavy.
• Lots and lots and LOTS of dialogue - heaven for me but may not be for everyone.
• Lots of QoL features to help prevent you from going mad from the repetition - note: there is still a lot of repetition, especially in regards to combat. Use those features!!!
• Siffrin being shockingly in tune with most players emotionally despite actually being a pre established character with their own personality.
• Snack time.

And much more (which probably comes under spoilers)~ <3

Can be bought on just about any platform other than Xbox, is sold in a bundle on Steam alongside the wonderful Slay The Princess listed above, and has a... Proof of concept game called Start Again a Prologue which can be played before or after In Stars and Time to add another layer to the overall story (playing it before ISaT gives you tons of ominous foreshadowing, playing it after helps a lot of mysteries regarding one of the characters click into place) but do be warned SAaP lacks a lot of ISaT's QoL features and it's much shorter so just watching a playthrough of all its endings is also totally valid.

And yeah! Hope this helps at least one other person out there find their game of the year~ =D

 

[thebigguy270]

TTYD and Super Paper Mario. Both are such fantastic games that I'll confess I cribbed bits of their stories for my project.