1) Her Story
Her Story is a very unique game. You play as an unidentified character looking through police interrogation videos of a woman telling a story. All the clips are less than a minute long and the only way to access them is by entering keywords into the search bar on the fully interactive simulated desktop. The goal is to stitch together what happened in the police case by solving codes and deducing what actually happened. It’s a fairly short game and can be completed in a few hours but the experience and story make it completely worth it.
2) Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
This game is more of an experience or an interactive story than an actual game but the premise is that you play yet another unidentified character walking around a quaint English country village. There has been an event that’s caused everyone to effectively disappear and leave behind these moving lights and snapshots of conversations which happened before the event took place. You walk around the village and listen to the conversations all while slowly learning about these villagers. It has a beautiful soundtrack and the visuals are stunning.
3) Duck Game
And now for something completely different: Duck Game. Duck Game is a game best played with online multiplayer and some good friends. It’s similar to Super Smash Bros in that it’s a free-for-all fighting game with items but with the added bonus of randomly generated maps. You play as a duck which you can customize with various hats and head accessories. You can also add mods to play user-generated maps and wear custom skins. It’s all-around chaos in the best possible manner and hours of endless fun.
4) Secrets of Grindea
With reference to many classic games in the same vein, Secrets of Grindea is a 2-D sprite RPG with lots of mob grinding to get all the collectables and power-ups. It’s a charming game with various in-jokes between the developers and players in reference to classic RPGs such as Final Fantasy, Eve Online, Guild Wars, and many others. You start as a character about to go take a test to become a monster hunter and treasure collector. You fight lots of low-level monsters to increase your Experience and Gold to acquire new skills and new gears. And, as the name suggests, you grind a lot to hopefully collect a rare-drop monster card which enhances your skills. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek game that understands exactly what kind of game it is.
5) Valiant Hearts: The Great War
Valiant Hearts is a game set in World War I and deals with the horrors of war with a cute art style and lots of historical facts. You play as various characters who served different roles during the war including: a French farmer, an American volunteer soldier, a Belgian nurse, a German man, and a dog called Walt. You solve different puzzles using each character’s skill set to further the plot in which you attempt to reunite the German man’s son, a young soldier, with his lost love. This game also has the benefit of being playable on mobile devices which makes it even more accessible.
6) TowerFall Ascension
TowerFall Ascension is a local multiplayer combat game involving archery, arrow conservation, special items, and a boss fight after a certain amount of maps. It’s a great party game with a couple different game modes to change things up. It’s fairly competitive which makes it a great multiplayer game. Doesn’t seem to lend as well to single-player play, but it is possible.
7) The Yawhg
Yet another game with a beautiful soundtrack and less gameplay compared to the storytelling bits. It can be played as a single-player game and it translates well to multiplayer. I find it’s more fun to get 3 of your friends together to play since you control 4 characters during 6 weeks. During those six weeks you decide how to spend each week in one location on a fairly small map. The Yawhg is coming and you don’t know what it is. You just know that you need to prepare for it. Simple, with a lot of replay-ability.
