Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Chasm the Rift.
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding


Developed by: Action Forms
Published by: GT interactive
Platform: MS-DOS
Year: 1997

Basically its one of those obscure ms dos fps games from the 90s so i knew what i was going into.

You play as an unnamed Marine whose mission is to stop a faction called the Tome Splitte..... i meant Timestrikers from taking over the world. The time strikers use dimensional or time travel and you must stop them at all costs. During these missions, you battle against enemies in different settings such as Military bases to tombs in Ancient Egypt.

As for the gameplay, it tries to compete with Quake 1, which was released a year ago, by using the same style as the game it was pitted against through the use of brown, grey, and steel colored palettes and its different areas. Quake started that way, in a military base then off to various other locales such as castles and catacombs. However unlike Quake which had really creative map and level design, Chasm does not have that same flair. Many of the levels are very cubular with lots of narrow corridors compared to Quake's much bigger and more open ended maps with various obstacles and traps.

But its not all that bad. The game to me is enjoyable for its obscurity and despite some flaws it does play well enough to warrant a look. However DOSBOX is required to run this thing.

And i actually own this game thanks to a really awesome person who provided a means to get it.
 
I haven't been back here in Ages...... Well, I guess I should post some more Obescura Games I've come across in my vast absence; apologies if this looks like I'm Necro posting, but there's still more buried titles in our culture to look back at and hunt down.

[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Mac, Windows, PS2​
Developed By Bungie
Published by Rock Star​

How do I describe this old one? If you have a love for Martial Arts mixed in with FPS games, this is one to look for and one you will need to look hard for. The plot is pretty basic, your a police officer from the future in an attempt to unravel an evil plot. The game's controls are.... Complicated in a small sense; though after a few minutes of practice, you adapt to it pretty quickly and it becomes just a fun fighting, platforming, shooting adventure. The game is still fun to play, has anime cutscenes done in the older style for anyone reminicant of old anime art. They game was kinda popular when it released though it didn't catch on because of the lack of multi-player.

You have a Beat'em up multi-player with FPS elements, you think someone would have gone out of their way to develop a method to play games like this over the internet. There was one planned for the PC port, but was scrapped as quickly as it was conceived due to various reasons. The biggest reason it was scrapped was because of the internet, not because of reviews but because how much data could be transferred and how fast the game would need to be in order to pick up on one players actions from another, processing the shooter elements was't the problem, rather the martial art's and it's whole fighting system was. This was 2001 Era of Internet, the same year we got Smash Bros. Melee! Nintendo had the same problem when making the internet multiplayer for Brawl(Super Smash Bros. Brawl 2007) and had to overcome the same hurdles Bungie tried to overcome back in 2001! (Spoilers, it still doesn't fare well in Brawl) We now have Smash Bros. on the WiiU and 3DS and we're going to be patiently waiting if they do a Switch port and while I haven't heard much about the online scene, I haven't heard any complaints yet so they must have done something right...

My Last notes on Oni was that there's is a small cult following on this game that have been hard at work reviving the title and succeeded. You can now run the PC ver. of this game on Mac and Windows while a few other more diehard fans have been attempting to revive it's Multi-player function and succeeded!!!!.... It's still terrible and lags from the videos I've seen, but the multi-player just works.

[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding
Z​

Developed By The Bitmap Brothers​

This is another old RTS game where your basically working with your 'red' robot army to attack and conquer the blue army. It includes some 90's adult humor you would probably see in bad military comedy films, but the game itself is quite fun and playable.... It's just incredibly slow unless your infantry units can steal a conveniently parked jeep in certain sectors of the map. Controlling your army is a little difficult when you want them to attack something specific, though after a few minutes in your first mission, it should be easy to catch on. If you don't care for low grade humor and can get behind simple game mechanics, I would recommend looking this one up on the App store, either I-Phone or Android. If you want to try it out, go to Archive.org and play it in your browser; It's the MS-DOS version, but it's still the same game.

Archive Link
https://archive.org/details/Z_1020

More to come.
 
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Ladies and gent's, I want to post about a game so far off the radar that only a handful are aware of it's existence and a lot of people from back in the day would remember this. It's an RPG that does not rely on EXP, is loaded with puzzles and has a world that is deep with it's own lore in a sense that there is no scientific way that it could exist. It may take Matt Patt from Game Theory on a spin providing about 20-30 minites of why the planet should be dead by now.

[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

PC, Android, IOS, Playstation, MS-DOS​

Little Big adventure was one of those games that tried to pioneer the 3D genre for PC using minimal textures and models to represent characters to move and navigate an isometric world. In the first Game, you are a prisoner because a dictator fears the prophecy of your planet that a lone hero would travel the world in search of magic to rise up against him and end him.... You then proceed to fulfill the prophecy and waste him. The game has deep story elements, multiple races, puzzles and just other elements that make this game a joy to play through. So much so they've made a sequel called "Little Big Adventure 2: Twinsen's Odyessy" and they had a 3rd game in works after the second!.... Until the 3rd was scrapped and passed on from the original creator to a group who are working tirelessly to revive the 3rd Game and have made some great progress. If you got a GOG account and about $4-$7, I recommend checking it out.... Or, Alternatively, Look it up in the Google Play Store and App Store since touch controls in it are more polished than using your keyboard.... In fact, if your new to the game just by reading this and want to try it out, I recommend the Android and IOS since the PC version of this game purely relied on the keyboard and memorizing 13-20 different actions was difficult.

[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Across almost everything... No, I'm not kidding​

Where do I EVEN BEGIN with this one? OK, You got Rayman Legends and Rayman Origins, both of them are AWESOME games both singe player and their co-op counterparts.... But this is a gem in itself, the original from the Dreamcast, N64, PC and Play Station 1.... Why I picked these 4 versions is because this game has so many re-releases and ports that it's hard to keep track of and each port differs! Example, In the original when Rayman 2 released, You had Rayman saving his world from pirates and in order to do this, you had to go to the Hall of Doors which was a river of space time that could take you ANYWHERE you wanted to go, the music and the mystical atmosphere made level selection a Joy to return too. Aside from this, while each of these 4 versions are the same game, there is a difference in level between the 4 of them.... Then the game released again for the PS2, Same game but slightly large differences and new platforming levels with the same powers and the hall of doors was replaced with a hub world.... Already, one of the best parts of the game ripped out... Then they had a DS release and a 3DS release where they scrapped the hub world and replaced that with the 'Isle of Doors' which no longer had that feeling of mystics and mystery but instead an island you can move back and forth while trying to select the level you want to go to and instead go to the swamp level again when you try to reach the cave of bad dreams to get that LAST STUPID LUM OFF THE SLIDE TOWARDS THE LEVEL BOSS!!!!..... But I digress. What actually makes this a good 3D platforming game to go back too is mostly because of the story, the characters and this whole mystical world they live in. If Ubisoft we're to do another Rayman game, I would like to see a sequel to the great escape rather than another great escape port.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Dreamcast​

I know it isn't a game, but it's a favorite console of mine with some good console exclusives that can't really be replayed on any other medium; this includes emulation since noone has perfected the PC emulation for this console; I don't intend to talk about it's piracy issues, but I do want to focus on some things that are more out of sight for this gray console. Ever since Sega bit the dust in hardware, this console has been able to adapt a life of it's own, even today. Like the Gameboy and Tiger electronic handhelds, this console is a survivor; not in the traditional form though but in the form of becoming something much more.

How much more though? For those who don't bother to google, fans and hardware enthusiast's went out of their way to improve the original dreamcast beyond what anyone would begin to expect. Because they could get past their anti-piracy lock's, people have been making their own homebrew games to run on the console, some clones of other successful games, some original. A pair of programmers for one of the Dreamcast Games, the Floigan Bros., released a save file containing all of the games DLC to give away for free to use with a copy of the game since the community for the Dreamcast still lives and breathes, the last game to officially release for this thing was Pier Solar by Watermelon Games! Which is a spiffy JRPG and for sale on Steam at a decent price. If that's not enough, you got HDMI TV's coming in that no longer support the A/V inputs? The community develops another work around and has developed an adapter to convert A/V signals from the Dreamcast into digital and allow players to play dreamcast games on any TV today, which are a little more difficult to locate, but it's worth the search if you can the component for sale somewhere.

The console is a survivor among it's fans and there is a petition in place to try and convince SEGA to return to the console war. Any interest in this ought to try searching 'Dreamcast Reloaded' if they have any interest.
 
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Avernum
PC, Android​

Avernum.... Do you enjoy RPG's? Do you enjoy Dungeons and Dragons? Do you enjoy both of these being on PC? Do you enjoy a story of rebellion? If not, then this isn't really for you. This is a gem that deserve's a little light because of the story it tells. You are thrown into an underground world, armed with nothing, pissed at a kingdom who put you there and you want revenge to overthrow the kingdom above, beating the shit out of the king and live freely once more... You then go on a long medieval adventure afterwards to either get to the surface, get revenge or get famous. The game itself play's like a Tabletop RPG from dungeons and dragons though it differs from the real thing like any OTHER RPG tabletop system like AdEva or FATE. The story of rebellion drew me to the game, coming up with the characters back stories on my own made the game a bit more enjoyable as a group of idiots and misfits who want revenge and go on quests to get stronger for that when they slay the king, they give him the middle finger before retreating or dying in the last hurrah...

I may just do a let's play of the campaign and call it the Campaign of Mullighan or something, post it to youtube and get paid 2 cents every view.

If you do try this game, know there are barely many guides for this game and it might be better to go in at this blind, save often. If you enjoy this version, they made a Sequel called Avernum 2: Crystal Souls and they're making the conclusion Avernum 3: Ruined World which will be published next year. It's worth looking into.



[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

PC, Android​

WHY IS THIS GAME ON GAMER OBSCUREA?! Well, because it's not as often talked about by a lot of people, nor is it's sequel Card City Nights 2. The music to both of the first and sequel is awesome, the card battle system is interesting and the characters are humerous. The characters in both of the games are characters used from all of the games Ludosity has published before, including Ittle Dew, Princess Remedy, Hero and several others; game's I'll add to this topic someday.

The basic gist of the first game's story is you move into an island because you won a free house. You discover the island is crazy about a card game so much that a company gives you a free deck to play with and your just killing time by gathering legendaries to win a challenge with a large cash prize available. The second game, you wake up in a freezer on a ship, discover the ship is on a aimless course and go on an adventure to find the captain of the ship and get him to straighten out the ship's course; but to get to him, you have to rank up via card battles to gain access to different areas on the ship and find him.

If you enjoy card games, This is worth a look. Mechanic wise, the games differ a lot from each other in both the original and the sequel though you may have more fun in the sequel...... BUT that's just me, I still think they're both worth playing and worth looking into.

Chill out to some tunes from the first game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmpCo-v-s3E
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

The Way
PC​

OK ladies and gems. You love RPG'S? I hope so because this is one of those PC RPG games that's in obscurity that I would love to shed some light on. Back when RPG Maker 2000-2003 was on the rise for independent developers before anyone bothered to look at Unity or any other Engine, there was a mass release of other independent titles that also helped pioneer the indie RPG Genre or JRPG.

Anyone who reads the thread may go ahead and shrug this game off because this is a game that was made with RPG Maker, though I strongly advise they hear me out about this particular title. The way is a 6-part Episode RPG done with RPG maker, though the executable or the program that interpreted the game's data we're edited heavily to include features that we're never really introduced in any of the old RPG maker systems; An example of this is Camera Zoom. If you own either 2000 or 2003 in Steam and check out your events or commands you use to program NPCS and such into these games, you'll notice there is not Camera option available. You could probably pan your stuff, but that was pretty much it. The guy behind this went the extra mile to include features that stepped beyond the engines original design and included things your probably would never find in those older RPG maker projects today.

As far as the game's story goes, your a swordsman looking for his girlfriend..... from there, the game devolves into mystery, lore, conspiracies and choices that, whichever you make, affect the later games as you transfer your save file into each and every new episode. As far as game play goes, there are 2 RPG system's included in the game; You got the typical JRPG where you make a decision and watch what happens and their own RPG system called 'plunge' which is roughly the same as the RPG, though it's more a duel between two swordsman. It's starts off simple to understand though it becomes more complex and more difficult to play through as the game progresses on.

If your interested in checking the game out; it's free. No cash needed, no deals, just free and in English. Fans of the series have translated the game into French, Italian and Deutsche which are available along on the game's download page.

If there are any cons with this game or series, it's that the episodes are INCREDIBLY long..... And while we're waiting on that Final Fantasy 7, this may be a good alternative after you've maxed out your characters in FF 15 and online in 14 and are waiting for a huge update but would want to play something else a bit more slow.

There are other free RPG Maker game gems from this era, though I think 'The Way' here shines a little bit brighter.

https://www.crestfallen.us/download.html
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Savage
PC
​

I want to pay more omage to another gem often push aside. Savage.
Savage is both an RTS game and an FPS game. How did it work out though? They split up the jobs, 1 player to work the RTS side who we'll dub as a [Strategist] while the rest acted as troops on the FPS side who we'll dub as [Warriors.]

The [Strategist]'s job is to build buildings, research weapons and tech that would be distributed to the [Warriors.] The [Strategist] would have a set of workers he could control to gather resources, build buildings and defense structures for the [Warriors] to climb and use as cover or elevation. The [Warriors] job is to keep the workers safe while also going over to the other teams base and destroy it.

You had 2 factions to pick between, you could either be human or your could be beasts. Beast's we're a race that we're mostly melee with little firearms, however they have a lot of health to survive attacks from their opponents to take down the opposition and upgrades available to make them more favorable melee troops and fun to play as. Humans are weaker in health compared to the beasts and weak in melee, though they have more firearm weapons than the beasts, such as a electric arc gun or a mortar or a set of traps you can lay all over the battlefield.... Well, not traps, but handy items.

Aside from the box art I posted above, this game is still going with it's own modding community with several game modes, nearly over 2000 maps created by it's fan base and it's still fun to play. If anything, they also re-released an update version on Steam you can pick-up for purchase to play.

If your like me however, and don't have much cash to work with, there is a free version available called 'Savage XR.'
https://www.savagexr.com/index.html
It's mostly PVP, but still fun to play, doesn't require much in graphic processing power, in fact; if you can run 'Elder Scrolls: Morrowind' well on your computer, you can run this. Just don't run the tutorial... On Newer computers, the tutorial in Savage XR breaks. The game doesn't end, it just doesn't spawn the models to perform the next task in the tutorial to learn and the modding community behind it has tried to fix it, but hasn't had much luck.... I got in contact with one of the modders behind the upkeep in keeping the Savage XR alive and they can't really change the map data for the tutorial to get it working more than you can convince Batman to fight the Joker without his Cowl and give that said villain an atom bomb. The most they could change was text explaining whats going on and variables on starting resources.

If your bored and looking for an FPS that's different from Call of Duty, I recommend giving this gem a hard look.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Trip World
Game Boy​

This is a rare game.... It' so rare that the reproduction cartridges I've found to this game are worth over $200 off of Amazon alone!... Though if your a gent or lass who loves Etsy, you can probably pick this up for whatever is worth $16 USD + whatever your countries tax law is for shipped in goods. This is just another game the has sunk into obscurity and only talked about by a handful of youtubers; well, there might be more than a handful, though then again, I don't exactly see this game often among those who review Gameboy classics.

In the game, you take control of that rabbit and set out to save your world from an evil villain, you can kick your enemies, jump on them to use as an extra leverage to gain more altitude to reach items and object. Transform into different forms to get around the levels and just.... Well, that's it; it's not much, though then again, this was a platformer title for the gameboy and gameboy is already being phased out along with other games and titles such as Azure Dreams or Survival kids, which I'll have to do a post on those at some point. From what I played, I enjoyed it, getting around the levels and having to use my brain to solve small yet interesting various obstacles to progress and get to the end of the level. If your into simple platformers, this is another obscure gem worth looking into.

The game itself is easy to play, the levels are decent in length, it's easy for anyone to just simply pick up and play and the character design and art is just likeable.
If you want, look up a let's play video and decide for yourself. If you want to 'PLAY' the game however, though I want to try to avoid recommending it, your going to have to rely on emulation. Like I said, this is a very rare game and I mean very rare. Only so many copies we're produced and it isn't something you can walk into a used game shop to simply pick up for about $5. Either you track down someone willing to make your a reproduction cartridge or you have some form of legendary luck to find the thing at an anime convention and paid top dollar for it; both options of which are difficult enough to even do.

Better yet, if you got an hour of time, I'd recommend watching this.
It's a video from the Game Developers Conference in 2016 about emulation and one of the programmers who was behind the release of the Megaman Legacy collection where it gives you game music, art and a lot of other spiffy stuff by playing the game.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Terranigma
SNES​

This is an RPG that I would be more than happy to travel to Europe, purchase a PAL Region SNES and a cartridge to THIS game just to play alone.... However I never had the chance to do so mostly because it would be too expensive; so I have to rely on tracking down the production cartridge.... That's how much I love this game.

Terranigma is a top-down hack and slash RPG, simular to the legend of Zelda.... In fact, it kinda plays like it except you can pull off more moves with your weapon than link could, such as running, jumping and using your weapon mid air; you land making an attacking dash along the ground. Jump and attack to do an air attack, rapid attack button unleashes a flurry of attacks as you hold still..... It's better to try the game and experiment; but MOVING ON!

Without spoiling the story too much, you play as the trouble making boy in the picture above who comes across a box. Upon attaining it, everyone within the village turns to crystal with the exception of your village elder as he tells you to leave home to 5 towers and rebuild the world... From here, you set out onto the games world and go with the flow of the story. Exploring, hacking, slashing, leveling up and traveling. You play this game for both the experience of the journey and the story both and there is so much about this title I want to talk about, but there's so much to it I don't want to spoil. It's just a good action RPG that just simply needs to be played.
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

A lot of you may ask, if the game is so good; why was there no USA release? The reason, or at least I think the reason was, the games content. There is no nudity to this game or graphic that would ban this game in general; the reason it was probably kept from the USA was mostly because of certain story elements from the game that the ERSB at the time didn't agree with in a religious society and frown at the game itself. If you browse wikipedia, Enix, the gents who helped publish the game, closed out their office over in the USA before the game was localized fully for release; that would also be a more probable scenario.

This is not a game you can find easily on any Nintendo E-Shop or flea market. You either need a buddy in europe to mail you a copy of the game and play it on a 3rd party Snes console that's Region free or look up a reproduction cartridge on Etsy. Either case, it's worth tracking down and if your watched the 1 hour long video I posted above on 'Trip World' about emulation, it's a game that counts as another good reason for companies to embrace emulation instead of hating it and working against it.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Wayward Souls
Android, iOS​

Something I never really touched on before, mobile gaming! Not the basic slot-machine-type-gaming-where-you-see-a-pay-wall-and-waste-your-paycheck-to-get-past-that-pay-wall-so-you-can-see-the-pretty-graphics-on-the-otherside-while-endangering-not-only-yourself-but-your-family-with-financial-debt-you-can-never-pay-back game, the kind of game you pay for that does NOT have the paywall and is still enjoyable enough to actually play on. Wayward Souls is ONE of those games that's not really touched on or talked about much.

The game begins where you play as a Paladin who storms a mansion to help a few nobles evacuate from monsters and darker forces that hit the estate earlier, teaching you how to play the game like out of Megaman X, except with onscreen instructions, until you get to the end to fight an impossible boss and die..... Then you pick between 3 other heroes and enter a dungeon underneath the home of the guy who just killed you and the real game begins. Each character has a different story for why they are there, the warrior is there to take revenge on his brother, the mage is there to find her missing twin sister and so on and so forth. Each time you go into the dungeon, you earn gold to upgrade your character or others with passives and abilities that help you climb the tower further and further, reaching check points, getting to the randomly placed forges to upgrade your gear until you finish the story for that character.

The more progress you make, the more characters you unlock and the more you can fight, hack and slash through the game with their own stories and reasons to be where they are.

The biggest turn off from these kind of games, to me that is, are how mobile controls work. The people or developer who came up with the control design to this game should have been awarded a medal; It's hard to actually describe, but the control scheme are gestures you make on the touch screen. Such as the left side of the screen, place your thumb on that side and move it up, your hero moves up. Same way with left right, etc. Tap the right side of the screen to attack, interact and so on. How it sounds on paper or text looks a little ridiculous, but I suggest giving this game a try, it feels natural like holding a NES controller for the first time..... Or if your the younger generation, reading post's about old and current video games being shoved out of the lime-light, it's like playing a game with your Xbox controller or PS4 controller or Nintendo switch controller for the first time and it feels like it's an instinct with you hit.....whatever counts as a 'start' button now-a-days..... WHY ARE GAME HARDWARE COMPANIES AFRAID OF THE START BUTTON?! WHAT DID IT DO TO THEM?! DID IT LEAVE THEM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?! DID THEY START DATING THE 'Options' AND 'Menu' BUTTONS TO GET BACK AT THE START AND SELECT BUTTON?! GAAAAAAAAAAAA- *This joke is going nowhere, ignore this*
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Lackey CCG
Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS​

Alright ladies and gents, this is for those who love tabletop games... Mostly card games.

Before we had 'tabletop' simulator, overloading Steam Workshop with custom games and models, there was this beauty of a program where you could play any card game you wanted too for free... In a sense, you could probably think of this as a tabletop simulator from the year 2002....

Why am I bringing up this old program out of nowhere? Last I checked, Tabletop simulator was still $20 on steam and it's only competitors are Tabletopia and Revolution. Tabletopia where you need to register an account with them + pay them more $$$ to make your own custom game to upload to them and Revolution, a tabletop program that was more designed for your Dungeons and Dragon games like Super Dungeon Explorer... Or Dungeons and Dragons.

You can create your own card games, play them online with friends, share them and create updates that the program can hunt down and download for the game you've made. It does not include the same shortcuts you've come to expect from tabletop simulator; but it works, plain and simple.

It's still for free over their website and for the Iphone crowd, you can pick it up for about $6. Alternatively, I'd recommend tabletop simulator, but if you want something that just works and is for free, I'd recommend this highly.
 
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[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

The Consuming Shadow
PC​

I probably should have posted something like this 2 or 3 weeks ago on Halloween.... Though then again, this is a title that's fairly easy to forget. The Consuming Shadow is a Roguelike mystery game; which in itself, sounds like it would just be more difficult to program, but the man or team who made this, we're able to work something out.

In the game, you play as a detective in London who recently discovers a cult is attempting to raise their Cthullu-ish lovecraft creature and your on the case to stop not only the cult, but their Cthullu thing as well. Though you don't 'fight' the thing traditionally upfront and outright. Before the world ends in the time it gives you, you travel from town to town and enter dungeons to gather clues to defeat the thing that's invading earth; the kicker is that there are 3 different Cthullu-ish beings and each 'new' game changes their properties from the rune's that symbolize them to the colors their cultists are bathed when they cast magic. What's more is that if you can't keep yourself together in health and sanity, it will hinder your efforts to beat the game. Lack of Sanity can and probably will..... Reverse controls and reassign buttons, Cause monsters that spawn in dungeons to go invisible and difficult to target + kill, Spawn ghostly monsters that will do damage with projectiles; though they don't literally exist, see creepy stuff on the road as you travel from town to town, making things more ominous.

Another thing worthy of note is you will die in this game..... A lot, like in DarkSouls; however depending on how many clues you've located and how many monsters you've killed + other factors break down into points you've earned from that game, which are exchanged for "Birth Star's." When you start a new game, you assign birth stars to give you different buffs, like better luck, better health and sanity or increase the rate clues spawn in game which helps you get through each game and get a little farther than the last time.

The major con's to this game... Well, 2 of them, is that 1, that graphics ain't nothing to write home about.... I mean the presentation of the game stands out pretty well and your character acting as a 2D silhouette in dungeons while searching them while also fighting the silhouette's of monster's is pretty stylized and works in the games favor when you go towards the final battle, though the graphics for the dungeon's, the items, even the pages in your notebook don't look polished and look like something a teenager attempted when designing his first game. How fighting works in the game is another story, it can be choppy, it's hard to near impossible to dodge attacks and though the gun your given has limited ammo, you can't carry any excess ammo you find and you can't aim the gun that well, especially if your dealing with ceiling crawlers.... which are easier to deal with than any other monster in the game if you know how to get behind them, but I digress.

These flaws aside, as a mystery rougelike, you need to bring in your best deduction skills to actually beat the game. Aside from the clues you gather, the corpses, runes that get painted on the wall, colors and the cultist's spells play parts in each game as your attempting to deduce who is who, what's invading, what's not invading and see what power's or cthullu's things are in play. I've actually had more fun with this game with friends who would sit in with me to try and figure out what's going on in each game as we attempt to deduce who is invading us and we go stop the thing and it's kinda fun. It's like 'Betrayal at the house on the hill' except the betrayer is the game itself and we don't know who that betrayer is so we're scrambling to find the betrayer and get rid of him in order to live....

If you want a good mystery you can revisit, even after you beat it once, this is one I highly recommend. It has daily challenges and hidden characters you can unlock. This game is pretty much one of it's only kind, roughly. Though I am willing to admit to being wrong and would check out any other games that do this that aren't by the Humongous Entertainment team, (They did a lot of chilren's point and click games that had a rough but predictable roguelike element) then I'm willing to look into them... Better yet, I'd like to see someone post about them here, even if it's a board game.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Sonic Battle
GBA​

This is an old one but good one. You like games such as POWER STONE? Do you like fighting games that include the Sonic franchise alone?! DO YOU WANT TO SEE A GAMES WITH FIGHTING MECHANICS SIMULATING A BEAT'EM UP?!

Well good or too bad, because this game is actually incredibly fun and accomplishes about 85% of all that. The game attempts Psuedo 3d in it's fighting stages, using graphics and (MATH!) to the create the illusion of 3D while fighting in a beat'em up arena. Supporting up to 4 players with individual health bars and special that can be assigned per ressurection, a charged super death attack and more multiplayer options to shake a stick at, minigames included and multiple back stories with different fighters with each battle, you earn a skill card at random of different moves you can use and customize a single fighter to be the most powerful fighter in the game!!!

​

If you got a Gameboy Advance, it's worth a look. It's up for roughly $7-$10 over amazon!
 
Hey, just wanted to let you know, this is an awesome thread, I'm pretty impressed with the list of titles that have been put up here and most of them I have never heard of before. Your written reviews of these games are pretty thorough without too many spoilers, well done.

I own a copy of Two Worlds 2, but I can never get past the beginning because the dialogue is so cringe worthy and the game mechanics and controls feel so clunky. Some more words of encouragement would be great to get me to continue playing this game, any further advice would be well appreciated.

I was amazed when I read about "Oni", a Bungie and Rockstar game?!? Why have I never heard of this game till now? I will have to look up some more info about it because it sounds amazing from the review you wrote about it.

I also wanted to suggest a game that I absolutely love and am obsessed with, but I don't actually know how popular of a game it is. I don't really hear many people talk about it and it's only a few years old, the game is called "SOMA" and it was done by the same studio that created all of the "Amnesia" horror games. Feel free to let me know if it's popular enough that you wouldn't bother with it, but if it's not very well known and you are interested in it, I highly encourage you to give it a go. I personally consider it to be one of the best games I have ever played in my entire life, I am currently doing my second play through of the game and I am trying to make different choices in the game than what I did the previous time I played it.
 
Mister Coffee said:
Hey, just wanted to let you know, this is an awesome thread, I'm pretty impressed with the list of titles that have been put up here and most of them I have never heard of before. Your written reviews of these games are pretty thorough without too many spoilers, well done.

I own a copy of Two Worlds 2, but I can never get past the beginning because the dialogue is so cringe worthy and the game mechanics and controls feel so clunky. Some more words of encouragement would be great to get me to continue playing this game, any further advice would be well appreciated.

I was amazed when I read about "Oni", a Bungie and Rockstar game?!? Why have I never heard of this game till now? I will have to look up some more info about it because it sounds amazing from the review you wrote about it.

I also wanted to suggest a game that I absolutely love and am obsessed with, but I don't actually know how popular of a game it is. I don't really hear many people talk about it and it's only a few years old, the game is called "SOMA" and it was done by the same studio that created all of the "Amnesia" horror games. Feel free to let me know if it's popular enough that you wouldn't bother with it, but if it's not very well known and you are interested in it, I highly encourage you to give it a go. I personally consider it to be one of the best games I have ever played in my entire life, I am currently doing my second play through of the game and I am trying to make different choices in the game than what I did the previous time I played it.
Click to expand...

I'm glad the topic has caught you attention well and I hope your enjoying what you can get your hands on. :)

Two Worlds 2; as clunky as some of the combat gets, that's part of the game's rough charm, including the first 7-25 minutes of the game. If you hang in there past that point and reach your home base or your general 'home,' the game opens up and you can kind of treat the thing like Skyrim and go side questing or do your own thing, be the villain who scorches the land or the hero who helps it. You can improve your weapons by finding other copies of the same weapon, bring them to a blacksmith shop at your home base, break the weapons down, learn about them and reforge or improve other weapons you have on hand. Those are two other tidbits I hope encourage you some to try and play; however, like I mentioned in the initial review, Reality Pump is a company that identifies and fixes their own mistakes. They're working on Two Worlds 3 and it look's awesome.

You never heard of Oni because it wasn't as popular back then. I mean, Bungie was roughly starting out back then. It was an era where companies we're racing on different consoles, trying to see what stuck and what didn't before the internet started gathering their marketing data and stuck to FPS games while Nintendo did the smart thing to do their own thing.... I hope what you find will encourage you to track the game down, whether in piracy or legitimately!

I'll give Soma a try; though you can post your own experiences here about it. I haven't heard it that much, I'll go track it down over steam and I'm willing to post my experiences; though if you have experiences with that game you want to get across, go ahead. It's an open topic for a reason, not a youtube channel where you beg a youtuber to do a review for it. (Though I was going to do that until I decided not too due to school work among other changes in life and I couldn't edit videos worth anything.... plus there's nearly over a million people with gaming channels on youtube so I decided to drop the project entirely.) I still want to hear about video games that are in obscurity from anywhere in the world, whether it's Europe, Japan or the USA from anyone willing to post their experiences; just as I've posted mine on these buried titles.
 
Spoiler:

Thanks for the encouragement on Two Worlds 2, if I get my Playstation 3 up and running again, I'll try giving it another go. I mean I did get the game because I heard some good stuff about it from a friend of mine as well, so I'll have to get around to it now that I've heard its a good game from multiple sources. Also when I got the game I was really focused on a couple of other games I was playing at the time, so I didn't really give the game the time it needed to really immerse me into it. I'll give it another chance soon.

I do a bit of old school game collecting as well, which is why I really enjoyed reading through this thread, I do enjoy obscure games, but even more so, I love collecting rare games. I'll look around and see if I can find a cheap copy of Oni somewhere. It might take me some time, but I've found some pretty rare games for cheap prices just by being patient and checking my shopping sites regularly.

I would actually love to write a small review about SOMA... :D

SOMA
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

"SOMA" is a Science Fiction Survival Horror game developed and published by "Frictional Games". Frictional Games is well known (well known to most Horror Game Enthusiasts anyways...) for their past Horror series "Amnesia; The Dark Descent".
SOMA is a very recently made game that was released in September for the PC and the Playstation 4 in 2015, and although it was well received by its target audience, the game was still not quite as successful as Frictional Games expected the game to be and they managed to break even with their sales of the game by March 2016. However by the time a full year had passed, the sales of the game had unexpectedly doubled. Despite this marketing information, SOMA is still not widely talked about in comparison to most other AAA Horror titles.

The actual meat of the game SOMA is a rich, spectacular, macabre and tragic environment. The game tells a story of a man named "Simon Jarrett" who is mysteriously out of place from everything he once knew about his life. A Simon from the year 2015 is mysteriously transported into a bleak and lonely future, how he was transported into the future and why, is only just the beginning of the humongous and contemplative mystery of this game. This game presents fear and horror to the player in a way that is extremely rare, the true horror of this game being the continuous loneliness and understanding the deep, horrifying, mystery of what has happened to the future environment that you have found yourself in.

SOMA has incredibly beautiful graphics, sensible physics, and truly immersive environments. The incredibly deep and mysterious story line will constantly have you questioning many of your personal philosophies about life and it may even question personal morals you may or may not have. The game has a nice variety of incredibly important personal decisions that will affect the direction of the story. The majority of the game play is exploration and puzzle solving, however you will come against frightening enemies while on your travels through the dark enclosed hallways that are nearly impossible to see through if it wasn't for most of the cleverly dynamic horror lighting. The dark is frightening and the monsters will come for you whether you see them or not. You are not a combat oriented character, your only way in dealing with enemies is evasion, stealth, and not falling victim to the varying types of monsters unique abilities to kill you efficiently. With these truly horrifying and tense portions of the game, of evading monsters, your heart will pump and you will have multiple "close calls".

The overall plot of SOMA is very obviously the most important focus of the game, and it is the plot that establishes this game as one of the most horrifyingly tragic video game stories I have ever played. This game will force you to make very tough decisions, it will make you question your personal philosophies, and it will force you contemplate the humanity of yourself as well as others. As a science fiction story it will also make you wonder about the complexity of machinery and artificial intelligence, and you will question what type of threat our obsession with technology truly is to humanity.

SOMA is beautiful, it's horrifying, it's philosophical, it's tragic, and at the very core of it, it is absolutely a fun experience. I heavily recommend this game to anybody who is open to trying it out and having their philosophical minds challenged, then I find it interesting to know peoples opinions on the subject matter of the game. The game is still considered a recent release and it can be purchased for Steam, Playstation 4, and XBox One, so it wont be hard to find, nor expensive to purchase.
 
Every time I see one of these threads I have to make the same post to BOOST AWARENESS, and it's not just because my username is on a brick on the boardwalk!
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding​

While it is still in work, it already has enough content to justify the purchase, with everything from Lazertag and bowling, to a typing race and a full fledged casino, to random events that pop up around the Plaza, and that's before you even get to the actual games (And there's more coming in the social space too, like an arcade, boating, fishing, etc.)

When you get to the actual gameworlds, you currently can join; Minigolf (which currently has 7 different courses to play solo or with friends/randos), Ball Race (The unofficial spiritual successor to Super Monkey Ball, currently has 8 courses to play), Planet Panic (A lighthearted team shooter where you have to capture more balls than the other team, currently undergoing a massive rework), Virus (A disease outbreak themed game of tag, where the survivors are armed with everything from Tommy Guns to sci-fi railguns to keep the infected from touching them and thus making them infected), and Little Crusaders (A gamemode based on the Chimera section of Mother 3, where a team of knights have to outsmart a Dragon and jump on the button on its back, while the Dragon tries to kill all the knights)

And that's not all, A zombie slaughtering top down shooter called Zombie Massacre, and classic quake styled FFA deathmatch named Slaughterday Night Live are in active development, with a Mario Kart styled racer called Accelerate and a Ghost hunting game called Panic at Horror Hill planned for after that.

Doing all of these activities nets you Units, the currency of the vacation wonderland, which you can use to buy character customization (current character system will be overhauled in the future), as well as furniture and construction materials for your very own condo, as well as different types of condos (From a high-rise penthouse, to an underwater villa). Or you could just go back to the Casino and blow all your cash again.

With more activities constantly being added (I do believe chainsaw battles in the Plaza are set to make a return from Gmod Tower soon!) there are plenty of reasons to keep coming back to play with your friends. Or you could just save up for the infamous body pillow that you can slap any image link on. Your call.

You can also visit other's condos, but do be careful with that. The ability to put any image from the web on some objects means you never know if you're going to accidentally visit someone's personal hentai collection : \
 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Ocean Horn
PS4, Xbox one, Nintendo Switch, PC​

This is a title for Zelda Enthusiast's out there. If your like me, you just played through breath of the wild, both normal and master modes, got the strongest master sword, found all 900 pieces of gold p- I mean sap to expand your weapon slots, cooked all the meals, beat all the shrines, found and upgraded/purchased all of your favorite armors, attempted to murder the NPC with that one annoying quest that was so agonizing to play that you just want to kill him/her with a combination of bomb arrows, elemental arrows, bombs and spell's because you though it needed to die and maxed either your health or your stamina or both while finding the dark evil statue near the village your house is in to rotate out your stats and containers. After that, you did it again and went straight for Gannon for the lulz to just see if you could kill him as you we're like them speed runners.

You then get tired of exploring and beat the last side quest. After exhausting the game of it's content, you don't have much else to play or do with Zelda until Nintendo decides on another game or re-release skyward sword without the motion control or an HD+ of Twilight princess.

When you get to this point, you want to play another game where you just go on an adventure to have fun slaying things and having an adventure. I want to introduce those who dig into the obscure, Ocean Horn.

Ocean Horn is a top-down hack and slash, reminiscent of the old Zelda games like Link to the past and the new ones they put on the 3DS called 'A Link between Worlds.' Your given a sword, a shield and your given the task to go find your father who abandoned you to an island to go fight a giant robot by himself. From here, it's pretty much an adventure, you travel to islands, solve puzzles, explore the area, find blood stones and cast magic useful for puzzles. Not like the magic in Ocarina of time where it teleports or helps in a fight, but magic used to solve puzzles int eh game whether it's summoning a rock or a useless object to act as a weight to hit a switch or setting fire to stuff from afar so you can see or hurt enemies from where they can't see you.

There's a level system with small mini quest's that once you gain enough experience points, it upgrades your hero to carry more bombs, arrows, use less magic to cast spells, give you a gun to shoot at ships and objects our on the ocean, all sorts of stuff.

If there are any con's to the game, it lacks polish, a LOT of polish actually. Some enemies, even at the start, require multiple hits to kill at the start and don't drop much exp, Monster's are -sometimes- recycled from earlier islands with the exception of dungeons and the sound sampling is just underwhelming. To not give much away, you beat the first dungeon, get the important key item, but as your reviving it, there is a light effect and there is a sound that plays to give off the epic-ness the power the item has. But the sound is so distant that you can't hear it well and it's presentation doesn't feel like you accomplished something great other than you beat a dungeon and got an awesome item to help you explore further. Even the voice acting feels rough. To be fair however, it's an independent studio, an indie game they had to start somewhere.

These flaws ASIDE, the game looks beautiful, the water effect for the ocean, though I was hoping for something out of wind waker, looks realistic and like real water, you can meet and pass other ships in the ocean so it isn't completely empty, the game feels like it has some form of life there is plenty to explore, puzzles to solve and, like Egoraptor would say, if you open a chest in this game 'INSTANT GRATIFICATION!!! THE suspense builds as your going up to the chest and wondering what new item you got!'

I guess, if I could give them game a real rating, it's like an uncut, raw gem buried. It has value and it's fun, just really rough to work with. I'm actually more psyched for OceanHorn 2. It looks beautiful and the game looks evolved from it's first iteration; however the animation looks choppy so far; here's to hoping and praying they can iron that out some.

 
[PokeCommunity.com] Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Azure Dreams
GameBoy Color, PS1​

My friends who dig into the obscure, I have a good question to ask you.

Remember Rouge? The DOS text game, first rouge-like game with the random dungeons that now spawned SO MANY GAMES THAT TRY TO COPY IT'S STYLE AND FLOODS THE MARKET IN IT'S TASTE?! EVEN POKEMON WHEN THEY DID POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON?!

Well, this is a title that jumped onto the idea before pokemon mystery dungeon became....well, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Introducing Azure Dreams!

Azure dreams is a game that's about the same thing you would almost expect out of pokemon mystery dungeon with one exception, the trainer actually fights alongside his monster's. You got some 'Red' from Pokemon Chronicles; eh, forget him, Koh, the hero who you play in this title was the original badass trainer, pulling out his monsters and fighting with them, training them while training along side him. My aesthetics and jokes aside, you play as the red-head above, who enters a monster tower plopped right in the middle of your town to recover monster eggs to sell or hatch and raise. Improve the living conditions of your home, attract a girl in the village and climb the monster tower higher and higher to find out what happened to your father who disappeared years ago in your youth.

In term's of gameplay, it's like I said above, it's pokemon mystery dungeon where the trainer fights too. You enter the tower, you summon your monsters, you fight alongside them, you find weapons, eggs and food you need to feed your monsters to keep them summoned so they can still fight. It's pretty basic and there are 3 types of monsters, Fire, Wind and Water.... They could have added Earth, but to be fair, this title originally came out on the Gameboy and your dealing with a randomly generate dungeon each floor you reach with a few exceptions, so I'd cut the game some slack.

If there are any differences between the Gameboy version and the PS1 version; you play gameboy, your playing a slightly upgraded game of rogue with help to help you fight. You play the PS1 version, the dungeon floors get more complex, the add different levels you can climb up on, cliffs, the tower looks more lively and animated, you can find you way around easier and you got some cheap-but-decent-for-it's-time cut scenes; it's pretty awesome! If you can find it, I highly recommend picking it up on the PS1. I'd even recommend picking up the gameboy cartridge if you can get it into your possession.

Before I leave, there is something else worth mentioning about this game's series. A few people may beat it and ask if there was ever a sequel to this title? The game wasn't as popular, but it did have an Indirect sequel. Tao's Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal... Was the Red Head named Tao? No he wasn't; Konami looked at Azure dreams, didn't think much of it but liked the idea behind lost magic and slapped this title together. It makes reference to Azure Dream's monster tower, but that's it.... That game requires it's own post; So I'll stop here.
 
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