Obscure Games

I remember Drawn to Life!
I got mine second-hand from a store called Game Knight.
The save file that was still there was either corrupted or the previous owner was playing a sick joke.
The name was Santa but among the red velvet of the character was red lines. (Blood!?)
Didn't help a little boy sleep.

Otherwise, the first game was pretty fun.
But...
I always thought drawing your own obstacles sucked though.
Drawing your own demise.

 

Check your eyes my dear, you missed the word "kinda" and replaced it with "like".

 

I hated the switch puzzles, but that was because the touch screen was disfunctional. Aside from that, the game was quite fun.
Oh and corrupted game? The sequel is enough to give me an existential crisis (and I completed it when I was 11)

 

Actually, after some thought... I think this would be the best example I could mention for an Obscure Game.



The soundtrack is beautiful, but the title itself has a lot under its apparently harmless name. A haunting story best represented by the world it manifests upon.

 

Folklore.
101% awesome and would recommend to everyone who likes fairytale-like games or a nice story.
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I dunno if they're really obscure games but I found myself really liking Pony Island and The Final Station.
Pony Island a cheerful game about being a pony, hopping over hurdles and blowing away butterflies. Or is it?
You'll find the game is a lot darker than the name makes you think.

The Final Station is about a world that has been affected by a gas that turns people into monsters. You, as train conductor, are responsible for taking special cargo from station to station. Unfortunately, shortly prior to that the rail management had installed special blockers at every train stop, forcing you to get out and find the codes while also scrounging for supplies to survive. Along the way you'll pick up survivors, who will travel with you.

 

I can honestly say I've not heard of these, and I've played a lot of games. I mean, like, a lot of games.

I've been racking my brain for more obscure titles. I'll try and compile a list and report back later, with links.

 

Are the original Tomb Raiders obscure enough, or just old? The reboots seem to be doing fine, but it looks like everyone forgot about the original series.
Tomb Raider III is worth playing for the music alone.
And the scares.

It was so hard...younger me was really dumb for thinking he had a chance
Didn't get past the 1st level until probably 10 years later

Edit:

 

Just old. ;o Which is fine! It is inevitable that some games gain fame, run their course, and then fade from view.

I did look up some obscure games, and man did I find some truly black sheep. :I

Like... "Pepsi Man". *shudder* So many regrets, looking into these games. I couldn't bring myself to post the list. T-T Some of them were really, really bad.

 

Iji. http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php

It's an indie metroidvania platformer crammed full of secrets, with a great storyline.

Fraxy. http://fraxyhq.net/version/index.php

Basically, there's two main aspects of this game. The main aspect is the "game" part of it - it's a shoot-em-up game that does not have directional constraints. You fight bosses with various weapons (that you need to configure in the game's config tool, FYI). Those bosses can be broken in pieces, and are generally what you'd expect from a shmup - cheap tactics, massive amounts of bullets, so on.

My favorite part of the game, though, is the editor. See, I mention you could break bosses in pieces? That's because they're MADE of pieces, Because the editor allows you to make your own bosses with those pieces, and it's actually pretty easy.


Genetos. http://www.tatsuya-koyama.com/software/wg002_genetos_eng.html

Another shmup, this time based on the theme of evolution.

 

Somewhat obscure, but perhaps not hugely so, how about the Shadow Hearts franchise?

It's only 3 (well, ok, 4....) games that I know of, but at the time they were current/relevant, I didn't hear ANYBODY talking about them.

Never saw adverts for them, they were never mentioned in any gaming magazines I ever saw, etc. I only found out about the first Shadow Hearts game, because a friend of mine had found it and showed me it and I was like "hey that looks cool, imma get that!"

And since I liked the first one, I got the second... and then the third.

Wish I coulda tried the "4th" (actually, the prequel), but... finding a copy of that (Koudelka) is almost impossible and it doesn't work with emulators last I checked.

The games had some interesting mechanics, especially the main character in the first 2 games who could shapeshift into monstrous forms, the whole malice thing, and especially the radar-like wheel that decided how good your actions were. The second and third game also added people comboing attacks together (which could be exploited to ludicrous levels, such as taking a boss down in 1-2 rounds if done properly).

Sadly, the third game is probably not well liked because of how lighthearted it went, a huge deviation from the first two. Some parts of it I don't even like myself, I felt they got too silly with.

The games also had rather good soundtracks, some of the best boss and battle themes in the game, especially the 2nd game.

EDIT:





It's like... dude... turn that up lol.

 

good god, the music...

Remembered 3 racing games i played forever ago, Mashed: Drive to Survive, Street Legal Racing: Redline, and Ignition.
The only one that's almost interesting is Street Legal Racing

The customization is godly
But that's basically the only thing it has going for it.

The other two...let's not talk about them

 

Gang Garrison 2
It's TF2 but 2D and with some different mechanics. Its pretty cool.

 

So maybe not quite as obscure as some of the other games mentioned in this thread, but nowadays people even forget this game still exists, and some people (wrongly) believe that it is in its death throes, and that is the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI.

Please hear me out here.

For several years of the game's life, the game grew a rather bad reputation as being nearly impossible to get anywhere in, being too slow to get anywhere, and needing a full group of 6 people to do anything in, and sadly it kinda deserved that reputation.

However, that was then.... and now it is entirely different.

Today, it has some of the most ingenious game design ever seen in MMORPGs -- I think many MMOs could learn from what the developers of XI did, because in some ways I think FFXI is better than WoW, in some ways.

One has the choice of grouping or solo all the way to max level, and then once at max level, you can see all the game's story (though some of the last few missions might be mildly difficult while solo), and there's a HUGE game world to explore, 95% of it can be explored solo at your leisure without you getting killed constantly.

Most of the game's storyline bosses can be solo'd now (or you can go with a friend or five), and you can level any job solo rather easily.

It is also probably one of the fastest MMORPGs to get to max level in (the last two days, I leveled a secondary character's Warrior from 26 to 43 in a matter of about an hour and a half while solo).

I think it's a shame that XI's bad reputation has probably turned a lot of former players off on the game, and it drives new players away. Sure, the menu and UI system is a little out of date, and the graphics might be considered by some to be "bad", but give the game a break: it's more than 10 years old. Even as old as the game is, if you have a good enough computer to crank up the settings, it can still look somewhat impressive for its age.

It is a very story-heavy game with lots of cutscenes and a huge amount of dialogue and intricacies in its plot, and this plot isn't given to you by dumping huge novels of text on you in a neat little window that one just clicks off in their road to speed-run everything like in WoW.

If anybody's bored and needs a good casual (I can hardly believe I can now use that word to describe FFXI of all games) story-heavy game (and doesn't mind a somewhat outdated UI/graphics) that's also an MMO, look it up!

 

Will Rock - a very obscure FPS inspired by Serious Sam: First ans Second Encounter, but with it's own litte spin on it. Very enjoyable game, if you'll manage to not run into a bug where on the second level arena hawks keep spawning infinetly, making progressing impossible.

 

Yume Nikki anyone? http://www.moddb.com/games/yume-nikki/downloads/yume-nikki-v010

 

LSD Dream Emulator, a Japanese PS1 game about a dream journal. Probably one of the first 3D randomly-generated games and it was open world.

 

How could I forget the White Chamber? Awesome free indie sci-fi horror point & click adventure. The soundtrack is amazing. And also free. Seriously, why am I not playing this right now?

 

Whacked, and Shrek 2 for the original Xbox.
Two games that are weird, mostly unknown, and pretty damn fun.

Some really crazy sh*t. ESPECIALLY WHACKED.

 

Not sure if this would count as an obscure game, I played it recently and loved it... people say its terrifying, but I found it very entertaining.



The boss at the end of every level always had something disturbing to them, but the last one? I was not expecting that

 

Plok for the SNES is a fun, obscure game that was actually going to become Nintendo's property, but Shigeru Miyamoto lost interest in it.