Hey again, you’ll probably need a minute to remember making this post, but I saw Intergalactic Fishing was on sale in the Steam Summer Sale, so I went ahead and bought a copy. This lives up to everything you’ve said - I very much enjoy the gameplay of messing with the lure puzzle minigame and collecting information on all the fish in any given lake, and I’m absolutely wanting to catch Just One More Fish.
…I guess I’m hooked.
Thanks again!
I finished Overload this weekend, so I’m wandering through my backlog looking for a next thing that sticks with me for more than five minutes. Oxygen Not Included doesn’t seem to be cutting it, so… we’ll see. I’ve got Cataclysm: DDA around as a light diversion until I get pulled into something, and there’s always Guild Wars 2 and Deep Rock Galactic.
At least bookmarked; I just have to give this a try!
Symphony of the Night has an entire pile of bangers and is my clear winner in this category.
I’m not sure Siralim Ultimate qualifies as “underrated”, but it’s the kind of game where if the idea resonates with you it’ll keep you happily busy forever. It’s often compared to a Pokemon game, but I think it’s better described as Pokemon meets a dungeon blobber.
At its core, you build a group of six creatures and go into a procedural dungeon where you will fight other groups of similar creatures, picking options like fighting and casting spells. The creatures each have special traits which change game rules for them, and your job is to take advantage of this so that you win these fights. Your character also has perks which act as additional modifiers, and fusing creatures and slapping artifacts on them means you can apply even more changes to how everything works.
The interesting part emerges from the fact that these traits are generally not modifiers like +3.5% damage on Tuesdays; they are instead drastic and game-warping options like “If this creature successfully attacks, there’s a 50% chance that a dead creature on its team is resurrected.” That by itself is kind of hugely impactful… and it’s also kind of basic and boring for Siralim. Now let’s fuse it with a monster that immediately gets a free attack if the enemy attacks any other monster on your team, now we’re starting to cook.
Your actual goal isn’t to play fair, it is to fold, spindle, and mutilate the game’s mechanics to allow your team to win in increasingly unfair and ridiculous fights. It’s also pretty good at letting you control your level of challenge, incidentally, but you are at some point going to have to win against enemies with their own completely bonkers tricks. If you enjoy figuring out how to warp complicated rules to your benefit and stack absurdity atop absurdity, this game is calling for you. It’s absolutely got indie jank, by the way - the graphics aren’t amazing, the game sometimes grinds along very slowly processing all the silliness, and while it has lots of reference material ingame there’s still just way too much information to take in.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is pretty astounding, offering an incredible level of detail and degree of freedom, plus just lots of zombies to fight.