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arbayer2

A great many things have happened. I'm home now though so that's cool

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arbayer2's Vaguely Obscure PC Title List 2015 *Now with 40% more dust*

Presented in no particular order, it's... *drumroll* a whole bunch of games which are probably not all that obscure by duders' standards, actually. ... But they are still well worth looking at! Mainly included based on nostalgia factor, historical importance or a unique form of gameplay which has been largely overlooked. Sporadically updated, check back occasionally.

List items

  • Available initially on Mac OS back in the mid-late 90s, the Escape Velocity trilogy is a timeless, engaging and extremely replayable take on the space trading sim genre. At least one of these games is also available for PC, complete with a crap-ton of mods.

  • ALSO available initially on Mac OS back in the mid-late 90s, the Marathon franchise was among Bungie's first attempts at creating a story-driven science-fiction first-person shooter, after the more adventurous Pathways Into Darkness. Many story elements, themes and symbols have carried over from the Marathon series to Bungie's later sci-fi FPS franchise, Halo (also originally slated to launch on Mac OS until Microsoft purchased Bungie during the development of the Xbox).

    This franchise is newly playable on modern versions of Windows thanks to an open-source recreation of the Marathon Engine known as Aleph One. I don't think Bungie will be done with this franchise until they make seven installments... at least.

  • Space Station 13 is a very interesting breed of top-down RPG/simulation. Originally made by a little-known developer known as Exadv1 on the obscure BYOND browser-based platform, SS13 is now something of a cult classic among nerds on the internet.

    The game has a particular unofficial association with the Something Awful community, whose Goons helped resurrect interest in SS13 after Exadv1 discontinued development abruptly years ago. The game is now largely open-source and as such a fairly large variety of custom servers and modifications can be found for it.

    The game features emergent, player character-based roleplay mechanics, highly-detailed simulations of the titular space station, the space outside and its infrastructure as well as many unique (and perhaps detailed to the point of tedium) personnel jobs. The game also is designed around the concept of a D&D-like gamemaster - player roleplay ecosystem with the station's AI, which introduces utter chaos into an otherwise quite sterile setting. Reminds me more of Paranoia than D&D, frankly.

  • Another in a long line of PC titles designed around emergent gameplay, Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress (also known simply as Dwarf Fortress) is a procedurally-generated RPG/God-game in which you control a small band of dwarven explorers in search of a new mountain-home, some grog and a new life in a land with millennia of history and mythos generated anew for every new game you start.

    Of course, the game prides itself on its difficulty and sometimes-absurd algorithmic attention to detail, making losing the game often just as fun as winning. This game is also incredibly mod-friendly, which is good, because layman players will probably have to modify its graphics in order to understand the damn thing... I'm one of those players. >_>

    Also, the developers are amazing people who wish to develop the game indefinitely for free just for the fun of it.

  • Pontifex 2, made by Chronic Logic back in the early 2000s, is a bridge engineering simulator. Similar to one of my favorite freeware demos in the 2000s (Bridge Construction Set), this game allows you to design bridges on a 2.5D grid and test their mettle (er, metal?) against various traffic loads. Pretty fun if you're into sadistically designing bridges which collapse if you sneeze at them.

  • The predecessor to BeamNG:drive, Rigs of Rods is a soft-body vehicular physics simulation game. You can drive, fly and helm all manner of land, sea and aircraft in an attempt to get all the way around the island without completely vaporizing your vehicle. The game's dynamic soft-body physics engine is extremely impressive, even today. There are tons of vehicle and terrain addon mods available for free on the game's website, although many in the community have switched over to BeamNG's community entirely.

    The game also features online multiplayer, although it is just as experimental as the rest of the game.

  • Shores of Hazeron is somewhat hard to describe. A sort of incredibly-detailed MMO resource-gathering and management, space/planet exploration and ship combat simulator with web-integrated diplomacy, a ship/building editor and an expansive tech tree is how I'd put it.

    The game is incredibly complex, as you might imagine. It's becoming more refined and stable all the time, but it's still a pet project that, unless I'm mistaken, only one person is making (known as "Haxus" on the forums) assisted part-time by a handful of others, so keep that in mind.

    The game can be slow at times and the user interface is anything except intuitive half the time, although it used to be a lot worse. I'd assume if you play EVE Online or some other game with a heavily menu/window-driven UI it may be easier to pick up.

    Once you get past its flaws, though, you can get to running your own intergalactic empire from every conceivable level with your friends. You'll need the resources, manpower and managerial muscle to do it, though. There is a /ton/ of micromanagement involved until you get to the point where your entire empire is balanced... which is pretty much never. I'd suggest you play with other people instead of making an empire by yourself.

    This is what I'd imagine Spore-done-right would be, more or less.

  • You may have heard of TURBO Dismount on Steam, and that's totally fine, but I suggest you check out Secret Exit's older Dismount series titles.

    This one has you push the poor Dismount Dude down some steps in an attempt to get away with insurance fraud.

    Yep.

    Hey, it was amazing back in the day when you didn't see ragdoll physics in games too often. It still gives me a chuckle.

  • Along similar lines as Porrasturvat and Turbo Dismount, this game from Secret Exit has you piloting the poor Dismount Dude (Dudette? Kinda hard to tell) into walls with a very simplistic interpretation of an early 90s U-Haul. I often like to see if I can get DD caught up on the wall or launched over it.

    Sometimes DD will land "gracefully" only to be flattened by the very same truck he got thrown from if you set up the ramps right... in those moments I can only be thankful that I don't work for UPS. I'd imagine "What can Brown do for your work-related spinal injury" was a slogan that didn't last long outside of the boardroom.