What I mean is… sometimes people are very loyal to a videogame franchise or a company because they loved a game they released years ago (Silent Hill/Konami with Silent Hill 2, Blizzard/Bethesda with their respective golden eras, some could argue this happens too with Pokémon and Final Fantasy, etc). Ethical/consumer reasons aside to stop supporting certain companies, sometimes some franchises/companies aren’t necessarily creating the best examples of games of those specific genres anymore, yet many fans are loyal to them (and a chunk of them also seem to suffer/complain with every new release).
Meanwhile some people that explore less known titles and different niches occasionally pop-up and say stuff like “the last Pokémon games are formulaic and uninspired, there’s actually this and that incredible examples of somewhat recent monster collecting games” or “the last FF wasn’t actually bad but if you want turn-based RPGs that’ll remind you of your old favorite FFs then check Chained Echoes or whatever” or “don’t look for something like Silent Hill 2 with Konami, instead I recommend these survival horror games”.
So the idea of this thread is for people to recommend alternatives to franchises. Especially if they’re standalone instead of other alternative franchises and especially if they’re indie (since most of my enjoyment these last few years has been from indies like Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Darkest Dungeon, Celeste, Slay the Spire, Tacoma, Hellblade).
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Cassette beasts is a great pokemon like with some fun twists and great sounds track
Coromon has a similar vibe. Such good games.
Congratulations on your excellent taste!
Let’s go with some good non-AAA games that were not sequels and never got one either.
Single player:
- Baba is you
- Brothers
- Mark of the Ninja
- SUPERHOT
- Vanquish
Better in co-op:
- Astroneer
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Nine Parchments
- Outward
- Renegade Ops
Rock and stone, brother!
Rock and Stone!
If you don’t rock and stone, you ain’t coming home.
SUPERHOT has a sequel
Sustained ! Although I thought SUPERHOT Mind Control Delete was more of a roguelite spinoff than a sequel (did not play it).
Vanquish was beautiful.
Huh. My siblings and I love the Trine games, and wanted to like Nine Parchments, but found it to be one of the worst games we’ve ever played. I don’t think we could find a single redeeming quality, and it just seemed like a total misstep.
So seeing it here on this list makes me think maybe there’s something that was okay about it? I’m curious what people liked…
(all the rest of these seem like good games, though, which honestly makes me even more confused about Nine Parchments’ inclusion…)
It’s okay not to like it of course. As you have seen it’s nothing like the Trine games, sharing only a bit of lore with them.
It’s basically a very pretty arena-based top-down shooter reminiscent of Magicka (which I also loved), with a good difficulty curve. There is not much of a story to carry the game forward, so it hinges on whether you like the gameplay and the challenge it offers or not. I for one really enjoyed Nine Parchments, doing multiple runs in single player and co-op with friends (even a “hardcore” one, which we usually never touch).
Right, yeah… It was definitely reminiscent of Magicka. Maybe even a little too reminiscent, since I feel Magicka was a much stronger game.
OK, interesting! It’s nice to know the game wasn’t objectively bad, and was only just “not for me”, since I like the devs!
Thumper is the best rhythm game I’ve ever played, and it was made by two ex-harmonix employees who were disappointed by the direction of rock band and similar titles. It throws away all the wish fulfillment and commercial stuff and the result is amazing.
CrackFactorioManagement games like Software INC, Startup Company, Big Ambitions, Sim Airport and SimCasino.
Don’t forget Cities Skylines and the recently released sequel. They’re both a lot of fun but for the sequel they really listened to the community. It’s a bit of a performance hog. There are performance patches coming but in the interim there area lot of settings one can change to make it run better on lower end hardware.
I am giving CS2 a year or so to clean up the performance issues and wait for the workshop to kick into gear.
I’ve got a decently beefy machine but it’s not top of the line or anything (Radeon RX 6950 XT, Core i7, 16GB memory) and with a few tweaks it runs pretty well. Definitely looking forward to the performance updates, though, because it’s a truly beautiful game.
That’s still a fairly beefy GPU though.
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Counterstrike 2 has great performance
I wouldn’t know. We were talking about Cities Skylines 2
Unless it’s something that you are a super uber fan, avoid buying a game before it comes out.
It saves a lot of heartaches and headaches.
Plus, in today’s world… why pre order? It’s not like a game will run out of copies…
“When you pre-order a game, you’re just committing to paying for something that some assholes in California haven’t even finished working on yet. You know what you get for pre-ordering a game? A big dick in your mouth.” -Eric Cartman, Black Friday
Outer wilds, tunic, a short hike, fez,
Tunic was shockingly good. Looks like its for little kids but there is a lot of surprises and neat puzzles tucked away in there. Absolutely worth checking that out
Second this. Tunic is a masterpiece.
what are these alternitives for?
Yup, I did not answer the question, I just put some personal recommendations
nevermind then. guess i dont care.
Outer Wilds is amaaaaazing
a short hike reinvigorated my love for indie games! it’s such a beautiful game with a cute little story and fun things to do, and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.
Although it looks like you’re mainly focusing on single player games, Titanfall 2 is a great alternative to Call of Duty. Its movement is insane, it’s fanbase isn’t toxic and it’s actually fun.
Its single player campaign is well regarded too if relatively short.
Do you have steam? Click on a tag (preferably a more descriptive one, but multiple can be selected on the next screen) of a game you enjoy, but think the soul has been lost from, sort by user review, find something you haven’t heard of before, enjoy the next entry in your preferred genre!
Alternatively go to the games store screen, at the bottom, after “more from this developer” is “users who enjoyed this game also enjoy”
Steam makes it very easy to expand your library, like it’s their business or something.
Edit to add Missing the point of let’s get some community involvement in here rather than turning to our benevolent monopolistic overlords.
If you want something that feels like Pokémon but was created by someone who isn’t just trying to shit out a new game every year, check out Casette Beasts!
Also if you really just want the same pokemon but better, check out rom hacks. Many of the pokemon community rom hacks are way better than they have any right to be
I guess I may suggest my all time favourite RPG. It’s Disco Elysium. A brilliantly written and crafted gem. You will find an amazing storyline, crazy dialogues and choices, psychedelic visuals. Such a gem must not be forgotten. What a pity the company almost dissolved after the release and the original authors won’t have a part in the sequel.
why is nobody here saying what the game is an alternative for or what ki d of game play to expect?
I feel like the Sonic franchise’s last great game was Adventure 2. There’ve been a couple good ones since then, but not great.
Anyone got a good replacement?
Lunistice
It’s relatively short, and there’s no chao garden. But it’s got a lot of soul. With a sequel on the way.
Above but the chao garden is required to be in the replacement.
You could check out Freedom Planet. It didn’t quite do it for me, but it has a decent fanbase
I haven’t played the beta yet but I’m hoping that The Finals, which is made by ex-Dice devs, will be a good alternative to Battlefield and COD. I just miss destructible environments so badly. Bad Company 2 was so so good back in the day.
Saw an article on that game recently that they’re using AI voices in that. I don’t think it’s for everything, but if you happen to be an opponent to AI, that’s something to know. If not, well, carry on 😅
I honestly think it’s a good application of AI. It really sets the “tournament” vibe
I mean, you could make an argument that AI announcers have an in-game reason to be a thing.
I really, really hope that it doesn’t get overrun with cheaters like warzone did. I have really high hopes for the game because I’m having a blast with the beta. Not often does a game come along out of nowhere and just tick all the boxes with having such a solid formula. Last game I felt like this with was Alex Legends. Pls devs don’t screw this up 🙏
The answer to your question is the indie market. Lots of unique ideas, ton of games that are a product of passion and not profit chasing.
My personal recommendation because I don’t see it mentioned a lot is Pathologic 2. Product of decades of work and one of my favorite RPGs where every single choice you make does matter. It’s a pretty bleak and heavy game that has about a 30 hour runtime and it’s really stressful so it’s not for everyone but I personally loved it.
Any game from Supergiant I would recommend in a heart beat.
My previous comment seemed to miss the point of this thread.
In the spirit of this thread I would love to find an alternative to “Settlers 7, a new kingdom”. The simplified combat, the urgency of the tech tree, the all or nothing of trade routes, and the really deep 4x in an RTS elements were friggin amazing, but Ubisoft drm really kept me away from trying any other entries to the series, and they haven’t indicated anything new coming out. So where can I guy go to get his settlers fix? If you haven’t played settlers 7, and are ignorant of why ubisoft is synonymous with the devil, give it a shot, it’s a wonderfully fun experience that I haven’t found replicated anywhere else.
