I’m requesting for recommendations for games that stand out from the rest in their genre, and not in the sense of being the best game in that niche but actually bringing something new and innovative to the table. I’ve not had much experience in gaming, but I have a few games to give you a hint on what I am talking about:
- Superhot: Time only moves when you do
- Viewfinder: Convert 2D pictures seamlessly into interactive 3D environments
- Superliminal: Change size of objects by working with perception
- Portal: Portals
- Scribblenauts: Summon objects by describing them in a notepad
I am not focused on the story, no. of hours of playtime, date of release or its popularity. It just needs to be playable and be enjoyable (and be available in PC).
Majora’s Mask: a 3-day timeloop where everything resets when you go back
Katamari: A giant ball gets rolled around and collects stuff forever
Baba Is You: Movable text is rules to the game
Untitled Goose Game: You have to piss people off the right way
Billie Bust Up[unreleased]: Musicals tell you upcoming platforming challenges
Celeste: every time you die you quickly reset on the same “page”/small tile of map
Splatoon: you shoot at the ground to go faster, hide, and/or win
Odama: real-time tactical wargame pinball
Golf Story: Golf-based fetch quests
Astral Chain: asynchronously control a companion in combat
Okami: paint skills on-screen in combat
Astro Bears: Snake but in 3D
Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime: Up to 4 players pilot parts of a ship together
Pokemon Ranger: draw circles around monsters to catch them
Viva Pinata: breed pinatas to create new species
Spore: create and evolve a creature
Oh man, I just want to give a shout out to the Splatoon ink mechanic.
The game is a competitive arena shooter. That would be pretty uninteresting, but instead of competing for kills or holding objectives, the teams are competing to cover the largest surface area with ink or paint. That’s pretty neat. But there’s more.
Every player has a special “squid mode” they can use when standing on ink of their colour. When in squid mode players travel much faster, can travel up walls, and are extremely hard to spot, but can not attack or lay new ink.
This makes the laying ink in specific areas valuable, as it makes it faster to get from the spawn point to the front faster and easier. It also rewards holding contiguous trails of ink, or conversely, cutting off your opponent’s ink trails.
As far as time loop mechanics go, there are some other strong contenders for playing with the concept:
The Sexy Brutale - you are stuck in a short time loop in which people die, and you need to save them. Successfully saving someone grants you a special power that can be used to try to save others. You have to untangle who and how to save each one and exactly what’s going on. You keep the powers between loops, and also start each loop from the last clock you checked in at.
Deathloop - Arkane stealth shooter stuck in a one day loop. Several locations, different events in each location each day, goal is to arrange the right day so you can kill all your targets in one loop.
Death Come True - interactive film game. You wake up in a hotel room, and have to figure out what’s going on. Loop continues until you die, at which point you wake up in the hotel room again.
12 Minutes - You come back to your apartment, and unless you change the course of events (or on the first loop, do not touch the controls at all) you will die in less than 12 minutes. Then loop until you understand what’s going on.
Okami plays extremely well on Nintendo Switch with the ability to paint with your fingers on the touch screen
Katamari Damacy is a great example, built around a very simple but satifying mechanic snd good controls.