Noita never reached the levels of fame and notoriety that it deserves. It should be mentioned in every “Best Roguelike” game list.

Now, it’s definitely rated high by those who play it, with Overwhelmingly Positive reviews, but it never got its mainstream spotlight.

Age of Mythology is one that I very rarely see talked about anywhere, it has a pretty good single player campaign. I also think more people should try out Caesar 3, albeit using one of the more modern fan made patches for reasonable zoom distances and other quality of life features.

The 2008 Prince of Persia.

What was expected to be a start of a series revival, flopped and ended up with a kinda messy PC port, platform exclusive DLC epilogue and eventually abandonment in favor of return to sands of time mythos.

Meanwhile it is my favorite entry in the series - with amazing art direction, and lovely character development and vocal performances by two main characters. The gameplay is a cross of guitar hero and parkour - it's much more rhythm based and perhaps less expensive, but pulling off a perfect run feels soooo good.

I love the game so much that even though I'm not a YouTuber, I created a full playthrough and published it - just so I can stop wanting to play it again every few years.

Dyson Sphere Program. Factorio and Satisfactory tend to get all the press, but DSP is AMAZING.

• They learned a lot of quality of life lessons from older factory games and built them in, e.g. you get bots right away.
• The visuals can be breathtaking: not because it's raytracing/whatever fancy tech, but simply the scale of the game: giant gas planet rises at the horizon, etc. -- and you can fly to just about everything you see. Star 5 light years away? You can fly to it and visits its planets and moons, and then ship stuff between your home system and the new system
• It does power exceptionally well: there are a ton of power sources (https://dsp-wiki.com/Energy_Sources#List_of_Fuels), and a lot of depth in figuring out how to power your mega factories. You can even charge up a battery and ship it by spaceship to another moon/planet. Going back to Factorio's simplistic steam/solar/nuclear power feels like a let down (of course, Factorio has its strengths, like trains and extreme polish).

It's in early access, but it's one of the most polished early-access games you'll find. They're currently working on a large combat update that should drop in December. Price-to-value ratio is ridiculous. It's $20 and I have 155 hours in the game.

Nihon Falcom games made since 2000, all of them. Ys games are so much fun and the Trails series has the most expansive world-building I've ever seen. Imagine something like a Bethesda game, but instead of every character basically just having one quest-line and ten lines of dialogue, they are constantly changing throughout the entire game, reacting to world events and progressing their own particular arc

there might be hundreds of side characters in each game that all have their own arc throughout the game, or maybe multiple games

The series really does ruin a lot of other games for you though, you come to expect this and then you play a game that doesn't' focus as much on narrative or world-building and everything just feels so videogamey as a result. Oh this character only talks about their Bar? and their dialogue doesn't change at all? and they have one quest and then you'll never speak to them again?... okay.

Evoland 2: A game paying homage to the history of rpgs, and has a fairly solid set of main characters.

Lenna's Inception: A 2D Zelda clone about the world glitching out and you taking the place of the main character.

Bastion: First game from Supergiant Games (makers of Hades). Fantastic music and voice acting. Fairly good story too.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It’s a free, classic-style roguelike that has a massive amount of options. The game takes place in the near-future following an apocalyptic event that has turned most people into zombies. There’s also Lovecraftian horrors, Fallout-esque military installations guarded by robots, the ability to be a furry (like, with a full costume. Or you can get mutagens and transform yourself into an animal hybrid.), vehicle and structure building, and you can even milk cows. It’s updated daily if you want to play the latest test builds, or you can stay with the latest stable build. There are various overhaul mods and loads of single-feature mods. It’s one of my all-time favorite games, and I tend to go back to it every few months.

Ok this isn't an answer from me but I'm hoping it's somebody else's answer because I've had this game in my library for like eight years and haven't played it: Transistor. It seems like it got really really good reviews and then nobody ever talked about it again.

Snowrunner. A great combination of both chilled-out & stressful, driving massive diesel trucks at 5mph through woods and rivers delivering logs or girders.

The fact there's no big story and almost zero dialog, just assignments and map markers mean it's a superb 'podcast' game - something you can put it on while you listen to some podcasts / audiobooks.

Not that the game is boring or just a distraction. It's incredibly satisfying finding the best way to navigate through a horrendous woodland or swamp and get all your cargo through safely.

Plus, it has some of the best landscape physics out there. Rushing water really feels accurate. Mud paths get distorted so that it's harder to get through on your way back than before you churned it all up.

A great game. 100s of hours I've sunk into that thing.

I replay EV Nova (Arpia plugin, of course) every few years and just absolutely love it.

Days Gone. Biker in post Zombie Apocalypse. Fucking love it. It was killed by a few bad reviews that obviously only played for a few minutes. The reviews were so wrong it is impossible that it was an accident.

Yes. The bike you get at the very start IS ugly, doesn't handle well, breaks easily, and runs out of gas. That's why you upgrade it.

The map is small? Because you haven't explored anything yet. The map is HUGE. It just isn't fully accessible at the beginning. You know what other game is like that? All of them.

There's no fast travel? Liar. Fucking liar. There is fast travel once you get more than 1 location. Which happens about 20 to 30 minutes in. Literally the second mission is go find the settlement.

The gun is terrible? No shit Sherlock. It's the first gun. Every starting weapon in every game is terrible. Name one, just ONE GAME, that gives you the best final weapon at the very start.

No alternative weapons? Fucking asshole. What do you think all those empty slots on the weapons wheel are for? You have to go get them.

Giving a bad review because your starting gear isn't good is absolutely underhanded willful ignorance hit piece bullshit.

Ooh, this is my favorite topic to discuss! But I'll keep this short because it's late and I should be asleep by now).

• Exanima - Read about the features. This one is more impressive than the screenshots make it look (at least for me).
• Lunacid - I love the visual style and atmosphere of this. I also enjoyed Lost in Vivo by the same developer.
• Praey for the Gods - This one is for anyone who's looking for more games like Shadow of the Collossus.
• The Upturned - A cartoony horror-comedy game with a great sense of humor.
• Withering Rooms - The story is interesting and the atmosphere is great.
• Your Spider - This one is possibly my favorite indie horror game.

STALKER - Or at least in North America, anyway. While the vanilla games can be a little clunky and difficult at times, they offer one of the most unsettling and atmospheric experiences around.

There is nothing quite like tucking your tail between your legs and hurrying back to the safety of numbers, or a lonely campfire after realizing the sun is rapidly setting and you're still out there with the shadows. Once you reach that camp or relative safety, there is this strange, mixed feeling of simultaneous security and insecurity as you listen to your temporary companions converse with each other in the glow of a crackling fire in a decaying village or industrial lot, while distant creatures howl in the night, and the Zone itself creaks and groans around you like great metal in the sky.

Those feelings are intensified when conversation abruptly halts and the men around you go on alert, and you remember that nothing stopping those things in the night from wandering right into your camp, or whether/whoever that distant flickering flashlight belongs to from getting a little too close.

And then there is that feeling that follows, after the sun finally rises and you head back out into the strange, abandoned beauty of the world. Never completely safe, always on the edge, but a little more confident after having survived another haunting night in the Zone.

Tales of Maj Eyal is a roguelike that is on the scale of an epic adventure rather than a single dungeon delve. It has some of the most unique class design I've seen in a game. It has great automation features that let you set trigger conditions for skills. The game has received persistent updates for over a decade now.

Crystal Project is a relatively new JRPG that features some of the best exploration I've ever seen in a game. Also like ToME it has interesting class design. The end game bosses are fun, and actually make you think about your team design, they are generally not brute forceable.

Both games are well received but have less than 10k reviews on Steam, where indie darlings such as Cuphead or Hades have over 100k.

Valheim has some hump.

Broforce

Metal Gear Solid 5: I wish there were more cutscenes and less repeated content, but the core gameplay was amazing and unique.

Final Fantasy XV, yes it was obviously unfinished but it had a great atmosphere and exploring the world was nice.

Hardspace Shipbreaker. You're a wage slave in an orbital junkyard breaking down ships and recycling them... with lasers. They're essentially a puzzle game in 3d, because you have to break the ship parts into their respective bins, but they're all stuck together in weird ways that explode if you do it wrong! The soundtrack is so good (Americana blues, Lotta banjo) that I got it on vinyl.

The battle for Polytopia is my jam

Gemcraft - was a game I found on Kongregate back in the day & I still find myself going back from time to time to play. Almost all tower defense games are underrated!

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure.

It's a very cute action RPG made by the developers of the Ys and Trails series.

Exiled Kingdom for mobile, basically an homage to isometric RPGs of the 90s. The graphics are nothing to phone home about, but the story is decent and the gameplay is great. I've done a couple playthroughs.

Sundered, specifically eldritch edition. It is a great metroidvania with an eldritch twist!

Oni is a game that often ends up as a small cliff note in the greater narrative of Bungie's history, which is a shame since it's actually a really good 3D action game that predates the standardisation that Devil May Cry established.

It's pretty rough around the edges, and hearing about the development hell for this game I can understand why, but if you do end up playing the game you'll find an incredibly engaging combat system that will keep you locked in well after the game ends.

Better yet, you can use cheats to play as any npc and some of them have fully functioning movesets.

The greatest tragedy is the lack of a multiplayer component. It was planned, and advertised, but Bungie West couldn't get the networking down before Take Two's deadline. If there was multiplayer you could be there would be people still playing it today.

However, there is a active modding scene for the game, and with the Anaversery Edition you can easily play Oni on any PC or Linux machine (use wine 2.0, later versions have compatability issues).

It might permanently be over shadowed by Halo CE, but if you like 3D action frames or are a fan if Bungie you owe it a playthough.

Rimworld, it has recently started gaining popularity.

The long drive, great time sink.

Zomboid, but that has really blown up in the past few years.

Star Realms digital

I really love the whole presentation and much of the gameplay of the "2D in 3D" games such as the original Octopath Traveler (haven't played 2 yet) and Triangle Strategy. Triangle Strategy especially really brought a lot to the strategy RPG table (generally my favorite genre) and I'm surprised at how little it was talked about even if it was well regarded and sold out of almost all my local game retailers from pre-orders alone on launch day (though that could have also been those game shops not ordering many copies thinking it wouldn't sell well).

Teleglitch: it's a top down sci Fi horror roguelite which has purposely poor graphics that are compensated by a great story and ambiance.

It's one of my favorite games that nobody has ever heard of

DmC - the reboot one. I could never fully get into the original series (i do like em), but this reboot really grabbed me. I loved the music and the atmosphere. I also liked the whole limbo aspect. I wish we got to see more of this version, the end got me excited to see what could come next. But then they went back with dmc 5 which was so critically acclaimed that they'll likely never look back again, for better and for worse.

Although loved by all that play it, I haven't seen much about Rhythm Doctor. If you like rhythm games, this is a must play.

Haunt the House: Terrortown

It is a continuation if the flash game "Haunt The House" that has more levels and is fun when you've got nothing to do and want to pass time

I don't see anyone online talking about it

Shapez.io If you love Factorio. Try Shapez.io, a game where you build factories to make shapes.

Awesomenauts

It's a 3v3 2D platformer lane-pusher with an art style reminiscent of a saturday-morning cartoon. The upgrade system is very simple compared to other lane-pushers, and the games tend to go a lot quicker (15-25 minutes.) It's very intuitive to get into, but still has room for a lot of expression of skill.

Unfortunately Ronimo (the company who made it) went bankrupt in late August, so the matchmaking server went down in September; but recently Atari bought the rights to the IP, so it's possible it will come back soon.

It's over a decade old and hasn't had an update in equally as long, but I really like playingMe And My Shadow from time to time. It's a 2D platformer where you have to control 2 characters, but the darker shadow version of you can only move if you record their movements by pressing the space bar and moving/interacting with objects and pressing space when you're done to see it move.

It also has a built in level editor and a couple of levels/level packs made by other players.

Little fighter series

Escape from Tarkov, but with the single player mod and further addon mods for AI, ballistics, QoL features etc. With enough mods Tarkov can be the most realistic FPS shooter around with an excellent body armor system and ballistics that actually makes sense imo.

Lunacid. Been following this game for a while now and managed to get the true ending a while ago. Phenomenal game. 100% recommended if you enjoy the King's Field games.

I could be entirely off base here, but I remember really enjoying tenchu z when it first came out. I have no idea how it holds up today, but a friend and I played tons of co-op and had a blast being ninjas

A lot of folks are sleeping on mobile games either because they're mobile games or because of gacha, when a small amount of research (in the right places) will inform you on what the quality of the games are as well as how much gacha is required to enjoy the game. A lot of which don't "require" it or give you more than enough to obtain enough out of it to progress (usually the gear based ones). Though if you outright don't like the blatant waifu/husbando nature a lot of them have you're free to avoid those, no point in forcing yourself to do something you don't like.

Genshin Impact for example, might have a massive number of players, but I have found the game itself and the storytelling to be very underrated because folks either expect far too much out of it or just don't care. Even out of my friend group there's a few that only play to collect characters, that's their prerogative. It's also technically not a mobile game since it is available on just about everything, but it does have a gacha and therefore gets lumped in with other mobile games.

I can understand why some folks were put off by the first act back when the game was new and there wasn't much else to do, but it's grown considerably and there's a lot more available to new players to keep them occupied during downtime. Like an entire TCG mode that gets updated regularly and even has its own competitive scene.

A lot of these games have more effort put into them than full releases on consoles and it amuses me how many players are quick to shit on mobile games when the games they play on whatever other devices are either worse, equally if not more "predatory", or similar enough that they would enjoy it if they actually gave it a chance.

Factorio. Sure, it's universally hailed as a great game, but I still call that underrated. Yes, I'm a cracktorio addict, how could you tell?