hidden gems

All games with fewer than 100 plays that I think should get more exposure. I dont absolutely love all of them, but I find every single one at the very least interesting to talk about, Ive even written reviews for some of them.

Interactive music video about a musician's struggle with certain mental conditions, short and powerful
Medical based detective game with a "watership down" esque aesthetic. An inspiration for me, though be forewarned its buggy
A hybrid RTS Visual Novel about aimless youths in Shenzhen China, its a bit too long unfortunately and the translation isnt great, but the realism of the dialogue and capturing of that "making a new online friend through counter strike at 2am in the summer" that you cant really get anywhere else.
A weird geocaching sim, very unique
I wrote a review about this already but in short its a sewing / management sim a bit like papers please but for 19th century seamstresses in england, very educational
A weird, amateurish photography sim, very charming
Like ace attorney but gay. Actually I guess thats redundant. Well, like Ace Attorney but Lesbian and on a Train
Short, minimalistic and clever
An "honest" simulation of expansion and economic domination
A mixed media FMV game about the story of the sudeten region of czechia
0 tutorialisation roguelike, satisfying to work out
Its uhh, like picross kinda? But in service of a love letter to retro computers and sculpture
Meditative adventure game through the framework of a lite bus sim. Cozy and melancholy
An addicting turn based rpg similar in mechanics to DDS1 if it was a bit more deckbuilder esque
Dont play this if you have any kind of photosensitivity but to anyone else its a fascinating little platformer
Just play it, its a bitsy game
Disco Elysium inspired VN, hard not to spoil and its free so just play it
I genuinely don't know what else I could say about commonplace at this point, but I would say it occupied my mind for months and wouldnt let go, probably not for everyone though
A refreshingly different narrative focused farm sim. The actual farm sim mechanics arent super in depth, but the understated realism and writing really are something special
Wayward strand is the kind of narrative game that makes playing other similar games worse by comparison. Death to gameified relationships, give me independent characters, not robots

9 Comments


16 days ago

i like this list a lot . i will look more at the games . thank you .

15 days ago

suggestion for you (or the list if you take submissions): bird tapper purple platoon panic, only play is currently me rn

14 days ago

fuck yeah traveler's game

14 days ago

@mlinguine np, thanks for reading
@zeusdeegoose Ill look into it
@judgerussel oh shit you've played it? I swear I thought I was the only one on the site who had

13 days ago

@LordDarias I sometimes keep tabs on weird Chinese games ... i didn't finish it though, I should return to it

13 days ago

Does Imperialism has something to do with Tropico 2? I noticed their both on the dev page (or publisher, dunno) here on Backloggd.

13 days ago

@CDX yeah, frog city software developed both Imperialism and Tropico 2
@Judgerussel I dont blame you, it really does go on a lot longer than it needed to

13 days ago

@judgerussel goddamnit I misspelled your username in the reply

11 days ago

@LordDarias Thank you for the answer.

Thank you for the list, to be honest. Didn't know a bunch of these studios and games, and my wishlist just grew thanks to ya.


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