The Last Sovereign (NSFW) is an 18+ RPGmaker game. The basic premise is this: What if you had a setting with a bunch of hentai tropes lumped together and played straight, with no porn logic or stupid characters?

You play as a middle aged, very competent army veteran who gains the powers of an incubus, and reluctantly uses them with the aim of making the world a better place, slowly developing a harem of well realized, cool characters along the way. There's sex scenes, obviously, but you very quickly forget all about them as you are plunged into an underdog story where you have to manage your fledgling armies + resources and have to constantly make tough decisions.

AAAAXY. AAAAXY is a nonlinear 2D puzzle platformer taking place in impossible spaces. You can take a walk on a Möbius strip, try to find the platform with your train at the train station, and play a piano that makes the Shepard tone. It will be a bit confusing at first, but I promise it will eventually get fun.

It's not on Steam, but it's available for download on the website for free. Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Also on F-Droid and FlatHub. give it a try im begging you

Knights Within

Solo indie dev mashup of Risk of Rain, Helldivers, Vermintide, etc with its own soul and style of knights with guns. Dev is very active in the discord and takes feedback and actively plays with the small community the game has garnered.

I played the demo on a whim during a next fest expecting a janky joke of a game to laugh at but a decent and fun game caught me by surprise. It’s been improved and updated quite a bit since then.

Tin Can

Tin Can is a space survival simulator, where you are trapped in an escape pod after the loss of your ship. There are a few systems in your escape pod, and each system has components you need to look after. Your pod regularly flies through astoroid fields & other space phenomena that break these component parts forcing you to repair, replace or do without the systems keeping you afloat.

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 2 Classic (aka LBA2 or Twinsen's Adventure)

You are Twinsen, a little tank-like controlled character that's about to go on an adventure to save his planet!

The tank controls may be getting a bit used to, but you can jump, roll to the side, hop backwards, etc, so you can apply some creativity to your movement. Shout out to the Magicball Network for staying alive all those years!

Go out there, meet a godess, defeat a dictator!

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Sadly, it's not available on PC, but it is available on Nintendo Switch (US eShop page linked above) and PlayStation 4 (and PlayStation 5 through backwards compatibility).

It's a sci-fi game made by the creators of some games you might've heard of in passing (namely Dragon's Crown, Odin Sphere, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, etc.), Vanillaware. I can't go into any details about the game itself because of spoilers, but I will say it is quite simply the best and most uniquely told story I have ever seen in a game. It's a game you have to experience for yourself. You should go into it as blind as possible, too.

I will say the English dub of the game is also surprisingly good, considering it was recorded almost entirely in COVID lockdown. The Atlus West sound engineers (Atlus published the game in the west) must've worked some incredible magic to get it to sound as good as it does.

Maize, a point and click/walking simulator/puzzle game about a secret military project to create sentient corn. Quite possibly the silliest game I've ever played.

Enderal: Forgotten Stories

It is actually a Skyrim mod but basically a complete game that just happens to be built upon Skyrim. It features full professional quality voice acting in German and English, new game systems inspired by the Gothic series, a setting separate from Elder Scrolls, and a story that gets close to the quality of Planescape Torment or Disco Elysium. I can't recommend it enough.

Rabbit and Steel - Cross between a bullet hell and roguelite with raid style gameplay. Requires very close co-ordination with your team to survive (up to 4 player co-op). Punishing but rewarding.

Metal Fatigue

A fun little 2000 era RTS with customisable mech chassis units/base building/multiple fighting levels per map (separate air/land/underground maps). In hindsight, it has a fiendishly difficult campaign which I remember it being a lot easier than I find it now...

Vintage Story

I've always heard it described as Minecraft meets Primitive Technology. I would say that is quite accurate. Maybe some (optional) Don't Starve like elements where you have to worry about the temporal rift (sort of like insanity) and drifters (largely at night).

Technology progression is much slower than Minecraft. Also much more involved. Want a stone axe? You have to place a stone on the ground and use another stone to knap it into shape first. Make an iron shovel? You have to heat up the ingot first and then beat it into shape on an anvil. If you are too slow and it cools down you have to heat it up again.

Farming has 3 nutrient groups, so fertilizers and crop rotation is important.

Leather making is a multi step process of soaking hides in various liquids.

It has a built in and very extensive guide/wiki. It also has a native Linux build.

Heaven's Vault is a game about archaeology and translating a dead language. You explore a unique solar system and discover ruins, in which you uncover artifacts, and bits of text. Through context clues, you translate the passages to uncover the storyline. It's not difficult, so if you're looking for a puzzle, this won't really do it for you, but it's more of a narrative experience. If you aren't sure about a word or phrase, you can give it a guess (based on assigning words from a collection of possible translations to specific symbols), and the game will remember that choice and let you slowly revise your translations as you find new text that rules out prior incorrect guesses. There's an interconnected storyline with multiple paths to follow, and a very unique world - haven't seen anything like it in other games.

The game has a NG+ mode wherein you start with all of your translations from the first playthrough intact, but, most of the bits of text are considerably longer and more involved, letting you use your prior knowledge to uncover more of the story and the lore of the world, which is also neat.

Out of Space a cozy co-op game similar to Overcooked but less chaotic.

Vangers is a postapocalyptic and fundamentally strange top-down driving/exploration/mystery/action-RPG.

It has a unique back story, hostile worlds and an intriguing and expansive vocabulary that helps tell the story. If you are the type of person that appreciates poetic neologisms because they get your brain going, guessing at the etymology and sucking up the layers of connotation, this is up your alley.

Even if you manage to complete the game, you'll be left wondering whether what happened was even meant to happen. It's sort of post modern with deconstructed words, rituals and behaviors all jumbled up and muddled together as a result of a great and important event that once had meaning to creatures that may no longer even exist.

Eternum (warning: NSFW) is an adult visual novel that keeps touching me with every new update. It's completely free, and I can't help but think of the creator as a master of the genre.

The characters are all well written and (those who are meant to be) lovable. The story is interesting, compelling even, and the humor is often hilarious. When you go to the website, you might think "Porn game!!!", and not be entirely wrong, but Eternum is so much more. It's a story about love, friendship, and a mystery.

Setting: Orion moves back to the USA after a long time. In recent years, a video game called eternum has been gaining traction, that allows going into virtual worlds, think full dive VR like in Sword Art Online. I'd say about 60% of the story happens IRL.

I can only recommend this masterpiece of a visual novel.

I you love puzzle games you need to try Can of Wormholes, over 100 handcrafted puzzle stages where every puzzle introduces a new idea or interaction, very underrated game.

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Original game page

Archive.org mirror of the game download

I genuinely have NO clue if this game is known, but i suspect it mostly isn't.

It's Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf! It's kinda like a music video, but it's a music video game 👉😏

It's a collaboration between 2000s indie weirdo darling gamedev cactus and Swedish synthpunk band Fucking Werewolf ASSO.

it's aggressively strange and moderately challenging, but I think it's just a goddamn delight and maybe you will too.

Magium

Not a pc game but rather on mobile. It's a really solid fantasy CYOA game and (if you wanted to) play through the next set of story chapters completely for free as long as you meet the achievement requirements. Barring that, buying books (as the game calls it) has a rather fair price. Unfortunately the game is incomplete as the solo developer has sadly passed away, but what is here is great with a decent length since there's been years of book chapters. Genuinely a hidden gem that I discovered on a whim back early in highschool, and it's sad that I won't be able to see the end they envisioned, so with that in mind I'll be replaying this game again in the near future.

Europa 1400: The Guild

Ignore that heretical work of The Guild 2/3 et co. Only the ORIGINAL is truly worthy.

Taipan!

A naval trade game about 1800's China from the Apple II. You won't believe it till it happens but I'll become addicted.

Clanfolk, a (very alpha and also very playable) game that draws clear inspiration from Rimworld, but has a kind of tech progression that feels spiritually similar to bootstrapping a factory in Factorio, while being set in the Scottish Highlands.

Tinykin
I know you said less than 1,000 reviews but this is at 1,500 so I think it just squeaks by.

This game for lack of a better description, adorable and over too soon.

Like a mashup of pikmim, Spyro 2, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater. It's got lots of fun platforming and new puzzle mechanics in an ever adding open world that is a true joy to traverse and cute silly little side plots that make for rather grand set pieces when it all comes together. I got 100% in 12 hours but also collect-a-thons are my jam and I was plowing through the game with grin on my face for everything but the platinum time trials.

Martha Is Dead is a grim psychological triller about twin sisters, set in Italy at the end of WW2. It's not about war, however. This game left me with deep emotions no other game could do. Heed the warnings given by authors, though. It may come too disturbing to some people.

One Way Heroics+

Semi-Rogue-like RPG, flee away from the darkness on the leftside of the screen, try and defeat demonlord and save the world. (Multiple endings)

One of my favorite games ever, guy made his own engine.

It does have design flaws, don't get me wrong. But this is is really novel and has enough content to get somewhat deep into it.

Eventually you start seeing the same things but for essentially a one man team it's really impressive.

Dink Smallwood is an old fantasy role playing game. It has a small community that makes mods for it. It's really dumb but it's free to play and very short if you have nothing better to do.

edit: Wow! I didn't realize a lot of people here know this game. That's actually cool.

Taiji (906 reviews)

Nonlinear discovery-based puzzles

If you liked the puzzle design of The Witness, you'll enjoy Taiji as more of that but with scenic pixel art.

Instead of a linear sequence of tutorials and puzzles, Taiji is open-ended. You can wander wherever you want, solve the puzzles you stumble upon, and ultimately discover this place's secrets. Sometimes you find a puzzle that you don't understand, so you'll just have to leave it for later, when you've learned more puzzle mechanics. It's like a metroidvania but gated by knowledge instead of abilities.

All the puzzles are built on grids of tiles that you can turn on or off. There are no tutorials; you have to figure out the puzzle mechanics on your own, hinted by environmental details.

HyperRogue has 352 reviews. It is a rogue like that is played on a hyperbolic plane rather than a euclidian one.

If you're not familiar with hyperbolic geometry, don't be fooled by the videos. It has the illusion of looking like it is on a sphere in many of the videos. It's not! Also, you don't need to be some master of hyperbolic geometry to play. I don't really understand it but can still play the game well enough.

Essentially, imagine a hexagonal grid. Now, replace some of those hexagons with septagons (7 sided). The further away you get from a point there will be way more tiles in the hyperbolic grid than the euclidian.

The UI is pretty bad, the menus are pretty icky. Those are my only real complaints.

The game is charming. It has.a very retro feel to it. The music reminds me of something of hear from an old school point and click game or RuneScape. The graphics are minimal but charming.

The mechanics are easy enough. You get hit and you die. Most enemies die in one hit. There are no weapons or stats. It's more like chess in a way. The game will also not let you accidentally move somewhere you'd die, so, yes, very much like chess with checkmates.

Because the game is so simplistic you can get into a flow state where you quickly move and attack enemies. It's very satisfying to play.

Minishoot Adventures is a twin stick shooter with a 2D Zelda-style map.