Discussion 2020 game recommendations that may have been missed

[Wibblewozzer]

This is a selfish thread as I'm trying to buy and play 2020 games I think are possibly top ten worthy as it gets near the end of the year.

Specifically, [UWSL]I'm talking about some [/UWSL][UWSL]highlights that came out only in 2020 (releasing in Early Access prior and full release in 2020 is fine) that aren't your big titles like Alyx, Last of Us 2[/UWSL][UWSL], or even Hades[/UWSL]. It doesn't have to be PC only. And this doesn't need to be some sort of top ten or whatever. It's really just to highlight smaller games, maybe personal favorites you don't expect to get noticed otherwise, that you just want to call out. Also, they don't necessarily have to be on sale. This is simply a celebration of 2020 releases of games that would be easy to slip past.

I'll give a couple to start things off:


This one may be on the slightly bigger side, it's part of Game Pass since its release, and it was on E3 stages. But at least on Discord there seems to be almost nobody that has played it. I loved the game and even though I expected to enjoy it with some reservations I was surprised just how hooked I was by it. I put roughly 24 hours into it to do most everything in just around 2-3 days. It's my nominee for the relaxing game on the Steam Awards, too, as there's no danger or anything to really raise the heart rate but it's constantly got something for you to do so there's never time to be bored. It tells some good stories, doesn't spell everything, and can hit hard emotionally. Really great game.


And another that had early hype with its trailers but once it actually released it kind of came and went with nobody saying a word about it. It is a kinetic VN, albeit with a far more dynamic presentation and method of storytelling than you usually get in what most people picture when discussing VNs, considering the whole thing is in 3D. It's not very long with the main story only being around four hours long if you don't check out any of the side stories, of which there are quite a lot. The writing is really great in a more natural English sort of way instead of the often translated English in VNs that are extra wordy. The setting and characters are also on the more unique side. It's another one that right away it gripped me and had me intrigued with just the set up of the world and then you start getting into each of the characters and learning about events that you're fully in by that point.

 

[Knurek]

Let's go with two puzzle games you might have missed:

Picross Ace Attorney AKA that other game by Fall Guys developers
Picross with a story/world map exploration AKA we still haven't added proper zoom levels to our 2019 game, here's something to get you off our back

 

[Ex-User (119)]

ill shoot my list


serious sam games have never got the love they deserve in my personal opinion in the shooter genre sam 4 came out a while ago and is insanely fun the devs are hard work at adding and fixing things

damjan also makes better soundtracks than mick gordon

since release they have run a halloween event that added new mobs for the event and changed some art in levels.

added a flat monster multiplier you can have with up 10x the normal amount of monsters per spawner ( ammo and things are adjusted) you can also tweak it so certain power monsters wont be multiplied.

they fixed some issues with co op where it will save your progress in co op (weapon and equipment ) at end of each level so when u come back to level in co op youll have secret things you wouldnt normally have. ( u can get weapon upgrades early like a quad firing rocket launcher mod).

the game has a huge update coming out in next few weeks and mod and workshop is also coming soon.


released out of early access this year

ive recommened this game alot and have done numerous giveaways so much fun


in early access but has a free demo

 

[MegaApple]

It's insane how this is only the first chapter, and yet it is so good.

 

[Avern]

Great idea for a thread! Here are some that really stuck out to me:



This one got a bit of buzz, but not nearly enough for how good it is. Each level tasks you with getting photos of various subjects, collecting tiny film canisters hidden about, and doing it fast (typically on a second attempt). It doesn't have the reactivity of something like Pokemon Snap, but it manages to be engaging thanks to its killer environmental storytelling. A combination of small worldbuilding details and carefully designed visuals and music makes each area stand out with a distinct tone. The near-future world occasionally gets very sci-fi, but it usually stays grounded, focusing on the scars military and police action leaves on the world and the people in it.

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This is an expanded version of a game originally included in the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020. You are tasked with feeding a tree with... something. You explore small and strange environments where weird NPCs give you cryptic hints on how to progress adventure-game questlines. You can find different liquids here and there, and dumping each into the waters beneath the tree will grant you a different ending. It's a simple and short game, but I really enjoyed its aesthetics. Also you can turn the entire world into skeletons.

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This one's a deckbuilder, but very far removed from Slay the Spire and its ilk. The cards all have symbols on the left and right, which represent things like logic, empathy, or creativity. You meet with various characters and try to form conversations by matching your cards with theirs. After each conversation, you have to drop a card from your deck and replace it with a card you saw during the conversation.

This is all set against a context of being a trader in a caravan. You travel from town to town, talking to people to try to negotiate thing into trading for things you can sell in your shop back home. However, as you get further from home, you'll encounter people who just don't quite mesh with you, culturally. Without the right set of cards, you have difficulty carrying on a conversation, despite speaking the same language. And then you get home and find that you've changed so much on the trip that conversing with people in your hometown isn't as easy or simple as it used to be. The other cultures you've encountered have left a mark on you. It's a killer bit of gameplay-as-narrative, and I love it.

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I think this got highlighted on a Nintendo Direct or something, but I saw almost nothing about it since, and I think it's worth highlighting. On the surface, it looks like a masocore game about dodging shittons of saws for 10-20 seconds at a time, but there's more to it. The various rooms are all connected, and opening adjacent rooms requires you to complete specific challenges. A lot of these are what you'd expect: survive 20 seconds in an adjacent room, survive 40 seconds total in this region, get killed by 50 different varieties of sawblades, etc. It makes for a fun gameplay loop, but then you run into rooms with weird requirements: die in 0 seconds. Survive in pitch blackness. ???? the ????. That extra layer of puzzling on top of the action elevated the experience for me.

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Rift Wizard is a more direct and action-heavy take on the traditional roguelike. Each level is a single floor full of monsters and monster spawners, and you can almost immediately start learning powerful magical spells to suppress the hordes. It's got a wide variety of monsters and spells, and lots of room for strategy, both in when and where you use your spells, how you advance your wizard, and in where you decide to go next (there are multiple exits from each floor, and each will give you a hint of what's to come). It's far more straightforward and approachable than most traditional roguelikes, and seems to have a lot of room for strategy.

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A very meditative little game that's extremely aesthetically pleasing. You get a diorama that shows a small slice of a ruined cityscape, then you place some plants in it. From there, you are presented with things like signs and tires and empty bottles, and you drop them into the environment. They'll pulse, causing nearby plants to grow (as long as you don't drop them on plants, damaging them in the process). As the plants grow, you can harvest seeds to create more plants and continue the growth. Once you're done with a level, you end up with a beautiful little piece of overgrown city. It's a very pleasing, zen experience.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

I can second Umurangi Generation for sure. I've brought it up a couple times on Discord but it seems very few seem too interested in it. As I've mentioned there I do hope someone else takes the concept and puts it into an aesthetic I find more pleasing as I'm not crazy about this one. Is this vaporwave? It doesn't really detract (and in some ways it probably makes it better) but I just want a photographing game like this that's just more my style. Despite that, Umurangi may make it onto my top ten when I put together my list.

I added Signs of the Sojourner and Cloud Gardens to my wishlist (and had a couple others already on there). Hopefully others are finding something they're interested in so far. Signs of the Sojourner I'd seen before and closed upon seeing it was a card game but reading your description seems far more interesting. Curious to try it out sometime.

 

[MegaApple]

This one got a bit of buzz, but not nearly enough for how good it is. Each level tasks you with getting photos of various subjects, collecting tiny film canisters hidden about, and doing it fast (typically on a second attempt). It doesn't have the reactivity of something like Pokemon Snap, but it manages to be engaging thanks to its killer environmental storytelling. A combination of small worldbuilding details and carefully designed visuals and music makes each area stand out with a distinct tone. The near-future world occasionally gets very sci-fi, but it usually stays grounded, focusing on the scars military and police action leaves on the world and the people in it.

Umurangi Generation OST is also composed by the excellent youtuber ThorHighHeels, who makes some fantastic gaming videos.

 

[Ascheroth]

4th entry in the Skautfold series. A top down metroidvania-ish Action-RPG. The entire series is well worth playing and very cheap for it what it offers: Save 68% on Skautfold on Steam

The 1st game, Shrouded in Sanity is a Souls-like.
The 2nd game, Usurper, is a metroidvania.
The 3rd game, Into the Fray, is a Twin Stick Shooter.
The 4th game, Moonless Knight is a metroidvania again.

It's all a connected story set in a lovecraftian alternate history. The 5th game will finish the 1st arc, iirc. Though that might take a while longer, since the developer (it's literally 1 guy) is currently working on a console version for the first game.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

Nice to see these Umurangi Generation recommendations! I came here thinking I was going to be the first to recommend that game, anyway other games that flew off the radar:


In Other Waters you play as a xenobiologist recently arrived in Gliese 677Cc and study the ocean life there while trying to discover what happened to the previous scientist.


Slap City left early access this year. It's a fighting game clearly inspired by Smash Bros and while it looks a bit rough the game is pretty fun! There are different game modes and it also includes a story mode, and the main theme is catchy.



Panzer Dragoon Remake it's Panzer Dragoon! Now finally in a platform I have so I can play it . There were some frame pacing issues related by others but I didn't noticed it.


Paradise Killer will be in my best games of the year list. You play as detective Lady Love Dies who is brought back from her exile to solve the murder of the isle council. I found the lore surrounding the isle and the past events very interesting, plus the OST is a real banger!

 

[Parsnip]

Paradise Killer and In Other Waters seem right up my alley. Maybe Umurangi too. I really need to play more 2020 games before the year is over.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

I'll add a couple more:


I don't even play a ton of VNs usually but this was another highlight this year. It's pretty short, around 4-5 hours, and it was mostly made by a two-person team. Despite that, the art is really great and it seems a rather higher budget, professional release in many ways.

It takes place in Hong Kong in 1986 dealing with an office lady trying to understand her feelings in a new friendship with a friend that lives a far less conservative lifestyle. It feels like the writer lived through the time and place because it's really a part of the story itself. It can make it a bit tough to sometimes understand the actions of the lead character but I think it's handled pretty well and it's definitely worth checking out.


This is above most other puzzle games this year, or in more recent years, for me. I've been comparing it to The Witness in many ways. You move around in top-down view in a 3D space and have spots where you enter themed puzzles and each theme has multiple nodes that unlock in sequence, each with a harder set of puzzles than those that came before. The puzzle concept works the same that you're moving around in a room while tethered from a single point and you can't go back over the cable that runs behind you so as you wrap around points and try to double-back you'll be blocked.

The style of puzzle is reminiscent of the line/grid-based puzzles in The Witness, as well as the variety and how it can do so much with the simple concept and also have different themed puzzles spread around that build up in difficulty but you're free to go between the different puzzle types as you wish. It's quite long, seems to have a pretty interesting story with voice acting and lots of optional and possibly secret stuff spread about. To be honest, I haven't finished the game, not even close, but I still expect it to easily secure a spot in my top ten.

 

[C-Dub]

Here's some of my favourite lesser-known 2020 games.


I wrote quite a long review on this in the Rate The Last Game You Played thread, so I'm not going to go into it again, but the long and short is that I really loved this game. It's an interesting murder mystery taking place in a fucked up version of paradise. No one is a particularly great person, and most are guilty of horrendous crimes. It has some great characterisation, an intriguing worldbuilding and mystery, and a satisfyingly vague and open conclusion where you get to spin reality into whatever you want it to be. Will you follow the evidence to the very end, eschewing all personal relationships to get there, or will you pick and choose who the guilty are based on other feelings. The game doesn't really give you the right answer to that question, and you're free to do whatever you do before the world you're investigating comes to its unnatural end.


In a year where we have Half-Life Alyx, it seems a bit odd to recommend another FPS. But Vertigo Remastered, while in Alyx's shadow, does some cool stuff that not even Valve managed. I actually enjoyed this game a lot and found its puzzles, weapons and scenarios rather interesting. It's definitely worth picking up.


Ikenfell is a fun little JRPG-like game with a Mega Man Battle Network-style battle system. It has a nice story with some good characters, the gameplay is satisfying and the game doesn't overstay its welcome.


This is a fun little puzzle game with Escape Room vibes to it. It's a good introduction to VR for a lot of people because it is easy to understand how to play and doesn't overwhelm you with locomotion options. It's also got some pretty high production values which makes it all the more compelling. The story sucks, but that kind of takes a back seat to what's important in this game: immersion and puzzles, both of which are incredible.


This is a neat little Picross puzzle visual novel. Mediatonic were definitely going for an Ace Attorney style production, but I feel the game doesn't have the narrative depth to work as well as the AA games do. But it's still pretty decent, with satisfying puzzles if Picross is your thing. They definitely set this one up to have further instalments, but since Fall Guys has exploded in popularity I feel the opportunity cost of a niche Picross visual novel probably isn't the best use of their funds right now.


This is a pretty spoopy game that really got me in the mood for Halloween, to the point that I now want to start a Christmas playlist too. I generally dig holiday-themed stuff so I knew I'd enjoy this, but the game has a great sense of humour, rather basic but fun gameplay, and a really great soundtrack. It's not a game I'd recommend you play this year at this point, because it really is a game for only the spookiest of seasons, but if it goes on offer at some point I'd pick it up and make it the first thing you play in October next year.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

C-Dub Panda Pedinte I was about to dig into Paradise Killer but it presents the controller right up front and I saw it has rumble in the settings. Did either of you play with controller? Is it recommended due to good use of rumble or something? I was planning on doing mouse and keyboard but I can easily swap to controller if that's a better fit.

 

[C-Dub]

I played with controller but I'm a comfy couch PC gamer and, at the time, I didn't have an acceptable keyboard/mouse setup for the sofa. I don't remember the game having any rumble at all, in all honesty. It probably wasn't remarkable use of the feature, but I kind of just ignore rumble these days as I feel it hasn't really advanced all that much since the PS2-era - at least in the controllers I have. I can't account for DualSense, if that's what you're playing with.

That said, I saw nothing particularly wrong with the controls. As it's a story game I didn't feel like I was at a disadvantage or playing it in a diminished way by using a controller. Either is probably fine.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

I played with controller but I'm a comfy couch PC gamer and, at the time, I didn't have an acceptable keyboard/mouse setup for the sofa. I don't remember the game having any rumble at all, in all honesty. It probably wasn't remarkable use of the feature, but I kind of just ignore rumble these days as I feel it hasn't really advanced all that much since the PS2-era - at least in the controllers I have. I can't account for DualSense, if that's what you're playing with.

That said, I saw nothing particularly wrong with the controls. As it's a story game I didn't feel like I was at a disadvantage or playing it in a diminished way by using a controller. Either is probably fine.

Thanks. I guess what I'd be looking for is stuff like when things rumble by proximity or other sort of non-visual cues that are done by rumbling. If it didn't have anything like that I'll likely just mouse and keyboard it.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

C-Dub Panda Pedinte I was about to dig into Paradise Killer but it presents the controller right up front and I saw it has rumble in the settings. Did either of you play with controller? Is it recommended due to good use of rumble or something? I was planning on doing mouse and keyboard but I can easily swap to controller if that's a better fit.

I played with KB+M as I dislike playing first person games with controllers.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Well, I'll third the Paradise Killer recommendations. Just finished it and it was wonderful.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

Well, I'll third the Paradise Killer recommendations. Just finished it and it was wonderful.

I'm glad you liked it!

 

[texhnolyze]

Here's what I got, a Japanese games galore!


Probably my favorite game of 2020 so far. It's a very old game, but it has just recently released worldwide this year. How do I put it? It's like a combination of Monster Hunter, God Eater, and Devil May Cry. There are lots of classes to choose, but you can become anything and max them out if you so desire. The gameplay loop is quite similar to MH, you start in a lobby, accept a quest, then go the designated field to complete it. The difference is, your goal isn't always to kill a monster in PSO2. It's free to play so there's no harm in trying. But the game doesn't really shine until the later levels, tbh.



Way of the Samurai spinoff which becomes an isometric action RPG rogue-lite. That said, it still retains some of the quirkiness of the original games, especially in the story and dialogues. Combat is fun, and precise timing is well rewarded, like for doing parries and combos. The faction system is also very interesting, you can pull the strings between them by crafting and selling weapons in your shop.



Arcade-like action mecha game. There are lots of customizations for your mech, from colors, weaponry, to body parts. You can equip up to 2 ranged weapons and 2 melee ones, and you can use them at all times. The mechs are very agile too, you can slide on the ground or boost while flying. Story is pretty standard with some interesting characters. It's a fun mindless game, and you can co-op too.



I know, I know, really? Yeah, the game is a mess at launch, it's not just buggy, but also performed very badly on both PC and console. But they've released more than a dozen patches since then, and it seems like it's now in a good place. The game itself is fun, and the story is interesting. It really feels like having your own adventure with a party in an offline MMO. Quest design is pretty standard JRPG fare, but the combat is fun with lots of combo possibilities with your party members to deal insane damage. It's quite satisfying, especially when hunting hard monsters.