COPPER ODYSSEY
This game is one of the best I’ve seen from the RPG Maker crowd. It’s non-linear, and you can technically defeat the four bosses in any order, so if you enjoy exploring weird and colorful labyrinthine worlds, check this one out for sure.
Beyond the main quest, there are TONS of secrets and optional content you can do that kept me wanting to go back. It’s very short and not that hard, so doing multiple runs with different builds looking for easter eggs is easy and fun.
– Real player with 33.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Abstract Surreal Games.
Copper Odyssey is a pretty nice-looking game.
The art direction is its strongest aspect thanks to excellent character designs and a good variety of art styles.
The designs of the enemies are especially really gorgeous and very distinctive between each other (putting aside the variations of some obviously) and certain art styles manage to either enhance certain scenes pretty well or contribute to the surrealist aesthetic of the world in general.
The music gives also a positive contribution to the mix. The best themes are the ones of each world you’ll visit, making the exploration of these more satisfying.
– Real player with 25.9 hrs in game
Hylics
Fans of Lisa and Undertale, rejoice. Hylics is one of the most greatest JRPG influenced games ever created. A masterpiece that will be talked about for generations to come
Rarely and every couple of years, in the indie gaming scene tends to appears a new creator whose name is destined to be inmortal and referenced in future articles for decades to come. A creator that based in the originality and unbelievable degree of talent showed in his first major commercial attempt, will be cited by future designers, writers and artists as a major influence.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Abstract Surreal Games.
Hylics is an awesome, super cheap, underrated light RPG. It’s short but not too short, oozing with style, and actually has some very deep and intriguing gameplay mechanics in-lieu of not having an experience point/leveling system. Not needing to get into battles for levels doesn’t mean this game is easy, as there are some very tricky encounters, it just means you have to think and be pretty strategic depending on how dirty the enemy likes to fight.
As for the story, there intentionally isn’t much of one since it’s very abstract, clearly. From what I can tell, you play as a bored farmer who rolls into town, meets up with an archaeologist in search of paper cups, and you set forth to journey finding more paper cups,
! running into a bug shaman who wants to murder livestock and a retired knight who travels with you to kill things. A corrupt and paranoid king assumes you’re journeying to kill him, which is pretty self-fulfilling since he’s antagonistic towards you. Pretty great, honestly.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Dark and Bright
In Dark and Bright you play Gourchweasel and his friends and you help them to find out more about that weird world they’re travelling through. The game combines some RPG elements with arcade or puzzle elements, but all in all it is a story-driven game with a focus on what’s happening to the four friends in that abstract world.
And that’s what I like about the game the most - the story is good! Really. I enjoyed it a lot, also a lot more than in some other, bigger and well-known RPGs. The game does a great job in telling the player the right amount of information (or only vague hints in the beginning) so that I was always interested in how the story continues. It all starts with a mysterious cutscene about two unknown characters at a bonfire - then we’re following Grouchweasel on his journey. And that journey is weird, confusing, but interesting and also thrilling at the same time. There are many things that made me enjoy it so much - things happening again with small changes to the dialogues, the memories becoming more and more intense as you progress, mysterious characters who sometimes totally confuse you, the whole tone to everything with these simple but weird graphics which fit well to the overall atmosphere. I can’t write more about that without spoilers. Maybe this story will also make you think a little bit about your own life, which I find amazing. So, if you’re a fan of good stories in RPGs - this might be the right game for you!
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Abstract Historical Games.
This is a good game, I enjoy it very much! This game has just a tone to it that makes it feel intense in a way, like you’re playing something funny and weird in the beginning, but you’re well advised to prepare for something big to come. I was thrilled to experience there actually seems to be a deeper meaning behind many of the things that happen. So, after revealing the first memories in the game, I was totally into the story and I’m excited for the outcome of everything, and the fates of the lovely written characters. Totally recommend!
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
The Endless Empty
TL;DR: This game is excellent. Please please give it a shot. It really clicked with me. Content Warning for the game for
! violence, sort of gore/unsettling imagery, eyes, teeth, arachnids, death
I think this is one of the most important games I played to me. The surreal and uncanny to slightly disturbing imagery here is perfect at communicating the themes of the unknown, of dying and not having a clue what will happen. I get really existential at times and I worry about death and non-existence a lot. I think this game’s given me the closure to what I’ve felt in the past by validating it by putting it into words. Well, picture form mostly, the abstract nature of what this game tackles is only something that can be materialised in images.
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
I deliberated a lot about how to write a review for this game that wouldn’t be inadvertently telling others how to experience it, but what I’m able to share at that point becomes very limited, so I will just reflect on what I took away from it and leave the rest up to the prospective player to discover for themselves.
The Endless Empty is a short game, but it is beautiful in its own discordant way. It has a story to tell and it will tell it on its own time. Exactly what that story is can change slightly depending on the choices made by the player, and so it’s able to contextualize itself slightly through said player’s expectations. Even being about the death of a character with a defined history, it strives to connect the player to the questions being posed on a personal level, and it definitely succeeded in doing so for me. The levels and the characters that represent the frames of mind being traveled through express many observations about the world the body has had to live within, and many of these observations may be readily recognizable as the sort most if not everyone has wondered about at some time in their own lives. If nothing else, the way the game manages to put on full-display those perceptions that often come with a sense of isolation and self-uniqueness also serves to highlight just how companionable the struggle being discussed really is, and there’s a special kind of heartbreak that comes along with this realization the closer the player gets to the end.
– Real player with 11.2 hrs in game
Der Geisterjäger / The Ghost Hunter
You know the expression “handling something with kid gloves”?
Yeah, Der Geisterjäger does - except its “kid gloves” are boxing gloves with horseshoes in them.
Basically, DGJ is a mecha dungeon crawler that not only isn’t afraid of being “unfair”, it actually incorporates savescumming as a canonical ability for your main character - something like precognition from Katana Zero, if you will. “This is only a dream” is a sentence that, if you, like me, are not a particularly sharp tactical mind, you’ll get used to seeing. A lot.
– Real player with 20.6 hrs in game
Der Geisterjager is a lot like Der Geisterturm, but better in every way. More enemy variety, interesting environmental challenges, and new hazards to deal with that aren’t mines. Along with quality of life improvements you should expect from continued development.
The single most important change is the addition of the credit system, you gain money for killing enemies now and the credits allow you upgrade your RCS as you see fit at repair stations dotted about the dungeons, creating an agency that the previous two games lacked while providing a much greater replay value.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
Disillusion
pretty cool game, especially cause 2 of my favorite games are earthbound and LSD dream emulator
One thing I can say is please fix the issue with the tracks looping when you can. it’s very noticeable on the shorter, early tracks or tracks that are short by nature, like cutscene tracks or the title track. When it loops, its really noticeable and choppy and kind of irritating. I like almost everything else about the game though. I hope you will add a lot more and finish it someday.
EDIT: Also, I got softlocked. Its after the floor where the green faced “ryan” guy chases you, i fought ebikaron and the purple room i was poisened for a few floors, idk why if it was the demon sticker or what, but pls make it obvious how to get rid of poison. Because now I’m softlocked in the room(s) where I have 1 HP and its a forced Brock Lee fight where he says “cement? no thats concrete baby!” I went through the door to the dojo but theres nothing there besides crows, a ryan who just talks about lsd, and then the door back. you can walk through the sprite to the door back and see some sprites from sun tzu eastern mind but they dont work when you press space on them
– Real player with 15.5 hrs in game
a funny yet dissociation-inducing journey of quirky internet humor, horrifying eye imagery laced with morse code, droning tunes chopped with decades-old vocal samples, and bizarre visuals that shine like old internet and LSD dream emulator. followed by one of the nine muses, climb your way up a tower where each floor becomes more deconstructed than the last.
the story is vague, something something nirvana, something something samsara. the importance and potential philosophy of it can become lost in the witty comments about the bone zone and the vague images of a man-fish wearing a “women want me fish fear me” hat. but it’s supposed to be bizarre. you’re climbing, because everyone climbs the tower.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Come Back Home Please
Trapped in an innocent 2D world trying to figure out what’s going on by your own decisions!
In Come Back Home Please the player learns his past and makes the future by his own decisions and choices. Play as a trapped in a fantastic 2D world character YOU and unveil the dark truth.
Features:
Test your timing skills in 50 premade levels while unveiling the mystery.
The game requires logic from YOU.
**WARNINGS:
-The game contains a lot of flashing lights and images.
-This is one of the hardest and most frustrating games you will ever play.**
flaming/million
The game was very cool and taught me about whats going on in the world. The use of visual metaphor and game play to convey the idea of a world that is working against you is pretty cool. This may just be pondering in my part, but the female and male models stacked in top of each other to convey that you are in-between is pretty smart and it’s embarrassing to say that it took me awhile to get it.
Great game with great mechanical and visual story telling. Hope everyone stays safe and has a great pride.
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
The character walks around backwards is that on purpose like a homage to OoT speed run? (That would be cool but …) As for the story I could not figure it out so I stopped reading and explored. Interesting game but have no idea what’s going on. The secret room was cool tho.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
ikenie
Ikenie is frustrating, like I hope you have keyboard insurance kind of frustrating. However, it is also fun… really fun. Though you receive little information on what is going on, or what you are meant to be doing, as a bullet-hell rpg player, this game drew me in with its (usually) fair yet challenging fights alongside fun puzzles to break up the action. Though its not long (my first play took about 2 hours), Ikenie makes up for this by providing multiple endings depending on play, and on top of this, it was originally created (amazingly) in under a month! Alongside its well fitting and well made music by Chris Porter, Ikenie is a crazy good value for only 5 bucks, and I challenge you all to go for that illusive 0 death run!
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
Boring puzzles and enviroments, cheap bosses where you seem to fight the controls more than the boss, and one point where you have to wander around a desert full of red herrings for an hour.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
M.E.M.E.S.
FUCKING BEST GAME if u like undertale at all like at all then buy this its cheap and u can play for ever so FUCKING BUY IT
– Real player with 21.6 hrs in game
So Bad its good again
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game