XOB
a psychedelic journey full of wonder sounds and positive affirmations. Great to be entranced by. Highly recommended.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Experimental Stylized Games.
What on the surface may seem like a trippy yet simple 2D puzzler, ends up being a lot more thoughtful and complex as you dig into its core. The game’s base mechanic of rotating the block and manipulating gravity feels both familiar but unique at the same time. The sound effects and visuals are very satisfying, mixed with spacey ambient music that you can listen to for long periods of play time.
I’m by no means a puzzle-game expert, but I do really enjoy the ones that click with me – and this one clicked with me. It felt just complex enough to be challenging, but not to the point that it felt overly-frustrating. When you solve a puzzle you feel a sense of satisfaction, not “finally it’s over”. That isn’t to say it doesn’t get more difficult as it goes on, slowly adding more mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh and tricky.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Californium
I’d say that I’m a little mixed on this one.
Obviously, I have a love of psychedelics. I love the Bay Area (live there), love the PDK inspiration, love the artstyle, love some of the sound(s) and love creativity & originality.
The reason I’m mixed is due to a little bugginess and honestly the game requiring a little too much patience on my part (I’m a pretty patient dude too). It almost feels at times like it is bordering along “ambient” gaming to solve the “puzzles”. And by “puzzles” I mean the game relies heavily on one core mechanic: find the right spot for clicky, click, repeat. This becomes a bit tedious; even for a $10 game and not immersive. Which sucks because obviously this game has the right ingredients for being very immersive (or even only immersive without clicky click, aka Alien Isolation mod removing the Alien - aka spontaneous combustion exploration instead of clicky clicky) but the tedium of finding that one core mechanic puzzle to progress dampens the immersion & experience for me. This is where it becomes almost “ambient”, the looping atmospheric effects and saying WTF is that little symbol to click, causing much retracing over an already limited (and by limited I mean small) map.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Experimental Colorful Games.
Devs are French and yes, there are noticable English spelling and grammar errors throughout but not unplayable bad. And the English voice acting is on a much higher level than the localization/translation bits and bobs so if you are worried about things being lost in translation that’s not an issue, for me at least. And if you have even a passing familiarity with PKD then you ought to be able to catch the little nods to his books because, well, they aren’t so little nor subtle. It is interesting to see a French perspective on a somewhat contemporary popular American mind and world(s) though. For that alone I feel the game is worth it to me. But this game is MOST DEFINITELY not for everyone, and I would be very selective with whom I reccomend it to. Most PKD fans should find something valuable in the game. I make the assumption that most PKD readers will be less critical of writing and more interested in unique and original ideas in general, and this game is certainly that.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
qrth-phyl
qrth-phyl falls in the class of games like Lumines or Space Invaders Extreme that offer simple, familiar mechanics, carefully tuned and immaculately presented. It’s a love letter to snake-like arcade games, with easter-egg tributes to the genre’s innovators. You alternate between snaking around the outside of rectangles or rectangular prisms and free-movement 3D snaking inside those prisms. The idea of 3D snake worried me initially, seeming like a potential camera disaster, but the implementation is rock solid and I haven’t had a death that didn’t feel like my fault. Playing well increases “corruption,” which increases the difficulty of the proc-gen levels but offers more dots and a higher chance of encountering the treasured blue dots, which turn your tail into dots for you to consume like Pac-Man CE:DX’s satisfying ghost trains. The dynamic difficulty system persists between runs, and it feels like one of the best such systems I’ve encountered, quickly dialing in a consistently engaging level of challenge.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Experimental Programming Games.
I absolutely love this game. The aesthetics are working great for the retro-arcade style. The controls are responsive and the game is challenging. Also the hidden sequence adds yet another dimension to the game (pun not intended).
I got this game years ago on IndieGameStand. That store doesn’t operate anymore and I had the only .exe file I managed to download before they went out of business. And here we are, qrth-phyl finally safely in my steam library.
I’m looking forward for future updates. Maybe VR support could be nice?
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Koma
Awesome simulator of near after death experience, it gave me goosebumps while I was playing it
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Koma is a confusing, both in a bad and a good way.
First the game seems to have some optimisation issues. Even on my Ryzen 9 XT and Nvidia 2800 Super, I had some lags and micro freezes, usually when loading a new area.
Also, sometimes I felt some issues regarding of the usual rules of game design in the way to indicate you the path. Combined with the fact that you can glitch the camera trough the walls, and sometimes yourself, it result in situations where you don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to do or where to go. I completly understant the goal to make you feel lost in this strange world and I like that, but sometimes I just felt lost because of confusing game design. It reminded me it was a game and kinda breaked the illusion.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Splinter
Splinter is a first-person movie/video game hybrid where the player explores the warehouse of a transhumanist hacker collective, watching full motion video clips that answer the question: What happened to Mason?
Splinter is an experiment with a new style of storytelling. A full playthrough is approximately 2 hours long, similar to a feature film.
Anomalies
SUMMARY: A graphical toy to make weird, surreal spacescapes and the oddities that inhabit them, from playing with sliders to just randomziing items. On top of that, you get odd soundscapes that play along. A way to just mess around, or a way to create relaxing - or disturbing - backgrounds on your computer or tv display.
Anomalies is a graphical toy that some may call a glorified screen saver - fortunately it’s both!
Basically you can randomize or set a bunch of parameters, that then make surreal spacescapes that you can watch while strange music plays. Depending on your choices, you might watch stars circle by as you observe a nebula, be caught among strange particles, or hover in front of a bizarre tentacular space creature. Or a combination.
– Real player with 31.4 hrs in game
This is a really interesting piece of software. It is good to have around to either dip into casually or have a longer session. There can be some nice surprises. I just came up with a not very spectacular creation from the visual point of view, but it has a very nice ethereal sound. Tweaking parameters and hunting and rummaging are great fun. I have got some more choices of wallpaper too.
– Real player with 26.0 hrs in game
Beat Biome
Play music through your headset and Beat Biome will automatically pick it up, reacting to the beats and wavelengths!
This is a pretty small trip, but fun none the less. Enjoy several psychedelic environments, even create your own! Just play some music and chill out, maybe lie down or bust a move. It’s up to you how to enjoy this, just keep an open mind and two open ears.
If this blows up I’ll make some more content, but in the meantime leave your comments in a review or email me directly with any bugs/feedback/etc you have. I’m a single developer and just made this for fun, so please be understanding if I can’t get to everything. Thanks, and enjoy!
CubeHub
This is a collection of mini-games based on innovative game mechanics and parodying famous games and other works of modern culture with its help. This is a physics challenge with puzzle elements.
Gameplay
At the game level are various figures. Your goal: to put the figures so that they intersect certain parts. The game marks these parts with a pink color.
Using the keyboard, you control one of the figures: rotation, movement back and forth. You can push other figures.
Some figures may have AI and move independently of the player. Some figures can “shoot” cubes, they push the figures too.
At different levels, different settings for gravity and destructibility of the environment.
Game features
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Many figures of different shapes and colors.
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Tutorial levels.
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Different game levels. From simple and funny to very complex, from which you will break the keyboard and your nerves.
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The game develops attentiveness, precision of movements, intelligence and a sense of rhythm.
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This is a fun game for the whole family. Play it with your friends, parents, children, grandparents. Play it at work so that your boss can see that you are increasing your intellectual level and become more useful for the company.
Ayahuasca
I really dug this. I knew going in it wasn’t a game per say but I was actually relaxed and kind of mesmerized. I would say I think the $12.99 price I got it for is a lil' steep for basically a 20 minute stint, so i think I would be happier if it was like $5-maybe $10 and they would probably sell more. I like that it isn’t just a bunch of images in a 360 sphere you are looking at but real 3d models moving around and things. In fact, although it might be hard to do as this looked like it took quite the team to get it out, I would absolutely LOVE if they did chapters/dlc for $5 a piece and had different artists attempt the same kind of trip, same amount of time, in their own way. I could honestly see myself “using” this once a week to relax or something and definitely showing VR to my friends with.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
I’ve had an HTC Vive since 2017 and from the outset, noted that coming out of VR is more like emerging from dream than quitting a flat game. I think it’s compounded of two elements: the 360 ‘being there’ immersivity of VR, but also the physical activity which, no matter how limited, purges the adrenalin that static gaming leaves you full of.
I’ve been predicting VR psychedelics for as long as I’ve had the headset and I have several quite hallucinatory VR apps and games in my library: Chroma Lab, Cosmic Sugar, Emergence Fractal Universe, The Bond, Form. It was a no-brainer to buy Ayahuasca as soon as it came out.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Ayu - The Dream Soul -
Ayu - The Dream Soul - is a surreal horror adventure experience where you control Ayu, a girl who suddenly finds herself in bizarre logicless worlds. Now she has to find out the reason as to why she’s in this place.
Features:
-A mysterious plot.
-Dialogues.
-Playable flashbacks/cutscenes.
-All kinds of different dream worlds.
-Exploration of small and large worlds.
-Hidden Easter Eggs and Mysteries.
-Treasure Chests.
-Vendor NPC.
- The Game is currently in Early Access phase, a lot of content is already planned for future updates! *