Existensis
To all the people reading this, I recommend you finish the full game, explore every location in the game perceiving its beauty whilst doing so, this game is an astounding experience and exploring every region enables you to proceed even further in the lore of the game in which regard I choose not to specify so as to encourage others into experiencing a blind play-through and as to not ruin the lore.
tl;dr - Quit wasting your time looking at reviews and get the bloody game already, its an absolute masterpiece.
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Philosophical Fantasy Games.
I haven’t finished it yet but it takes me ages to finish games and I really want to leave a positive recommendation.
This game is gorgeous, charming and so immersive. I did not expect to be so entranced by this world – especially because I rarely play fantasy games and I’m never interested in fantasy lore – but the more I play, the more I want to discover more areas, more characters and more of the story. I bought this the day it came out because I immediately loved the artwork and the fact that it’s all hand-drawn by one person, I just wish I started playing it sooner.
– Real player with 7.0 hrs in game
Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between
What do you see up there, when you consider the infinity around us? And as you wander on your own journey, who are the strange, unworldly others who probe those questions as they pass like ghosts through your travels? Were they ever really real?
Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is about the thoughts that exist between destinations, the parts of journeys that dominate our time but not our attention, when our minds wander to parts of ourselves and our world normally left unexamined. On a late night highway drive, a quiet train car in the early hours, a walk through a moonlight park, or the endless wait in a deserted airport, we listen to weird music amid the ambient announcements of delays, and question our place in the universe.
Inspired by long travel and the stream of consciousness it fosters, Glitchhikers asks you to look inward. Find the answers to your questions, and question the answers you receive. Ruminate on life, the universe, our place and purpose in it. Voyage through a freeform narrative experience, converse with the endless inevitability, and explore the cosmic, hopeful world you find yourself in.
A follow up to the critically praised short game released in 2014, Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is an expanded experience, reborn and reimagined.
No pressure, no failure, no optimal path, no journey exactly the same. Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is an introspective freeform game where the player picks a journey, slips into that liminal space and has a unique experience travelling into their own thoughts, guided by the characters they meet along the way.
A late night drive, a deserted airport lounge, a moonlit walk through an empty park, a quiet carriage on an overnight train, a 24-hour convenience store. Never the ultimate destination, spending time in the inbetween creates a setting for contemplation and reflection, a mood that exists in these liminal spaces.
The hikers you meet on each journey will travel with you for a time, offering thought-provoking conversations, and questioning your place in the universe. Who will you meet? What will you talk about? Were they real or just a figment of your imagination?
An extensive original soundtrack full of chill grooves, upbeat wonder, dreamy synths controlled by your movement through space, and that one busker who makes you feel right at home: each journey has its own feel.
Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between both expands and dives deeper into the ideas behind the original Glitchhikers (released as a short conceptual game in 2014), to fully realise the concepts and present a polished and fleshed out experience to a new generation of players.
Silverstring Media are a vital and vibrant voice within narrative indie games, creating a string of short experimental titles and working as narrative guns for hire on indie darlings including Celeste, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, Manifold Garden and Wandersong.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1449230/
Read More: Best Philosophical Nonlinear Games.
Lost Voice
At first glance, the story is simple, if not cliched. A player finds themselves in a strange and unfamiliar world - they don’t know where they are or how they got there. And it appears they don’t remember anything up to this point. Almost immediately the player is contacted by a group of characters with similar symptoms and together they start an investigation to unravel these mysteries. Where are they? Why can’t they remember anything? These and many other questions will be answered in the most unexpected ways.
At its core, Lost Voice is a first-person shooter, with strong exploration and some puzzle elements. Town Square is a safe space where the player can go to seek shelter and communicate with NPCs. Teleport Room that can be found there is used to reach other worlds (dungeons). Each world has its own gameplay twist.
There is no “Game Over” screen in Lost Voice. Instead of dying, the player teleports to the Well when HP is depleted. Upon climbing the Well to the top, the player transports to the Secret Room, nearest to the player’s “death” location. These rooms are closed from the inside, so the player will need to figure out how to unlock them.
Read More: Best Philosophical Singleplayer Games.
Symploke: Legend of Gustavo Bueno (Chapter 2)
This is what is apparently an old point and click adventure game ripping off the old Sierra games from the early 1990s, only this was released in 2017.
Regardless, the game is unplayable, you are prompted to enter a password (some kind of copy protection?) which cannot be bypassed and prevents access to the game itself. Resolution is fixed (despite a launcher that pretends to provide you with the option to change it) and the game is unstable, it crashed hard and I had to switch users to regain a working desktop session and terminate the crashed game.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
It’s fine
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
ASH OF WAR™
This game is awesome! In my opinion it has great music and plot that get you deeper into walkthrough all the story and mini games. This is the first self game of these developers so I don’t think that we have to judge them for graphics. It’s funny. I really can’t avoid the soundtrack and I have to say that it fits amazingly into the game. Great job guys! Also want to say that junction between chapters is nice idea. It tells us what character is thinking about.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
Should you buy the game? Is it worth the money? Short answer is no (to both), however, I do think you should get it when it goes on sale (I got it for 1.70$ CAD on sale).
(message for the Devs at the bottom)
Let’s talk about the Pros:
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The game honestly looks gorgeous, and for an indie game, pretty surprising.
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All the animations look great, smooth, and pretty realistic.
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Character models look pretty good and you do see some decent variety.
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For the most part has a pretty immersive story and narrative.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
Dabado Puzzles
Dabado Puzzles is a very difficult puzzle game that takes its inspiration from the classic Tetris, but provides a completely different approach to block stacking.
The objective in every level is to place the blocks in a configuration that allows you to reach certain spots. While in Tetris the goal is to fill up lines to the full, in Dabado you’ll have to spread them out as much as possible (keeping them connected and on top of each other), and extend your construction in all directions. What you obtain in the end is not a wall of tiles, but a branching structure, very much resembling a tree, like so:
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
disclaimer: I did some beta testing before release.
dabado puzzles is a gorgeous tetris-like, and sadly that’s pretty much all the praise I can give. weird shapes of varying weight are falling, try to arrange them in a way that some of them will eventually touch and collect keys (they end the level immediately, so leave them for last), goal and special items, etc. so yeah, tetris with some fluff, pointless abbreviations, a narrative of sorts, and some unnecessarily complicated (or simply unnecessary) resource management.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Revived Souls
You play as Harry the Hermit in this old fashioned celtic world full of magic devices, hidden passages, talking animals and clever logic based puzzles. But do be warned… your killer is in hot pursuit with a plan to destroy you before you can save your village from impending doom! Explore a labyrinth of perplexing puzzles in this quirky escape game that’ll have you wondering whether you’ve reached the conclusion… or just the beginning!
Notice something strange or out of place? Making mental notes and observations will aid you in solving tricky puzzles later on. As you explore the world of talking animals that hate your guts, collecting objects and using them cleverly is crucial in unlocking a trail of puzzles leading you ever closer to saving your loved ones before its too late!
Sisyphus Reborn
I believe I’m a less common player on Steam, I buy games for several different reasons, some I buy for myself and also for other people, some games I prefer to watch and comment on instead of play. I collect games for their beauty, for their art design, for their challenge or if they convince me they have a good story. This “game” is, above all, a philosophical reading, you basically need to follow the only way of doing the things.
Inspired by the Albert Camus' essay in which he introduces his philosophy of the absurd: that of the man in search of meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternity. Does the realization of the absurd demand suicide? Camus replies: “No. It demands revolt.” He then describes various approaches to the absurd in life. The last chapter compares the absurdity of man’s life with the situation of Sisyphus, a personage of Greek mythology, condemned to always repeat the same task of pushing a rock to the top of a mountain, and every time he was almost at the top, the stone rolled down the mountain again to the point of departure by an irresistible force, completely invalidating the hard effort expended. You can and, sometimes, you have to do your own way, and even your closer beloved ones will be against you, because people are doctrinated to live an absurd life with no purpose other than gather properties. I call it contemporary (and cheap) slavery, the utilitarian and materialist world we live to serve purposes and reach goals that are not the ours.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
When you finish playing Sisyphus Reborn, it will feel like being suddenly roused from deep sleep in the middle of a blustery night. It’s raining heavily outside; the window is wide open, and the cold, damp air makes you uncomfortable, finding its way under the blanket and disturbing your peace. You remember that the dream was uniquely pleasant; disappointed, you rub your eyes somewhat forcefully for no apparent reason, turn over, adjust the pillow a bit and prepare to go back to sleep. Some intrusive thoughts linger for a couple of minutes. They have no discernible form or purpose, but they feel vaguely threatening. Being awake at this hour seems strange and unnatural, so your only desire is to plunge into nothingness once more.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
SOMA
I replayed this game and it hits me just as hard today as it did back when I purchased it at launch.
Plus, all the bugs I had at the launch (such as crashes during scene switches) have all been fixed.
Don’t want to say anything about the game itself in case I spoil it, but if you enjoy existential and thought provoking science fiction I would highly recommend it. The game drips with thick emotional atmosphere and the occasional cheap jump scares, but it doesn’t diminish the plot or impact.
I also love that the game (like PREY, the 2017 version) gives you several important decisions to make which ultimately do not get resolved as part of the plot; You are left to your own imagination to figure out what impact they had upon the world. That’s the sort of engaging thinking exercises I wish more games would give me.
– Real player with 28.0 hrs in game
Different than thought, different than expected and yet really good!
When I got the game, I assumed it would be a kind of bioshock that was just creepier. Yes, reading helps, at least sometimes 😊
But in this case it played absolutely no role because I didn’t miss the shooter aspect in any way. Soma is a pure adventure game from the first-person point of view.
Nevertheless, the underwater scenario is somewhat reminiscent of Bioshock but with an incredible sound experience. Everywhere it creaks and groans. The game lives from the great soundscape and you should definitely use headphones to play.
– Real player with 22.1 hrs in game
Symploke: Legend of Gustavo Bueno (Chapter 3)
Symploke: Legend of Gustavo Bueno is a point and click adventure with the scent of legendary classics such as The Secret of Monkey Island or The Day of the Tentacle. The game is completely designed in MS Paint and it is divided in different chapters. This is Chapter 3.
Did You Finish Chapter 2?
To play Chapter 3 you must introduce the password given when you got through Chapter 2. If you haven’t, please download Chapter 2 and come back once you have completed it.