A House of Many Doors
Seeing as there seem to be some Sunless Sea fans in this thread, this one might also be of interest. While it's clearly very heavily inspired by Sunless Sea (and was actually made with financial support from its developers), I still feel like it holds up very well on its own. The writing is good (although not quite at Sunless Sea's level, but you could say that for basically every game ever made), and different enough from Sunless Sea to still make it worth playing even if you've played that already. The game also features some amazing art. At 11 (and probably half that when it goes on sale), it's an easy recommendation for everyone who enjoyed Sunless Sea and wants something similar, or for anyone who likes exploring interesting worlds.
To go a little more in depth, the general structure and gameplay are extremely similar to Sunless Sea. You have a ship (well, a centipede train traveling on land), explore varied and creative "islands", and interact with the story exactly the same as you do in Sunless Sea. The biggest difference, gameplay wise, is the combat. A House of Many Doors uses a FTL inspired combat minigame, although much like Sunless Sea, the combat really isn't worth bothering with. A House of Many Doors also has a (somewhat limited) fast travel system, which cuts down on some travel times, but you can only teleport to a specific islands, not all of them.
In the writing department, A House of Many Doors is actually pretty distinct from Sunless Sea. In Sunless Sea, each island is a mostly self contained story, and reading these stories makes up for most of the content. In Many Doors, most islands are grouped up into regions or countries, with a story arc for the entire region. As such, individual islands can feel lacking in content if you don't first start the regions story arc somewhere else. A House of Many Doors also places a greater emphasis on crewmember stories, with these stories making up for the bulk of the content (Sunless Sea had those as well, but they never really felt like the main part of the game, with some specific exceptions). As such, the game is more character focused then it is world focused. That's not to say that the world itself isn't impressive, because it absolutely is. It just means that the world is more often presented through the eyes of your companions. In addition, I feel like the game does romance pretty well. You're free to attempt to romance any of your companions, regardless of race, gender, orientation or age, but they might not actually be interested in you, or not want a serious relationship. It's a pretty welcome change to most games with romance, where everyone you can romance will at the end fall unquestionably in love with you.
Brawlhalla
A free to play smash styled fighter with actually functional netcode and online infrastructure, as well as a large enough playerbase to make it easy to find a game. A bit simplistic compared to other smash styled games out there, but the simplicity, and the free price tag, make it a good choice for an introduction to this style of fighting games.
Counterfeit Monkey
Counterfeit Monkey isn't actually on Steam, but it is free, and is absolutely a game more people need to try. A text adventure game about word manipulation, where you start of with the ability to remove a single letter from any object in the game, and use this ability to solve puzzles. For instance, the tutorial has you facing a locked door with a keypad, and a museum containing a codex. Remove x from the codex, and you get the code for the door.
What really makes the game special is that you can interact with almost every word you see, often with very amusing results. Rather than actively trying to solve puzzles, the game turns into seeing just how much the game will let you interact with, and what will happen when you try doing it. For instance, you can turn a wheel into a
heel by removing the w, or change a simple ball into the almighty all by removing the b. The core gameplay basically consists of seeing a word and saying to yourself "I wonder if the game will let me change it". Most of the time, the answer is yes. Later on, the game further expands the possibilities by giving you access to tools such as a homonym paddle, and the ability to use anagrams and add umlauts to words.
Another thing really makes the game stand out is just how well these crazy abilities are integrated into the story and worldbuilding. The game actually manages to create a world where these abilities, and people using them, make sense, and ties everything up in a conclusive ending that makes good use of the rules of the world.
It being a text adventure game might turn a lot of people off, but the game does a great job of removing most annoyances found in games of the genre people might be familiar with. Since most of the interactions in the game are based on using your word manipulation tools on objects, there are no issues with trying to guess which verb you need to use to get the game to do what you wants. You are also provided with a useful map that is always displayed on the edge of your screen, and you can navigate the world by simply saying where you want to go (for example, go to park), instead of having to use commands like go north. It also comes with a short tutorial for people that have never played a text adventure game before. That said, there is a particular puzzle that I had to look up, but there is a basic walkthrough available online. Besides, this kind of game wouldn't work in any other format.
Counterfeit Monkey also serves as a great introduction to the text adventure/interactive fiction genre, which is filled with incredibly creative and well written games, most of which are free. So if you do end up liking it, you've probably discovered a whole new genre you'll like.
Thanks, but reading that this game has roguelike element kinda dissapointed me, its my least favorite genre by a longshot.
Don't let Sunless Sea's roguelike features discourage you too much, since they can be turned off. While Sunless Sea defaults to one savegame that gets automatically rewritten when you die, you are still free to manually save and load the game at any time your ship is docked, and these saves will still be there even if you die.
