Gaming

I'd personally recommend Rain World. It has a reputation for being pretty hard, and you'll probably die a lot so you have to approach this game with patience

A bunch of my favorites have already been listed, so I'll just mention the one that wasn't: Antichamber, a first person puzzle game that's probably somewhat like Portal in terms of how it requires you to rethink your assumptions about how space works, but it's a very different game, both mechanically and in tone. I don't want to give away too much, but it's a mix of weirdly unsettling elements (although it is by no means a horror game), a design that's actively trolling you in ways that will make you laugh, and mechanics revelations that will have you scream "Wait, I could have done that this whole time?!" It's one of those games that I wish I could delete from my memory and play for the first time again.

I enjoyed atomicrops tremendously

If you like surrealist art I highly recommend Hylics and its sequel

recently got completely addicted to a text-based Indie RPG called Roadwarden. The story and characters are incredibly rich and the gameplay is full of satisfying little moments of "oh, I have just the item for this!" or "another character told me this tavern keep doesn't appreciate jokes; I better get straight to business". I haven't beaten it yet, but I can't wait to see where it leads!

You want short and weird? Check out Crypt Worlds. Free too.

You want a bit longer and weird? Check out Hylics 2. One of the most unique aesthetics in gaming.

You want a very streamlined 3D version of Dwarf Fortress? Try Going Medieval. I have over a hundred hours in it.

You want a Czech version of Duke Nukem 3D with the art style of Quake? Well that's very specific. But good news, you should check out Hrot.

These are all indie games that I think aren't quite as popular as they should be. Not the most explicitly unknown, but definitely under-known.

If you were ever a fan of Rollercoaster Tycoon, check out Parkitect. It's a phenomenal and fun themepark game!

Owlboy was better than I expected it to be.

One of my favorites over the past few years is Prey(2017) it was made under Bethesda so I wouldn’t say it’s underground, but It didn’t get the popularity and fan base it deserves. Essentially a open world (as open as a world can be in a giant space ship) that allows you to explore and fight creepy creatures. It also gives you multiple ways to solve the problems you face as well as Multiple endings and story branches to choose from. I played for 33 hours and it was so worth the price it was on sale, (wish I could remember) but it would also be worth $60 as well. It reminds me of a high polished Skyrim at certain points. Would highly recommend

• DemonCrawl: It's basically RPG Minesweeper, with hundreds of items that you can encounter as you work your way through 10 progressively harder levels. You could be an armored knight, a snooping detective, a fiery pyromaniac, or even a sneaky ninja. There are several dozen of classes that take your standard Minesweeper mechanics and subvert and reframe them entirely. If you like puzzle games, this one is worth playing.

• Backpack Hero: It's an inventory management roguelike. Use your limited inventory to hold all the weapons, armor, consumables, and trinkets you need to reach the end and claim your prize. Don't forget to optimize the placement of your various items, so that they can all combo together. Different characters have different play styles, each with some mechanic that is partially or wholly unique to them. Is your backpack big, small, or filled with many pockets? Do you fight with totems, summon minions, or charm your enemies to your side? There's lots to see and do in what is possibly one of my favorite indie games of the past year. Highly recommended!

Narita Boy is a really cool glitch aesthetic sidescroller

Gunpoint

S.P.A.Z.

Eufloria

Astroneer

Manifold Garden

Massive Chalice

The Pedestrian

Solar 2

Snakepass

Stacking

I’ll say CrossCode. 2D hack-and-slash set in a futuristic MMO. Way too good, way too unknown for the genre that it is.

If you enjoy city builder games you might wanna try Songs of Syx out. You basically build an empire containing potentially thousands of citizens. There’s no way I could possibly do the game justice in a comment, so you might wanna check out a let’s play or the Steam page

Ctrl Alt Ego

It's like a System Shock or Prey 2017 that has even less emphasis on "conventional" combat and more general problem solving. In some ways I feel like it's what you get if you grow an "immersive sim" out of a "puzzle" game like Portal instead of out an FPS or RPG.

Ooh, I love finding obscure indies. There are an awful lot of games on Steam and Itch and other platforms that are amazing experiences, but that almost no one has ever played or even heard of for one reason or another.

One of my recent favourite zero-budget indies is Sally Can't Sleep, a strange first person platformer with a lot of focus on fun, versatile, and exploitable movement mechanics. The dev sacrificed visual polish for quantity and style, so the game has a lot of interconnected levels with a big variety of different mechanics and visual styles - it's a really good example of how much a solo developer can accomplish.

Another one is Worlds, which is a 3D stealth-shooter-platformer-adventure? I like it for the same reason as Sally Can't Sleep, it's ambitious and creative, and you can really feel the developer pushing against their limitations to release something that punches far above its own weight.

Also, both these games are very cheap, even at full price!

always way too many to list without some guidance on what you're looking for(!)

worth mentioning guacamelee 1 and 2 (notable indie metroidvania games ) are currently free on the epic store: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/guacamelee-stce-7cdbc8 https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/guacamelee-2-ac4977

OneShot is a simple and flawed game but it'll leave a strong impact if you let it. Highly recommend going into it FULLY blind.

Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages is a 2D top-down space shooter with RPG text-adventure elements outside of the combat scenarios. I found it a super fun game with an insane amount of content. Probably over a hundred hours worth. There's a bunch of weapon and defense customization when it comes to combat, and there's probably thousands of varieties of ship you can build for whatever duty you need it to do.

Hyper Light Drifter is a really pretty game with tight controls, fair difficulty, excellent music, and some of the best atmosphere of any game I've played.

The Westport Independent is a censorship simulator, in which you play as the editor of a newspaper, choosing which stories to run and how to edit them in order to avoid angering both the authoritarian government and political radicals who want to take them down, while also appeasing your journalists, who may get angry and quit if you censor their stories too much.