Excluding all games you have seen mentioned by anyone on the internet, what is your favorite game?

No One Lives Forever

To this day I have no idea why I bought it. And I bought it close to its release date. I would only do that if I had been absolutely obsessed for months with previews and stuff. But I remember none of that.

And still it ended up becoming one of my all time favourites.

Sid Meiers' Pirets of the Carribean

Lode Runner

Shallow Thought Of The Day: Any game mentioned in this thread twice is automatically someone who didn't read all the comments before posting.

Two very niche board games from the 70s: "Snit's Revenge" "Lie, Cheat, and Steal"

And an old Avalon Hill wargame: "Wooden Ships and Iron Men"

There was this officially licensed Star Trek tabletop starship battle game that I got to play a couple times in the eighties and no one seems to remember it but me. Wish I could find a copy. I remember it being a blast.

I could rattle off a whole list of TRS-80 Model I/III or Apple ][ games that no one has ever heard of, but I'll spare you.

Action Quake 2 - AQ2

An online 90s FPS

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Innovation

Card game - Simplicity and depth, exceptional gameplay. Best at 2P.

Super dodgeball for the NES.

Deceptively simple, but much deeper than it seems on first glance. Each character has 2 different special abilities that change the way you throw. Especially if you can get a few buddies to huddle around the tv with you, will keep you all entertained for hours.

Labyrinth!

Each turn you first move one column or row of the gameboard over by one, then move as far as you like along any unobstructed path as you race against other players to collect magiffins in the ever-changing maze.

It's a game that rewards both creative thinking and sabotage. It helps develop strategy and spatial reasoning. It's simple enough for a kindergartner to learn but engaging enough for adults to enjoy even after dozens of games.

I really like backgammon but no one ever wants to play with me

Hero’s Quest by Sierra (Later renamed to Quest for Glory)

Idk, I remember hide-and-go-seek being pretty sick as a kid. I don't often see it mentioned.

Descent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_mancala

My current phone game is ∞ Loop. Just a simple puzzle-type game.

I also like a variety of solitaire card games, but the app I used to like has become quite enshittified, and I haven't found a good replacement.

Cogmind! I found that game after I bought Caves Of Qud. Technically it wasn't recommended to me by anyone directly (just found it one day scrolling through Steam). Its an excellent RPG where you play as a self-assembling robot trying to escape from a massive robot colony thing. Haven't gotten super far into the game yet but I absolutely love the gameplay and sound design. Check it out!

Also, NES Open; the greatest golf game ever made in my opinion. I've had it since I was a kid and have never heard anyone talk about it online. Simple gameplay, high skill ceiling. Exactly what a golf game needs to be!

Dungeon Keeper

Edit: I accidentally hit the post comment button, so I might as well add something:

I think I might've mentioned this once before, but The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] stood out to me for its stylized graphics and animation. Or if you're in the mood for a puzzle game, Temple of Snek might be good to try.

Two gamecube games that I never see discussed anywhere, and no equal sequel has ever released for:

Cubivore & Frolf

I am still so sad to not be an owner of either in a physical capacity :’(

Ok, any game that I've ever seen someone in my almost 30 years online is going to strike most titles and leave inly the ones that are really old, obscure, or both. So, here are a few that I like but can't recall seeing mentioned online other than when specifically looking them up:

• Stunt Island. Airplane sim-like game by Disney studios. Early 90's
• Rocking Cats. Awesome NES platformer that has a really fun take on the genre
• Armadillo Run. Physics puzzle that a friend of mine recommended in the mid 2000s.
• Sacrifice. Weird (the good kind of weird) first person strategy game I pirated once after findingit on an FTP. Fucking amazing game from somewhere in the early 2000s
• A.r.s.e.n.a.l. An RTS from the late 90s. Don't send an attack without fuel trucks!

So... A game that actually isn't my favorite, just the favorite amongst things that I've never seen mentioned anywhere?

Shit... Even the most obscure games I know about, I know about because someone else mentioned them.

I guess I'll have to go with Fightin' Herds? It's one of the few games I have that I bought entirely on the screenshots from the store page and I've never seen anyone mentioned it ever. In the simplest explanation: It's a 2D side scrolling fighting game with animal characters designed by Lauren Faust (the creator of MLP: Friendship is Magic). It's not a very good game. It's extremely cheap and unfair, like way more than any other fighting game I've played. The adventure mode is also kinda shit because it takes the already bad fighting mechanics and makes you do platforming and Smash Bros style horde fights against multiple opponents and the controls just aren't really designed for that shit. I haven't even gotten 25% through the story mode :(

Actually... Matt Muscle should be told about this pile of dogshit for his Worst Fighting Game Ever series... 🤔

If its out of non-mentions it has to be Space Station 13. I hope 14 on Steam catches up soon, been thinking of lending a hand.

Herzog Zwei on the Sega Genesis was one of my favorites back in the day!

Bounty Bob on the C64 was goood.

This is a hard one because I generally try to play good games these days, and good games either get popularized through word of mouth or Youtubers make video essays about how they were misunderstood at the time. For me, this question is really asking "Hey what weird trash did you find back when you were 10 years old digging through the bargain bin for whatever you could trade two games you finished for."

I think my big picks from the weird trash are The Urbz, which comes from back when they made Sims spinoff games instead of endless DLC, and Ty the Tasmanian Devil, which was a 3D platformer metroidvania that revolved around collecting increasingly elaborate boom-a-rangs. I definitely sunk the most hours into the Urbz, because nothing was more fun to a 10 year old than going around a virtual town flipping people off.

Castle of the winds.

Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters

The boardgame Heat is one of my all time favorites. Thunder Road Vendetta is right up there too, and I am waiting to put them together for an all road race/rage saturday with my boardgame peeps.

Favorites come and go with the seasons, but objectively, the one game that we have played more than anything in my house is Silver.

We've bought all the expansions and created our own variation of playing with ALL the cards.

Snake. There are many good versions of it, but I'd say my favourite is the one from coolmathgames.com .

I really enjoyed Doom 3. Has more of a horror vibe compared to the hack and slash nature of the rest of the series, but I feel its very enjoyable and doesn't feel as old as it is.

Commander Keen might be one of the few old enough not to have been mentioned to me since the internet became well-known.

Also, Squarez.

I came across Blade Runner on GOG. I don’t remember when but I think it was on sale. I didn’t touch it for at least a year or two until two days ago. It is so amazing. It has the old school 90’s point and click vibe while being an amazing detective story (one I could imagine even being made into a movie itself).

Tf2 maybe ? Honorable mentions: Tetris, Dwarf Fortress, stormworks, bg3

All time biggest time sinks are probably Civilization 2 and Factorio.

Biggest time sink you’ve never heard of is Ancient Dungeons of Mystery, a one-man Roguelike dungeon delving passion project.