Vintage Story

I've always heard it described as Minecraft meets Primitive Technology. I would say that is quite accurate. Maybe some (optional) Don't Starve like elements where you have to worry about the temporal rift (sort of like insanity) and drifters (largely at night).

Technology progression is much slower than Minecraft. Also much more involved. Want a stone axe? You have to place a stone on the ground and use another stone to knap it into shape first. Make an iron shovel? You have to heat up the ingot first and then beat it into shape on an anvil. If you are too slow and it cools down you have to heat it up again.

Farming has 3 nutrient groups, so fertilizers and crop rotation is important.

Leather making is a multi step process of soaking hides in various liquids.

It has a built in and very extensive guide/wiki. It also has a native Linux build.

Mindustry

An open-source factorio like game. You can play it on PC or your phone, and it has a self hostable server that is relatively easy to setup.

Edit: I'm really glad to see this game is pretty well known!

Original game page

Archive.org mirror of the game download

I genuinely have NO clue if this game is known, but i suspect it mostly isn't.

It's Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf! It's kinda like a music video, but it's a music video game 👉😏

It's a collaboration between 2000s indie weirdo darling gamedev cactus and Swedish synthpunk band Fucking Werewolf ASSO.

it's aggressively strange and moderately challenging, but I think it's just a goddamn delight and maybe you will too.

Pizza Tower is a love letter to the Wario Land series, and from my experience, is a drug trip and a half for the sheer absurdity of the game. If you do pick this up, I recomend going in blind :3

From the depths for me is a vehicle building game that's targeted to whoever likes tuning little systems. Haven't seen anyone know of it besides in the community itself. It's a bit like toying around with Lego technic. There's also quite a few more obscure versions of it, but I put this one out because I like it best.

Chex quest. I got this game in a cereal box back in 1996. It defined my childhood.

Now they have an HD version on steam. 10/10 good times.

https://www.chexmix.com/chexquest/

Thomas was alone

An excellent example of storytelling elevating a game. The game play is a decent puzzle platformer, and the story is very charming.

Sanctum (and its sequel Sanctum 2)

It’s a tower defense where you also have guns and go fight alongside your towers as a first person shooter.

Both Sanctum and Sanctum 2 are worth playing and have slightly different vibes. Sanctum 1 is simpler while Sanctum 2 has more complex build crafting. Also Sanctum uses a square grid while Sanctum 2 uses a hexagonal grid, and Sanctum 2 has some tweaked enemy mechanics, including enemies that target destroy the towers or killing the players over just going for the core. I think Sanctum 2 tries to make the player feel more important instead of the towers being the main focus.

Grand Theft Auto IV

It's a little known game from a small publisher originally located in Scotland.

The main premise is that you drive around a city as quickly as possible and go bowling with your cousin. Think Big Lebowski meets Driver. You can also play Pool and Darts in various locations around the town, and earn money doing small side jobs such as being a taxi driver or a paramedic.

Cave Story+.

You are Quote, an amnesiac robot. The world appear to have gone to shit and you don't know why.

It's a 2D sidescroller, which if I told myself, I would find immediately boring, but the animation, controls and story combined as just so good. It's so good.

Vangers is a postapocalyptic and fundamentally strange top-down driving/exploration/mystery/action-RPG.

It has a unique back story, hostile worlds and an intriguing and expansive vocabulary that helps tell the story. If you are the type of person that appreciates poetic neologisms because they get your brain going, guessing at the etymology and sucking up the layers of connotation, this is up your alley.

Even if you manage to complete the game, you'll be left wondering whether what happened was even meant to happen. It's sort of post modern with deconstructed words, rituals and behaviors all jumbled up and muddled together as a result of a great and important event that once had meaning to creatures that may no longer even exist.

Children of a Dead Earth is a tactical space game with n-body Newtonian physics. This means that on the surface it is very similar to something like KSP, you can do things like orbit a Lagrange point. In addition, you can design all the parts of you spacecraft and weaponry down to the materials they use. If you can make a fuel tank made out of aerogel work with the laws of physics, then you can use it. For example, I made a coilgun that fires nukes which was devastating at close range but the low velocity of the nukes made them easy to dodge at long range and without any thrusters, they cannot course correct.

Dungeon Keeper

It's a dungeon management game from '97. You are an evil Keeper and control a dungeon where you need to build rooms and train your creatures to attack (or defend from) the good guys.

Nowadays people play KeeperFX which is the opensource remake.