What are some alternative to soulless videogame franchises?

What I mean is… sometimes people are very loyal to a videogame franchise or a company because they loved a game they released years ago (Silent Hill/Konami with Silent Hill 2, Blizzard/Bethesda with their respective golden eras, some could argue this happens too with Pokémon and Final Fantasy, etc). Ethical/consumer reasons aside to stop supporting certain companies, sometimes some franchises/companies aren’t necessarily creating the best examples of games of those specific genres anymore, yet many fans are loyal to them (and a chunk of them also seem to suffer/complain with every new release).

Meanwhile some people that explore less known titles and different niches occasionally pop-up and say stuff like “the last Pokémon games are formulaic and uninspired, there’s actually this and that incredible examples of somewhat recent monster collecting games” or “the last FF wasn’t actually bad but if you want turn-based RPGs that’ll remind you of your old favorite FFs then check Chained Echoes or whatever” or “don’t look for something like Silent Hill 2 with Konami, instead I recommend these survival horror games”.

So the idea of this thread is for people to recommend alternatives to franchises. Especially if they’re standalone instead of other alternative franchises and especially if they’re indie (since most of my enjoyment these last few years has been from indies like Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Darkest Dungeon, Celeste, Slay the Spire, Tacoma, Hellblade).

YarHarSuperstar,

Last day on earth (mobile top down survival action game with building and gathering) alternatives without the intrusive ads and waiting forever for upgrading and traveling? Preferably on PC.

Katana314,

The solution is slow depletion of title power in order to drive competition. Basically, encourage each others and yourself to explore other games that aim for the same goals as the original property, ideally expanded with some vision of innovation.

For Pokémon, players could likely try out Casette Beasts. For Silent Hill, there are other survival horror properties examining psychological properties of their heroes, like Cry of Fear and The Park.

Cybersteel,
@Cybersteel@lemmy.ml avatar

Play those old good olde games on the nes. Modern games just ignore all the EA games, ubishits, Anything first party, eurojanks, weird woo woo games, anything made by the japs and most non traditional ones like those netflix ones.

Rednax,

If you want to play animal crossing, but only have a PC: try Dinkum. Same gameplay loop, but with a few minor twists and turns. And the setting is Australia. Hence you ride your mu around town, shearing the wool of your pleeps and milking your vombats. Ofcourse you need to defend them from crocos and fire spitting bush devils. But anything you kill can be thrown on the BBQ. And to get rich, you start a fairy bread empire. Exporting millions worth of sugary goodness.

AngryCommieKender,

Didn’t the emus already start a war cause of fuckin bogans trying to ride them?

/j

idk_a_cool_username,

books

ryno364,

This really is a good answer.

Nahdahar,

The answer to your question is the indie market. Lots of unique ideas, ton of games that are a product of passion and not profit chasing.

My personal recommendation because I don’t see it mentioned a lot is Pathologic 2. Product of decades of work and one of my favorite RPGs where every single choice you make does matter. It’s a pretty bleak and heavy game that has about a 30 hour runtime and it’s really stressful so it’s not for everyone but I personally loved it.

Evotech,

Path of exile is a arpg made by a small studio

popemichael,
@popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Unless it’s something that you are a super uber fan, avoid buying a game before it comes out.

It saves a lot of heartaches and headaches.

Plus, in today’s world… why pre order? It’s not like a game will run out of copies…

Oxnvat,

“When you pre-order a game, you’re just committing to paying for something that some assholes in California haven’t even finished working on yet. You know what you get for pre-ordering a game? A big dick in your mouth.” -Eric Cartman, Black Friday

p03locke,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Stop playing AAA games!

AlexisFR,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

Beyond All Reason is by far the best current Traditional TA like RTS and it does this being free and open source too!

TrustedTyrant,

Due process is a fun alternative to rainbow six siege. Unlike siege you actually have to coordinate and play tactically but unfortunately it’s pretty much dead at this point.

Vipsu, (edited )
@Vipsu@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe I am just getting old but I’ve started to spend a lot more time with older games and titles that may be rough around the edges but have some unique ideas and actually take some risks with their game mechanics.

One of these games is Outward which has a lot of walking (quick travel is almost non existent) and serviceable combat system that leaves a lot to be desired. However both of these do give the game some flavor that is missing from many modern games now combine this with interesting “death” mechanic where instead of respawning you’re thrown in to random scenarios related to the area where you died. Another mechanic is backpack which you’ll need to carry any meaningful amount of items and which will limit your movement in battle if you do not drop it with all your items. The way palyer needs to sacrifice health to receive mana is also interesting and how different each mastery tree is is also nice. I do have to admit that I’d like the game a lot more without time limits on quests as they stress really me out.

Another one is Incredible adventures of Van Helsing which is diablo-style ARPG that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It took me awhile to understand the games mechanics which lead to bad time initially but once I understood the power-up system, focus on flat elemental damage bonuses instead of percentage based ones and how silly some skills where with power-up the game got me hooked. The dialogue and story is also pretty good for ARPG and fully voice acted.

Third one is Wurm: Unlimited which is basically special version of MMORPG Wurm: Online where players can host their own servers with their own tweaks and mods. While Wurm Online is substriction based mmorpg with very very slow progression most Wurm Unlimited servers are free to play and have quadruple experience modifiers making the game a lot more enjoyable. The game is basically medival fantasy sandbox where players can terraform the world, build all sorts of structures, hunt, farm and even do pvp on pvp servers. While a lot of the game is just pressing buttons and waiting for action timers to pass there’s a lot of depth in the game and it can get suprisingly immersive. I do however recommend joining to one of the long lasting servers like Sklotopolis instead of playing the game solo on self-hosted server as the experience is a lot better with small community even if you prefer to do things solo as the world will feel a lot more interactive and a lot less empty.

SCmSTR,

I've been thinking a lot about this for the past few years, and have noticed a trend in what games I've found to be actually good.

I noticed three very specific commonalities, and all of them have at least two:

  • Foreign (Non-American)
  • Indie
  • Small studio

Basically all of the good games that I've liked in the past ten years have been at least two of these, and I'm sure if you think about it, the great games you've played have also been this way.

Stop buying big US studio games, their shareholders all require them to maximize their income with really anti-comsumer and predatory designs and practices. You won't have fun, and it'll be expensive.

Go play EDF5 with some friends. It's jank but super fun. 6 is being translated and ported to PC soon.

Raft is great, too.

Talos Principle was fantastic, if not a little melancholy.

And weirdly, Minecraft Java is still good fun. Go check out some of the mod packs like All Of Fabric 6. Host a local server, port forward, play with friends. Literally world-class, free content made by grassroots, passionate developers who do it because they love it.

Valheim was great years ago, and while their development cycle is slow, it's been solid.

But seriously. When somebody refers or suggests a game to you, the first thing you should look at are how they make money, because that is ABSOLUTELY where the industry is at, and has been for a decade now. We used to have centralized talking heads like Total Biscuit who would bring up topics and discussions trying to keep these studios and publishers in their place, but he got taken out too early and now the community is ultra fragmented with no central integrous authority to reference and publishers and studios are out of control with nobody to answer to except investors.

It's like the loss of a union, except it's industry wide.

There are gems out there, but you gotta get past the advertising and learn to smell the bullshit business practices. They don't have to be standard, but remember that gaming has only turned into gambling and Gaming-as-a-Service (GaaS) because credit cards got involved post-purchase as a source of revenue.

Sure, good things come from it, but the trade-offs are entirely insidious and clearly motivating for standardized enshittification. We adults made our own graves by accepting and spending. Sure, even if the money isn't that big of a deal and the content you get might be good, you're voting with your wallet and training a soulless system.

It's ABSOLUTELY a mirror world, just like the media - if you consume, there will be more. Stop buying shit games like Diablo 4. Blizzard can take the hit unfortunately, and if those business practices stopped making as much return as they did, they wouldn't be supportable.

Sure, initial prices would go up, but at least the games wouldn't be ruined with money shops, proprietary currencies, battle passes, and all the other ultra predatory shit that makes them money that ruin gaming.

Reward creators and studios that stick their necks out to make something purely fun, despite their CFO compromising and forcing their developers to implement these practices because otherwise they'd: "be leaving money on the table, and we are a business, after all."

But remember:

  • Foreign
  • Indie
  • Small Studio

These are demographics that are typically more resistant and empowered to make FUN games.

CADmonkey,

I have wasted a significant part of my life on two amazing games from (I’m pretty sure) indie developers: Factorio (Wube) and Satisfactory.(Coffee Stain) Both of these games have a lot of depth, and both are stable which is interesting becuase Satisfactory is still Early Access.

alsimoneau,

Just here to plug Captain of Industry if you like factory games.

CADmonkey,

I’ve played Captain of Industry, about 50 hours in it, and it just doesn’t grab me like Factorio or Satisfactory.

alsimoneau,

Fair enough, I’m hooked but it is different in some fundamental ways.

devbo,

so aren’t all indies small? and the non-american thing is just taste.

Why cant you just say you only like either:

  • non american games.
  • small studios.
SCmSTR,

Valve is an independent company.

devbo,

cool.

SweatyFireBalls,

Larian (baldurs gate 3) is massive for being indie. I think where your misconception comes from is the term indie. The term comes with a lot of predetermined expectations and definitions, but in spite of this fact very large studios can be indie.

Of course it feels weird to label a studio as large as larian indie when compared to the likes of supergiant(hades) or two brothers of bay 12 who created dwarf fortress. None of the three are technically any less indie, but one certainly feels more indie, doesn’t it?

devbo,

oh, i guess most of the times of heard indie, it was refering to small studios, where as i have never heard anyone call a large studio indie even if they are. thanks for the correction.

yamanii,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Currently looking for one to total war after all the revelations.

AlexisFR,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

Not many alternatives, other than playing older titles with overhaul mods like Divide e Impera

Parellius,

OOTL… What revelation?

yamanii,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Enjoy. youtu.be/43YY49jizPE?si=bbMdJo6klXb3v0Ky

slazer2au,

CrackFactorio

Management games like Software INC, Startup Company, Big Ambitions, Sim Airport and SimCasino.

elscallr,
@elscallr@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t forget Cities Skylines and the recently released sequel. They’re both a lot of fun but for the sequel they really listened to the community. It’s a bit of a performance hog. There are performance patches coming but in the interim there area lot of settings one can change to make it run better on lower end hardware.

slazer2au,

I am giving CS2 a year or so to clean up the performance issues and wait for the workshop to kick into gear.

elscallr,
@elscallr@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve got a decently beefy machine but it’s not top of the line or anything (Radeon RX 6950 XT, Core i7, 16GB memory) and with a few tweaks it runs pretty well. Definitely looking forward to the performance updates, though, because it’s a truly beautiful game.

AlexisFR,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

That’s still a fairly beefy GPU though.

Evotech,

Counterstrike 2 has great performance

slazer2au,

I wouldn’t know. We were talking about Cities Skylines 2

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