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Really Obscure RPGs

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Harry Easter

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Jul 27, 2016
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Does Restricted Area count as an obscure RPG? Nobody mentions it, it doesn't even have an article on TV Tropes. But I found it quite solid and nicely written. It played every Cyberpunkcliché straight, but that made it so charming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTRGsOxmSWY
 

Darth Canoli

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JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Does Restricted Area count as an obscure RPG? Nobody mentions it, it doesn't even have an article on TV Tropes. But I found it quite solid and nicely written. It played every Cyberpunkcliché straight, but that made it so charming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTRGsOxmSWY

Yes it counts.

And I fucking loathe it.

Why?
I'm never going to play it so spoil away, please.

It's one of those mid-00s Diablo clones that brings nothing new to the table.

In fact, "nothing new" is Restricted Area's main thing, at least that's how I remember it. I played it 15 years ago or so, so my memory might be hazy, and I didn't play it very far because it got repetitive very quickly.

As I remember it, there were only two types of locations: abandoned bunkers and corporate HQs. In abandoned bunkers you'd fight mutants, in corporate HQs you'd fight corporate security.
Once you've gone through a type of dungeon, you've seen all it has to offer. Higher level versions of these dungeons would feature the exact same enemy types, except with a different color on their texture. Level 5 mutants are blue, level 10 mutants are red, etc.
 

Darth Canoli

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Thanks, after watching the video i thought: "it doesn't look so bad for an action-RPG" but with your description, it's not even a RPG and i'll just forget about it.
 

Skdursh

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Nox Archaist is a new RPG for the classic Apple II platform, playable on Apple II hardware, Windows, and MacOS. It is an evolution of the classic fantasy games of the 1980s like Ultima, Bards Tale, and Wizardry. Nox Archaist is set in a sinister world ruled by sorcery and swords.

Maybe it's just me, but I think this sort of thing belongs in the indie RPG thread. It hasn't been around long enough to really be considered obscure. Plus tons of people on the Codex are well aware of this game and it has its own thread.
 
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felipeflop

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NoxGroup1.jpg

gifcamp_1024x1024@2x.gif

Nox Archaist is a new RPG for the classic Apple II platform, playable on Apple II hardware, Windows, and MacOS. It is an evolution of the classic fantasy games of the 1980s like Ultima, Bards Tale, and Wizardry. Nox Archaist is set in a sinister world ruled by sorcery and swords.
https://vintageisthenewold.com/nox-archaist-the-long-waited-apple-ii-rpg-has-been-launched/



very comfy .gif

Imagine if someone has a Apple II, and is like "Oh boy, finally I can play it!"
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
15,368
I've posted about and looked around for Omega Syndrome for years now and essentially gave up on it thinking it was just absolutely lost. It's probably shit, but something about the screenshots for it has always called to me.

As a side-note, I never really realized before just now, but archive.org has an absolute treasure trove of 90's - early 00's DOS RPGs which are almost certainly mostly trash.

Here's a sampling:
City Beneath the Surface
Tower's Lord Baniff's Deciet
Shadowflare: Episode 1
Azalta
The Crusade
War Wizard
DreamScape
Konrad the Warrior
Magebane 2
Stellar Police
Gateway to Another World
Ancients 1 Deathwatch
In the Nocturne

Here's to a night of very low-quality entertainment!



Fall of the Black Mage
Hera: Sword of Rhin (Full Registered Version)

Its funny how often you can find the shareware but getting the full version is nigh impossible.

Azalta, like Hera falls into this. I was working on finishing cult of the raven but I got sidetracked. Towns, dungeons are easy to map. Just screenshot and piece each room together. The overland I was slowly using gridcartographer (and losing my place frequently).

Azalta is uh... slow at the start. I hate inside town/dungeon party movement. Overland combat is ok for that simple ultima 3 shit. Shareware, so you don't get the construction set (like most people would want it??).

Speaking of Ultima 1-3 on palm os (check the review by pix's origin adventures. The old links to play the games i think are buggy and i avoid geocities links. The ultima 3 Codex & Reconstruction has them.

PALM OS ULTIMA I
PALM OS ULTIMA II
PALM OS ULTIMA III

Yeah, these are demos and i guess no full version. I thought maybe they could be cracked and thr full version unlocked.

I'd rather play Azalta than Red Crystal. I could never get anywhere in that damn game and could never play 2 player.




Ending


Gamefabrique Review
 
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KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
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Nov 23, 2016
Messages
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More Gameplay. Now I feel a tug to map this game.. damnit.

MyAbandonware
Mocagh Manuals
Mobygames

lol part of the wiki
PC Zone offered a negative review, concluding, "Don't ask your friends to play this if you want to keep them."

Now its funny, I see these "worst games" and want to not only play them but fully map them and find the secrets to finishing it with ease.

The list grows:
Deadly Towers
Gateway to Apshai
Hydlide
Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness
Hydlide 3: The Space Memories
Virtual Hydlide (lol this should get VR release)
Azalta: Cult of the Raven
Sword of Kadash (all versions as i finished c64)
Red Crystal: The Seven Secrets of Life
 
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JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
So I dug through the deepest depths of the Steam catalogue and found some interesting shit.

And by deepest depths I mean use the search function, browse by tag, tag: RPG, sort by lowest price. That means it starts with the absolute trash-tier 30 cents crap and slowly moves up to a buck, two bucks, three bucks etc...

That way I can find all those weird one-man indie-dev games with zero to 4 reviews that lie lost and forgotten at the bottom of the Steam catalogue.

I only reached page 150 of 730, and had to scroll my way past dozens of generic RPG Maker games using stock assets, but here are some interesting games I found along the way:

Phoenix Tales, a Quest for Glory clone with digitized photos and FMV animations of the developers and their friends as the character graphics. Looks charming!


Spice Pirates in Space, which seems to be a dungeon crawler kind of game with first person movement and skillchecks rolled as actual dice, and uh... it looks like some really weird amateur shit made on drugs. Pretty cool.


Kinkshamed, an RPG Maker game that completely changes the RPG Maker formula (props for that), where you have to produce BDSM and tickle fetish videos and the "combat" consists of using BDSM skills on tied-up victims to break their willpower. I mean... it's certainly creative and has more effort in it than your standard RPG Maker game!


Dungeons and Geese is more of a metroidvania-ish platformer than an RPG, but it was in the RPG category and is too crazy not to share. At 31 reviews, this one isn't even obscure compared to the other games in this list!


Feels is a text/ASCII RPG with a command line style interface. Looks rough but cool.
 

AdolfSatan

Arcane
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Dec 27, 2017
Messages
2,027
What was prosper's latest alt again?
You know what, tomorrow after I get back home I'm gonna take one for the team and play it, I need to know what it's like.

Phoenix tales looks interesting too.
 
Joined
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Messages
733
Phoenix Tales is a nice game in the vein of Quest for Glory and its obviously made with love and dedication. It suffers a bit from the fact there are only a handful of different enemy types though.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
15,368
Candice DeBébé Games are certainly unique. Watched the gameplay of #2 and he says the platforming is awful.
 

Skdursh

Savant
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Nov 27, 2018
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Location
Slavlandia
I... I don't even know what this is.

I really don't know.




These two honestly have me a little intrigued. This sort of completely bizarre trash just gets me.

Now its funny, I see these "worst games" and want to not only play them but fully map them and find the secrets to finishing it with ease.

Do you post your maps anywhere online? I'd be interested in taking a look.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
15,368
A truly old-school game, as this image is a blatant rip-off of Clyde Caldwell's artwork for the cover of DL10 Dragons of Dreams, part of the original series of Dragonlance adventure modules. :M

Dragons_of_Dreams_Cover.jpg
I watched this video:

And noticed other works of art that looked awfully close to yet more artists.

I guess these are the game artists:
Artist(s) Mark K. Jones
Richard Fox

HOL shows:
Artists Coder : Andrew J. Buchanan
Coder : Paul A. Hodgson
Coder : Stewart J. Gilray
Graphician : Mark K. Jones (Mark Jones Snr.)
Graphician : Richard Fox
Musician : Martin Iveson (Spaceman/Lemon, Nuke/Anarchy, hyper)
Misc : Mark K. Jones (Mark Jones Snr.)


Cadaver was mentioned by bitmap bros but is it really an RPG or iso puzzle solver with inventory?


Seeing these my mind trails to more than a score of iso games from many platforms. I can't tell you how many times my perspective became screwed up esp jumping and exits offscreen. To this day... IMMORTAL is the one game I was most disappointed at.
 
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KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
15,368
Only maps I tried to put online was Sword of Kadash c64. It was rejected by gamefaq because my Key/Legend was separate and size was too big. I should have submitted to vg maps but i'd say there are small issues with the map like personal notations.
I have old photobucket pics on SWUT.net forums

Being shitty photobucket... they got shrinked. I should put them up on imgur.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,553
That way I can find all those weird one-man indie-dev games with zero to 4 reviews that lie lost and forgotten at the bottom of the Steam catalogue...
Some of these games are now on discount, I think.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
And by deepest depths I mean use the search function, browse by tag, tag: RPG, sort by lowest price. That means it starts with the absolute trash-tier 30 cents crap and slowly moves up to a buck, two bucks, three bucks etc...
Now for a real deep dive, do the same with itch.io

Did that once, it was fun and I found some cool stuff.
 

Bad Sector

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2,334
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Now for a real deep dive, do the same with itch.io

Did that once, it was fun and I found some cool stuff.

One thing i noticed on itch.io recently when i decided to check what modern (if indie) stuff can still run on my ~2004 era retro PC is that pretty much 90% of games that also provide demos are adult/nsfw games.

(btw about half of the demos i tried worked fine while pretty much nothing made with Unity worked)
 

The Red Knight

Erudite
Joined
Apr 18, 2017
Messages
485
One thing i noticed on itch.io recently when i decided to check what modern (if indie) stuff can still run on my ~2004 era retro PC is that pretty much 90% of games that also provide demos are adult/nsfw games.

(btw about half of the demos i tried worked fine while pretty much nothing made with Unity worked)
My experience is that most of the demos are for early access/kickstarter/vaporware stuff (and stuff that once was in that phase), or game jam versions that evolved into proper projects and list the jam version as a demo, but we may have browsed for different things. Though the adult stuff likely counts as early access since those games start with public proofs of concept to attract sugar daddies to their patreons to fund further development.

Old Unity versions stuff should be at least somewhat playable on ancient hardware/32bit OSes (maybe after tinkering with the quality settings and launch commands), but all the newer/more featured games tend to use newer versions that are leakier and with various compatibility-breaking bugs. And you can't search by engine version to dig out the few games that stick to old Unity, so yeah. BTW one weird Unity behavior I noticed recently, if I try to run a game using it from a USB-connected external drive then instead of taking that much longer to launch, it will immediately crash with a misleading error about running out of memory (but will launch from the main drive).

________

Not an RPG but an obscure thing nonetheless: Aliens: Attack on Colony, an Alien Breed-like shooter from the early 00s The Games Factory/Multimedia Fusion/Game Maker boom in potato. Alien fangames were a popular choice, and this is the most polished one. While it was never finished (supposedly it ended in late beta stage and the next release was to be the full game), the beginning of the campaign and the skirmish mode are available and the latter is quite fun, with destructible environment and lots of weapons to blow things up with.

emveSOb.png


Download:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/9v668dxfuj4ntpe/AliensAOCv2_1.zip/file

Game's old website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040102082427/http://www.baltix.home.pl/AliensAOC/ (the second missing image for site's language choice leads to the English version)

The guy behind it tried to reboot and overhaul the project some years later as a coop multiplayer shooter, with title change to Alien Territory (dev thread, preview video and another one, planned features list), and reportedly there was a server for it running for some time, but that was after my interests drifted elsewhere and so I don't know how good or bad it was (you can find the client for the "old"/earlier version of it together with some dev screenshots here, ~26 MB to download, but it's useless as there's no single player mode and no option to host yourself).

Also:
https://almoradarkosen.com/features/ - seems like this is his current thing he dropped the above games for (some mobile hack&slash, which I guess fits this thread a bit more)
 

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