For me it's Captain Claw - 2d platformer for PC
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Not super obscure, but still nowhere near as appreciated as it should be: Alpha Centauri.
Game was way ahead of its time. No clue why the IP was left in the dirt, especially with all the attention they gave to its cousin Civilization. Putting aside the state of modern gaming, in theory I'd absolute love an Alpha Centauri 2.
The main issue with modern Civ is that the AI can't play or pose a challenge within its own environment.
The bare-bones vanilla base game drops and the AI is dogshit, but also represents the pinnacle of PvE play because every subsequent DLC and game update adds new mechanics that the AI simply can't handle.
The player ends up either having to avoid new content or use house rules to keep things even remotely balanced.
I love 4X games where I can fuck around with my enemies by raising mountains to alter the local weather pattern and cause their colony to undergo a crash famine and the resulting riots as people starve to death.
It really was all downhill from there, huh.
Because, as much as I love the third generation of Big Name Game Devs (Sid Meiers, Will Wright, Warren Spector, Gabe Newell), they all found their meal ticket and cashed in their creative drive to get it.
I had a friend who was massively addicted to Alpha Centauri back in the day. I never got what he saw in it. I guess I was a normie gamer kid who liked Civilization.
So it was civilization but in space? I’ve been looking for such a game
It takes place on an alien planet, so it's not in space, but yes, it's a sci-fi game similar to Civilization. If you want in space, check out the Galactic Civilizations series, or Endless Space 2. No sci-fi, but speaking of Endless Space, Endless Legends is an excellent fantasy 4X.
For more on planet ones sci-fis, there's Civilization: Beyond Earth (which I've heard not so great things, but may have fixed some of their stuff...I hate 2K though...), as well as Age of Wonders: Planetfall. There's also some 40k stuff, like Gladius.
Headed to Steam now. Thanks!
Alpha Centauri is on GOG only, I think, by the way. Oh, it's also $1.49 right now. :D
Civ: BE is OK. I'd personally rather play it (with mods) than Civ V/VI. Diplomacy is pretty weak (and actually worse with the expansion IMO), but you can fix nearly every other problem I had with the game (including "it's not a worthy successor to Alpha Centauri") with mods. I need to play that or the Civ IV Planetfall mod again.
It's also got some of the best quotes and voice-overs for the various secret projects and technologies ever seen in a video game.
Almost makes me want to crack it open again for a few hundred hours...
Cool!
It's a spinoff of Civ, in the same engine (I think) as Civ 2. One major difference I remember was that you could design your own units by mixing and matching components.
Sounds cool! Can’t wait to dive in
The engine is similar but there's some pretty notable differences (terrain and units mainly.) Enough that I don't think it's quite fair to call it "the same", but unlike CIv II and Civ III (for example) there's probably a lot of shared code under-the-hood.