I enjoy Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup played in the terminal with ASCII graphics. I wonder whether there are other hidden gems out there which don’t get attention because they are “ugly”?
Would Cruelty Squad be cheating?
Seconding this; Cruelty Squad is hitting that Deus Ex/Quake itch for me right now
I have had some people refuse to even try Baba Is You, because it looks ugly.
I had The Hex a few years even installed, so I have tried it, but only after getting familiar with the style of Daniel Mullins’ games with Inscryption I pushed far enough to get interested. Still very clunky, but worth it.
Baba is… Fuck you, you’re stupid, this game is stupid. Fuck you.
I’m stupid 😔
I felt like a the Hex was one of the most innovative games, I loved it soooo much.
FTL, it’s not very ugly, but it could be improved
Dcss is the greatest game of all time. Everything about it is good.
But Dwarf Fortress is also good with bad graphics.
Factorio is like crack and looks terrible.
I think the Steam release of DF looks nice. They’re simple graphics, but not ugly.
I’ll have to give it a go. I bought it to support them. I put in many many hours of DF like 10 years ago. I was sending the guys money too… I wish I could find the drawings they sent me.
I’ve just been playing a lot of DCSS lately because it is so easy to just spin up my browser and be killing kobolds and fire giants.
Agreed. I have more hours in DCSS than any other game. I started playing when it was Linley’s Dungeon Crawl.
I don’t think it’s totally fair to call it ugly either. It’s a masterpiece of efficiency. The ASCII looks messy to some people, but after a while you just see right through it; purple Y = catlobe gtfo etc. Plus the upside is that it’s extremely clear at a glance what is going on because you don’t have complicated sprites everywhere. And the handmade vaults that get rolled into the procgen are often really nice looking and give the world a lot of character.
I’ve also been playing since Linley’s! Got my first win way back when Sif channeling was a discrete action and it cost food. I was a mummy so fuck food and I cast summon dragon (also discrete) to fill up the whole screen. Good times.
Battle for Wesnoth. Best.Game.Ever (slight exaggeration)
I would say Kenshi with assests that show it was done by one person and a rough UI, also maybe pathologic 2, although for that game I wouldn’t say it’s the graphics that put people off it’s mostly the gameplay, but the geaphics are weird and really grey/depressive
does Doom count? Because my friends and I still play the game to this day, all the various community mods and maps.
I never got far in it, but I didn’t see anyone mention Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. It’s fun to explore a world where everyone has noticeable neck seams.
That game is literally so unhinged. If you enjoy KOTOR or Morrowind era RPGs then VTMB is a must play.
Zero shame in cheating to progress, some of that combat is like literally impossible. Awful game design.
Fucking iconic memorable characters story setting dialogue, everything that isn’t gameplay is 11/10
Simutrans is great, but looks like dogshit.
pak192comic and pak128britain actually look half decent, imo, but on the whole you’re right.
Oh hi, have you considered joining the best Lemmy community, !dcss@lemmy.ml? 🙃
If you’re into zombies and post-apocalyptic survival, CDDA always looks like a blast to play: https://cataclysmdda.org
I’m joined!
Hardly ‘hidden’, but there is always Nethack
I haven’t played it, but Cruelty Squad beats 95% of these in uglyness. Probably because they (hopefully) do it on purpose.
That game is beautifully ugly lol. I need to go back and beat all the secret worlds
Tales of Maj’eyal. A free to play open source roguelike that I hate. This game is amazing. Fuck this game. Also definitely recommend. But fuck this game. After numerous 10-12 hour long runs, I have yet to win.
Love me some ToM!
Stardew Valley, hands down one of the graphically ugliest modern games, like 80’s console style. Though it’s a really good game and I’ve put a of lot of hours into it. People say it’s meant to look that way as intentional retro styling, but damn it’s ugly. I actually added a mod on PC to use AA on the blocky graphics and it makes it look a lot better.
- AnarchoYeasty ( @AnarchoYeasty@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
Stardew isn’t 80’s console style at all? It’s just pixel art? And doesn’t even look bad.
TradeWars
I know that game, used to play it on BBS in the early 90’s.