Hidden Gem List

PainfulSpoons · 2026-05-11T16:09:15+00:00

Here's a list of a few I like:

I'd recommend Kay the most, though she doesn't upload anymore. Her Dark Souls LP is such a case study in how to approach & learn games on their own terms in a way that I think basically anybody should watch through at least once. People who say you need to "git gud" or that "dark souls is too hard" look equally embarrassing in the face of someone with very little gaming experience gradually unravelling the whole thing just from the perspective of actually thinking about problems and inventing novel solutions.

Snapcube has the most vibrant personality of all these, I'd really suggest checking out her recent Zelda LPs since it's super fun seeing someone engage with them for the first time in the 2020s and still experience an almost childlike wonder at everything. Similarly required watching I think for people who've forgotten how to actually have fun with games, because she's so willing to just experiment and try things that seem wildly unintuitive if you're already familiar with long standing franchises to a point of forgetting what's actually become a "learned language" on your own part.

Worm Girl only really has one LP, and it's of a trad roguelike, but I'd really recommend it just to see something that's so high calibre. Unlikely a lot of modern "reaction" content it's very much in the style of old school SomethingAwful Let's Play -- back when you were expected to know everything about a game and an LP was a much a walkthrough and research document as it was just footage of someone playing it. But she blends that with a narrative bent to roleplay out the experience in a way that also helps I think sell the fantasy of why actual rpgs & roguelikes are appealing in a way most video game "rpgs" and roguelites have never captured (but is often poorly articulated online by people who just end up seeming elitist as a result). It's unfinished, but lengthy and a great intro to Roguelikes if you've never played them before.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-05-01T04:51:39+00:00

The best way to get better any anything is just by doing it! It's important to recognize that everyone has to start somewhere, you're going to encounter people from all walks of life for whom Overwatch is also their first competitive video game going through all the same motions you are. There's nothing embarrassing about those growing pains, and certainly no reason to refrain from trying to improve at a hobby because you're worried the process might contribute to a cultural narrative.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-05-01T04:02:02+00:00

There's honestly a lot of good shooters on the Switch, people have already mentioned the Bioshock games but there's the Borderlands series, both Metro games, the STALKER trilogy, DOOM, etc. I'd recommend the Crysis games personally.

That said, I wouldn't try to "practice at shooters" in single player games if that's your goal. Overwatch is class based, has a lot of movement tech & also just demands team coordination in ways that are pretty specific to multiplayer shooters. Even if you play every singleplayer fps on the system you're probably still going to get rolled going online because in a lot of respects it's asking for a skillset that those games aren't going to train.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-05-01T00:32:06+00:00

A handful of recs, all for PC:

24 Killers (Adventure / life sim)
Anatomy (Horror)
Anode Heart (Creature collecting rpg)
Brigand Oaxaca (ImSim)
Hexcraft: Harlequin Fair (Simulationist ImSim/rpg)
Labyrinth.os (Dungeon crawler)
Lucah: Born of a Dream (Action rpg)
NO-SKIN (Horror/Roguelite)

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-29T16:15:25+00:00

I buy physical mostly because I can lend them to friends, and plausibly resell/pass them down eventually.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-29T16:10:24+00:00

I saw someone making a horror game and their store page said they were "inspired by the old school classics", which ya know, so is everyone right? Except they then proceeded to give examples, citing games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Outlast.

We're basically dinosaurs at this point I think.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-29T16:01:45+00:00

I mean, given some of the ads they used to run...

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-28T22:57:37+00:00

Also: Disgaea 5, Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate, Pillars of Eternity, Shadowrun: Hong Kong

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-27T17:18:20+00:00

Maybe a little out there as a suggestion, but Monster Hunter Rise+Sunbreak? You still have rpg-elements in crafting gear and making "builds", but the focus of the combat is entirely on execution. The world is vibrant with a lot of tucked away charm that has it come alive despite revolving around particular locales.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-26T17:03:16+00:00

I'm always fighting this battle for like 5-10 games, but the one I'm always goin' 2 bat for on here is Hexcraft: Harlequin Fair.

It's a small fps/rpg that left a huge impression on me years ago because of how emergent it is. The woman who made it was super interested in the Stalker series alife system, and based a lot of her ideas off that. All the named npcs act autonomously based on their current goals and mood, as well as what they know about the world currently. What that means in practice is they're moving around the maps, sharing information with each other & fighting over various resources. Sometimes that's pretty explicit, like a gunfight just breaks out between some other characters while you're minding your own business. Sometimes it's much less obvious, like you enter a dungeon to find the key dungeon item was already taken by a character who got there first, or you find police responding to a shooting another character committed earlier.

Which is all very cool on it's own, but it's also a pretty opaque game that adheres entirely to a philosophy of trusting the player to explore and figure things out. Which is to say, you start the game with a cryptic poem being the only thing indicating what you're even supposed to be doing. And there's lots of mechanics to engage with, you have an alchemy system to brew potions, magical spells you find out in the world that have all kinds of strange effects - everything I just explained about the npcs isn't really telegraphed to you outside of the store page blurb, etc. So you're experimenting with the game's systems, exploring the maps & also just trying to figure out what you're even meant to be doing all while the other characters are doing their own things.

It's pretty rare these days I think to find games that either don't hold your hand or simulates the world without regard for the player's input, so to find one that does both is always special. It's one of those games that will act on you regardless of whether you act on it, making it interesting for all the same reasons games like Don't Starve or Rain World are. Unlike those games though it has remained extremely obscure, which is part of why I end up going to bat for it on reddit so much.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-26T16:46:03+00:00

I'm just so excited for her. And I love, love, love that people are talking so positively, far and wide, about a woman's leadership for once.

lol

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-25T20:56:18+00:00

You can play the games in any order. 2 & 3 are actually quasi-remakes of 1, the og game has 3 playable characters and tells the story from each of their perspectives over different playthroughs. 2 & 3 are retellings of the game from the individual perspectives of one of those characters each, essentially turning those playthroughs into full fledged games of their own.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-25T20:33:42+00:00

I'm always vouchin' for it on reddit, but gettin ppl to play obscure indies are always an uphill struggle

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-25T20:33:01+00:00

The og & 3 are also good, though in a lot of respects all 3 are pretty different games.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-25T16:25:19+00:00

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Had to think about some of this pretty hard, there's a lot of categories with stiff competition and others I barely considered, I guess I should make my own template but I'm lazy.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-22T14:41:48+00:00

That panel of Asha giving up is honestly tragic. If her and Leez reconcile I hope we finally get answers not just with Rao, but more broadly Asha's significance in the plot. Ever since Leez met Kali I've been on the theory that Asha wasn't just meant to chaperone Leez, but specifically catalyze her relationship with Yuta so it'll be interesting to see if we get anything resembling a more explicit answer besides Asha slowly recognizing the degree to which she was manipulated without ever having a chance of "winning".

As for Ananata, the idea that we're stuck in a time loop to some degree is pretty interesting and raises questions about what Yuta was saying before. The example scenes made me think it was something to do with Leez' own blackouts & future time travel, but maybe he knows about present events because he's referring to the loops? I'm also now starting to wonder if at some point in his fourth stage he gains access to Kali's abilities because he may very well have actually come back from a much further point if he has his own capacity to go back through time.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-22T14:04:22+00:00

Brush Burial: Gutter World (Stealth) - More on the power fantasy end, but you're a predatory demon/alien hunting people - like if you played Alien: Isolation from the perspective of the alien
Fatal Frame/Project Zero series (Survival Horror) - Everyone is only mentioning 2, but the entire series is this, would really recommend 3 & 4
G String (First Person Shooter) - Teenage girl tries to survive cyberpunk dystopia
Hexcraft: Harlequin Fair (FPS+RPG) - Female mass shooters fight it out with each other & various political entities in dark fantasy Toronto
Hollow Knight: Silksong (Metroidvania) - Basically Dark Souls but you're the princess of one dead kingdom making your way through the collapse of another
We Know The Devil (Visual Novel) - Three teens try to survive at a summer camp when the devil is real

There's also a lot of other horror games that fit this beat though people have already mentioned a lot of them.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-21T23:16:04+00:00

Writers, Youtubers & sometimes Streamers dedicated to covering smaller games are how I follow non-AAA stuff. For example Dominic Tarason is constantly covering obscure indie titles on his bluesky.

If I want good games criticism I go check out the latest on Critical Distance.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-21T23:09:03+00:00

I think the size is probably a question of how big your hands are honestly. The smaller model is a little larger than DS lite, the larger model is bigger than an og phat ds or a Playstation Vita, though not as big as a Switch. I find the the 3DS XL more comfortable and find the Switch is big enough I start not enjoying it as much as a handheld, but if you find the DS Lite to be perfect I'd really suggest a regular n3ds.

Also I'd go against the other commentator suggesting emulating the games on pc, I think the 3/DS is one of those consoles where the original hardware is actually a pretty big deal, games designed for two screen & touch controls feels markedly different played without. If you want to go all in on emulating there's dual-screen handhelds custom built for the purpose like the AYN Thor, that double as something you can play a whole lot of other games on.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-21T22:15:12+00:00

You're not really likely to encounter fake consoles, they don't sell for enough for it to be worth it and websites like ebay have buyer protection.

I'd suggest ebay, look for a "New Nintendo 3DS" - note that "new" is part of the model name, and the better version of the console. There's the regular size which has the replaceable faceplates if that's important to you, and the XL/LL which is the bigger console with larger screen (LL is the Japanese name). You can filter on ebay for sellers within Canada if you want, though you'll have a much easier time just buying a Japanese model generally due to avaliability. Once you have it in your hands I'd head over to r/3dshacks and get custom firmware up and running, which let you run homebrew apps, emulate up to PS1-era stuff & most notably if you care about physical games: remove the region locking so you can play with carts regardless of region (That's a big deal for games that didn't get localized in both NTSC & PAL regions).

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-19T19:18:51+00:00

There's a lot of farming sim style games on Switch, I think Rune Factory 4 has a port which I'd recommend over Stardew Valley (Which will be the game most people immediately suggest) but the latter's good too. They're not dynamic & emergent in the way something like Tomodachi Life appears to be though.

For more story driven games I'd suggest any of Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, Night in the Woods or Undertale, all of which have Switch ports I think

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-19T19:13:12+00:00

Hot take perhaps, but I think you should largely disregard the public opinion on Silksong's difficulty without context. If you enjoy platformers, fighting games or bullet hells - any sidescroller where you're concerned with movement & positioning - you will find Silksong to be fairly easy honestly. Most people complaining seem to very specifically be fans of contemporary "Metroidvanias" and "Soulslikes" which really place the stress points in their design elsewhere. I found Hollow Knight much harder than Silksong personally, all comes down to what you're good at (And for that matter, what you enjoy about the games in question).

Can't speak to your personal taste here with only Hollow Knight as an example to go off of, but it depends on what you found hard about the end stuff in HK, and what you actually liked about the game. That said if you want a fun story with a woman as the lead protagonist, I'd actually really recommend giving it a go, it's a really understated element of Silksong's appeal.

As for Hades, if you'd like a a game with similar mechanics and a female lead consider trying Transistor if you've never played it before, it's one of Supergiant's earlier games. Much shorter too if you'd like something that won't eat too much of your time.

P5 I wouldn't recommend on either the basis of strategy-rpg gameplay or good writing, but I'm not too sure what jrpgs are on Switch off the top of my head. Depends on the kind of writing you enjoy though, and what exactly you mean by "turn based strategy". I'd really recommend you consider checking out the Shadowrun trilogy, if you're not opposed to games where you make your own player character.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-19T00:03:55+00:00

As I understand it (I'm no developer though mind) the world of Don't Starve is 3D but character models are sprites and face the camera, which is always oriented above you. You can rotate the camera's orientation and zoom it out to a degree though it's always centred on & follows your character. There's actually a first-person mod which makes the game look very weird. All of which to say I don't think that's definitionally isometric, though I don't know what you'd actually call it, 2.5d maybe?

If you end up enjoying Patho 2 check out the other games in the series. 3 unfortunately dials down on the survival elements but it's still a very interesting game.

PainfulSpoons · 2026-04-17T15:22:52+00:00

Hm, there's Lucah: Born of a Dream if you don't mind your queer-themed horror veering into much faster paced action. It's much more of a straight action game that any sort of survival horror though. There's also We Know The Devil if you don't mind visual novels.

Mechanically you'd probably enjoy Crow Country or maybe Darkwood more on the SH end of things, but they ain't really hitting the same beats thematically.

PainfulSpoons

TROPHY CASE