Loom may not exactly be obscure by any standard, but I don’t see it being mentioned nearly as much as, say, Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island. But it was a truly revolutionary way of reimagining the adventure game genre, and in a very early age of point-and-click. No inventory, single mouse click interaction, using spells to interact with the environment…
Of course, you’ll want to play the original floppy version to get the full story; the CD-ROM version had its dialogue heavily truncated to fit onto the CD.
What’s your pick?
How about “The Dig” I have fond memories of this game, I suppose it’s not terribly obscure.
<bites tongue, swallows blood>
- YU-NO (has some lapses in taste, but is overall truly epic and impressive, and still way better written than most other VNs/VN-style games)
- Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (among the best implementations of story branching and multiple solutions)
- Death Gate (strong in all areas, the 2D artwork in particular is amazing)
- Frederik Pohl’s Gateway (perhaps the best parser-driven game I’ve played)
In response to the OP: I love Loom in principle but I’ve barely played it. Really need time to get into it. Hopefully the SteamDeck will let me do that at some point.
But yeah, memorized tunes functioning as the verb interface, and physical looms that weave existential magic? I’m into that.
Wadjet Eye Games’s The Shivah (old enough to be a classic at this point! But still pretty obscure and underrated.)
Discworld…the game is hard, confusing, and sprawling, but so much enthusiasm went into the animations, voicework, and design.
Also: Gobliiins series. In a class of its own, highly inventive and sui generis French design that is often overlooked for being so oddball.
I think a lot of adventure game fans have heard of it but Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon is pretty great and it’s my favorite game designed by Josh Mandel. I really wish it could get a digital rerelease.
A lot of people really hold this one in very high regard. Unfortunately, with regards to a rerelease, the rights situation is a tangled spiderweb of immense proportions.
