Gaming

If you're looking for underrated indies, I'd recommend Ctrl Alt Ego, a fantastic attempt at an indie immersive sim in the style of Deus Ex or System Shock, and Worlds, a unique stealth-action-exploration game that feels like something from the early 2000s, though it does require putting up with some ambitious indie jank. I'm not sure which games I would call my favourites, but those are definitely up there.

Roots of Pacha, Sun Haven, Vampire Survivors, Graveyard Keeper, Traveler's Rest, Core Keeper, Halls of Torment, and Coral Island are some of my favorites.

I know the whole "Open world survival craft" genre is super overdone, and has way too many games now, but Valheim is honestly awesome. The fun scales with more people, me and my friends (3-4 usually) have been having a blast.

Nothing crazy, but Spelunky 2 kept me entertained for a few solid hours (+40 hours). Simple permadeath platformer with tight controls. Also has coop and multiplayer, altho I recommend not touching multiplayer until you finished the game.

Celeste is great! Love that platformer a lot.

I've been having a lot of fun with Against the storm. It scratches my base building and resources management itch and the game is updated really often.

Since I don't wanna say Terraria all the time, I'll say Crashlands! I've really enjoyed it, it has a fun game loop, crazy NPCs and isn't taking anything seriously. The only gripe I have is that it doesn't have much replayability.

Frostpunk

I have sunk so many hours into that game. So raw, so satisfying.

Burger Patrol is fun, plays a bit like Dr. Mario/Tetris, gotta make burgers for score. And the music is kinda bumpin.

If you haven't experienced the sadistic, rage inducing masterpiece known as Jump King I highly recommend it

You should check out Inscryption. Deck-builder with amazing story.

I’ve really enjoyed Slay the Princess. Repeat the same three scenes ad infinitum to get all possible outcomes

Pathologic. It's not even close, honestly. If you're the sort of person who reads the novels you were assigned in English class and actually goes "fuck yeah this is awesome and I wanna write an essay about it now", Pathologic is that in video game form.

I want to promote Monochrome Heights. It's a deceptively simple, kaizo platformer based on color.

https://pdyx.itch.io/black-and-white-game-jam-2022

Maybe not underrated, but Darkwood blew my mind.

I recently enjoyed Above Snakes (Steam). It's a solid 7-7.5, and will hopefully go from good to great with some of the promised content patches. The studio clearly ran out of time or budget towards the end of the questline. It's still a good 15-25 hours of content.

I really love Monster Sanctuary by Moi Rai Games. So much so that I played it to 100% on Xbox, Steam, Switch, and the Game pass version on Windows, which for whatever reason is different than the Xbox versions.

It's a metroidvania game with Pokemon-style creature collecting and turn based three-on-three battles (or six-on-six with three at a time plus swapping when a monster faints). It's insane how viable every monster can be with the right build.

Several newgame+ modes to enable too!

If you liked playing with toy soldiers as a kid, I'd highly recommend checking out Foxhole.

Since so many people have already mentioned Stardew Valley, I'll go for some lesser-known ones:

• Zero Ranger (this links to the demo): no joke, probably one of the best shoot 'em ups (or shmups) I've ever played. Sure, there are more challenging ones like DoDonPachi but in terms of visuals, sound, and even story I don't think there's anything that tops it. It's also really weird at times but it's so, so engrossing.
• Death Trash (also has a demo inside): a 2D action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world full of eldritch horrors. It starts like Fallout but it gets weird fast. The visuals and the overall sound are purposefully harsh and unsettling, the difficulty is...not easy. But if you like something a bit different from the norm, it's, again, pretty engrossing and think you'll love it.

Kena: bridge of spirits

Oh I'm a huge fan of NGU Idle. It is an obscenely deep idle game, that is fairly unknown outside of idle game fans. Its written with a very self-referencial sense of humor, and I have over 100 hours in it.