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I have a couple ideas for threads like these, so gonna start with one of the few I feel confident in saying it won’t get pulled to another dimension in the process of making it.
Also so I can branch out a bit and work on writing which is something I really need to do anyway and staying at home hasn't exactly helped that lol.
(god why am I so bad at intros?)
If I think of anything else I’ll add it to the list, but for right now that’s all I got.
Now your game doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly this, because these are mainly just rule of thumbs for determining if a game is obscure. The biggest indicator is if there are very few videos online about a game, or otherwise are of low quality, which indicates that a community isn’t very big.
Now that we have the thumbs laid out somewhat, now I’m going to diverge a bit and talk about my favorite obscure game(s). I’ll avoid spoilers as much as I can but do be warned if you click those spoiler tags that there are going to be many. Many spoilers.
Also so I can branch out a bit and work on writing which is something I really need to do anyway and staying at home hasn't exactly helped that lol.
(god why am I so bad at intros?)
So then, without further ado,
welcome to the Obscure Games thread!
Before we can begin to share our favorite obscure games, I’m going to need to differentiate between online-only games and single/multiplayer games partially because that means I can type more and make the intro post longer(lol) and also because the difference between "being obscure" between the two is different enough I feel they need separate categories.welcome to the Obscure Games thread!
For Single Players Games:
- -Must not have a very active or otherwise dead community(very few videos on the game, very little overall community on social platforms, etc. Bakugan for example fits that bill)
- -I can’t think of anything else lol
For Online-only games:
- -Must still be playable to this day(If I can’t make an account right now and play a game due to any circumstance it’s not really a game anymore. More like an archive)
- -Developers ignore or otherwise actively make decisions that hurt the community(lack of updates or transparency for example)
If I think of anything else I’ll add it to the list, but for right now that’s all I got.
Now your game doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly this, because these are mainly just rule of thumbs for determining if a game is obscure. The biggest indicator is if there are very few videos online about a game, or otherwise are of low quality, which indicates that a community isn’t very big.
Now that we have the thumbs laid out somewhat, now I’m going to diverge a bit and talk about my favorite obscure game(s). I’ll avoid spoilers as much as I can but do be warned if you click those spoiler tags that there are going to be many. Many spoilers.
So, my most favorite obscure game of them all, eh? For those that know me from my last account it may seem obvious that I'm just going to talk about my favorite card game and call it a day. I'm happy to say those that though that, are wrong.
My favorite obscure game, of course, is an MMORPG I hold dear to my heart, and one I recently started replaying a few weeks ago:
If you don't know what this is, don't worry, I'll get into it.
As of right now, Pirate101 is slowly losing players: hell even I only starting replaying it due to nostalgia. But hoo boy, it and it's older brother Wizard101 are some of the most unique MMOs I've ever played.
I'm going to do the rest of this in spoilers due to me getting into the plot details(and also so this post isn't ridiculously long)
Welp that was a doozy of a writing session lol. I'm curious to see what kind of games people like that others may or may not of heard of. Let's have a go at it, shall we?
My favorite obscure game, of course, is an MMORPG I hold dear to my heart, and one I recently started replaying a few weeks ago:
If you don't know what this is, don't worry, I'll get into it.
As of right now, Pirate101 is slowly losing players: hell even I only starting replaying it due to nostalgia. But hoo boy, it and it's older brother Wizard101 are some of the most unique MMOs I've ever played.
I'm going to do the rest of this in spoilers due to me getting into the plot details(and also so this post isn't ridiculously long)
To start off, both Pirate101 and Wizard101 take place in the same general universe: The Spiral. It's hard to explain without giving away massive spoilers, but think of a Milky Way Galaxy with various small self-contained planets floating in its orbit. That's essentially what the Spiral is.
You have worlds such as Wizard City: a bumbling place of magic where Wizards converge, Valencia, A formerly glorious empire shattered to pieces by the ulterior motives of their puppets, the Armada. You have Cool Ranch, a western inspired land of lawlessness, Bison tribes feuding against one another, and the chickens that call this place home. I could easily write an entire essay on just the world themselfs! But that's besides the point.
Wizard101 in particular focuses heavily on the worldbuilding of the Spiral, due to the fact the Player Wizard(I'll get into that later) saves the Spiral from destruction multiple times! While the Player Pirate only does so once, and against a enemy who would pose literally no threat to the Player Wizard.
The thing about the Spiral that makes it so unique is how it was made. The Spiral was a mistake. Originally, there was "The First World" that at some point or another was broken apart and then formed the Spiral due to the Elder Tree, Bartley, holding the pieces of the First World together in a spiral shape.(haven't played enough Wizard101 to get to that point)
Furthermore, you can travel between these worlds(obviously). In Wizard101 all you need is a key designed with that world in mind, and a Spiral Door(A door designed to open portals to the various worlds) In Pirate101 however, you need to find a Stormgate(a giant vortex of sorts that appear in various places throughout the Skyways) and have a windstone that corresponds to it. If you don't your ship will just crash and you'll die. Oh yeah did I mention that ships "FLY" the seas, and not "sail" them? It's true!
There also are "Windlanes" which is Pirate101's version of safe zones. All manner of hostile ships and creatures will not attack you while you're in one, and you'll move automatically while in one. Which is nice. However I've started to get a bit sidetracked, so moving on...
You have worlds such as Wizard City: a bumbling place of magic where Wizards converge, Valencia, A formerly glorious empire shattered to pieces by the ulterior motives of their puppets, the Armada. You have Cool Ranch, a western inspired land of lawlessness, Bison tribes feuding against one another, and the chickens that call this place home. I could easily write an entire essay on just the world themselfs! But that's besides the point.
Wizard101 in particular focuses heavily on the worldbuilding of the Spiral, due to the fact the Player Wizard(I'll get into that later) saves the Spiral from destruction multiple times! While the Player Pirate only does so once, and against a enemy who would pose literally no threat to the Player Wizard.
The thing about the Spiral that makes it so unique is how it was made. The Spiral was a mistake. Originally, there was "The First World" that at some point or another was broken apart and then formed the Spiral due to the Elder Tree, Bartley, holding the pieces of the First World together in a spiral shape.(haven't played enough Wizard101 to get to that point)
Furthermore, you can travel between these worlds(obviously). In Wizard101 all you need is a key designed with that world in mind, and a Spiral Door(A door designed to open portals to the various worlds) In Pirate101 however, you need to find a Stormgate(a giant vortex of sorts that appear in various places throughout the Skyways) and have a windstone that corresponds to it. If you don't your ship will just crash and you'll die. Oh yeah did I mention that ships "FLY" the seas, and not "sail" them? It's true!
There also are "Windlanes" which is Pirate101's version of safe zones. All manner of hostile ships and creatures will not attack you while you're in one, and you'll move automatically while in one. Which is nice. However I've started to get a bit sidetracked, so moving on...
Unlike literally every other MMO I've played, Pirate and Wiz have a cohesive narrative built into the game. Hell in some MMO's I've literally found myself being able to skip the entire story and go to endgame areas right after finishing the tutorial sometimes! But back to the point. Both Wiz and Pirate take place at roughly the same time, meaning you can draw a rough timeline(using the levels you enter and exit various worlds as a sort of time passing equivalent) and references are made often to places you only see in Wiz and vice versa. As such, there are two distinct canonically "different" characters you play as in terms of the lore: the Player Wizard, and the Player Pirate, both being silent protagonists in-game but being very strong and spoken in the lore.
To give an example of a reference to Wizard101 in Pirate101, in Xol Akuma(the last free to play area of Pirate101) you find the Azetosaurs, an ancient race from a forgotten land, fleeing something called.. The Lords of Night. It just so happens this Lord of Night is known as Morgantha in Wiz, and is the main antagonist of the second arc! Another example is the Ravenwood Roll Call videos, posted on Kingsiles official Youtube account, which are considering canon. According to them, some Professors in Wiz(such as the Storm Professor) Were born and raised in places we visit in Pirate101!
One of my favorite things about the story of both games is how it's presented: You go from place to place, fighting off enemies and collecting things you need along the way. But oftentimes in the background there are things that while we never see are very important to the story. You will often find that something YOU did in a world ages ago completely changes how NPCS interact with you, and on one occasion you even start a fake war that explodes into a real one causing you to have to make things right. There aren't really any examples I can give you that wouldn't ruin some plots of either game, unfortunately.
To give an example of a reference to Wizard101 in Pirate101, in Xol Akuma(the last free to play area of Pirate101) you find the Azetosaurs, an ancient race from a forgotten land, fleeing something called.. The Lords of Night. It just so happens this Lord of Night is known as Morgantha in Wiz, and is the main antagonist of the second arc! Another example is the Ravenwood Roll Call videos, posted on Kingsiles official Youtube account, which are considering canon. According to them, some Professors in Wiz(such as the Storm Professor) Were born and raised in places we visit in Pirate101!
I'm going to focus only on Pirate101 for this one since that was the game I chose, while Wizard101 is only more important for that sick L O R E.
To start off, you can pick one of 5 classes, each with their own unique strengths and weakness. You also pick an origin story and how your parents died. Your origin gives you a small buff in a specific stat while the story of how your parents died affects a specific companion you get later on. Speaking of...
Companions are essentially units that appear with you in battle, up to 3 at a time. They often have special abilities and can easily turn the tide of battle if used right.
Battling takes place on a grid-style turn based combat system, with you and your companions going first, being able to move or use abilities before your opponents attack, and then you repeat that process until one of the two sides fall. It's a very interesting system where you have to balance between who attacks who in order to maximize damage while also trying to prevent you from losing the numbers advantage.
You gain companions throughout the story and they often act as the voice in your steed, and a decent chunk also "Promote" at certain levels, gaining new powers and animations. Most Companions simply require you to give you gold but story-relevant companions have quests that you need to complete before they promote, which is a nice take on the idea of upgrading that I haven't seen in other games.
To start off, you can pick one of 5 classes, each with their own unique strengths and weakness. You also pick an origin story and how your parents died. Your origin gives you a small buff in a specific stat while the story of how your parents died affects a specific companion you get later on. Speaking of...
Companions are essentially units that appear with you in battle, up to 3 at a time. They often have special abilities and can easily turn the tide of battle if used right.
Battling takes place on a grid-style turn based combat system, with you and your companions going first, being able to move or use abilities before your opponents attack, and then you repeat that process until one of the two sides fall. It's a very interesting system where you have to balance between who attacks who in order to maximize damage while also trying to prevent you from losing the numbers advantage.
You gain companions throughout the story and they often act as the voice in your steed, and a decent chunk also "Promote" at certain levels, gaining new powers and animations. Most Companions simply require you to give you gold but story-relevant companions have quests that you need to complete before they promote, which is a nice take on the idea of upgrading that I haven't seen in other games.
Overall Pirate101 is a fantastic game, which sadly is losing players by the day. The tie-in with Wizard101 is one of the best ways I've seen lore done in a MMO and the humor is genuinely funny at times, and the story while often happy-go lucky gets dark very quickly towards the second half. It's sad too, because it's always held a dear place in my heart. The devs straight up only do yearly updates now when in the past we used to get 4 updates a year, and the last major story update was a joke of an update where they just lazily ended the first arc after the planned next 5 chapters started going downhill in development. And on the other side of the fence Wizard101 is thriving with content updates every few months. Doesn't help that both it and Wiz have a $10 MEMBERSHIP fee to even play a decent chunk of the game, and $80 for a year is apparently the best deal?! In all fairness if Kingsisle dropped the yearly price down to $60 I would at least say it's worth it due to the amount of content you get but $80 dollars is literally just a rip off at that point. In addition they have a crown shop which is there premium currency, which even as a kid made no sense to me because at that point why not just make the game free-to-play and let people spending money on Crowns be the driving income? But to conclude, Pirate101 while it has it's downfalls is still a great game, and I recommend you at least try the free-to-play portain of the game, if nothing else.
Welp that was a doozy of a writing session lol. I'm curious to see what kind of games people like that others may or may not of heard of. Let's have a go at it, shall we?
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