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”?
Some people find Slay the Spire’s art ugly. Personally I find it creative and original, definitely more personality than if it was just another pixel art game. 😁
I don’t find Slay The Spire that ugly artwise, I don’t find it beautiful… but what I do find ugly is how terribly Slay The Spire uses screen space. It has an AWFUL UI in terms of using space intelligently for important bits of gameplay information and I would love to play it on mobile (I play other deckbuilders on mobile a lot) but I will never touch it on mobile for that reason.
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.
Depends on the monitor. It’s pretty horrific on a 27" desktop monitor. On a phone it’s probably good. Anyway, like I said I added an AA mod and it looks a lot better on the PC screen, still pretty crude though. I play a number of 2D games on my PC and Stardew Valley has outstandingly pixelated artwork in comparison. That’s not to say I don’t like the game, I like it a lot and have put a good number of hours into it.
You can not like the art style of Stardew Valley, but calling it ugly in the way DF, TOME, DCSS or other games that have very rudimentary graphics styles are I think is missing the point in this context. A lot of effort and production time was put into Stardew Valley’s graphics, it is undeniably not “ugly” the way other games that developers focused all their time on gameplay instead of graphics are.
Yeah. A lot of the UI seems to be intentionally bad. It’s actually a pretty hard game. A good example is reloading. You do this by holding right click, moving the mouse down then up and letting go of right click. I think the visual parts of the experience speak for themselves from the screenshots but my point is that even a lot of other stuff in the game is just wack.
There’s another one with a similar kinda vibe (the vibe being “shitpost but it’s a video game”) called Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengence of the Slayer. I haven’t played it but it looks great. Er… Gameplay wise anyway lol.
I dunno compared to other games of a similar or younger vintage like UT2004, that I had a ton of fun with at the time but looking back they have aged like milk in terms of aesthetics and core gameplay… I think the quake games actually have aged very well.
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.
I love both the style and soundtrack of that game. Maybe it’s a little too “lowfi” for some people. That’s the only way I can imagine someone not liking it.
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.
I’ve mostly played the game with a texture mod. The lighting is fantastic, but I feel the textures don’t quite match the lighting. Though, I do understand that is the game’s style.
Card Quest (Android) has similar dated graphics, but I got kinda into it lately. It’s a card-based roguelike, with a fixed deck that only changes with inventory/skill changes.
Thanks for the recommendation! Spent this evening playing it, and it’s everything I was hoping Slay the Spire would be. Slay the Spire is still great, of course, but deckbuilding has always been my least favorite part of card games.
You’re welcome, glad that someone enjoyed my suggestion!
Yeah with Slay the Spire there is often some slight feeling of “I lost because I didn’t get any good cards”, but in this game I more often feel like I died because I messed up my resource management and priorities haha (still haven’t beat it once yet…)
I remembered thinking teleglitch was absolutely fascinating a while back. Not exactly a pretty game but it’s not ugly either, the chromatic aberration effects on collisions is real pretty imo, even if the underlying art is rather spartan
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.
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