Any kind of game
EDIT: changed from suggested to mentioned and made the title more clear
Quest for Glory series. Got me into RPGs.
Cultures 2.
Battlezone 2: Combat Commander. When I started playing that, my brother and I had to face each other and use our laptops’ infrared ports.
Challenge accepted. Does anyone recognize Llamatron: 2112? I played it on Amiga, but I think it was also on Atari and DOS.
It was an acid trip “llamas are funny” parody of Robotron: 2084, and it was a fuckin’ BLAST!
So if I’m not counting close friends recommending games to me as “mentioned on the internet” probably Crystal Project, according to Steam. Otherwise, we’d need to go back to things that I was told about by family members way back in the day that I both like and haven’t seen mentioned online since, which is trickier. Thief The Dark Project, possibly?
If you haven’t played Thief: The Dark Project I recommend it and its sequels. Don’t play Thief (no subtitle) though, it’s AAA garbage.
The dark pictures anthology: man of medan.
Freelancer, very fun space sim that didn’t quite seem to get popular enough
Have you seen Underspace? Its almost a spiritual successor to Freelancer. Take Freelancer and add Eldritch horrors and you have Underspace. IIt’s still in Early Access but definitely scratches the itch.
Some of my favorites that I don’t usually see mentioned would be Inmost, that game is fantastic, and Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight. Honestly the whole Momodora franchise is great, worth checking out.
Go
Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising. It’s the only game in the Carrier Command-like subgenre of RTS that isn’t part of the Carrier Command series. Shockingly well written, too, for what it is.
Hammershlagen
Gameboy color dinosaur JRPG / metroidvania that seemingly no one else has ever played. Called Dinosaur’us. I had to google the name there and it turns out there is a wikipedia page so it’s not totally obscure - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur’us
I loved this game as a kid! There are surprisingly few good dinosaur games (although admittedly a lot of good dragon ones).
World in Conflict is one I don’t see talked about. Squad based military RTS.
Multiplayer on that was so fun. Guessing how the enemy was moving in order to time how you call ordinance on them was my favorite part
Not a video game but a boardgame called Nightmare
I don’t see many people ever really talking about them at all outside of fans, but Krosmaga and One More Gate from Ankama.
Krosmaga is a deck builder autochess like game (with something like 9 or 10 different classes/dieties with different abilities to build around, alongside a bunch of non-specific cards any class could use in their deck). Place summons/spells to protect your Dofus (dragon eggs, to simplify what they are) and destroy theirs. Matchmaking is either play against computer, who randomly selects class and gets default deck, or just flatout random player. Don’t think there’s any selective matchmaking, sadly.
One More Gate is a short enough roguelite game where you accidentally destroy a portal and have to fix it by beating bosses in new areas, usually after multiple failed runs. Has meta progression, which I personally am not the biggest fan of.