I'm looking for games with unique or experimental game design

Since nobody mentioned it before, Stanley parable.

If I had to describe it with one sentence: you're not playing the game, it plays you. I played a lot of games but this one stuck in my head. It awards for thinking outside the box.

Any other title like antichamber were already mentioned ^^

SUPERHOT - a shooter in which time only moves when you move. It kind of plays like a puzzle game and is quite fun

Outer Wilds.

but a game where the plot twist is discovering a hidden game mechanic, you could've done all the time

Turn this up to 11.

You've come to the right place, I also fancy artsy games and unique experiences.

• Return of the Obra Dinn is a great mystery game about figuring out who died and why. You use your watch to go back in time and explore the moment of death of everyone, trying to piece together what happened.

• Viewfinder is a new puzzle game where you take pictures of your surrounding and place them in front of you, turning them back into 3D-space

• Antichamber might be my favorite abstract puzzle game ever. It's hard to explain and can be a little obtuse (you get lost easily), but basically you explore a lot of world-shifting environments and try to figure out what is needed. Eventually you get a gun that manipulates cubes and stuff. Really, just play it.

• Manifold Garden is a close second after Antichamber. You explore infinitely repeating worlds and shift gravity to solve puzzles. It's not a hard game and you can finish it in a few hours, but it's a great experience.

• Journey is probably a game you've come across before. I loved this game to death when I first played it on PS3, I'd recommend giving it a shot. It's also quite short, only about 3 hours long.

• Hypnospace Outlaw is a game where you play on a fake late 90's operating system acting as a web moderator. I can't understate how cool this game is, and the seemingly innocent story gets more interesting as you play along.

There's probably more out there, but these are on the top of my head.

Inscryption, there's a reason it's such a highly rated game on steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/

Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie. Darker still are the secrets inscrybed upon the cards...

• Heaven's Vault: Language translation point and click adventure game.
• Project Hospital: A great hospital sim. You can even diagnose the patients yourself!
• Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin: A japanese RPG/brawler with a (very detailed) rice farming simulator as the way to gain XP to level up.
• Warsim: The Realm of Aslona: A text based kingdom manager / adventure game. Full of quirky details and humor.
• THE LONGING: A very very slow paced point and click adventure game about waiting... for 400 days... in real time. Why not read some books while you wait, or come out of your little hole and explore the caverns outside?
• Cultist Simulator: Run your very own lovecraftian cult, the card game!
• Windward: A pirate sandbox akin to Sid Meier's Pirates! Tried it on a whim when I got it in a bundle and got stuck playing it for 15 hours. Worth a try.
• Shadows of Doubt: A procedurally generated detective simulator (in early access at the moment).
• Ruinarch: A big bad simulator sandbox. You are the big bad. See that village over there? Make their lives miserable!
• Ghost of a Tale: You are a mouse bard in a fantasy world of anthropomorphic animal people. You are imprisoned in the castle dungeons and need to escape.
• Heat Signature: A space bounty hunter sandbox. Hijack a ship, kill your target, collect the package, throw yourself out the airlock, and pick yourself up by remote controlling your ship.
• Intergalactic Fishing: You like fishing? Do you want to fish an unlimited amount of different fish in an unlimited amount of different lakes all over the galaxy? Look no further.
• The Last Federation: You are the last surviving individual of a powerful species in a star system full of different species at different levels of technology. Your mission: unite the star system to save its people from annihilation. Will you be able to unite all of them, or will some species be eradicated for the greater good?
• Songs of Syx: A fantasy city builder of grand proportions. Build your kingdom's capital and fill it with hundreds or even thousands of individual people.
• 5D Chess with Multiverse Time travel: Are you good at chess? Well, everyone is on a level playing field when you introduce time travel and the multiverse.

Have you played Return of Obra Dinn? Also Inscryption, the creator is half mad

TUNIC https://youtu.be/Q5XpgTO7YN0

On the surface it's a Link To The Past inspired Zelda clone, with hints of Dark Souls, cutesy graphics, and a KILLER soundtrack. And while that might sound appealing, it's really just the surface. This game does something so unique that I can't imagine how it could be done again in any other game.

Baba is you: a simple block pushing puzzle game where you make the rules by lining up words. It's not like anything else.

Iron lung: a short horror game about navigating a submarine blind

Dollhouse: a flim noir styled avoid the pursuer type horror game, with eack level adding new mechanics. One of the most interesting games I've played, but it got lost to a ten year hype train and never recovered from the initial review bombing.

Jazzpunk: hard to describe. An first person puzzle game where the whole game is a joke and every aspect is unexpected.

Papers please: run a Soviet bloc security check point, and try to keep your family alive with the small amount of supplies you receive for filtering citizen correctly. Same guy who made obra dinn.

Receiver 2: at the surface it's an fps with insane gun mechanics. Deeper though, it's forced meditation and mindfulness. Nothing you do can be reactionary or automatic, every movement must be on purpose. Lots of mental health themes.

Many others already mentioned here are great. Obra dinn, doki doki, antichamber, outer worlds. There's a ton of great things out there.

Surprised nobody mentioned One Hour One Life before.

Basically, it's a game where you only have 60 minutes to live in an open multiplayer world, starting out as a baby being cared for by your "mother" going to adult, and then dying of old age, possibly leaving everything to your offspring, also actual players.

I found this mechanic to be very unique among other games.

These definitely aren't everyone's cup of tea, but these are some really unique games I like.

Dwarf Fortress: A colony sim who's depth gives it it's uniqueness factor. It's been in development for forever and if you dig into it a little bit stories will begin to construct themselves in the game in a way that no other colony sim does. Heads up that you won't know how anything works and your forts will fall apart, it's part of the Fun.Check out Kruggsmash on YouTube for some great videos on it.

Caves of Qud: I just learned about this game today actually, it's a rogue lite(like?) In a similar vein as Dwarf Fortress. Super long in development with incredible depth and replayability. Really interesting stories that come out of it.

Kerbal Space Program: Learn to send adorable little green men to the moon! Build rockets, crash them, learn and try again! A few games have tried to do something similar, but nothing matches the vibe of ksp. Best to stick with the original + mods for now, the sequel needs more time in the oven.

Frontier Pilot Simulator: Be a delivery person on a alien world, fly vtol aircraft around, deliver goods, make money, upgrade craft. Ok that sounds basic as hell, but something about this game scratches a doing things itch for me. It's great once you kinda get the flight controlls and can be played in 20 or so min intervals which I actually have trouble finding these days.

Delta V: Rings of Saturn: Take the old school asteroids game to it's absolute furthest possible development and then a bit further, no, further than that, keep going.

Trackmania: Racing game that has crazy tracks but manages to stay grounded somehow. Fun if you just want to try and beat the latest tracks, also fun if you lose hours or weeks or months or years or decades of your life trying to get the best time.

VTOL VR and Jetborn Racing: Ok it's a VR game, and you need a headset. But if you have one it's literally the best flight sim ever. It's just realistic enough to make you learn a bunch, but not so realistic that you get bogged down. No sticks or equipment needed, it's all VR motion controls.

Carrier Command 2: Control a whole ass aircraft carrier! It's very microprose, so super simulated and fiddly, but really really neat. If you have friends and can somehow convince them to play this with you, it's super fun* *I take no responsibility for friendships lost due to 'fun'

Anyways, I might like odd sim games a little bit more than is strictly healthy. Splattercatgaming on YouTube is a good source for finding odd games if you haven't seen them yet.

Planescape: Torment
The story of an amnesiac immortal piecing things back together.
The immortality isn't invincibility, you still die, but wake up after a while.
Die enough times and you lose all memories, maybe with a different personality altogether, that's where the game starts: a cold slab in the morgue and the start of this new incarnation you now control.
It's not only a respawn mechanic though, the mechanic is used in a few puzzles and social encounters, it's also integral to the storyline.

I absolutely recommend TUNIC. It's sort of a combination of a legend of zelda/dark souls gameplay and a really interesting puzzle element. Basically, you are playing this game without the guide or any tutorial, and as you play you pick up pages of the game guide which teach you how to play, but it's written in a language you can't read, so you have to piece together the mechanics based on the pictures. The game is absolutely full to bursting with secrets, including a final puzzle that blew my mind when I figured it out. I played it with invincibility on so that I could focus on the puzzle element and not worry about combat so much.

It's one of those games that you can only play once because you learn so many secrets through playing it, but it's a truly magical experience.

My personal favourite that fits the description but was not mentioned yet is Cultist Simulator.

A thing, a place, an attribute, a person or feeling: all of these are cards.

Talk, work, travel: those are special containers called verbs.

And this simple setting gives you a lot of freedom. Upgrade your abilities, hoard esoteric lore, recruit people into your cult, raid vaults for goodies, summon an alien demon to get rid of your annoying boss and try to become immortal.

Takes a bit long to master due to how opaque some parts of it are though.

Not sure about experimental but different game mechanic:

Radio Commander - a RTS that you totally control via the radio, you don't see anything, you must interact with your deployed units.

Hell Let Loose - Not niche, but very unique in its 50 person radio system, where you must communicate and coordinate with other players. Think of it less as a FPS, and more as a management training simulator.

Majesty - A old game, but you don't actually control units, you set goals and bounties and the units have their own agency and will accomplish things in their own good time.

The forgotten city - A very cerebral approach to time loops by a indie studio.

Undertale? I came at it being basically familiar with RPGs and having only a faint idea of what it was like. It was awesome. It has a few things that get "rosebudded" a bit these days, being an old game with a bunch of meme potential. It's an indie, very Japanese-inspired RPG with "bullet hell" fighting mechanics and an astonishing soundtrack. I basically can't praise it enough, BUT if you're going to play it and have managed to not get it spoiled so far, do yourself a favor and don't read up on it first.

Factorio? I fell in love with it practically because of the nice, flashy power graphs. It's a factory sim with "tower defense" aspects but you can play peaceful mode if you (like me) are not into that or don't like its combat mechanics.

TIS-100, Shenzhen IO, SpaceChem, Opus Magnum or Zachtronic games in general, if the last one was somehow not geeky enough. A lot of the zachtronic-style games have more or less the same general idea and they also focus on some nostalgia/zeitgeist type things. TIS-100 and Shenzhen IO are coding games on an imaginary computer, you basically write a minimal form of "assembly". SpaceChem and Opus Magnum have the same basic problem solving thing but are less overtly "code-y". TIS-100's UI is very "faux retro" and their last game, Last Call BBS doubled down on that aesthetic, really drilling down into the "90's kids' idea of computing back in the day". I personally didn't like the actual LCBBS games or activities but the presentation is really neat.

Rain World (I love it so much please take it away from me before I lose all of my free time):

• Very fluid procedural movement that takes 300+ hours to learn
• Torturous first 20 hours that most people give up during

Toribash is a unique take on fighting games, where you control the character in freeze-frames by adjusting actions on the character’s joints (relax, hold, flex, extend), then executing those actions. You can make singleplayer sequences or fight other players one on one - you get X amount of seconds per move simultaneously with your opponent, then the movement is resolved and you have another action round.

Omega Strikers - I’m not sure if this fits the bill entirely, but I think it is relatively unique in what it does and I have been playing the heck out of it since release, so I’ll plug it. It is a mesh of MOBA and table/air hockey, the game plays in 3v3 - 2 forwards and a goalie each team. Controls relatively standart for MOBA, the goal is to get the core (puck) into the enemy goal. You can also knock opponents off the sides or damage them making it easier to knock them off.

I guarantee you will never find a game like the Return of the Obra Dinn. Never. It’s a shame that I will never ever be able to re-experience playing it for the first time again. If I could erase my memory of it to play again I would.

Unheard is another good one. It scratches the itch after you’ve played Obra Dinn and you’re clamoring for more. It depends on proximity and sound and attention to detail to play and solve. Amazing.

Gorogoa is absolutely amazing and beautiful. It’s a puzzle game you will appreciate as a designer. It uses perspective. Gorgeous.

Creeper World 4 - a sort of tower defence, but you are fighting the ocean. Sounds insane, and the graphics are not really great. But the core game play loop is so well refined. Check out the mods as well such as "light play as creep" or LPAC where you are the ocean instead.

I've only played two of the games you mentioned, thanks for the list! Here are a few I thought were especially interesting and that I played somewhere recently:

• Nuts - you set up cameras to track movements of squirrels to find their hidden stash; gameplay is placing cameras and reviewing footage
• 140 - platformer stripped to its roots; the novelty is the simplicity; honorable mention Thoth (same idea, but twin stick shooter)
• Ys 1 - ARPG with bump combat, which I found very interesting
• Death Squared - MP (2 or 4) puzzle game where moving one unit can move set pieces, so coordination is needed
• Titan Souls - boss rush, but with 1HP for you and the boss
• Gorogoa - abstract puzzle game
• Donut County - you're a hole
• Fez - 2D puzzle platformer where the gimmick is it's actually 3D, but you can only see one 2D surface at a time (rotate worpd mechanic)

And some you're probably aware of:

• Superhot
• Doki Doki Literature Club
• Oxenfree
• Portal/Portal 2
• Undertale

Thanks again for the list! I'm excited to see what others post too!

Edit: I just wanted to say thanks for the post! I found a ton of great games to try out, and I hope you got the same out of it. :)

Read through some quick replies, I'd recommend Superhot a game where time moves only if you move, highly recommended.

Death Stranding - package delivery simulator, with occasional horror and action elements

Iron Lung - horror game where you're in a submarine with no windows

Factorio - the factory sim game part is fairly standard but the pollution mechanic is really neat. The more you build, the more you pollute, which feeds the monsters which attack your factory. It's self balancing.

Hardspace shipbreaker - the physics are damn close to real, within reason. You have a tractor beam and a laser saw. You break down space ships into salvageable bits. Voice acting is superb.

Terra Nil - most sim factory games have you exploit natural resources to achieve a goal, ruining the area in the process. This is the opposite. You're planting and reforesting, trying to undo the devastation. It's the anti Factorio.

This ended up a bit longer than I intended, whoops. Most of your examples are more conceptually unique than most of these, but I figured it couldn't hurt to mention them since they all do something 'different' you might find interesting. I've really enjoyed all these games myself.

• Perspective - Absolutely mind-blowing, this is the one that I think fits your question best. There's both walking around in a 3d environment and 2d platforming, but the platforming is based on your perspective. It's hard to describe, but it's free (college project), so go check it out!
• Cortex Command - I wouldn't exactly call it experimental, but it's certainly unique. The selling point is the fully destructible particle-based 2d environment. It may be 20 year old abandonware, but there's a reason it still has an active fanbase working to improve it (check out the Cortex Command Community Project).
• Antichamber - Reality-bending first person puzzler. It can be frustrating at times but it has some seriously mind-boggling challenges.
• Little Inferno - You burn things. It's amazing.
• Reassembly - Hard to describe, kinda like 2d space legos with some strategy elements? You build spaceship things and slowly amass your army, gathering resources and commanding your fleet. It's a bit sandboxy for my taste but I've never played another game with this unique mix of strategy and building. It's a lot of fun seeing the ships you create flying around independently, gathering resources, fighting enemies and even making more ships themselves.
• Melody's Escape, Beat Hazard (1/2/3), Symphony - I'm a big fan of games that use music for generating levels, and these are my favorites. It's a small 'genre' but it's fascinating to me to see how different developers approach it. Melody's Escape is a rhythm game which is pretty unique among this 'genre', Beat Hazard has spectacular visuals and adds in progression (with varying degrees of success), and Symphony is pretty similar to Beat Hazard in basic conception but executes things differently at every level.
• Sanctum 2 - Combination tower defense + FPS. The unique thing about this is less the idea and more how well it's executed. A ton of fun with friends.
• Yoku's Island Express - Pinball metroidvania-lite. What can I say, they make it work.
• The Beginner's Guide - A linear story / adventure game sort of thing. The setup is essentially about exploring different short games made by someone who committed suicide. It's slow and sad, but has a unique concept that it executes well. It has a couple of twists that really make the game.
• Shelter 1 & 2, Meadow - Shelter 1 is a linear adventure game where you play as a badger mother caring for her pups. Shelter 2 is a nonlinear survival game where you play as a lynx mother caring for her... kits? Then Meadow is a sandbox social MMO in the same universe, with little goal aside from just interacting with other players; but there's no text chat, only a limited set of emotes and some actions you can do. This is a great little family of games, each being an entirely distinct and unforgettable experience.
• The Messenger - Starts out as a linear 8-bit-styled action platformer that (spoilers) turns into a 16-bit-styled metroidvania. Conceptually that's all that really makes it unique but it's done well, lots of fun.

Recently I've been exploring flash games again. I played them a lot as a kid, but in revisiting them I'm blown away at how unique and interesting so many of them are. Here are a few of the more unique ones you might enjoy, you'll have to use something like Flashpoint to play them:

• This Is The Only Level - There's one level, but the mechanics change each time you complete it. Super fun.
• Demons Took My Daughter - A combination 2d platformer and tower defense (complete with mazing). It's worth checking out all of the developer Nerdook's games, he has a habit of mixing genres in completely new ways.
• This is not a minimalist game - A short adventure game, nothing groundbreaking but has some interesting ideas.
• The Day - This is a weird one, kind of hard to describe without spoiling it but it's like <20 minutes to beat, mostly just a walking simulator sort of thing. The game's dev, Gregory Weir, has a lot of experimental games, if you like this one you'll probably like more.
• Sugar, Sugar - A really unique puzzle game, its basic idea is simple but it makes the most of it. Another dev to check out more from.

I dont know if it still can be found, but Achron is a Time travel strategy game. Think command and conquer where you can send orders and troops in the past. One the change is done, the effects will travel in the time line as a wave. Fixing the paradoxes Letting you send troops back 5 minutes giving time clones for the attack.

https://youtu.be/rGmMenc1jCY

Don't know how well known it is, but Who's Lila is a point and click adventure game when you progress by controlling the character's facial expressions

Superliminal might be a good one for you, lot of perspective trickery and new ideas going on there.

Kinda surprised no one has mentioned Noita yet. Its a roguelike where every pixel is simulated, which lets you do cool things like burning the floor walls to light enemies on fire, then putting it out with some water (and also just makes it look really cool). Also even though its a roguelike the world is still completely, open so you can go back and forth from harder areas to the earlier ones, which i havent really seen before.

II would recommend these:

The Last Guardian: A story game where you are a small boy and you have a giant cat/bird/dog thing you befriend and try to escape the area. You are almost completely reliant on the animal and it is very unique. If you are an animal lover, you will love this game. This is exclusive to the PS4, but still is highly recommended. If you can't play it, watch a let's play because it is beautiful in more ways than one.

The Stanley Parable: A comedy game where all of your actions have some sort reaction from the narrator. It is a lot of fun. Other people have listed this and can give a better description.

The Beginner's Guide: A game from the developer of The Stanley Parable. However, the games could not be more different. This "game" is basically a story told by the developer who narrates about his time with a fellow game developer. It is very good, will make you think and is best played blind. Just keep in mind that this is not a funny game.

Here's one you almost definitely won't know. Guy made his own game engine to make it work.

Hyperbolica - A whimsical Non-Euclidean adventure with mind-bending worlds full of games, puzzles, mazes, and secrets! Immerse yourself in reality-warping geometries where lines can never be parallel, horizons are curved, and space grows exponentially.

Cruelty Squad rapidly became one of my favorite games. It's a true art piece designed with a significant amount of spite, for both the world we live in and the player punishing themself with the game. Every single part of the game is thoughtfully designed, down to the fishing mechanic. It challenges you, both in its gameplay and in its audiovisual experience. It's abrasive on purpose, to wear you down until you get used to it and can build yourself back up better.

Pyrocynical recently did a video about the game but it's very long and a bit too revealing for someone who knows nothing, so I actually recommend Markiplier's video which shows just how bizarre the game is to get in to going in blind.

You might like the demo for a game I'm making. It's free, on Steam and is a standalone game (not just a slice of the main game), where the little demo character dies if you quit. So he does everything in his power to convince you not to.

I've yet to hear of someone who didnt enjoy the experience.

store.steampowered.com/app/2021600/Game_Over/

There's a game called Journey which is... mystically beautiful? It's mystical because it's basically just a walking sim with a few puzzles to solve in between, but yet it really draws out the emotions. I've played many games like this but nothing trumps Journey yet.

It's mostly single player but if you play it online, once in a while you'll come across a fellow traveler from another instance whom you can share the journey with for a while, or not.

Superliminal is a fun puzzle game that plays with perspective to find out-of-the-box solutions.

Auditorium is a very fun puzzle game, unfortunately not updated for higher rez screens. Would recommend checking it out if you like indie games, non traditional games, puzzle games, or awesome soundtracks.

Nimbus is an interesting level based game, feels a bit like a cell phone port, but a simple yet hard to master mechanic.

Return of the obra-dinn is one a lot of people will recommend, and I agree with them. An almost point and click mystery game so fully thought through and developed as to awe it's player with it's thorough-ness.

Disco Elysium is like the above, a nearly fully voice acted crpg fleshed out to such an unbelievable extent.

If you enjoy exploring the meta-ness of a video game the Stanley parable is very good.

How about Before Your Eyes? To my knowledge, it is the only game that uses blinking as a gameplay mechanic.

Check out Shadow of Doubt. Never played anything quite like it. Rough as hell.

You play a detective solving procedurally generated murders. They don’t all seem possible to solve but the idea is amazing. Early access

• Stacklands - a "city building survival strategy card game"
• Moncage - a game where you match objects from different scenes viewed from the faces of a cube in order to progress by changing perspectives.
• Tiny Topia - a city building game, except it's a toy city, you can stack buildings on top of each other, and it sometimes involves having to balance your city on an object so it doesn't tip over.
• Superliminal - a first-person puzzle game where "perception is reality" (e.g. things change size when you move them around based on how large they look from your perspective).

I haven't actually played any of these. I found out about them watching Real Civil Engineer on Youtube, who plays a lot of building and simulation games but also plays weird stuff perhaps more often than the average gaming youtuber.

The Unfinished Swan came instantly to my mind.

Some others that might intrest you but I'm not sure really qualify with the description:

Roto force - Quirky take on a bullet hell game

Yukos Island express - Metroidvania pinball

The Witness - Well known puzzle game that has you looking for 2D shapes in 3D areas, and other things

Quantum Break - Mixing TV between chapters, didn't live up to it's potential in my opinion

Crypt of the Necrodancer - Rhythm-based dungeon crawler

Forgot what it's called but there's a VR game where your hands are stuck in a box and you sit down and hold a controller that moves gadgets on the box to solve puzzles. Very fun, would recommend. There are optional rewards for being perceptive about your environment.

I don't think I've seen these two mentioned so throwing them in.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/322450/FRAMED_Collection/ Framed has an amazing and creative use of comic panels that you rearrange to try and get to the right set that lets you move to the next page. However, putting them in the 'wrong' order gives very entertaining sequences and sometimes that's exactly what you need to do to progress. I highly recommend the entire collection. I think it's a near masterpiece of visual gameplay, with no dialogue at all (if I recall rightly) and even instructions all being visual indicators.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/224460/Contrast/ Contrast has an interesting puzzle mechanic where you have to transition between the 3D world of colours and 2D world of shadows to platform to the next location. It's interesting to see how the shadows and lights can be used and the way the story unfolded through the game made good use of the medium.

I've also seen certain games here that I'll be sure to add to my list.

Super Time Force Ultra

It's a side scroller where you can rewind time to fix your mistakes and if you can't progress further, just let yourself die and respawn alongside all of the past versions of you to help yourself get further.

So I would also recommend Antichamber, Manifold Garden, and Unfinished Swan. I would also add the following:

What Remains of Edith Finch - while technically a walking simulator it really does provoke a child like sense of exploration while providing a very adult storyline.

Thomas was Alone - this is a platformer at heart but the minimalist design, innovative mechanics, and great storytelling make this game a must play.

The Spectrum Retreat - this is technically a Portal clone but the puzzle mechanic is based on color and manipulation of environment. The story is bleak but compelling. And as the story progresses your view of the hotel changes adding to the tension.

The Bridge - not going to lie this puzzle game gets brutal but the mechanics are like nothing I've ever played before or since. You navigate through Escher-like environments. If you can get it cheap and don't mind using a help guide I'd say go for it.

Honorable mention/good time wasters:

Hexalogic - number puzzler and great zen experience. I've not found another game like it and I wanted more when I finished it.

Inbento - a cute puzzle slider game where the board is a bento box. The game introduces more mechanics as it progresses and it gets hard.

A fairly unique game that I've played and have never experienced anything like it since, is Doki Doki Literature Club. It's very easily spoiled, but one must be forewarned it is psychological horror and it's warning at the beginning of the game is on point. It's radically different than anything else here, but there's also nothing like it that I can think of to compare it to. Sure, it's basic gameplay is "visual novel" but it goes way beyond that. Again, it's absolutely a psychological horror and it does touch on extremely sensitive topics. So avoid if that sounds problematic, but as a standalone work, it honestly creates a category all its own and I'll likely never play a game that recreates anything close to it.

And totally different but a lot closer to other suggestions is the game Bastion. Very interesting time-manipulation puzzle solving with a intriguing plot story that doesn't steal the focus but is still good enough to add value to the game.

Dominions 5: strategic turn by turn game where you play a god and all the armies of his nations. Dozens of spells, you can equip your units with items you forged. Unique mechanism: your god, your prophet, your clerics and your temple can spread faith. No faith = game over. Some nations have specifics rules about faith, for exemple a Astec one has to sacrifice virgin, another (Ermor) has a faith which kill his population an turn it undead, another one inspired by lovecraft generate mad men...

If you want weird go Eastern European

Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason - stuck on a nuclear ice breaker where you have to play back frozen members of the ships cause of death and save them. In addition to this the core health mechanic is the most unique I have found in a game where health is decided by how warm you are so you can recover off steam pipes and can as lose health in colder regions of the ship

The void - I don’t know too much about it since I never managed to complete it but this is really odd. It’s like Okami but I’m sort of this hellish weird world. You have to draw shapes to do things like attack enemies. Plus again another health system where you lose health as you stay on the menu screen very weird.

There are a lot more and all tend to be fairly bleak but cyrostasis I 100% recommend the story is just as good as it plays out through those death scenes

might not be what you are looking for but i strongly recommend project zomboid for the best unique costumizable survival game. i think there is no other game like it

Antichamber for a good old school mind bending puzzle game

Braid is a puzzle platformer divided into several sections, where time functions differently in each section and you have to figure out how to use it to solve the puzzles. It's very well designed and (as I remember it) the puzzles can be quite challenging.

The Last Express is a first person murder mystery Myst-like adventure. Events are unfolding in real time, with the story and characters adapting to your actions. Beautiful rotoscoped animation. Currently under €2 on GOG.

I'd highly recommend Patrick's Parabox. It's an incredible little puzzle game that revolves around paradoxical movements of pieces in each puzzle. I don't know how to adequately describe it, but it was incredibly unique.

super interesting question. thanks for posting it

If you're looking for "games as art", I have 3 recommendations:

1. Yume Nikki. It's a classic RPGMaker horror game, which has inspired many Fan Games and even some more modern games, such as Undertale. Definitely at least give it a try and explore a little bit - the game play is minimal but it's quite an atmospheric experience.

2. Disco Elysium. It's more of a very interactive book than a game, but the writing is just phenomenal. In the game you have 24 skills as your personality traits, and depending which ones you level up, they often come and chime in during conversations, giving funny remarks or advice - I love it.

3. Pathologic 2. Can't really get into its special mechanics without spoilers, but it's such a gem of a game. I love it.

I've got a few unusual suggestions. I think most of these flew pretty far under the radar.

Sethian: This one is about decoding an alien language, and is carried out mostly in that language. I don't think it's entirely successful, but it's a very interesting concept.

Heaven's Vault: also about decoding an alien language, but with a lot more other bits about archaeology, social wrangling, and a weird minigame about sailing between planets? I dunno. I didn't love this one either but the language thing is so unusual that it's pretty easy to win me over with it.

Gateways: by Smudged Cat Games, since there are a couple of other games with a similar name. This one is a 2d puzzle platformer; it starts out pretty similar to Portal, but it gets way more involved when you have to manipulate rotation, size, and even time. Really, really challenging by the end.

TIS-100: This one is pretty well-known. This is a "zach-like" puzzle game, along with games like Shenzhen IO and Magnum Opus (also made by Zachtronic Games), but this one is my favorite. It's about programming an unusual computer. It's quite hard, but extremely engrossing for the right kind of brain.

Yon Paradox: This one is almost entirely a time travel puzzle game. In it you have to explore a facility, periodically traveling back in time; but with you do, your previous selves still exist, and do what you previously did. So in order to avoid causing a paradox, you have to avoid being seen by your previous selves. I didn't actually spend much time playing this one--I got it to try in VR, and it gave me motion sickness like that. But I've meant to go back and try it in flatscreen. You've got to admit it's an unusual premise.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention Achron as well, since I bought that one for its unusual premise. It's a realtime strategy game, along the lines of starcraft, but with a timetravel mechanic built in. The mechanic is intended to be balanced even in multiplayer. I never really learned to play it, though--it seemed really complicated and not necessarily all that fun. But it's pretty unique.

Miegakure is probably something you'd be interested in. https://miegakure.com/

0_Abyssal_somewhere is pretty short and transmits an interesting sensation of strangeness and curiosity to me. More reminiscent of modern art than comercial videogames for sure. You can also play It for free if you want without pirating It.

https://nonoise.itch.io/abyssalsomewhere

Give Up the Ghost - https://gate.itch.io/ghost

I've wanted to go back and beat this puzzle game, because it's quite excellent.
There's some proper rot13 hints in the comments by the creator.

If you want a list of wild games I can recommend Warp Door - https://warpdoor.com/
I try to stay away from there.

I highly recommend Inkulinati. It's still in Early Access, but I've enjoyed many hours of getting my ass kicked by a farting donkey and a Yoda wanna-be.

Have you tried the "haunted ps1 demo discs"? Horror seems to be the genre that always tries something unique in gaming. Things like Iron Lung always amaze me.

I don’t think I see it after a quick skim of the thread but surely Kenshi should be on any list such as this.

Completely bewildering and actually quite hard to describe. If you want uniqueness then I’d say it’s hard to beat. I personally have only started playing recently and the learning curve is a cliff face but it’s compelling and having heard the way others describe it, it sounds to me like it’s worth persevering with.

Ubisoft's Prince of Persia 2008 has a unique atmosphere, design, combat, ambience and movement that sadly they did not continue but the game is beautiful at its fullest and really cheap now days

Viewfinder

Superliminal

The vale: shadow of the crown

I personally really like Satisfactory. It is not the most original game out there. However, it is really beautiful. The community is awesome too.

Unraveled 2 is a beautiful game with unique mechanics. The game is a platformer, but how you get through the levels is unique. You need to play it with another person for it to really shine though.

If you havent already, stanley parable is a nice one, it is a game about making choises.

I would recomend for you Killer 7. It was originally for ps2 but i think it was released on steam for a while now. The gameplay is very weird being kinda like a rail shooter but you can move your character around a fixed path and change your character. The interesting part though is the story or at least how its presented. Best way i can describe it is like a fever dream after a bad trip, and i dont do drugs but after playing it youll feel like you just did. The story itself is better experienced than tolld since it doesnt sound very speciall, but just so that it picks on your interest you play as an assassin with multipple personalities disorder and you are tasked with taking down a cult/terrorist organization known as heavens smile and you are not gonna understeand fuck all at first and it gets very ridicoulous, but it still an extraordinary experimental experience.

I've on my way to work but I'm commenting so I can come back and give you a list and see what everyone else suggests.

Dude, I'm just super happy that Patientgamers is on lemmy, I really hope you find your game!

On that note, Gamepads has so many niche indie games that I think you will love

Hyper Demon - the camera is almost 360 degrees and in the trailers the gameplay seems unintelligible, until you play it for a bit

Virtamate fits your description