What are your favorite "ugly" games?

Dwarf fortress and RimWorld are both... Pretty ugly
- Yeah especially Dwarf Fortress. The gameplay:graphics ratio is over 9000
  
  That's improved now, though, with the steam release. Before the Steam release I exclusively played DF with Ascii graphics. Honestly, I thought it was pretty.
  https://nailbar.io/random/df/df_siege_01.png

Dcss is the greatest game of all time. Everything about it is good.
But Dwarf Fortress is also good with bad graphics.
Factorio is like crack and looks terrible.
- I think the Steam release of DF looks nice. They're simple graphics, but not ugly.
  
  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 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 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.
- Baba is... Fuck you, you're stupid, this game is stupid. Fuck you.
  I'm stupid 😔
- I have had some people refuse to even try Baba Is You, because it looks ugly.
  Oh come on, the art style is charming!
- Who is saying that Baba is You is ugly? I don't think I've ever heard that opinion. It's always just been "charming Flash game aesthetic" for me
- 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 felt like a the Hex was one of the most innovative games, I loved it soooo much.

Would Cruelty Squad be cheating?
- Wow that art style is... something
  
  It's like... 2001 shareware shitpost flavored.
  
  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.
- Seconding this; Cruelty Squad is hitting that Deus Ex/Quake itch for me right now

does Doom count? Because my friends and I still play the game to this day, all the various community mods and maps.

FTL, it's not very ugly, but it could be improved

I would say Kenshi with assests that show it was done by one person and a rough UI, also maybe pathologic 2, although for that game I wouldn't say it's the graphics that put people off it's mostly the gameplay, but the geaphics are weird and really grey/depressive

gorillas.bas Classic😎
- qbasic gang we out here

Battle for Wesnoth. Best.Game.Ever (slight exaggeration)

Tales of Maj'eyal. A free to play open source roguelike that I hate. This game is amazing. Fuck this game. Also definitely recommend. But fuck this game. After numerous 10-12 hour long runs, I have yet to win.
- Love me some ToM!

West of Loathing and its sequel Shadows of Loathing have a bland grayscale artstyle on the outside but they're absolutely hilarious RPGs that have a lot of heart to them.
- The loathing series is an absolute gem
- Man I played their browser game way back when, the humor was pretty funny, but I haven't been able to make time to consider trying their console games.
  
  You should give it a shot, it's pretty fun and West of Loathing isn't that long to finish.

I haven't played it, but Cruelty Squad beats 95% of these in uglyness. Probably because they (hopefully) do it on purpose.
- That game is beautifully ugly lol. I need to go back and beat all the secret worlds

Simutrans is great, but looks like dogshit.
- pak192comic and pak128britain actually look half decent, imo, but on the whole you're right.

Kenshi came to mind as that's a butt ugly game but probably not as "hidden". Graphics look on par with Empire Earth 1 zoomed in but it's really unique and original and the low poly look helps it run on my aging PC so no complaints.
- Do you know if there is a good lemmy community for discussing Kenshi? I was about to go on a huge tangent about my experience with the game and stopped myself because this comment section probably isn't the right place. ^^;;
  
  I don't know I'm new and still finding stuff. Also I've only scratched the surface of Kenshi ATM but if you do find one post it and I'll join too.

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.
- That game is literally so unhinged. If you enjoy KOTOR or Morrowind era RPGs then VTMB is a must play.
  Zero shame in cheating to progress, some of that combat is like literally impossible. Awful game design.
  Fucking iconic memorable characters story setting dialogue, everything that isn't gameplay is 11/10

Caves of quid.

Unpopular opinion but I thought Return of the Obra Dinn was ugly. However, I really like it and it's one of those games you can only experience ones.

Mindustry. It's a mix between an RTS and Factorio. It's pretty nice and Open Source
- I wouldn't call it ugly
  
  It's not ugly but I find it pretty hard to figure out what's happening at a glance because it's really abstract
- Open Source
  You said it all
- I loved this at first but then the complexity of the various mechanics seemed to take a sharp rocket ship upwards through the roof. I got kind of lost and then tried to read the wiki guide and it was like a book, so that was that. I really wanted to like it though! Maybe I should give it another go.
- Mindustry has wonderful graphics!? Nice vector objects that scale smoothly. What’s the ugly part??

Hardly 'hidden', but there is always Nethack

I second Stone Soup and FTL! Both amazing, but ugly. Also:
The Binding of Isaac
Slay the Spire
Mario 64
- Slay the spire is kind of a style choice. Dev art mode is bad however and kinda funny lol.
- I didn't expect to find a Stone Soup entry so early in the list. It's perfect for me because I can just spawn a new window inside my tmux session, type soup, hit enter, and etch-a-sketch my brain for a few minutes.

Although you are asking for lowkey ugly graphic gems, I'm gonna go for Vampire Survivors.
There's that addictive gameplay loop that just keeps me going back

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.
  
  Really? Why do you say so? I always found it pretty usable, in mobile some buttons being so near the edges can be pretty uncomfortable tho.

Bannerlord! Although maybe it could be argued that it’s not “ugly” per se.. curious what others think
- Seeing a fully armored horse ragdoll across the sky as my Fians melt Imperials is nothing but beautiful.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead I find ASCII more charming than anything though
- I play with tilesets only, but oh my I love this game. ESPECIALLY with the sky islands mod, that completely elevates the game for me.
- Aw cmon some of the tilesets ain't too bad

I always thought Quake was pretty ugly, great fun though. And I guess much of it was probably supposed to be ugly.
- 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.
  
  UT2004 certainly does have a much more forgettable look. But the look and style of Quake always seemed kinda like a step down from Doom to me, I guess it's the little color and enemy models. However, you can definitely instantly recognize it's Quake from any screenshot, that says something too.
  But keep in mind the question was "favourite" ugly game, I didn't mean to say anything bad about Quake. It's ugly in the same way that some awesome metal genres sound ugly.
- I always digged the earthy colour tones. Combined with the level designs it's a cozy feeling game.

Oh hi, have you considered joining the best Lemmy community, !dcss@lemmy.ml? 🙃
If you're into zombies and post-apocalyptic survival, CDDA always looks like a blast to play: https://cataclysmdda.org
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !dcss@lemmy.ml
  
  Thanks, bot. I did just wonder what linking to it with that syntax would do. :)
- I'm joined!

Had a lot of fun with Elona (rougelike) a short time ago, didn't know a game like that existed
- Haha yeah! The dev just concluded a KS for their new game too!

The Case of the Golden Idol
Some people dislike the pixel-art style and weird character design, but I find it charming.

Tibia, an old 2d mmorpg

Not sure about ugly, but Stardew Valley's graphics are pretty basic. Great game though.
- I think the graphics of stardew valley are pretty beautiful, it's really well done pixel art.
  
  In my opinion, it's okay. It's pixel art that does its job of depicting things the player can recognize. It just looks bad. The colours in particular are... not pleasant.

TradeWars
- I know that game, used to play it on BBS in the early 90's.

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

EverQuest.

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 a 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...)

Project zomboid
- It's got that "functional ass" look to it and it's perfect
  
  It's supposed to look like The Sims 1.

I haven't seen anyone mention it yet so... Golden Light!
A creepy, funny, challenging, confusing, silly mess if a roguelite. Art looks almost PS1-esque. It's gorgeous in an ugly way!

From the games I can recall, Anuto TD (Another Ugly Tower Defense).
I cannot say whether or not it would get attention because of the graphic quality, but I know there are plenty of people who wouldn't play it since it is not 8k super ultra 3D high def masterwork quality graphics and would gladly shit on it because it doesn't have the most realistic graphics out there.

Deadly premonitions, everything about it is jank but I love it

Jump Ultimate Stars, not everyone is fan of the sprites 🫤
To be fair I have seen better, but they have their charm.

Ravenfield is ugly but fun

Cruelty Squad
Dominions 5

Imbroglio (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/imbroglio/id969264934) is one of my favorite minimal purchase iOS games. I haven’t played it in awhile, but it’s a unique dungeon puzzle game where you place attacks as floor tiles on the board ahead of playing. There’s some consistent rules with ramping challenge, which made it super replayable for me. I loved trying different floor designs, finding strategies, and there’s a small progression system that’s fun. Hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it was a great design despite the rough appearance.

Zombie Highway for iOS
Planetside 2 for PC

oolite

Valheim! The graphics may look like a PS2/XBOX Game, but it is very fun.
- Valheim is very pretty in my opinion, it's just a bit stylised.
  
  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.

TagPro - minimalist graphics, straightforward gameplay and an insanely high skill ceiling. So good it was banned from AskTheBadWebsite because it was always the top answer for every question regarding good webgames etc.

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.
- Dk what you're talking about Stardew valley has some incredible pixel art
  
  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.
- Stardew isn't 80's console style at all? It's just pixel art? And doesn't even look bad.
- 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.