The Rogueies: Biggest Surprise

These are the games that delighted us. Maybe they were novel, or maybe they were just unexpected, but surprising games are always something special to discover.

Blue Prince

Back at The Other Place, when Blue Prince’s release date approached, we weren’t even sure we’d cover it. On paper, it kind of looked like a point-and-click puzzle game also-ran that could be good, but would probably disappear from the public consciousness quickly if it registered at all.

I don’t think anyone was really prepared for what a masterpiece Blue Prince would be. From the sublime puzzle design to the breadcrumbed clues to the touching framing story, Blue Prince surprised us all in such a great way.

— JP

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping

The Duck Detective games are weird. They look like kids’ games with the cartoon paper cutout characters and the silly premises. But then you’re introduced to Duck Detective, the recently divorced private investigator with a crippling bread addiction, and you realize that you’re playing something special.

— JP

Silent Hill f

It’s the year of our lord 2025, and Silent Hill is back, baby! The franchise was sadly abandoned after a string of unsuccessful spinoffs, relegated to nostalgia bait and pachinko machines. Konami announced a string of games and projects to revitalize the survival horror franchise, starting with the disastrous web series Ascension. Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake was much stronger, but Silent Hill f is the biggest surprise so far. 

Set in 1960s Japan, Silent Hill f stars Hinako Shimizu, a young girl navigating a dysfunctional family environment and the pressures of her culture. When a heavy fog rolls in and her friend is seemingly killed by a flurry of red spider lilies, Hinako is thrust into a world of nightmare. She is guided through rituals by a seemingly kind fox-masked man, but the deeper Hinako goes, the more her sanity unravels. For a brand new Silent Hill game, set outside Maine and by a new studio, to be this good is a very pleasant surprise indeed.

— CM

Skin Deep

Skin Deep is such a well-thought-out, clever, funny, fun, and, above all, weird game. The crispy, PS1-era graphics, blocky models, and bright colors betray just how intricate the sandbox it creates really is. You play as an insurance operative who handles the space pirates when a ship gets boarded.

You do this through subterfuge, stealth, or just plain head-whacking. Pirates can be distracted and taken out with concussions, get ejected out of airlocks, or exploded. Once a pirate is down, you'll have to pop off their heads and flush it into space.

Also, your clients are square-headed cats wearing clothes who say a drole "MEOW" when you rescue them. Skin Deep is exactly the right kind of weird to be a surprisingly delightful little game.

— JP

Biggest Surprise winner — Absolum

I first encountered Absolum over the summer, when Jeff and I were looking for cool Steam NextFest demos to highlight for readers of BigFriendly.Guide, our mostly-guides blog that preceded Rogue. I downloaded it because the art looked gorgeous. But I didn’t expect much out of it, because beat-em-ups were always coin-devouring novelty games to me, not something I’d want to repeat over and over again.

But Absolum has depth. And Absolum has legs. And, against all odds, Absolum is fun to play every time you load it up. So few games with art like Absolum’s are able to live up to the beauty once the gameplay begins, but the game looks just as good in motion as it does standing still. And the mechanics inside the game – the way you grow and improve your account, and the way the devs continue to throw challenges at you even after the credits have rolled – ensure that you have good reason to stare at that art for a long, long time.

— RG