Recs for Mac games on Steam

[alias_sqbr]

After some effort (it required a reinstall, me logging into the website, and then both of us logging in on both machines and doing the right settings) we got "family sharing" working on Steam so I can play all of Cam's mac compatible games on my laptop.

Thus, a collection of recs! All the plotty ones have happy endings unless otherwise stated.

• Analogue: A Hate Story A confronting and affecting visual novel untangling a tragedy. The "white American explores sexism using Korean culture" premise is a bit unfortunate but it's very good for what it is. Also has two gxg endings.
  
• Bastion Beautiful isometric action game about rebuilding and hope after apocalypse. Not fantastically suited to laptop play.
  
• Bejeweled 3 Untimed casual gem matching game. I prefer Bejeweled 2 but this is what I have.
  
• Bookworm Deluxe Untimed casual word finding game.
  
• Broken Age Beautiful and funny puzzle/adventure game, one of the two protagonists is a brown girl fighting against stuff. Ends on a cliff hanger while we wait for the second half!
  
• Cinders Beautiful and well written visual novel/dating sim retelling of Cinderella. Very heterosexual but gives the "ugly" sisters and stepmother more complex characterisation.
  
• Crayon Physics Deluxe Flawed but interesting puzzle game where you draw objects to solve puzzles using physics (falling weights, pendulums, ramps etc) The physics engine is a bit frustrating but it's relatively easy to kludge your way through and I enjoyed playing around with it.
  
• Dear Esther Beautiful and melancholy walk-around visual novel(*) about death and loss. Not a happy story but immersive and interesting.
  
• Escape Rosecliff Island Hidden object puzzle game. Haven't finished this yet but am enjoying it for mindless time wasting. Has a timer but you can turn it off.
  
• Gone Home Another walk-around visual novel, you play a woman who comes back from a trip and explores her empty family home figuring out what's been going on in everyone's lives. Surprisingly affecting lgbt subplot. Detailed and immersive setting.
  
• Long Live the Queen Fiendishly difficult but fun raising sim, where you make choices for a new queen and try not to have her die (or at least hit all the death options). Has gxg options though I never made it that far.
  
• Magical Diary Super fun and surprisingly well written visual novel/dating sim/life sim where you play a new girl at not!Hogwarts. Has cute gxg options.
  
• Portal and Portal 2 Awesome portal based puzzle games, clever puzzles and really well written with a great dark sense of humour. Female main character too.
  
• RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition Walk around version of the classic puzzle game (with a slideshow version if you prefer). Graphics are dated but the worlds are still very atmospheric and the puzzles are great. What little acting there is is bad since it's the developers but mostly you just walk around looking at stuff.
  
• RUSH A nice little puzzle game using directional arrows to direct streams of coloured cubes. I am not very good at it.
  
• SpaceChem Clever puzzle game where you have to create paths for atoms to follow so they become the right molecules. More computer science than chemistry, gets into some pretty complicated finite state machines.
  
• The Stanley Parable Funny walk around visual novel where you can spite the narrator in lots of different ways and see what happens.
  
• Worms Reloaded Stategy game where you try and blow up the other team with various cute weapons. Haven't played this in years but I remember enjoying it.
  
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Ollld Bioware RPG. I found this too annoying to play on the laptop and then lost my save, but based on where I got up to it's pretty good.
  

Haven't really played but have been recced:

• Papers Please You're an immigration clerk?
  
• The Longest Journey Some sort of fantasy/scifi thing?
  
• Torchlight Run of the mill isometric fantasy RPG. Haven't played a lot of this but have been recced it a lot and it was kind of fun.
  
• Trine Another fantasy RPG I have been recced, was ok based on a very short play.
  

Also I'd probably rec Halflife, Tomb Raider and Thomas was Alone were it not for the zombies and/or platform jumping.

(*)I'm not sure what you call this genre. It's like a first person shooter (a couple started as FPS mods) in that you walk around a 3D landscape that renders in realtime, but the gameplay is like a visual novel or puzzle game in that you just walk around and click on stuff/make choices. If I have any other genre names wrong please let me know!

Comments

[lilysea]

Yay! ^_^

*bookmarks this list*

[alias_sqbr]

Was definitely thinking of you when I made the post :) Have fun!

[pebblerocker]

I am an obsessive player of the action-RPG hack and slash genre: Diablo II and III (I started too late for the original), Torchlight I and II, Path of Exile. I play more of these sorts of games than any other genres put together. D2 is a very old game these days and I still play it regularly with a group of friends.

I like some of the more convenient mechanisms in Torchlight and the games that came after it, such as stacking consumables no clicking on gold, sending pets to town to sell junk for you, etc. The original Torchlight was cute and fun but never drew me in quite enough. Torchlight II (with multiplayer) appeals to me quite a lot. The character customisation is new to the genre and there's just enough to get me invested in the character without going Oblivion-style with masses of sliders.

I love that T2 and D3 both let you choose your character's gender, rather than having only one gender model for each character; that means I can play as a woman who whacks things with a big sword instead of being limited to Staff Chick or Bow Chick.

Path of Exile (free download, free to play, supported by microtransactions giving cosmetic effects rather than gameplay advantages, and made in New Zealand!) goes back to gender-locked classes in the traditional form - right down to having more male classes than female, and the starting female classes are Witch and Ranger, Staff and Bow Chicks again, ugh. It's a fascinating game with plenty of depth and an excellent mix of traditional and inventive mechanics. However I think I would need to forget all my in-depth knowledge of D2 mechanics in order to make brainspace to understand how to build a good PoE character.

[bunny_m]

Path of Exile definitely has those gender issues you've mentioned, plus the *ginormous* passive skill network which can be more than a bit daunting when you first get into it.

Plus it's online only, and the devs have deliberately made it a gold/coins free game, which is where it lost out for me. It's a bold and interesting move to force the game to have a barter system from the start, but I find it just an un-necessary complication and barrier to starting players. Of course, YMMV.

If you like the Diablo style of gameplay, you might want to give Marvel Heroes a try, especially if you are a Marvel Comics nerd like I have been all my life. It's surprisingly a whole lot of fun.

[pebblerocker]

The passive tree is enormous but *fabulously* cool and ten years ago I would have put in the effort to learn how to get the best out of it. These days it seems a bit harder to pick up on things, or I don't have as much time to spend theorycrafting. But not to the point where I prefer the D3 system where all characters have the same skills and no decisions are irreversible; I like characters to develop and I like the game to be replayable in a different style.

It's interesting how the developers try to handle cheating. In D2 they threw their hands in the air. D3 and PoE have more robust anti-cheating measures but that comes at the cost of online-only play, which sucks. The Torchlight developers allow offline play and encourage mod-making; if someone wants to modify the game so their character does three zillion damage from level 1, they're only cheating themselves of experiencing the content. I really like that attitude!

Other gamers in my circle have recommended Marvel Heroes too. It sounds like it could be amazing, and mediaeval fantasy settings aren't a requirement for me :)

[bunny_m]

Be aware that like Path of Exile and Diablo III, Marvel Heroes is 100% online only.

That said, it's a lot like a modern setting Diablo with 30-odd different character classes. With oodles of delicious Marvel universe setting and background titbits.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks! I'll bear this mind if I feel inspired to explore action RPGs in the future.

[bunny_m]

I know you loved Bastion as much as I did, are you aware of the fact that Supergiant Games have just released another game, very similar in the broad outlines, by the name of Transistor?

*checks Steam*

Drat, it's currently PC only, by the looks of it. I hope they are planning on porting it to Mac as well.

I was going to buy you a copy, because it is just as atmospheric, visually and musically gorgeous as Bastion is, only with more of a sorta art nouveau look and feel, for all that it's a very cyberpunk-y world.

And just like Bastion it throws you in the deep end of a plot, just after Everything Goes Wrong, and you have to piece things together as you go along, which is also something that isn't done nearly enough these days, IMO.

[thedeadparrot]

I also eagerly await the day that Transistor gets ported to more systems! I'm a sad Linux gamer at the moment, but even with some middling reviews, it looks like a lot of fun.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes I am aware and yes I hope they port it to Mac ;_;

[thedeadparrot]

I've been making my way through Papers Please, seeing if I can get different endings. Can definitely recommend it as it is both weirdly soothing and anxiety inducing all at the same time.

Based on your list, I'd probably also recommend Kentucky Route Zero as well, though -- like Broken Age -- it is sadly unfinished at this time.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks! I've been more in a casual mindless clicking mood lately but will definitely check Papers Please out when I'm feeling more thinky.

[pebblerocker]

Oh, and thank you for making me aware of the family sharing! I now have a much, much larger selection of games to play when I'm not busy in D2...

[alias_sqbr]

Yay! Happy to help :)