Staff – May 7, 2019 at 12:10 PM
Often, the job of a streamer is to react to the game du jour, even when it seems like an entire platform is enthralled by a particular title or trend. But sometimes streamers also help bring hidden gems to light, using their extensive on-air time to venture off the beaten path.
With such a rich and varied catalog of games to choose from, it can be difficult to find every game worth playing. It can be helpful to watch someone spend some serious time with a little-known or forgotten title in order to help us decide if it should go on our wishlist or not.
Luckily, streamers FhaeLin, Sacriel, and Bennyfits have come to the rescue. Each of them selected a game that they felt was either underrated or deserving of some more love. Read what they have to say, and if any stand out to you, bookmark them for the next time you’re looking for something new to play!
Sacriel - RimWorld
Sacriel is a partnered Twitch streamer who specializes in competitive shooters like Apex Legends, PUBG, and DayZ. He also streams strategy games like Anno 1800 and has participated in a number of prestigious competitions like Twitch Rivals and the 2018 PUBG Global Invitational Charity Showdown.
One of my favourite games to stream when I can't figure out what mainstream game I want to play is RimWorld. It's an amazing colony simulation game with incredible depth and replayability.
The game starts with a small handful of hopeful colonists. As a player, you need to construct buildings, plant crops, research new technology and help the colonists survive. Threats include hunger, heat, cold, enemy raiders, cyborgs from space, wildlife, illness, and much more!
The default depth of the game is astonishing, but the game is also fully moddable via the Steam workshop, which means you can tailor your gameplay to whatever you feel like playing. There is even a multiplayer mode out there, which is incredibly fun!
FhaeLin - Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
FhaeLin is a partnered Twitch variety streamer who also does voice acting work. In addition to streaming long, multi-session single-player experiences, she also occasionally streams smaller and lesser-known games in their entirety over the course of a single stream.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a game that I certainly don't hear enough people talk about. While it came out back in 2013, it holds a powerful narrative that is truly beautiful and heart-wrenching, while also providing fun puzzle mechanics between the two protagonists. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons doesn't rely on an understandable verbal communication but instead utilizes the power of physical action and inference to tell a sincerely engaging story.
Having an older brother myself, this game was a particularly emotional journey for me because it really made me evaluate our individual strengths and weaknesses and how we have used them in the past to work through certain events. I recommend Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons to anyone looking to play a game that's perfect for a rainy night or a time that you'd really like to partake in a sincerely beautiful story.
Bennyfits - No Man’s Sky: NEXT
Bennyfits is a partnered Twitch streamer who is also a puppet. You read that correctly — he’s a puppet who demonstrates quite a lot of skill when streaming games like Warframe or Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. And no, we don’t quite know how he does it.
This game was hyped to the sky, but when it wasn’t everything we expected, it was torn down. The monument we erected to its perceived failure became the landmark we pointed to whenever a game was released and didn’t live up to our expectations.
Even in the beginning, however, I saw potential in this game and enjoyed some things about it — the sort of quiet autonomy it gave me, the ability to decide where I could and would go. Now, nearly three years later, the team at Hello Games has not been sleeping or resting on what success they did have. They’ve been quietly working on the game and making it better.
No Man’s Sky: NEXT had me come back to the game and explore it even more. I played through the Artemis storyline and it is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful narrative experiences I have ever had in a game. It did not hold my hand with cutscenes or writing, and it said so much without saying much at all.
