10 Hidden Gaming Gems From 2016 That You Must Play

Gaming is currently suffering its worst crisis in years: there are too many great titles to play. Every gamer worth their salt has to get their hands on blockbusting, tech-showcasing 'must plays' like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Dishonored 2 and DOOM. Aside from all that, you've also got to make time for the endlessly entertaining multiplayer games like Overwatch, The Division and Destiny that hoover up hundreds of hours of free time. After grinding through all that gaming loveliness, though, how much free time can anyone possibly have left? Something's got to give, and too often it's the less marketed, more experimental and less well-known games that get overlooked. It's a shame, but it's the nature of the industry and each and every year, numerous games fly under the radar when often, they're far better than what's currently sitting in your console. So, with that in mind, here are 10 titles from 2016 that unjustly fell through the cracks. Thumper (Steam, PS4, PSVR) Described by developers Drool as "rhythm violence," Thumper is the long lost mutant offspring of the Harmonix PlayStation 2 classics Frequency and Amplitude. But while those games reveled in the joy of creating music, Thumper revels in being aggressive, oppressive and just plain bonkers. You hurtle through psychedelic neon tubes at breakneck speed, listening to music that sounds like you're trapped in a trash can that someone's bashing in with a baseball bat. Ten minutes in and your brain is leaking out your ears. Half an hour and you're experiencing Timothy Leary-esque enlightenment. Once I played it for an hour and woke up naked in Hyde Park, covered in someone (something?) else's blood. Terrifyingly, this nightmare is also available on PSVR - may God have mercy on the souls that load it up. Virginia (Steam, PS4, Xbox One) I'm a sucker for a bizarre and satisfying mini-narrative; something Virginia doles out in spades. Taking obvious inspiration from Twin Peaks, Virginia follows rookie FBI Agent Anne Tarver as she investigates the disappearance of a young boy. Developers Variable State set out to explore using cinematic editing during gameplay, making for an experience and atmosphere that's like little else out there. Dreamy, disconnected and gently surreal, its unique style led to a lot of (in my view) unfair criticism for removing player control. Similarly, though it wears the clothes of the adventure genre, there's precious few puzzles to solve - your interactions limited to actions like opening doors, picking up and examining objects or pulling loose boards away. But Virginia has such a tight focus on its narrative and cool aesthetic that picking holes in the gameplay feels like missing the point. After all, if you can't experiment with form and style in a budget indie game, when can you? Oxenfree (Steam, Xbox One, PS4) If you liked Life is Strange, you'll like this. A 2.5D adventure game following a bunch of teenagers unearthing the mysteries of an abandoned island, Oxenfree is big on style, soundtrack and the simple humanity of its characters. It's sadly rare to find games with It's sadly rare to find games with genuinely good writing, but Oxenfree never devolves into 'yer typical video game fare of exposition filled information dumps and cardboard characterization. With frequent nods to Spielberg and John Hughes, the storybook style quickly envelopes you as you slowlu unravel a series of mysterious radio transmissions and eerie ruins. Also, to my personal delight, you can choose to complete this (ordinarily dialogue filled) game without your character ever saying a word, the NPCs growing increasingly frustrated and weirded out by your unexplained silence (thus unlocking the 'Strong, Silent Type' achievement). Genital Jousting (Steam) Genital Jousting is a local multiplayer game where each player controls a primary colored dick n' balls that schlicks around the screen leaving a slug-like trail behind it. Seriously, we're not making this up. The aim is to penetrate the other player's balls, creating a conga-line of conjoined phalluses and be the last cock standing. It's like a Mario Party mini-game, if Mario Party were designed by Beavis and Butthead. It is, however, absolutely hilarious to whip out at parties and watch people stare at it in disbelief that someone would develop and release such a barmy game. That it's addictive, looks great and has a wicked sense of humor ("Press Up to Consent") to boot are simply the cherries on top of this rather distractingly creamy cake. Deus Ex GO (IOS, Android) Quietly accompanying Square Enix's new releases are the 'GO' series of puzzle games. Previous entries have been the equally great Hitman GO and Lara Croft GO. Now, joining them in time for the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided comes Deus Ex GO. For those not in the know, these games boil down the gameplay of their series to a brilliantly responsive board game style. Augmented super-spy Adam Jensen is still infiltrating military bases, offices and secret installations, but here the game ticks to a clockwork beat, each level a precision engineered tangle of patrolling guards, hackable computers and turrets to be turned on your enemies. It's also downright beautiful, with great sound design and impressively detailed animations. Even better, this is the first entry in the GO series that comes with a level designer, the cream of the community crop regularly arriving on your device. Both the previous GO games have eventually turned up on PC and consoles as well, so expect a port in early 2017. The Turing Test (Steam, Xbox One) With more than a whiff of both Portal and The Talos Principle to it, The Turing Test looks a little derivative at first glance. You play Ava Turing (okay, the name is slightly on the nose), awoken from cryosleep by an artificial intelligence that tells her her crewmates are in danger and she must act fast to save them. To do this, she must solve a series of puzzle rooms utilizing various gadgets. Each room forces you to utilize a new set of skills, even as you ponder the philosophical conundrum of artificial intelligence vs. human consciousness. Admittedly, Portal did this kind of stuff about as well as it's possible to do a decade ago, but The Turing Test is not without its own charms. There's an intelligence and warmth in the design, from the faux-Rembrandts hanging on the walls to the slow trickle of narrative information as you realize that *shock* the AI might not be so trustworthy. It's not the hardest puzzle game in the world, nor is it the most original, but it's a satisfying, compact gaming experience that deserves more attention than it got. Downwell (iOS, Steam, Android, PS4, PSVita) Some games do one thing to perfection. Downwell is one of them - the best game about falling down a well that has ever and possibly will ever be made. Presented in a palette of just black, white and red, the Sinclair Spectrum inspired graphics work gangbusters in creating a simple, tricky and endlessly addictive experience as you see how far down the well you can get. The epitome of 'just one more go' game design, this is fast, furious and intense stuff. After you've mastered the simple game mechanics, everything becomes an instinctive blur as you jet-boot between platforms, dispatch the various monsters lurking within the well and travel ever deeper underground. With the well procedurally generated as you travel through it, no two descents are same. Some games use this as a crutch to avoid the strenuous process of actually designing their levels, but Downwell's environments are distinctive and logically constructed, each presenting their own individual challenges and bonuses. Besides, the pared down retro graphics leave ample space for the player's imagination to fill in the gaps. There have been few more joyous gaming experiences this year than discovering a cave with a new unique weapon in it in Downwell. The Flame In The Flood (Steam, Xbox One) Set in a beaten-up, soggy post-apocalyptic American South, The Flame in the Flood is a roguelike survival game that tasks players with surviving a raft journey down a raging river. Humanity is clinging onto the edge by its fingertips, leaving behind a dangerous work of hungry wild animals and warped survivors. Somewhat reminiscent of similarly damp flood movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild, we're presented by a warped yet eerily plausible world gone mad. It's despondent stuff, as the effects of Hurricane Katrina encompassed states rather than cities, each turn of the river bringing fresh new nightmares and troubles. In terms of gameplay, you have to manage your hunger, thirst, temperature and need to sleep - not to mention surviving the horrors the river throws at you. A strikingly pretty game - deep somnolent blues punctuated by explosions of orange - The Flame in the Flood demands your attention, too. The only flies in the ointment are an awkward inventory system and some iffy control decisions, but the overall game feels like little else out there. Samorost 3 (Steam, iOS, Android) Some games blow your mind, some thrill you to bits, some have you hurling the controller in frustration. But some give you a warm fuzzy feeling right down to your toes. Amanita Design, a Czech game studio, have spent the last decade or so turning out a series of beautifully chilled out adventure games that feel like playing through an indie animated short. I first came across the studio in Botanicula, arriving in a bundle of indie games, and its organic, distinctly Eastern European stylings stood out by a mile in a sea of boringly ironic snarky adventure fare. This latest installment (and the first in HD), Samorost 3 follows "a curious space gnome who uses the powers of a magic flute to travel across the cosmos in search of its mysterious origins." So, not exactly Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare then. What you get instead is a whimsical, imaginative and pretty as hell puzzle game that surpasses all else Amanita Design have done. The first in the series is free to play on the developer's website, so settle back with your favorite relaxant and give it a whirl. You'll thank us later. ABZÛ (Steam, PS4, Xbox One) There are few more promising marketing taglines than "from the art director of Journey." ABZÛ lives up to that promise though, as it's a stunning diving adventure game that tasks players with exploring an underwater world populated by a variety of aquatic animals. From Ecco the Dolphin to this year's Steam Greenlight hit Subnautica, I've always been a sucker for exploring the deep sea in games, and this is hands-down one of the best yet. Granted, it's not the longest gaming experience out there, and it's probably not going to tax your button-bashing skills, either. What it will do, is dazzle and leave you starry eyed with wonder as it serves up endless indelible images, from the sunlight passing through a kelp forest to bioluminescent neon light shows far underwater. ABZÛ is so good that it's invaded my dreams, and will no doubt do the same to you as well once you've played it.