Unique PC Games

[Nostradamus]

I'm starting this thread to share knowledge about unique PC Games. To let each other know of something they nver thought had existed as a game.
What do I mean unique?  PC Games that do not belong to any known genre, or that they are unique in their genre, games that have an original and unique concept that there are no other games like it. I do not mean one thing in the game is unique, I mean the game's concept itself is unique. Now I do NOT mean Adventure games here, so please don't post them. And I know there are some old games that fit this description (example: alter ego male\female) but PLEASE keep it to games from the year 2000 - present including games yet to be released.

My contributions:

Ship Simulator 2006 and Virtual Sailor: games that present an accurate simluation of driving differnet kinds of ships in differnet surrondings. Sure, there have been many boat\shi[ driving arcade games, but those are simulators - the weather effects the ship realistically, the steering is realistic (if you have a big cargo ship or a huge Titanic style passenger ship it will be long, slow and hard to turn it etc). Ship Simulator is mission based and Virtual Sailor is a more open sailing game.

New Star Soccer 3: A unique soccer career game in which you play only ONE player on the field out of the 11 in it. The graphics are primitive for the time kinda like Striker 95 style but the uniqueness of player with one player makes it worthwhile.

The Movies: The game which puts you in charge of a movie studio creating your movies, managing the actors etc.

Spore: A game yet to be released, to be released sometime in 2007 in which you play the evolution of a species from being a single cell organism throguh evolution into an intelligent species until the stage where it achieves space travel. It combines 6 different styles\genres that change as your specie evolute.

Spore is, at first glance, a "teleological evolution" game or god game: the player molds and guides a species across many generations, growing it up from simple prokaryotic microbiota into a more complex animal, until the species becomes intelligent. At this point the player begins molding and guiding this species' society, progressing towards a spacefaring civilization. Spore's main innovation is the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-endedness. Wright said "I didn't want to make players feel like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins. I wanted them to be like George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien."
Spore will be a simulation that "ranges from the cellular level to the galactic level". It will consist of several long phases, each with its own style of play. In his Game Developers Conference speech, Will Wright likened the style of game-play of each phase to an existing game:

   1. Tide Pool Phase, similar to Pac-Man
   2. Creature Phase, Diablo
   3. Tribal Phase, Populous
   4. City Phase, SimCity
   5. Civilization Phase, Risk and Civilization
   6. Space Phase (a.k.a. UFO stage or Invasion), with some elements reminiscent of Destroy All Humans!, and later, sandbox gameplay.

Each phase of the game determines the starting point of the next phase. In the Game Developers Conference presentation, the creature that Will Wright was presenting during the creature phase was based on his earlier cell creature (in having three legs, a tail, eyes and mouth in roughly the same positions) that he had evolved through gameplay. He also mentioned that how each phase is played develops the creature's personality, referring to whether the creatures would be logical or emotional, peaceful or violent, among other attributes.

[DGMacphee]

I thought The Fool's Errand was pretty unique. In a way, it was the genesis for a lot of narrative based puzzle games like The 7th Guest. The difference is that The Fool's Errand had a bit more substance to it while The 7th Guest was mostly atmospheric with very limited substance.

[lo_res_man]

Though there are scores of games like it now (and most of them suck) Myst, at the time, was awe inspiring. Put yourself in the seat of the people playing it when it came out, it was different it was beautiful, plus its enigmatic. Even today, though we can use more polygons, some of the screens still are some the nicest pieces of 3d art I have ever seen.

[Nikolas]

Since we're discussing uniqueness it would be a shame not to promote Vince XII game:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=815

What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed.



A single puzzle game, rather difficult to solve, four different endings, and dual story gameplay and music... Rather difficult to play, even more difficult to concieve...

[Radiant]

META!

(sorry, couldn't resist).

Lemmings was very unique when it came out, and has few clones to my knowledge. The Sims is still rather unique.

Heaven and Earth is a very original puzzler, as is Marble Drop (I think that's what it was called).

In the genre of adventure games, Bureaucracy is rather unique in its premise (you just moved to a new city and have to convince the bank of your new address without raising your blood pressure overly much...)

And, although it's not a PC game, I'd recommend E.V.O. to everyone. You get to evolve yourself from fish to dinosaur to mammal, and you get to pick your own scales/horns/fur/etc.

[Nostradamus]

I don't mean to disencourage anyone, but you're kinda ignoring what I asked for. You gave examples which were unique ONCE but now they have sequels and similiar games. You gave games before the year 2000, you gave mostly adventure games. Originality in adventure games has already been discussed in a previous thread.

[m0ds]

Pretty hard, I can't really think of many recent innovative games.

The Movies: The game which puts you in charge of a movie studio creating your movies, managing the actors etc.

Wasn't Stuntman similar to that? I never played it, but I thought it worked along the same principles. The Movies is kind of fun for consumers I guess.

Spore also looks interesting, I remember reading about it. It's certainly getting quite a lot of hype.

I know you said no adventure games, but Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon was a welcome and unique change to the majority of adventures we know and love. Not that it quite worked out, though :p

There was a game reviewed in a magazine I read on the way back from Mittens, I really can't remember its name, but it's another Army game, only this time I think the majority of it works through "speaking" to your co-player. I can't remember the details, if I knew the name I'd be able to find out again what made it innovative, but they were boasting "This has never really worked well in previous games". I'm sure it was the fact you had to shout commands. Anyway, someone else will remember its name.

Can't add much else to this though, unique games to me were pre-2000.

[lo_res_man]

Ed the feel good rabbit

[ManicMatt]

The Movies: The game which puts you in charge of a movie studio creating your movies, managing the actors etc.

Wasn't Stuntman similar to that? I never played it, but I thought it worked along the same principles.

Nothing like each other, actually. Stuntman was just basically following the directors commands to stuntdrive for a film. (ie steer left, drive off ramp, hit the glass plane those two men are holding up etc) No creativity. It was original though, albeit frustrating to the extreme. The Movies is a fun but limited movie maker with sim like puppets, with a pointless theme park style strategy element added to it.

it's another Army game, only this time I think the majority of it works through "speaking" to your co-player.

Sounds like the forthcoming "Army of Two", but that hasn't been released yet to my knowledge. (I am from UK, so..)

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Nostradamus, originality and "unique" are not necessarily synonims in these discussions, so this may not be a bad place for some adventures.

Bad Mojo - unique in concept, play as a cockroach.

The Neverhood - graphically unique, claymation.

The Dark Eye - unique by taking 3 classic Poe tales and merging them to make more of an interactive film/story than a game.

Gish - unique gampleay within the basic "platformer" scenario, controlling a ball of tar and playing around with physics.

In Memoriam - unique attempt at ultimate immersion.

Beyond Good and Evil - unique sucessful blend of many different game genres.

Loom - unique gameplay for an adventure game.

Fahrenheit - not played it, but from what I heard, same as above.

And of course:

http://www.the-underdogs.info/theme.php?id=27

EDIT - Plus 3 freeware games:

"Cloud" (or whatever it's called)

That game I don't really remember the name of in which you were an active bystander in a couple's relationship, supposed to have an insane amount of A.I.

That game I can't remember the name of either, which is a horror game and was posted here awhile back and is an adventure game with an impressive use of physics (want to open a door? Click on it and drag it sideways)

[fred]

First of all, great topic!

Maybe also take a look at the Game Innovation Database

The goal of the GIDb is to classify and record every innovation in the entire history of computer and videogames. Because we could never complete this daunting task alone, we have made the GIDb an open wiki, allowing anyone to easily add innovation entries for the benefit of everyone who cares about the history, study, and practice of game innovation.

I also agree with Rui that 'unique' is a difficult category. Can't think of any entirely unique games actually. Most of them seem to rely on at least some previously achieved design consensus. So I'll be quite content with 'innovation' or 'originality'.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Fahrenheit - not played it, but from what I heard, same as above.

...yeah.

[Scummbuddy]

That's a legitimate sexual technique strategy in games, and I'd like to think, in life.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Well, the unique bit isn't the interface itself, of course, it's the way it was used. Claymation in itself isn't unique, but in a computer game, it is. Loom consisted of walking around and casting spells - not new since the Enchanter trilogy, but the musical twist they gave it and the fact that in the process they did away with inventory and detailed object interactions made it rather unique. In Memoriam is mostly a bunch of flash games, and how is that unique?

It's mostly the whole that can be unique. Break down the parts and very often you have something not so remarkable.

[m0ds]

Matt, yep that's the one - Army of Two, looks pretty cool! It was featured in the same issue you were of PS3 or whatever that mag was called

[ManicMatt]

Oh i see! hehe! Yeah that wasn't a review, so I wasn't sure if you meant that game!

It's PSM3, and my review of Suikoden V will be in the next issue, if not, the issue after that, as they told me it will be featured!

Yes I know, I'm in there every other issue! If Bath was a place I could live in, I'd apply for a job there, seriously.

[Ghost]

FLOW is quite unique IMO: It's both a concept for gameplay and a game that implements the concept of "sub-conscious game difficulty settings". Worth a look. Btw, "Cloud" was written by the same designer, but I never got to like it as much.

Ah, summary: In flOw you play a small organism. All you do is eating to grow up. You can eat other organisms to grow stronger, bigger, more agile, and you eat "ups" and "downs" to switch levels (go deeper into an ocean). The deeper you go, the larger and more complex other organisms are, often requiring you to eat target cells out of their body before you can consume them. At the deepest point you meet a fully evolved version of yourself, and once that creature is eaten, you become the next "boss" and start the game anew, this time as a different organism.
It's addictive despite the simple gameplay... couldn't say why, but it is,

[Jaws]

Reactor 09 has gotto be pretty unique. A game with endings based on how you treat your 'sidekick'

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

"sub-conscious game difficulty settings".

That sounds very interesting. Tell us more.

[Buckethead]

Legend of Zelda- The twilight princes will sure be unique like all other zelda games