5 Unique Games Unlike Anything You’ve Played Before

Every once in a while, a new video game comes along and introduces a new mechanic or does something that makes it unique. Those are the games that are literal game-changers, offering something new for other developers to try and emulate. Then some games might use existing mechanics in new ways, telling stories or exploring worlds in ways nobody ever thought of before. Those are the truly unique games, and they’re a cut above the rest. We looked through a whole mess of titles and came up with five games that are truly unlike anything you’ve played before, as they’re different from all else, and arranged them in no particular order.

1) Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure game released on PC and pretty much every available console at the time. It’s unusual in that it follows a player character who explores a planetary system, but they are stuck within a fixed, 22-minute time loop. It resets after the sun goes supernova, destroying the star system. It takes repeated attempts to explore the environs and investigate alien ruins, learning enough of the system’s history to uncover the cause of the time loops and make genuine progress. Video games often let trial and error work by killing the player so they can progress, but they don’t often do so within a fixed time loop, making Outer Wilds an extraordinary title.

2) Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a 2013 puzzle simulation game with one of the most unusual premises. In the game, the player becomes an immigration officer at the border of the fictional dystopian state of Arstotzka. It’s your job to check the papers of travelers and weigh their worth against ever-changing rules and guides, allowing some to proceed, while rejecting others and detaining some with falsified information. Basically, it gives you absolute power to determine the fate of people attempting to flee a Communist state, which isn’t the typical premise of a video game. Still, it’s nonetheless incredibly well-written, balanced, and a great example of an empathy game.

3) Spiritfarer

In 2020’s Spiritfarer, which is a management sim and sandbox action game, the player takes control of Stella, a “Spiritfarer” whose job is to ferry spirits of the dead to the afterlife. She’s accompanied throughout her work by her cat, Daffodil. There are several quests given to Stella by the spirits she takes aboard her ship. It’s an interesting game that features a beautiful score, gorgeous artwork, and animation. There’s a great deal of emotional depth and empathy to the gameplay, and Spiritfarer was a hit, selling more than a million copies, which isn’t bad for an indie game.

4) Loop Hero

Loop Hero is a roguelike game where the player alters the world to aid a hero on an expedition as they travel upon a randomly generated path. They continue throughout a loop, and the player plays cards to benefit the hero as they progress. It’s one of the most unusual games of its type because the player doesn’t control the main character in any way — they make their way through the loop no matter what the player does. It’s up to the player to make their passage as painless as possible, but it’s not easy. It’s almost like playing as a Dungeon Master with players who forge onward regardless of what you say and do, which can happen in a D&D game.

5) Katamari Damacy 

Katamari Damacy is a 2004 action-puzzle game released for the PlayStation 2. It’s the first in a small franchise, and it’s one of the strangest games released on the console. In it, you play a tiny prince who sets out to rebuild the stars and the Moon after his father, the King of All Cosmos, accidentally destroys them all. To do so, you roll around, collecting increasingly larger objects. Basically, you have to roll around, picking up items until you have enough mass to become a star. The game was heavily influenced by Japanese culture and is incredibly surreal, but also weird in all the right ways.

What’s your favorite unique game? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

5 Best Games That Really Mess With Your Head