This might be a slightly unusual attempt at a prompt, but might draw some appealing unusual options.
The way it goes: Suggest games, ideally the kind that you believe would have relatively broad appeal. Don’t feel bad about downvotes, but do downvote any game that’s suggested if you have heard of it before (Perhaps, give some special treatment if it was literally your game of the year). This rule is meant to encourage people to post the indie darlings that took some unusual attention and discovery to be aware of and appreciate.
If possible, link to the Steam pages for the games in question, so that anyone interested can quickly take a look at screenshots and reviews. And, as a general tip, anything with over 1000 steam reviews probably doesn’t belong here. While I’d recommend that you only suggest one game per post, at the very most limit it to three.
If I am incorrect about downvotes being inconsequential account-wide, say so and it might be possible to work out a different system.
Aw yeah! This is where my knowledge of absurdly good but extremely niche games comes in. I think I’ll make multiple replies to this comment.
Chronosphere
Think enter the gungeon combined with superhot, but simplified a lot. It’s a turn based bullet hell, and an excellent arcade game playable in the browser.
EDIT: I’d also like to take this oppurtunity to talk about flashpoint. Flashpoint is a massive archive of basically every flash game and animation, and you can even play them again.
However, in addition to flash projects, I also noticed that flashpoint also archives HTML/HTML5 games… but only a subset of them. Although flashpoint’s primary purpose still is as a flash archive, it can also be used as a curated list of HTML5 games.
Here is a website that lets you search the flashpoint database
PhobosLabs
This site has a few high quality browser games. The one I come back to is X Type, a bullet hell shoot-em up that has ever expanding enemy ship sizes, and never ends. It gets hard fast.
I also like Xibalba, which is a Doom/Wolfenstein style game playable in the browser.
The creator also did a rewrite of quake in 13 kb of javascript
That guy’s seriously talented!
Among the things he’s made, he’s also made some really nice, easy to understand, high-speed compression formats (QOI/QOA), as well as a public domain mpeg decoder.
I’ve used all three for various projects and I’d highly recommend that most software developers check them out. If only for the learning experience.
Bonk.io
A simple but elegant io game. You are a ball, and you want to knock other balls to the ground.
One thing I like is that rounds in small, 4 person lobbies, rather than the massive worlds of other io games. Although you can’t really make friends, you can know personas, and it’s more personable.
Code Romantic
Learn the pleasures of loving another human, and the pain of being a programmer — at the same time!
Spent
A short questionaire game that demonstrates the difficulties of poverty.
This game hurts, got a bit of water in my eyes. Hit me in feeling bruh.
Keep Out!
A webgl/browser based 3d dungeon crawler with proceduraly generated levels.
Master Archer
Addictive arcade game about archery. Reminds me of flappy bird, not in the raw mechanics, but in the way they are both addicting in the same manner.
Ember Skull
Fun arcade bullet hell survivors (think vampire survivors) type game. Dodge bullets, and survive as long as you can.
Gridland
Also by double speak games, and open source gridland is a variant on the match 3 style. During the day phase, you accrue and store resources, and build stuff. During the night phase, you fight.
Cave Noire
Gameboy roguelike that is simple, but very elegant.
Sadly, since romhacking went down, I don’t think it’s possible to find the translation patch for it, unless they uploaded it to the internet archive.
Swarm Simulator
Open source idle game, playable in browser. No clicking, just watching numbers go up.
Mole Mania
Gameboy puzzle game. Very high quality.
Always love to see Mole Mania get some love. One of Shigeru Miyamoto’s earliest titles he worked on also
Touch Some Grass
A wonderful and life changing experience.
I like to link it without the ending title, like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1944240/ because it’s funnier when people can’t see the game title in the link.
The glitched attraction
A fnaf fangame that is close enough to feel like fnaf, but has a twist: Every single level also involves a puzzle. While trying to survive enemies fnaf style. Although I’ve never played this game, I LOVE watching it on Twitch. I like to call it “Human’s can’t multitask: The Game”.
Warfork
Fork of the older warsow, open source movement shooter. Think quake.
Sadly, it seems to be dead on steam.
Free Rider HD
Simple bike racing game, although the player is very fragile, which adds some difficulty. Playable in browser.
All the maps are user created content.
A Dark Room
Open source idle game, but not quite. It eventually expands beyond watching numbers go up, into a sort of roguelike, where you can wander the world and collect stuff. And die. Die a lot.
A Dark Room was where I first saw the @ symbol used to represent the player character.
this game is really fun
The Game
Absolutely obligatory, the simply named “The Game” is a work of art, and truly a life changing experience. You’ll never think about things the same after experiencing “The Game”.