Playframe doesn’t exclusively highlight small indie games, but they do cover a fair number of them alongside various bigger games.

Although, I guess it depends on how unknown a game has to be to “count” as “lesser-known”; I’ve certainly been introduced to games by Playframe, but, it’s not like they’re going onto Steam Roulette or anything.

Some examples of games that I personally hadn’t heard of until they showed up on Playframe include “Worldless”, “Cursed to Golf”, “Frog Detective”, “Say No! More!”, etc. I don’t think any of those are, like, deeply obscure or anything, but, they’re “smaller” indie games in my book.

Also, they’re just really rad people.

Yoko’s Island Express: Pinball Metroidvania!

Here’s a weird one I had a half-baked idea for: Tower Defense Metroidvania. The idea is that your an acolyte of a temple (or a mechanic in a space station, whatever), and there’s an armed group trying to force their way past the temple’s traps and defenses to get to the heart of the temple and steal the macguffin; that’s going on in a little horizontal track at the top of the screen, and meanwhile the rest of the screen is Metroidvania gameplay as you navigate the interior of the temple (or space station) to activate defenses, acquire magical relics, and eventually awaken the temple’s guardian spirit. You lose if the bad guys get to the heart of the temple, you win when you successfully gather everything you need to awaken the guardian. In the meantime, you have to decide when and where to spend resources (including time) shoring up the “normal” defenses (that delay the attackers) and when you need to just push onward to awaken the guardian.

Much easier, in fact; Eliza could pass the Turing test in 1966. Humans are incredibly eager to assess other things as being human or human-like.

He bought the domain back later, actually.

Dawncaster is excellent.