16. Sheltered

Sheltered Trailer

Sheltered is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Your family had enough forewarning to build a basic underground shelter, but there was not enough time to make the shelter comfortable. So your job now is to make your family comfortable and to survive the apocalypse.

The gameplay is a fairly basic point and click system. You must also craft everything from your toilet to a stable for your optional horse. You can even craft a car or van which will make exploring the wastelands easier. Since you’ll need to explore them fairly extensively for materials and food.

But it is easy to spend hours developing your family and taking care of them throughout the apocalypse. You’ll need to raise all their stats—like charisma for trading with other survivors, or building ability to make things like that toilet you’ll be wanting—and take care of their physical and emotional needs.

Sheltered Gameplay

You can end up with a pretty swanky shelter

How you interact with other survivors is up to you.

15. Kingdom

Kingdom Trailer

You are the king or queen of your domain and you must build your kingdom from the ground up.

This means gathering subjects. Building walls that will, hopefully, withstand the night’s attacks. And if they don’t you’ll need to build up those walls again.

You’ll also need to think about archers, catapults, farms, everything a kingdom needs to survive. Controls are pretty easy to understand and the object of the game is pretty simple: build up your kingdom and fight off the enemies. But with assaults every night from critters  that look like something out of nightmares, it will not be easy to maintain your kingdom and you might find yourself rebuilding over and over again.

Kingdom Gameplay

You’ll need lots of farms to feed your kingdom.

Hold the monsters back little archers!

14. Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight Trailer

What would you do if your beloved was taken from you? Well, Shovel knight would set out on an epic quest to bring her back. He has to fight past the Enchantress and her knights of the Order of No Quarter to get to Shield Knight, his beloved, in the Tower.

Made in an 8-bit style, you must play as Shovel Knight. And there’s all sort of bad guys to go through before you get to your beloved. You’ll fight everything from little blob monsters to dragons to other knights on your way to take down the Enchantress and earn back your love.

The gameplay is very much like classic arcade games. There’s no fancy leveling system. But you do buy upgrades for your trusty shovel and your armor. So you need to carefully navigate each level getting as much money as you can if you want to be able to take down the Enchantress.

Shovel Knight Gameplay

It’s rainin’ diamonds

Bubbles are better than fire, I suppose…

13. Oxenfree

Oxenfree Trailer

So Oxenfree is all about a group of high school seniors taking a trip together. It’s a tradition at their high school to go to this island every year. It’s supposed to be some big hang out at the beach and all fun and games. Problem is it doesn’t end up that way. Alex brings along a radio to test out a local theory: you can hear radio stations that don’t exist on the island. But when she starts playing with it everything goes haywire and the group is separated.

Sounds like the beginning of a great horror movie to me. And it is the beginning of a great horror game. Your character, Alex, brought along two things to this party: a radio and her step-brother, Jonas. The radio ends up being pretty important.

You’ll need to use its frequencies to open up portals to another dimension. And yes, that is as creepy as it sounds. But if you don’t use the radio, it’s game over.

You’ll need to navigate your surroundings and figure out how to use that radio to solve the mysteries of this place and hopefully make it out alive.

Oxenfree Gameplay

Maybe some of this equipment will help…

How you react to things is up to you

12. Rogue Legacy

Rogue Legacy Trailer

This game follows one line of knights throughout the generations. And this line of knights is all about exploring dungeons and getting fortunes. One problem though: each generation of knight has some… difficulties. Some are color blind, some have flatulence, some are near sighted, and many more oddities. These problems make each dungeon a little more challenging in different kinds of ways.

How do you progress through generations of knights? Each time you die you must select an heir to continue your adventures. And each heir has a different problem, so don’t get used to playing with difficulty for too long. But because they’re your heir, you never start from zero. They inherit some of your skills and weapons, so they may be different. But they aren’t level 1.

The weapons you use are swords, shields, scythes, maces, and so on. Enemies will test your mettle in various ways. Some will hide in portraits. Others will charge at you haphazardly. The enemies are as different as you are. Anything from giant flaming flying skulls to rabid wolves await you in your travels.

And bosses are even more challenging. They usually come with a set of minions that do their bidding while you battle. And they are big and have quite a bit of health for you to whittle away when you can get hits in between their powerful attacks.

Rogue Legacy Gameplay

That’s a big angry skull…

You don’t regen you name your heir