I notice that simple, easy games rarely stick with me. An easy game must be otherwise interesting in its art or story or mechanics; Okami was easy, but it had a great visual style and interesting gameplay ideas; most Final Fantasies offer diverse tactics and eye candy, even though they're relative pushovers. Now, Thief? Dark Souls? FTL? These are games that offer a challenge. I like digging into their meat (and, I guess, vice versa).

This is the thread to discuss these kinds of games!

I'm currently absorbed in Faster Than Light, and oh man am I loving it. I still haven't managed to beat the Rebel boss ship thing, after probably 50+ hours of playing it. Nevertheless, I'm having a good time trying to come up with different tactics and unlocking the other ships and alternate layouts.

I'm slightly annoyed that I've only unlocked two extra ships (Engi and Rock) and only one alternate layout (Engi), but that's a large part of what's keeping me hooked. If this were a simpler game, I'd probably be annoyed at the very limited content, too, but it's otherwise so engaging I can't really complain.

Of the three ships I have so far, Engi's my favourite.

Anyway, chat away!

I really enjoy difficult/challenging/punishing games. I haven't played a lot of them, and Dark Souls is probably the most recent of that kind that I played. I really enjoyed it, and it was definitely one of my favorite games of 2011.

The game made me rage lots of times though, especially when I kept losing 40k souls.

Volfied is pretty punishing.