Top 50 Awesome Games You Probably Missed In 2017

With so many great video game releases this year, there’s no way that any one person could have kept track of them all, let alone play them. Lucky for you, the hive mind here at Gaming Central have been able to dig through most of the good video games that came out this year, and put together a list. So here are the top 50 awesome games you probably missed in 2017.

Elex (Please Play This Game)

ELEX is a handcrafted action role-playing experience from the award-winning creators of the Gothic series, set in a brand new post-apocalyptic Science Fantasy universe that puts players into a huge seamless game world full of original characters, mutated creatures, deep moral choices and powerful action.

Nidhogg 2 (The Real Game Of The Year 2017)

The rules are simple. Reach the other side and kill anyone that stands in your way. Deftly parry and rend their throats, riddle their bowels with arrows, or squish their brains between your toes. The wurm cares not for chivalry.

Serial Cleaner

You are a professional cleaner. Your job is to clean up murder scenes by disposing of bodies, cleaning up blood stains and hiding incriminating evidence. A good cleaner never gets caught so you have to make sure you get in, clean up and get out without leaving a trace of evidence for the police to find.

Echo

After a century in stasis the girl En arrives at her destination: A Palace out of legend, a marvel of the old civilization eons gone, still awaiting its first human occupants. Out here, using forgotten technologies, she hopes to bring back a life that shouldn’t have been lost. But nothing could prepare her for what she’ll face in the ancient halls below.

Battle Chasers: NightWar

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is an RPG inspired by the classic console greats, featuring deep dungeon diving, turn-based combat presented in a classic JRPG format, and a rich story driven by exploration of the world.

What Remains Of Edith Finch

As Edith, you’ll explore the colossal Finch house, searching for stories as she explores her family history and tries to figure out why she’s the last one in her family left alive. Each story you find lets you experience the life of a new family member on the day of their death, with stories ranging from the distant past to the present day.

Flinthook

Flinthook is a fast action-platformer with “roguelike” elements. Become space’s greatest pirate with your hookshot, pistol and slowmo powers!

Little Nightmares

Immerse yourself in Little Nightmares, a dark whimsical tale that will confront you with your childhood fears! Help Six escape The Maw – a vast, mysterious vessel inhabited by corrupted souls looking for their next meal. As you progress on your journey, explore the most disturbing dollhouse offering a prison to escape from and a playground full of secrets to discover. Reconnect with your inner child to unleash your imagination and find the way out!

Tumbleseed

TumbleSeed is a deceptively deep roguelike about balancing a seed up a dangerous and ever-changing mountain.

Tokyo 42

Tokyo 42 is a hyper-stylish isometric open-world shooter. Framed for a murder you didn’t commit, you’ll delve into a world of assassins, deadly corporate intrigue and…tactical cats.

Dead Cells

You grew up with the roguelikes, witnessed the rise of the roguelites and even the birth of the roguelite-lites? We’d now like to present for your consideration our RogueVania, the illegitimate child of a modern Roguelite (Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Spelunky, etc.) and an old-school MetroidVania (Castlevania: SotN and its ilk).

Rime

A land of discovery stretches out before you. Explore the beautiful yet rugged world of RiME, a single-player puzzle adventure. In RiME, you play as a young boy who has awakened on a mysterious island after a torrential storm. You see wild animals, long-forgotten ruins and a massive tower that beckons you to come closer. Armed with your wits and a will to overcome—and the guidance of a helpful fox—you must explore the enigmatic island, reach the tower’s peak, and unlock its closely guarded secrets.

Cryptark

Cryptark is a 2D roguelike shooter that challenges players with boarding and neutralizing procedurally generated alien starships to earn income for their Privateering enterprise. Purchase improved equipment and weapons to tackle more dangerous targets, but be cautious as failure will result in a loss of investment and profit. The decaying alien arks will defend themselves from intruders with a wide arsenal of cyborg monstrosities, robotics, and security systems, all obstacles that must be surpassed to achieve victory, the destruction of the ship’s central System Core.

Nex Machina

Nex Machina is an intense arcade style twin-stick shooter from Housemarque. Taking hints from both Robotron and Smash TV, Nex Machina focuses on pure action, voxel destruction and competition in the distant, cablepunk themed future.

Get Even

Under the guidance of his anonymous captor, ‘Red’, Black embarks on a form of treatment, facilitated by a unique technology – a headset that allows the user to relive their memories and experience them again in the present.

Observer

What would you do if your fears were hacked? >observer_ is a cyberpunk horror game from Bloober Team, the creators of Layers of Fear. Discover a dark cyberpunk world beset by plagues, war and squalor. Play as the new front line of neural police as you hack into the jagged minds of the insane.

The Long Dark

Bright lights flare across the night sky. The wind rages outside the thin walls of your wooden cabin. A wolf howls in the distance. You look at the meagre supplies in your pack, and wish for the days before the power mysteriously went out. How much longer will you survive?

West Of Loathing

Say howdy to West of Loathing — a single-player slapstick comedy adventure role-playing game set in the wild west of the Kingdom of Loathing universe. Traverse snake-infested gulches, punch skeletons wearing cowboy hats, grapple with demon cows, and investigate a wide variety of disgusting spittoons.

Blood Bowl 2

Blood Bowl 2 smashes Warhammer and American football together, in an explosive cocktail of turn-based strategy, humour and brutality, adapted from Games Workshop’s famous boardgame.

Cogmind

Experience sci-fi tactical combat and exploration in a procedural world that combines traditional roguelikes with an immersive modern interface like no other. Build yourself from components found or salvaged from other robots. Attach power sources, propulsion units, utilities, and weapons to become a slow tank bristling with weapons, or a fast-moving flier zipping past enemies before they even have time to react, or a stealthy sword-wielding assassin/hacker, or whatever else you can come up with from the salvage you find. The situation can quickly change as you lose components and rebuild yourself from enemy remains. You are the Cogmind. Discover what that means as you explore a living, breathing world ruled by robots.

Steamworld Dig 2

SteamWorld Dig 2 takes you on a platform mining adventure forged in Metroidvania flames. When an old trading town is struck by mysterious earthquakes, it’s up to a lone steambot and her unlikely companion to uncover what trembling terrors lie beneath.

Cosmic Star Heroine

Alyssa L’Salle was one of the top secret agents at the Agency of Peace & Intelligence on the Planet Araenu. But when she uncovers a horrible conspiracy, she has to go rogue in order to save the day! Can Alyssa save the galaxy when everyone (and everything) is out to stop her!

Night In The Woods

College dropout Mae Borowski returns home to the crumbling former mining town of Possum Springs seeking to resume her aimless former life and reconnect with the friends she left behind. But things aren’t the same. Home seems different now and her friends have grown and changed. Leaves are falling and the wind is growing colder. Strange things are happening as the light fades.

Pyre

Pyre is a party-based RPG in which you lead a band of exiles to freedom through ancient competitions spread across a vast, mystical purgatory. Who shall return to glory, and who shall remain in exile to the end of their days?

Thimbleweed Park

A haunted hotel, an abandoned circus, a burnt-out pillow factory, a dead body pixelating under the bridge, toilets that run on vacuum tubes… you’ve never visited a place like this before.

Wulverblade

Help Britannia defeat the Romans in Wulverblade – a hardcore side-scrolling beat ’em up inspired by classics such as Golden Axe, Sengoku, and Knights of the Round! Experience a historically inspired storyline across eight campaign levels – or test your skills in the game’s deadly arenas. Go it alone or team up with a friend in local two-player co-op. It’s time to show the Ninth Legion what you’re made of!

The Sexy Brutale

All the guests are being murdered — horribly! — at this extravagant masquerade party set all across the sprawling and bizarre Sexy Brutale casino mansion. Then at midnight, the clock re-winds and the grisly pantomime all plays out again in exactly the same way.

Songbringer

Songbringer is a procedurally-generated scifi action RPG with swords, secrets, dungeons, bosses and stuff.

Expeditions: Viking

Get ready for an adventure in history! Logic Artists, the makers of Expeditions: Conquistador, are pleased to bring you Expeditions: Viking.

Golf Story

Sidebar Games is excited to announce Golf Story for Nintendo Switch. Play the story of a golfer, forced to give up all that he holds dear for one final shot at accomplishing his dream. But all is not so simple in the world of golf. To best today’s players you have to be able to keep up with them not just on the course, but also off it.

Everybody’s Golf

Ready for a round of everybody’s favourite golf series? Step on to the fairway for a unique blend of deep golf mechanics and quirky visual style that the beloved franchise is known for. Entering the clubhouse is a variety of new features, including the chance to create and customise your own golfer, with an assortment of tasks to play and level up their skills with.

Endless Space 2

Your story unfolds in a galaxy that was first colonized by God-like beings known as the “Endless”, who rose and fell eons ago. All that remains of them are mystical ruins, powerful artifacts, and a strange, near-magical substance known as Dust.

Tacoma

Tacoma is a narrative adventure set aboard a high-tech space station in the year 2088. As you go about your mission, you’ll explore every detail of how the station’s crew lived and worked, finding the clues that add up to a gripping story of trust, fear, and resolve in the face of disaster.

Flame In The Flood

A rogue-lite river journey through the backwaters of a forgotten post-societal America. Forage, craft, evade predators.

Heat Signature

Heat Signature is a game from the developers of Gunpoint where you break into spaceships, make terrible mistakes, and think of clever ways out of them. You take a mission, fly to the target ship, sneak inside, and make clever use of your gadgets to distract, ambush and take out the crew.

Ruiner

RUINER is a brutal action shooter set in the year 2091 in the cyber metropolis Rengkok. A wired psychopath lashes out against a corrupt system to uncover the truth and retrieve his kidnapped brother under the guidance of a secretive hacker friend. Combine preternatural reflexes, augmented tools, and the arsenal of fallen foes to tear down and dismantle the corporate titans of virtuality dealers at HEAVEN.

Absolver

In the ruins of the fallen Adal Empire, you awaken with a mysterious mask on your face, and faint recollections of an esoteric ceremony. Freeing you from hunger, thirst, and even death, the mask is the creation of the Guides, the rulers of these lands, who have placed you here to determine whether you are worthy of becoming part of the elite corps of Absolvers. As you wander these forsaken lands, encountering other Prospects like you, you will learn new combat styles, acquire weapons, gear and armor, and build a team of warriors with whom to fight side by side in Arenas of combat.

Hob

From the team that brought you Torchlight and Torchlight II comes Hob: a vibrant, suspenseful action-adventure game set on a stunning and brutal world in disarray. As players delve into the mysteries around them, they discover a planet in peril. Can it be mended, or will the world fall further into chaos?

The Mummy: Demastered

A powerful ancient evil has arisen, and the war to save humanity has begun! The Mummy Demastered throws you into a 16-bit-inspired battle against the undead in a 2D, nonlinear, action-packed adventure. As an elite agent in the monster-hunting Prodigium organization, you must use a variety of weapons, upgrades, and mysterious artifacts to defend mankind against the supernatural hordes of Princess Ahmanet. Your Prodigium unit is already on the scene, but HQ lost contact with them hours ago. Only by exploring tombs, forests, abandoned tunnels, and the cursed streets of London will you discover the fate of your allies. But beware – Ahmanet commands legions of undead, insects, plague-ridden vermin, and worse! If you’re not careful, you’ll be the next soul in her army.

Sundered

Sundered is a horrifying fight for survival and sanity, a hand­-drawn epic from the ​creators of ​​Jotun. It is a replayable metroidvania where you resist or embrace ancient eldritch powers. You play Eshe, a wanderer in a ruined world, trapped in ever-­changing caverns filled with hordes of terrifying enemies. Harness the power of corrupted relics to defeat gigantic bosses, at the cost of your humanity. Resist or embrace.

Yonder: The Cloudcatcher Chronicles

Yonder is set on the vast island of Gemea, a lush frontier with eight distinct environments ranging from tropical beaches to snow-capped summits. Each location has its own flora and fauna, along with changing seasons and a day-night cycle. Gemea, once a paradise, still maintains the appearance of one, yet an evil murk has enshrouded the land and its people in despair.

Black The Fall

After decades of toil, an old machinist plots his escape from the oppressive grasp of the Communist regime. Through hidden passages, shadow and grief, he struggles. Ingenuity, reflexes and deception are his tools. Along the road, he befriends the most unlikely creature, an abandoned little robot. Could they escape this bleak and deadly world, together?

Mr. Shifty

Teleport, shift through bullets, and master lightning-fast takedowns in an all new kind of action game from tinyBuild and Team Shifty!

Super Cloudbuilt

Take on the role of Demi, a young soldier who wakes up in the empty shell of a ruined building, in the center of a strange new world, disconnected from her old life and physical body. With each new challenge she overcomes Demi slowly pieces together the future now laid out before her.

Aztez

Aztez is a highly stylized, brutally satisfying beat ’em up set in the world of the Aztec Empire. Take on the role of an elite close combat unit and undergo missions on behalf of the Empire in the turn-based metagame, and fight against warriors and mythological foes alike using 8 unique weapons in real time combat mode.

Children Of Zodiarcs

A story-driven, tactical RPG set in the fantasy realm of Lumus; a world divided by affluence and poverty. Take control of Nahmi and her fellow outcasts, utilising a brand new deck and dice based combat system to strike a blow to the noble Lords’ and Ladies’ unquenchable thirst for profit.

Gorogoa

Gorogoa is an elegant evolution of the puzzle genre, told through a beautifully hand-drawn story designed and illustrated by Jason Roberts.

The Shrouded Isle

As the high priest, uncover and purge heretics to prepare for the awakening of your beloved god beneath the waves.

Honorable Mentions

Cat Quest

Slayaway Camp

Sorry, James

Superflight

Far From Noise

Battle Chef Brigade

Kingsway

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