Roughly 18 years ago, my buddies and I took the California Zephyr from the Midwest out to San Fran. We were riding coach and it was two days travel each way.

The train was fine–about what we’d expected, nothing amazing but in generally good condition. The trip was great, though. The scenery traveling across the west was almost always interesting, we played a bunch of poker, and we met a bunch of interesting characters we still talk about to this day.

The most interesting guy we met (we dubbed him “The Stranger” after Sam Elliott’s character in The Big Lebowski) was a guy who made an annual trip coast-to-coast and back. He had some kind of grift where he was getting unemployment checks from two different states and would schedule his Amtrak trips such that he’d always miss his Chicago transfer and get put up in a hotel so he could shower and sleep on Amtrak’s dime. He’d mail a suitcase to his destination with clean clothes, cigarettes, etc, and mail his dirty laundry back home. When we got struck with a delay in California, he left the train station and bought a bunch of pizzas at a nearby Domino’s for the passengers and staff.

I highly recommend it as an alternative to air travel if you can spare the time. I often think about doing it again.

If you want something very similar to the three you named, do not sleep on Case of the Golden Idol.

It might have a little more replayability due to they way decisions you make impact the story, but I’d also put in a strong recommendation for Pentiment.

If you’re on Android, the emotion/sticker/gif browser in Gboard includes ASCII emoticons at the end! (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

I’ll have to stick these on the old to-do list! Already played and love Cultist Simulator, Forager, Inscryption, Into the Breach, and Ascension. Thanks for the recommendations!

I suppose it depends how you think of “hidden”. In my mind, if you follow awards and gaming news, you’re already in a fairly small niche of well-informed gamers. To people who don’t stay on that pulse, marketing budgets and cultural moments can largely determine what’s known or not known. Most of these didn’t get much marketing, and few (like Undertale) had a cultural moment I was aware of. But I didn’t include games like Hades which I love but kinda thought got a bit of both.

Ultimately, of course, you’re right and I just took advantage of the question to list a bunch of my favorite games. 😂

You’ve already got a bunch of great suggestions, but I’ll throw my two cents in too. I think of these as indies or games that have a niche audience, but some of them probably have bigger teams involved.

• Outer Wilds. It’s a quiet, contemplative game about space exploration and seems unremarkable until you really start exploring and learning about the solar system you’re in. If you play it, go in blind. IMO it’s a perfect game.
• Pentiment. You play as a young artist visiting a Renaissance-era hamlet to work on your masterpiece. The game is gorgeous and thoughtful about the decisions the player has to make when spending time and influencing the narrative. Stayed with me long after I finished.
• Slay the Spire. Tightly-balanced deck builder rougelike. I’ve put untold hours into this one on maybe 3 different platforms?
• Wildermyth. Hard to describe this one–it’s like an interactive fantasy tale with characters that grow and evolve in ways you won’t expect, and dynamically told so no two stories are quite the same. Pretty solid combat mechanics, too.
• Undertale. Does Undertale count as relatively unknown? If so, Undertale.
• Case of the Golden Idol. Very good mystery game with a cool, novel mechanic for solving each mystery. Don’t let the aesthetic put you off.
• Return of the Obra Dinn. Another incredible mystery game where you are determining what happened to the crew of a ship that sailed into port with no one aboard.
• Papers Please. Simple mechanics that really make you FEEL like you’re -Spider-Man- an oppressed civilian in a fascist/totalitarian government.
• Disco Elysium. Another great mystery game, wherein part of the mystery is: what kind of person were you, and who are you now?
• Tunic. It’s like old-school Zelda but with more depth and some serious twists.
• Stanley Parable. It’s funny and fun.
• Tchia. It’s like Breath of the Wild if Hyrule was a real place and the game devs wanted you to love it as much as they do. Fun and charming in a big way.
• Season. Hard to describe and I haven’t finished it yet, but the opening stuck with me. It’s about what we remember and what we choose to forget.
• Hollow Knight. Does Dark Souls arguably better than Dark Souls. I was put off by the Dark Soulsness and the aesthetic, but once I got a few hours in I was fully hooked. Another perfect game.
• Deep Rock Galactic. Great fun mining valuables and fighting alien bugs with friends.
• 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. A time-traveling anime story game with mecha combat.
• The Forgotten City. A time loop game where you are sent back to ancient Roman time.
• Nonary Games / Danganronpa. Both series are anime-inspired mystery games. If you want something that tries to be more cerebral and serious, Nonary is your ticket. If you want tongue-in-cheek violence, Danganronpa is the way to go.
• The Witness. A masterpiece puzzle game built on an incredibly simple core design. One of my favorite all time “a ha” moments came from this game.
• Citizen Sleeper. You are a synthetic being trying to survive on a space station and evade the megacorp that “owns” you. Your body is breaking down and you don’t know anyone, so you have to take it one day at a time and do what you can to survive. Clever mechanics and a really well told narrative.

That ended up being a lot more than I intended to share, but if this convinces anyone to give any of these games a shot, I think they’re in for a treat.

Case of the Golden Idol is so good! DLC coming soon, too, I think! Can’t wait to revisit that game.

Obra Dinn is one that I full on wish I could invoke selective amnesia so I could experience it again with fresh eyes.

If you haven’t tried it already, some other good detective games are Pentiment and Disco Elysium. My fiancee and I love playing detective games cooperatively, always on the hunt for a new one.