Let's try to give the spotlight to some smaller games, so that maybe they find some new players:
This game was developed by Abbey Games, who also created Reus and Reus 2, not to be confused with the abbreviation of this game: REIS. First I will explain a bit what makes it special and then why I like it so much.
What is REIS?
It's a Roguelike in which you select a team of 3 Adventurers and go on a grand adventure tour with them Indiana Jones style. The game consist of mainly three parts: world map, adventure map and the encounters. First the world map between adventures where you use your found treasures to e.g. buy tools, train your team or research technology.
Then you select from the available adventures one to go on. These adventures can be for example on a tropical island, in Egypt or in the Himalayas. When you enter the region you go on a map with a randomly generated network of points of interest. Each point of interest is embedded into a little story (similar to Heroes of Might & Magic 3), either because your team find something, fight someone in an encounter or solve some problem. You need resources to move during an adventure, which makes planning your route necessary to still reach the goal, but explore as much as possible. For each map there are also some connected stories to discover, Who you choose for your team and how you evolve them determines the skills you will have and which problems they can solve. You have a mechanic, a linguist or a sailor? Then you might get a special solution for a certain problem (similar to FTL), but if you don't, you can still try to solve the problem with a certain chance which is influenced by the level of your characters in the necessary skill.
Finally the encounters are tactical and round based, but what makes it special is that the fights have a Mood, which is affecting all characters abilities, and those abilities are part of one of three categories: friendly, aggressive or devious. Instead of HP, characters have fighting spirit and you lower that with all 3 categories. When it's 0 the character either doesn't want to fight their opponents any more because they like them now, they are KO or because the other side was really, and I mean really, mean to them.
The moods are influenced by which category of abilities is mostly used: if everyone is friendly, those same mood abilities will be a little less effective, but an aggressive ability will do double damage, but that betrayal of course destroys the friendly mood and now devious abilities are enhanced. This rock paper scissors relationship between the three moods makes it necessary to focus on a certain tactic but still be able to counter the opposites counter to your tactic.
Why do I like REIS?
I like this game for its atmosphere and also for its mechanical depths. Those endorphins you get when you have a special event and you have the correct skill/item with you to solve it in a special way is simply marvelous when first experiencing. And due to the different layers (world map, team composition, abilities, etc.) and interactions between the layers your playthrough will feel different every time. And it will take a while before you have seen most of the possible interactions on the maps. The atmosphere is best described as Saturday morning animation. Yes there is violence and "bad people", but all in all this game is kid friendly in a positive way. It doesn't feel dumbed down, it simply isn't as cynical as so many other games. And that honestly feels refreshing from time to time.
And the turn of the 19th century gentleman (& gentlewoman) adventure is something I'm always a sucker for. And when you beat the enemy by being friendly and they leave the encounter area with a big smile on their face? It gives me a big smile myself