Jank game recommendations - Love 'em even though they suck. Weird in the good way, but you never pay full price.

[Hell Swarm]

Have you ever discovered a game you know is low quality but you love it any way? One dude in his bed room makes a master piece but his skills only allow him to create something a child could? Goat simulator? Who the fuck is this guy and why did he make a schizo game about being a wolf living in a sub marine? It's jank! All of it is jank! Well I fucking love jank games and I wanted a thread where we can enjoy jank together. Share what you love or what you're looking forward to.


This game is a generic, pretty bad 3d platformer. It's jumping puzzles range from fuck you to fuck you with a cherry on top. Hardly something to write home about normally. But this one feels like Old world if it was made on the original Xbox and now whatever the fuck Munch's odyssey was trying to do. You play as a weird bird thing exploring futuristic landscapes and green fog filled swamps. The gameplay is nothing to write home about but it's atmosphere is second to none. Excellent Jank.


ACE team (Xenoclash) made a game where you play as a weird little fucking creature and a giant rolling pin is chasing you across the world. Really strange but really charming at the same time. It's pretty playable by jank standards but it's so weird it has to be included.


Before all the indie whores started using unity to make physics based 'sims' there was Slav simulator 2016. Released in the year the world ended there was no better experience than getting drunk and building a slav mobile. It's a slav sim, you know it's jank.


Garage bad dream adventure is an obscure Japanese lost media title later rediscovered and released on mobile platforms as well as Steam. It's a point and click adventure with an extreme amount of weird things in it and the usual slant eyed weirdness you would expect from 1 guy making a game in his anime filled apartment. Very industrial and vaguely giving the sense of that old Alice in wonderland movie where they used poorly stuffed animals for the white rabbit and Cheshire cat.


Ice pick Lodge (Pathologic) made a game where Gods have destroyed the world and the only way to restore it is to make naked Russian midgets happy. Why? Who the fuck knows! This is a vehicle crafting game where your objective usually involves getting a string of naked midgets to hang onto the back of your vehicle until they get so happy they explode. If that's not enough to make you play the game then nothing will be. You can also kick them to make them explode, but this isn't some weeb porn game so we'll skip on the CBT elements for now.

Bethesda games do not count

Fuck you Todd Howard. Your games aren't jank, they're an abortion in binary.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

and the winner is...




edit: dafuq is this "commercial license"?

 

[Ash]

I guess that means they are making it clear that you will own nothing and not be happy?

As for jank recommendations, if your definition is that it is a bad game, then I have nothing for you. I don't play bad games. If your definition is that it lacks polish and has notable bad parts in an otherwise decent to great game, then probably something like Devil Spire.

 

[Tyranicon]

edit: dafuq is this "commercial license"?

 

[Falksi]

The humour just hits a sweet spot with me...

 

[Hagashager]

The classic is Two Worlds. I unironically like that game. Go play it for ultimate jank.

As a younger teenager I confess to also enjoying the NARC 2005 remake. The game is offensively terrible on multiple levels and absolutely would never be made today. That all said, at 13, Arresting people, planting drugs on them and living out a psychotic power-fantasy as a corrupt cop was morbid fun.

Outward. It's like Two Worlds but the jank usually works in your favor.

 

[Valestein]

Rogue Warrior, not a bad game per say, just uninspired in terms of gameplay, but what really makes it shine is the xbox live 12 year old tier dialogue of the main character.

 

[KafkaBot]

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure is a marvelous game and I wouldn't really describe it as jank. It makes little sense, but that's something else entirely.

On-topic, I'd probably go with Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry. It has flaws up the wazoo, is quite prone to crashing and was clearly rushed out the door (even after the rerelease), but I still think it is the most fun pirate RPG ever made.

As a bonus, it features the best rendition of Drunken Sailor ever seen in a videogame:




Also, Deadly Premonition. The PC version is even more janky than the console releases.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Age of Barbarian(s) games are super fun once you adjust to the slightly stiff controls. The digitized sprites and clunky English only add to the charm.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Age of Barbarian(s) games are super fun once you adjust to the slightly stiff controls. The digitized sprites and clunky English only add to the charm.

We both know you're only playing this for the naked chick. It looks janktastic and I'll pick it up when it's at a decent price.


One of the worst thought out JRPGs I've ever played. Every enemy encounter is a loud jump scare. There's no escaping it, you need to level up and you will get your ears destroyed. Highly recommend for 10 minutes.


Early PS1 janks pretty easy to find but how often is it attached to a franchise people respected? Fade to Black is Flashback in 33333DDDDDDDDD and it fucking sucks. There's other early PS1 adventure games I can't remember the names of but I would like to add. I remember one early PS1 demo disc having a girl with a huge sword wandering around a cave dungeon. Played like utter shit and looked even worse but I remember putting an hour or so into the demo because it was the early days of the console.

 

[Spukrian]

Before all the indie whores started using unity to make physics based 'sims' there was Slav simulator 2016. Released in the year the world ended there was no better experience than getting drunk and building a slav mobile. It's a slav sim, you know it's jank.

Uhh.. so Finland is Slavic now???

 

[Valestein]

Before all the indie whores started using unity to make physics based 'sims' there was Slav simulator 2016. Released in the year the world ended there was no better experience than getting drunk and building a slav mobile. It's a slav sim, you know it's jank.

Uhh.. so Finland is Slavic now???

Always has been.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Objectively nowhere near a top 10 game but I can't help myself. Ne plus ultra amongst weird titles I love.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Can't say that i really "love" it, but a few years ago i replayed Requiem: Avenging Angel, and i found the game to be actually worse than i remembered. Average level design and janky shooting and enemies. I still managed to finish the game and wasn't bored until maybe a couple of the last maps, where the waves of janky hit-scan enemies just wore me down. At the time i told myself the game was too shit to bother playing again but thinking about it right now i can feel like actually giving it another go. No idea what it is with this thing.

 

[lightbane]

Janky games? Any Russkie game then.

No idea what it is with this thing.

I suppose it's the even nodaways unique setting: You're an avenging angel with Biblically accurate (to some degree, I like the "turn to salt" power) magical powers, you fight demons that can only be hurt with your magical powers, and the setting is a cyberpunk cliché where Satan is manipulating humanity to bring them to their doom. The closest thing is Messiah.

 

[Hell Swarm]

This game looks terrible. It even has hard lock ups in the trailer.. So why am I tempted to buy it and play through it!?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

It's fairly janky, but it's one of those games where the developer wants to add every single feature under the Sun to it. I had a lot of fun with it a few months ago. Space exploration? Yup. Ship to ship combat? Yeah. Dungeon crawling? That too! Base building? It's in there.

 

[udm]

 

[Hell Swarm]

This game looks terrible. It even has hard lock ups in the trailer.. So why am I tempted to buy it and play through it!?

I tried it.
I got 6 FPS in the starting area
I have been out janked. I must refund.

 

[lightbane]

I think I found the ultimate janky game...

 

[Jack Slash]

Hammerfight is not mentioned often, but the game has a pretty interesting history. It's made by the same team that was behind Highfleet, but what's more curious is that Highfleet and Hammerfight share the same setting - for example, you can find the city of Melka in both games and visit it on occasion, and as far as fan theories go, Highfleet is a prequel to Hammerfight's storyline. There is a lengthy Steam thread with fan research done into this.

Even more importantly, Hammerfight was part of the emerging Russian indie scene back in 2008, when it won a few awards on the Independent Games Festival. Apparently, it was impressive enough to get its own page on Kranx Production's website - Kranx being the famous Russian dev behind Vangers and Perimeter, both innovative and outstanding games in their own right.

So, I'll just leave Highfleet as a recommendation of my own:

 

[Hell Swarm]

Jack Styler gameplay full of glitches and bad animations. Kind of want to refund it but I'd take the dudes only sale away and I might spoil his day.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Even more importantly, Hammerfight was part of the emerging Russian indie scene back in 2008, when it won a few awards on the Independent Games Festival.

I wonder if they're still getting paid for the sales of their game given the whole Russia embargo thing. Hammerfight is pretty damned fun. I got it as part of a Humble Bundle ages ago. Got the bundle for something else, but ended up spending a good chunk of time with Hammerfight.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

All the recommendations from the various Eurojank threads go here.

The classic is Two Worlds. I unironically like that game. Go play it for ultimate jank.

As a younger teenager I confess to also enjoying the NARC 2005 remake. The game is offensively terrible on multiple levels and absolutely would never be made today. That all said, at 13, Arresting people, planting drugs on them and living out a psychotic power-fantasy as a corrupt cop was morbid fun.

Outward. It's like Two Worlds but the jank usually works in your favor.

Also, Deadly Premonition. The PC version is even more janky than the console releases.

I second all the games listed.

 

[jebsmoker]

this game is noticeable because it's one of the few examples of a game made by a bunch of guys on the ag.ru forums that eventually went professional, but didn't lose their forum-centric spirit when they got the money to help make the game from 1C; the lead programmer basically rapidly prototyped the game with input from various posters on what kind of features to implement, and curated the ones that actually seemed good and put them in

the english translation is complete dogshit, the story is hard to follow, and the game is very obtuse - but it's also completely engrossing and has some of the best tactical combat you'll experience in a RPG besides Jagged Alliance 2