I wasn’t expecting to see INFRA mentioned but it’s one of my favorite games for a lot of the reasons you mentioned! It really had a sense for exploration and environments to tell more of the story. And it really is part puzzle game without having any single gimmick like other first person games. It reminds me a lot of Half Life 2’s puzzles (which makes sense since INFRA was also built in Source as far as I can remember).

I’m really itching for more expansions or games like it. Not sure what happened to the DLC they were working on, but there were some groups working on mods.

I recently beat Antimatter Dimensions after coming back to the Reality update after a long while. There’s a lot of depth, especially in the new additions. I appreciate all the layers and addition of QoL upgrades.

Bitburner was fun as an incremental hacking sim. I haven’t played it for a while, but I find it really unique.

There’s also Orb of Creation which can be a bit grindy but also seems really fun for what it offers. I’ve been playing the demo version at https://marple.itch.io/orb-of-creation

I just finished the storyline in Yakuza 0 and had a pretty great time. I might continue on with some more of the side stories and minigames but I’m itching to pick up on the story with Kiwami next

I’m looking forward to The Invincible. It felt very similar to Firewatch in terms of using the radio to stay in communication with a distant helpful character, and the overall sense of isolation and mystery. And just being walking simulator-ish lol

I second Nonogram Katana! You can also play in the browser, but there’s seriously soooo many puzzles to do.

And if that isn’t enough of a game for some people, there’s a whole guild system of resources and upgrades. Not to mention a dungeon mini-RPG they added in the last year

I’m actually kind of excited for the notes feature. Having a place to save notes if I come back to a game way later (thanks backlog) to help catch up is great. Or just keeping track of things for puzzle/mystery games is handy

I haven’t seen any incremental games get posted. They aren’t exactly traditional games, but so many of them are open source like Antimatter Dimensions or Synergism. Bitburner is a unique one as an incremental hacking sim, since it relies on actual scripting to grow and automate tasks.

It truly is insane how many subsidiaries and IPs are under their umbrella. And yet nobody really ever hears about Embracer. I’d heard of them once or twice in industry news, but never really knew how many things were under their belt. Truly grew too big for it’s own good.