Hidden Gems of Game Design Vol 36

Plenty of amazing games go unnoticed and are not played widely for various reasons. Maybe it’s a diamond in the rough, or the marketing wasn’t there, or it could be a game ahead of its time. For this monthly series, I’ve asked my fellow writers on SUPERJUMP to pick a game they think is deserving of a chance in the spotlight. Let us know your favorite hidden gems in the comments.

Josh Bycer

Shadow Hearts Series

With Clair Obscur being the new big name in town for RPG fans, I want to touch on a very underrated series that I would love to see more eyes on. Shadow Hearts by Sacnoth was released during the PS2 era, and while it did not get the same attention as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, it quickly went in its own weird direction.

The first game was the most straightforward of the trilogy, but it did introduce the series’ use of action commands via the “judgment ring”. With it, players could add more attacks to their turn and do more damage, with the rarest ring granting the player infinite attacks, provided they kept hitting its sweet spot.

The second game, subtitled Covenant, is when the series took off to make its own original mark on the genre. The game followed the main character from the first game during World War 1. Attacked and stripped of his powers, he must team up with a wacky assortment of JRPG characters to save the world from an evil organization.

The judgment ring makes a return, embellished to provide more ways of using it. You can now select and modify different ring types to customize the action commands. An easier ring removes all timings, but disables critical hits; another ring is all critical hits but requires specific timing to make it work. 

Combat was also more involved with the option to set up combos by directing the direction of the attack. Knocking the enemy in the air and then slamming them down would do more damage; coupled with the judgment ring, this attack could lead to massive damage.

In interviews, the designer of Clair Obscur mentioned being inspired by Shadow Hearts, and if you’ve played this game you can see why. From a character standpoint, each party member is completely different in terms of powers and progression. One party member is a wolf who grows in power by competing in a worldwide “dog fight club,” while another is a vampire obsessed with wrestling who finds inanimate objects in the world that he then uses as his new weapon. 

With all the different subsystems, progression, and combat depth, Shadow Hearts was not an easy series to jump right into. The third game tried to streamline things with a new story and new characters, but I did not get a chance to play it.

There are so many incredible RPGs currently lost to time, from the PS1/PS2 era, that I hope we get to see brought to PC for everyone to enjoy. If you're looking for an RPG series with a lot of charm and action, be sure to check it out.

Ben Cantrell

Guntastic

Indie arena brawlers are easy to come by these days, but Guntastic stood out to me, for good reason. Available on Steam and Xbox, it’s a fast-paced, one-shot-kill pixel-art party game from Ludicrous Games, a small Italian dev team. It might not reach the same heights as some of the genre’s heavyweights, but it carves out its own space with charm and energy. It’s one of those titles that tends to get buried in the depths of the store, but it absolutely deserves a moment in the spotlight.

What pulled me in at first was my undying love for TowerFall. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into that game over the years in couch multiplayer. I was hunting for something in a similar vein with tight maps, quick rounds, and unpredictable chaos. While Guntastic doesn’t offer quite the same level of strategy or depth as TowerFall, it’s got a scrappy charm all its own.

Standard rounds in Guntastic last 25 seconds on default settings, although I find removing the time limit increases the tension and fun factor greatly. When rounds start, you spawn in, dash for a random weapon, and try not to get obliterated. It’s twitchy, messy, and surprisingly satisfying - when you win of course. Where TowerFall encourages careful aim and positioning, Guntastic goes all in on speed and mayhem. One second you’re dominating the scoreboard, the next you’re walking into a shotgun blast and it's all over before you can blink.

What surprised me most was how decent the bot support is, which is something TowerFall lacks. You can play one-on-one, or four-player free-for-all, entirely offline with bots. Four-player bot matches can get utterly chaotic, but two-player matches with bots hit the sweet spot for me. The AI is sharp enough to keep you on your toes, especially on medium or hard difficulty. Learning each map’s layout, figuring out which weapons suit which situations, and reading your opponent’s next move gives it huge replayability, especially if this genre is your thing.

The arsenal is part of the appeal: each weapon feels totally distinct, from bouncing rockets to wall-piercing drills. Since your loadout changes constantly, adapting on the fly becomes essential. You’ll be mixing offense, defense, and good old button-mashing panic in every round.

Of course, it's not a perfect game and there's a lot of stuff I wish they added. A 3-player bot mode would’ve been ideal. Some alternate modes like team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag wouldn’t have gone astray either and would have added tonnes of replayability. Even just adding different abilities for each of the characters would create a lot of depth. It kind of feels like the devs pushed out the game with a solid core experience, then never came back with updates or DLC. It's a real shame because there’s so much potential here. I'd pay a few bucks for a half-dozen new modes and maps if the devs are listening!

Still, Guntastic is snappy, fun, and good-looking. The pixel art is vibrant, load times are near-instant, and once you turn off the annoying announcer voice, the game becomes infinitely more enjoyable. Guntastic is my hidden gem for the month and is worth a look if you love couch brawlers or twitchy fighting games.

Antony Terence

Miscrits

In 2009, the Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver remakes were released on the Nintendo DS and sold over 12 million copies. Social gaming was on the rise with Facebook popularizing worldwide lobbies, check-ins for daily rewards, and free-to-play titles that maximized engagement. Spotting a Pokémon-shaped hole in Facebook’s library, Broken Bulb Games launched Miscrits, a creature collector about fighting human Magicites.

Miscrits didn’t stray far from its Pokémon clone ambitions, but it did lower the barrier of entry. Roaming across zones to capture creatures known as Miscrits, taking down opponents in turn-based combat, and using elemental weaknesses and status effects, were never going to break new ground. While your avatar suffered from stiff animations, the battles looked great, with a strong visual identity and Miscrit names whose puns were a nod to Pokémon. 

Looking for new variants, leveling up Miscrits across four evolutions, and optimizing your team composition to beat the next Magicite boss made for a simple but engrossing time sink. The game even sidestepped RPG tradition by letting you use every move a Miscrit learned in its lifetime. Miscrits gained new moves every 3 levels and evolved at every 10 levels, making the grind a bit too predictable. But that didn’t dim the excitement of adding rare Miscrits to your collection or seeing a new evolution.

The latest additions, expansions, and hard-to-get Miscrits quickly became conversation starters and fostered a dedicated community. Coverage from YouTubers like JeaHSaren helped spread the word. While Miscrits shut down in 2017, a team led by developer gk started working with Broken Bulb’s founder Robert Nelson in 2024 to secure the IP and most of its assets. Miscrits: World of Creatures is now playable on Steam with new animations, balance fixes, and Miscrit spawn changes. I was chuffed to see Dark variants pop up more often. If you collected Miscrits back in 2011-2017, you owe it to yourself to check it out.