It feels like they have something in common?

Psychonauts
Beyond Good and Evil
Anachronox
Giants Citizen Kabuto
Sacrifice

Its like they are from a brief period of sheer creative gaming genius. The last game
game that sort of reminded me of these kind of games was : Armed and Dangerous. Perhaps Overlord
as well and to a lesser extent Bard's Tale. Did this die, or are there other games like this? Please tell me there are other games like this...

edit : perhaps I should add Startopia which I'm playing right now! Gotta built a lovenest for my lovesick scientists o.o

edit 2 : Also missing : Messiah, MDK

There's Fable 1+3, Vampire the masquerade Bloodlines, Omikron, Brutal legend, Jade Empire
and maybe some other games

Not too surprising since Armed and Dangerous was made by the same studio as Giants.

And well, another thing all these games have in common is that they all had disappointing (initial) sales despite critical acclaim, as far as I know.

Well, those two are from the heyday of Shiny Entertainment, before they got into the whole Matrix thing and basically dried up and died. There was a creative spirit around then which allowed games to be both original and not take themselves so damned seriously. Unfortunately, most of the games exhibiting these fine features were not commercial successes at the time, even though they have gained a large following over the years. However, in the game industry, what matters is the first month of sales, so those types of games rarely get made, because the general consensus in game industry management circles is that they don't sell well.

By the way, I think MDK deserves to be on that list as well. Incidentally, that's also from Shiny ;-)

There is one more thing that those games have in common: none of them achieved a commercial success. And that's very sad how creativity can be killed by such a trivial thing... Publishers prefer to take dull efficiency over exciting uncertainty any day of the week... Indies market, even with its obvious flaws, helped a lot in this situation and delivered many creative titles that would never be released by AAA publishers but yeah, I too wish for more mind blowing games like those you've mentioned.

Oh yes of course I forgot about MDK! Another title that I missed was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_%28video_game%29 Should try to get a hold of that some time (that and Impossible creatures)

The moment I finished reading that sentence one word popped up in my mind : Indies :)
If it wasn't for the indie scene and gog, I don't know if I would even be much of a gamer anymore...
(well that and my 5870 fried...)

sacrifice sucks.

Add Project Eden please :-)

I'll never forget: in highschool one of my buddies showed off his Viper V770 Ultra TNT2 card with Sacrifice's incredible graphics. (at the time :P)

Every now and again I notice someone insisting on the brilliance of this game - think it might be you :) Well met, I'm the local Blade Runner fanboy (aka best game ever made...)
I definitely want to give Sacrifice a go sometime, after Giants, since I gather that Sacrifice is the better game of the two.

It is....


To the OP : Add Messiah to the list .

Ok, certainly seems like it belongs :)
see my reply to Wishbone ;) All I remember about it from the gaming magazines was : baby angle possessing people :P It looked awesome! More or less the same time as another game I want to get my hands on : Oni

Given that it's right here on GOG, it shouldn't be hard to get a hold of ;-)

Be aware though that the game is finicky with some systems. I've given up getting it to work properly on mine, so I've still never played it. I did hear something about GOG doing something to fix it a while ago, so it may be better now, but I haven't checked, so your mileage may vary.

wow ok I completely missed its release on gog, or simply forgot about it :P Thanks for informing/reminding me!