What are some lesser known games you recommend to anybody?

Not sure if these count as lesser known:
OneShot (reading anything about it is a massive spoiler)
Supraland
Dead Synchronicity
Disc Room
Felix the Reaper
Invisible Inc
Street of Rogue
Volgarr the Viking

• Phoenix Point - Similiar to XCom
• Encased - Post Apocalyptic like Wasteland
• Gamedec - Odd type of Cyberpunk game
• Iratus - your the bad guy, lord of the dead
• Kenshi - squad survival, can be brutal

Not so sure about lesser known but three recommendations
SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293180/SuchArt_Genius_Artist_Simulator/

Hitchhiker - A Mystery Game https://store.steampowered.com/app/1003120/Hitchhiker__A_Mystery_Game/

Golf Around! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1086410/Golf_Around/

Oozi: Earth Adventure, great casual platformer
Cat goes Fishing, pretty fun casual fishing game

The Anomaly Series, one of the games that introduced reversed tower-defense genre!

Intergalactic Fishing

It's weird that many people wrote well-known AAA titles here.

Anyway, lemme think:

• Blades of Time (Hack & Slash)
• Defender's Quest (Tower Defense)
• Do Not Feed The Monkeys (Kinda unique)
• The Longest Journey trilogy (Surely one of my favourite adventure games.)
• Long Live The Queen (Choices matter VN)
• Neverending Nightmares (Charcoal drawing 2D psy-horror)
• SanctuaryRPG (Text based ASCII RPG) quite good
• Coromon (Can't use sleeper hit for this since it's new but still a good creature collector game.)

Eversion (I know, I know, but trust me, it's good)

I'm not sure if these would qualify as sleeper hits, but it looks like they might be of the lesser-known kind at least...

Wazhack
I'm not huge on roguelikes, but this one is probably the best roguelike title I've played so far. I never saw the end, I died so many times and yet, there was something that made me go back time and time again. You know when you die and then you go "ok just one last run" ? Yeah, that's what it did to me.

The Caribbean Sail
I picked that one up because it reminded me a bit of Pirates! on the NES (although people compare it to Oregon Trail and Organ Trail, which I've never played but from what I've seen, are more accurate comparisons) and I wasn't disappointed. It's a pretty cool retro adventure game.

Dead End Road
Horror driving game. It's short. It's cheap (especially on sale). And well worth playing methinks.

Webbed
This one might be too popular as quite a few people have it in their library, but I needed to mention Webbed. I'm terrible in physics-based games, but that little jumping spider is too cute for words.

Riff Racer - Race Your Music!
I noticed you had that one in your library, but it looks unplayed. You should try it sometimes. I find the game quite relaxing (despite the neon colors) in a somewhat hypnotic manner. My only gripe is that the racetrack generating system seems broken to me: a song like Somewhere Over the Rainbow yielded a 4 star difficulty track (out of five), while The Supreme Necrotic Audnance was a mere 1/5. How is that even possible? That gave me a huge WTF moment. O_o

Here's some I've played that are in my "good" folder.and also seem lesser known. Some I forgot I even played, so there's that too!

Bridge It (bridge building sim) https://store.steampowered.com/app/248370/Bridge_It/
Californium https://store.steampowered.com/app/402060/Californium/
Event[0] (not sure this is lesser known, but maybe? Thought it was really good) https://store.steampowered.com/app/470260/Event0/
Gravitas (free game, short, portal-esque) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067310/Gravitas/
Hue (maybe lesser known ) https://store.steampowered.com/app/383270/Hue/
Kairo https://store.steampowered.com/app/233230/Kairo/
The Last Show of Mr. Chardish https://store.steampowered.com/app/1164060/The_Last_Show_of_Mr_Chardish/
(if you like story based games, I thought Chardish this was very good for how unknown it was)
Mecho Echo (build machines to solve puzzles) https://store.steampowered.com/app/433890/MechoEcho/
Morphblade (cool puzzle battle game) https://store.steampowered.com/app/494720/Morphblade/
Spirits of Xanadu (very cool game - systemshock-ish) https://store.steampowered.com/app/312230/Spirits_of_Xanadu/
Stick it to the Man (enjoyed this weird game alot) https://store.steampowered.com/app/251830/Stick_it_to_The_Man/
Timeframe (very short, but memorable. I enjoyed) https://store.steampowered.com/app/340270/TIMEframe/
Verde Station (short, but memorable walking sim) https://store.steampowered.com/app/324120/Verde_Station/

Thanks so much thus far, frens.
Found very great gems to add to my wishlist.

Also, shameless bump

Last chance for you guys to enter the GA!

It was tough for me to find games that I have reviewed, highly recommend, and did not have over 1000 Steam reviews, but here are the two games are I was able to come up with:

Rollers of the Realm: ($5.99 @ 40% off) Well done pinball adventure with RPG elements. Delightful visual style even with a bit of voice acting with gameplay that didn't overstay its welcome for me. I recommend playing on hardest difficulty for the most challenge, and if you get stuck then replay prior levels to gain more gold to level up characters. BTW a sequel is coming.

Midnight Protocol: ($14.99 base price) My favorite hacking-centric game for PC. What's great is the variety of programs and being limited to a couple of them, the many different ways & degrees to complete an area, and the proc gen nature of area protections (ICE protections, sysops, etc). All this makes it feel less to me like a puzzle that I would otherwise get stumped on where I might be compelled to look up a solution out of impatience. Instead this gives me more of a strategy game vibe that I can work through & learn from.

Some recommendations for you:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/
Point n click adventure, grim and short, but also free. Very well done.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/599610/Lost_Words_Beyond_the_Page/
It's a tear jerker. Some lightweight platforming, mostly narration heavy. Beautiful game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1015940/Welcome_to_Elk/
Another narrative driven game, yeah, I like them. This one is especially weird, but in a good way. Tackles some heavy topics and still remains funny.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/385250/Paint_it_Back/
THE best and funniest picross game on Steam. Just replaying it for the second time after years and still think it's great.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/544970/Milkmaid_of_the_Milky_Way/
Pixelart point and click. It rhymes. You play a milkmaid in the 1920's in Norway, who gets abducted by an alien spaceship. Need I say more? Yeah, I love quirky.

I think those are decently known -> Braid and 11-11 Memories Retold

Those are not -> Pid and Primordia

I would especially advise Braid to everyone, while others may require some genre interest as well.

I'd recommend Jazzpunk for a great comedy game, which is a parody of multiple genres.

I would also like to mention having played Donut County for weird puzzle sgames.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620/Jagged_Alliance_2_Gold/

Bubble night just $2
I recently got a random key from the developer and it was an interesting play.
However, I cant write a review on because I did not clear it on insane difficulty. :(

It's pretty popular judging by the amount of reviews, but still, for some people it will be a find. Can't recommend it enough.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/335670/LISA_The_Painful/

Also, Enderal, a total conversion mod for Skyrim. Also somewhat popular, but I just finished it and it left me craving for more, absolutely stunning.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/976620/Enderal_Forgotten_Stories_Special_Edition/

Just finished Iconoclasts, it's astonishing. Created by ONE person working on it for 8 years.

I'd probably recommend Cardpocalypse (https://store.steampowered.com/app/904400/Cardpocalypse/) to card game enthusiasts. It's a very good and fun little single-player card game.
Another interesting little gem is House (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1444350/House/) - a roguelite (sort of) horror game that has a pretty simple and fun gameplay loop.
And finally, I'd recommend the Skautfold series (https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8659/Skautfold/), which are a pretty interesting experience overall, and they're made by one guy. The first two are my personal favorites. :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/335620/Star_Traders_Frontiers/

Made from 2 brothers and i never seen a game that got more Updates as this game.
So they really do a lot for the asked price.

Very recommended for strategy and tactic nerds.

Strong points:

• Extremely much possibilities
  A "small" example: I started the game and thought "i am smarter as the rest" + was not happy with the offered race + classes, so i created a own. I needed over 2h for it because of all the possibilities + my english translation speed. In the end i found out that i made a bunch of mistakes by creating that new character class but it isn't frustrating. I learned a lot from the testing around with the possibilities and of course from playing the game.
• Good creation "limitations". You can pick in dif. categories where your strong parts should be or your weaker parts.
  As example: You pick a lot of money (A), then you have only B-F for other stuff like the picked ship, traits, experience of the crew etc.. It bring the "pressure" that you don't have enough "points" for all that you want and that is in a lot of cases the main pressure -in a good way because you need to think what you want and be not a overpowered "god"-.

Weak points:

• A lot to read and only in english, which means not native speaker need to translate a lot.
• The animation of the characters in the combat looks bad.

I strongly recommend not to create a own race + class for the first play :-D