#also samorost 3 ofc but I already mentioned it

[gnosk]

@leechdealer69 Oh, absolutely.

In no particular order:

Hyper Light Drifter Ahaha I know I just said these were in no particular order but HLD might be my favorite video game. I’ve written essays about this game (okay, just one, but I poured my heart into it). Every part of this game is executed SO well and it comes together for an amazing product. It’s gorgeous and the sound design is superb. The story is subtle in a good way, largely told through small anecdotes and environmental storytelling, and is incredibly melancholic. The combat is brutally difficult, which would typically be a turn-off for me because I have difficulty with combat, but feels so good that even if you’re total shit at it you want to keep playing. I’m actually decent at HLD’s combat at this point, somehow. Every part of this game serves its thematic identity, from its story to its world to even the game design itself. Please play HLD if you get the chance.  

Machinarium Machinarium does the point-and-click genre really, really well. I love this genre solely because of this game, honestly. All of Amanita Design’s games are great (I also highly recommend Samorost 3), but Machinarium stands out to me because it’s just so.... charming? It follows a robot protagonist as he attempts to infiltrate the robot mafia to save his robot girlfriend and keep said robot mafia from destroying the robot city (everything in this game is a robot). Truly, the only straight romance that matters. It’s weird and wacky and while the puzzles are certainly difficult, they all make sense conceptually (plus there’s a really well thought out hint system). If you like point-and-clicks, or even if you don’t, I’d recommend checking this one out.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Yeah, okay, nobody’s surprised by this one. Open-world games are the type of thing that sound like they should be  right up my alley, but most don’t execute the open world aspect very well. BOTW, it’s safe to say, does. I’ve sunk, like, 250 hours into this game, and for good reason. I dunno if I can really say anything about BOTW that hasn’t already been said, but for me, the biggest draw is its exploration, and how much there is to explore. I’ve pretty much 100%’d BOTW (aside from the koroks, because fuck the koroks) because I kept being surprised that there was even more I hadn’t found already. Also I project onto Link. There’s that.

World of Goo This game is so weird, in a really good way. It’s also surprisingly anti-capitalist/anti-consumerist? The game itself mostly just consists of building towers of these cute little goo balls to solve puzzles, but it’s set against this warped, hyper-consumerist society that (vague spoilers?) ends up basically ruining everything. It was one of the first real video games I ever played and I’ve never played anything like it since, and it definitely has held up on replays. The puzzles are great, the goo balls are cute, and the world is demented in ways both amusing and intellectually complex. Anyway, yeah. This game’s pretty old at this point compared to most of the other entries on this list but it deserves some love.

Oxenfree Oxenfree is a really cool game. Five teenagers roaming around a historically haunted island, getting haunted and sharing their traumatic backstories? Hell yeah. This game implements choice-based dialogue & multiple endings really well, and every little detail becomes relevant to *something* later. It’s kind of a horror game, but not totally, and didn’t end up freaking me out existentially like most horror does (just has some spooky moments. It’s about ghosts, after all.). The sound design & art are really cool, and all of the main characters are really interesting & well written. There are also plenty of secrets if that’s your thing. Now that I’m writing this I actually want to go back and replay it, ahaha.

I think I think too much about video games.