Kerbal is a game with a specific audience in mind: people into planes/rockets and the freedom to design them. I’m not that person, but the game does what it sets out to do exceedingly well.

Goes from chill to chaos real quick. Super fun, satisfying, beautiful to look at and can get really challenging. Arguably better as a mobile game, but it works either way.

A remnant of its time, when games-with-awkward-controls was a big thing. It’s fun though, if you can get into the silliness of it. Challenging but relatively short in a welcome way.

Brimming with the passion of people who clearly love this genre, and made for the people who are underwhelmed by lack of depth in its contemporaries. A bit too intimidating for me, but I respect it.

As a huge fan of the first Quake, at the time I never quite knew what to make of this. The setting & theme shift was bold but respectable. Sadly this release doesnt have music, which IMO was integral.

Decent follow-up to Her Story. Great production, but some of the magic is gone: it’s not as immersive and some of the writing is a struggle. That said, definitely play if you love FMV games.

A beautiful love letter to oldschool Zelda et al. Starts off slowish and somewhat opaque (by design), but if you stick with it, the pay-off is pretty good. A wonderful little puzzlebox of a game.

Starts off small in scope, but somehow just keeps expanding and delighting. Great characters, art, music and satisfying gameplay loop/s. Constantly surprising and funny.

IO Interactive’s reboot trilogy bundled into one package, and it’s about as good as a stealth sandbox gets. This is the culmination of over 20 years spent perfecting one format, and nobody builds these clockwork dioramas like IO do. Each map is a puzzle you learn by failing: patrol routes, target habits, a perfect silent run after a dozen botched ones. Few games reward patience this generously.

Cleverly expands on what Obra Dinn did with the genre while painting a gripping story. Doesn’t waste your time or rely on gamey logic. Extremely hard to pull off, but it’s been done wonderfully here.